"Every Strand" author commentary pt. 1
Jan. 17th, 2025 08:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
allekhaI've never written an author commentary on my writing before, but it sounded like fun, so why not?
The idea:
It began with 2.5 scenes of hair kink. It... got out of hand.
The original idea I had was more or less the first scene of the fic (Nerevar jokingly(?) orders Voryn to wear his hair down more often because it's pretty) + a scene of the two of them later reminiscing about it in bed, plus an omake that may or may not end up as a bonus scene to the fic one day. But then I started thinking of how they might have gone from scene A to scene B, and it started growing into a slow burn emotional-affair romance with other themes involved. And then at some point I realized that I wanted to add a degree of politics happening so it didn't feel like the romance was all happening in a void. I gave in and started writing in October 2024.
The title:
I had a difficult time coming up with the title for this fic. I wanted it to sound magical, maybe connected to something astronomical; I also wanted it to have at least a vague connection with hair since its hair kink beginnings still ended up being a significant component of the fic. After looking and looking for a relevant line of poetry or song lyric or pretty quote or something, I made up the title based on this pair of lines:
Those curious locks so aptly twin'd,
Whose every hair a soul doth bind
from Thomas Carew's poem "To A.L. Persuasions to Love". (Which I had already used to title another fic years ago, though more directly.)
The brothers:
While writing this fic, I started using Obsidian, which is a kind of personal wiki software mostly aimed at note taking, to keep track of information. I have one note for a vague outline and reminders to myself about smaller storylines, notes consisting of maps and canon info I got tired of looking up on UESP, and then multiple notes just to keep all of the seven damn brothers straight. They were the reason I started looking for a new personal wiki software after realizing the one I used on another project years ago was outdated.
It's fun to see how different first era fic interprets their characters based on their scarce dialogue/where they are/their artifacts, but seven more-or-less-OCs was also a lot for me to keep in my head for the first few chapters. When I first wrote the note, each brother was listed in birth order and given a one-line summary of his character (Voryn's is 'Our protagonist :)'), and as I wrote, I also put what they did in the fic under their name until some of them had enough material for their own notes. By now, I don't need the reference as much, but it was super helpful when I hadn't yet written enough to solidify them in my head.
Chapter 1:
I rewrote this line at least four times, and I'm still not entirely happy with it, but I also couldn't find it in myself to cut it.
This line came about because it seems reasonable that even if your society thinks that daring and ambition is a virtue, for the existing movers and shakers, having some commoner (one assumes from the fact that Nerevar was once a caravan guard) from some random small clan (according to Douglas Goodall) pop up and rapidly rise to prominence would be seen as a threat to their own power. Even if he is your friend.
I feel like these two lines together kind of sum up the first part of this fic.
Dagoth Ur – the dungeon – is a Dwemer ruin, so I thought I would give it a Dwemer name. Nchuand means "radiant", which seemed like an auspicious word to put in a name.
This scene originally went on for longer (and involved the Gilvoth/Vemyn fight Voryn mentions), but halfway through, I realized it was killing the pacing and not interesting after all, so it got shortened and mostly cut out.
I showed my mom – who is not a geologist but knows more than me about geology – a screenshot I took in the Sheogorad, because I was curious if there was a more precise name for that kind of geography. She took one look at it and went, "Oh! That isn't real!" in a delighted voice. We did do some searching together, but it seems that 'stone columns in the water' is probably about as good of a description as you're going to get.
It's my headcanon that he invented those – they had to come from somewhere, didn't they?
This was my attempt to describe something like the sayagata pattern that we see on doors in the Mournhold ruins in Tribunal. I'm not sure it worked, and perhaps I should have taken it out since it's not important.
Vivec says: "In that time I was but a junior counselor to Nerevar, and Nerevar's queen, Almalexia, and his other favorite counselor, Sotha Sil, always doubted that such a peace might long survive, given the bitter disputes between Chimer and Dwemer, but by negotiation and compromise, Nerevar and Dumac somehow managed to preserve a fragile peace." But what did Nerevar's loyal general have to say about it? Especially when his House lived in the same area as many of those Dwemer strongholds and ages later, their symbol would be found on objects in Dwemer ruins? When, much later, the ash vampires wear beards that look awfully similar to the ones seen on Dwemer ghosts? What did he think of this alliance? (I mean, we also only hear this 'everyone totally knew the peace wouldn't last' with the benefit of hindsight and knowing it went down in such spectacular flames that it took the Dwemer with it; did everyone think that the whole thing was about to blow up for the whole ~250 years it did last?)
This comes up a little more later in the fic, but I liked the idea of touching on possible cultural differences between different areas/Houses in Resdayn.
Not getting into fic spoiler territory here, but this line was the start of something that came from this observation:
House Mora: Supposedly the origin of one of their country's greatest heroes, one who was elevated to sainthood after his death
Also House Mora: An obscure footnote of a House that was quietly absorbed into House Hlaalu
Chapter 2:
I had a blast writing all the descriptions of the clothes and wedding in this chapter :)
And also coming up with what their wedding customs/rituals could be.
Sil originally had a different worry, but it ended up not going anywhere in later chapters and didn't make that much sense anyway, so I changed it to this.
I find Vivec's attitude towards Almalexia in some of the sermon passages and the canon-adjacent writings like What My Beloved Taught Me to be... interesting, even if it's softened here.
I know the fanon is for Nerevar to have blue eyes – Almalexia and Vivec also tend to get an eye color change from their actual models, haha – but while it looks pretty in fanart, I decided to go with what seem to be the Chimer-standard gold eyes for this fic. But still special gold eyes, lol.
This is another section that got rewritten a bunch. I think it still sounds a little awkward, but it is what it is at this point.
I particularly enjoyed coming up with ways the various Houses might dress to the nines slightly differently depending on what their fashions or specialties might be. I never see beetle wing embroidery or the like in Morrowind fic/art, but it seems like an obvious choice for decoration with all the bugs they've got over there.
I originally came up with the ideas for the gifts other than Dumac's for a fic I never wrote, which was about Almalexia and Nerevar's wedding. The only other thing I remember making it from that idea to this chapter is the colored lanterns.
I'm going to be honest, this one is more my opinion. We only get a few examples of Vivec's poems between the sermons and ESO, and... they're not good. The strained rhyming in them doesn't help. Sorry, Vivec. (To be fair, I think that writing 'characters who are good at poetry' is hard, because most of us aren't!) At least he has the excuse of being young here.
While I was writing, I ran into the official mod that includes the weird little entertainment plot I'd totally forgotten about, including the very traditional Dunmer shield dance.
I had this prescient image pop vividly into my head when writing this part of the scene and couldn't resist including it.
A favorite line of mine 💕
Chapter 3:
This one is something of a transitional chapter, so not the most exciting.
If you read something like The Tale of Genji, or start reading about medieval nobles, one of the striking things is how little anyone seems to do things alone. Even when sneaking around on a secret mission to have an affair at night, they always seem to have a handful of people with them. Of course, safety is probably a little less of an issue for a powerful sorcerer.
This line was inspired by a book I was reading. I did not make it all the way through In the Shelter of the Pine, which is a diary by an Edo noblewoman about her husband, who was close to the shogun, but there was one scene that struck me. Her husband hires a bunch of people to build some cottages in his garden, then hires people to play shopkeeper in them, just as you hear about 18th century French nobles building themselves 'rustic hamlets' (although apparently they didn't actually cosplay farmers in them). Because the shogun's wife was visiting, and it simply was too far below her station to go shopping like a normal woman, so having somebody create a fake shopping street was the only way for her and her ladies to have that very everyday experience. It was pretty sad, honestly.
He originally had a name, but then he never came up again and I didn't seem him doing so in future plot events, so in the interest of reducing OC name overload, I yanked his out.
Obviously, I'm not the first to pick up on this idea, but if a people's religion literally labels one of the gods of the world as attempting to ruin their bloodlines and purity, and someone is from a place known for having foreign ancestry, it seems like that is going to be an issue that comes up when they marry the queen. Maybe it was a purely political marriage and everyone was okay with it if no kids happened. Maybe Nerevar with his 100 personality and speechcraft was just that good at soothing everyone's worries. Maybe they all knew to shut up when the guy who just defeated an army and his besties were around.
Aristocracy sucks in the real world, but sometimes it's fun to write someone going on a bit of a power trip. By the way, using forced penitence as a punishment for slander used to be a real thing (at least in England) - normal people would take each other to court over insults. Link if you're interested in reading more.
I like the ash statues. They are creepy-cute and menacing, but we never get a good idea of exactly what they do or how they work. And I also like the idea that some of the creepy House Dagoth stuff was once (like the House itself and its members) fairly normal before getting twisted into a nightmarish version of what it once stood for.
Re: Nerevar and Voryn's conversation: There are many people far better informed than me to speak about this topic. However, I'll just say that while the context is different, if you feel like playing a heartbreaking game, My Child Lebensborn is an excellent raising sim designed to raise awareness of children born of war and based on the experiences of such children in post-WWII Norway. If you check it out, please mind the content notes if you need to.
No lollygagging :|
The idea:
It began with 2.5 scenes of hair kink. It... got out of hand.
The original idea I had was more or less the first scene of the fic (Nerevar jokingly(?) orders Voryn to wear his hair down more often because it's pretty) + a scene of the two of them later reminiscing about it in bed, plus an omake that may or may not end up as a bonus scene to the fic one day. But then I started thinking of how they might have gone from scene A to scene B, and it started growing into a slow burn emotional-affair romance with other themes involved. And then at some point I realized that I wanted to add a degree of politics happening so it didn't feel like the romance was all happening in a void. I gave in and started writing in October 2024.
The title:
I had a difficult time coming up with the title for this fic. I wanted it to sound magical, maybe connected to something astronomical; I also wanted it to have at least a vague connection with hair since its hair kink beginnings still ended up being a significant component of the fic. After looking and looking for a relevant line of poetry or song lyric or pretty quote or something, I made up the title based on this pair of lines:
Those curious locks so aptly twin'd,
Whose every hair a soul doth bind
from Thomas Carew's poem "To A.L. Persuasions to Love". (Which I had already used to title another fic years ago, though more directly.)
The brothers:
While writing this fic, I started using Obsidian, which is a kind of personal wiki software mostly aimed at note taking, to keep track of information. I have one note for a vague outline and reminders to myself about smaller storylines, notes consisting of maps and canon info I got tired of looking up on UESP, and then multiple notes just to keep all of the seven damn brothers straight. They were the reason I started looking for a new personal wiki software after realizing the one I used on another project years ago was outdated.
It's fun to see how different first era fic interprets their characters based on their scarce dialogue/where they are/their artifacts, but seven more-or-less-OCs was also a lot for me to keep in my head for the first few chapters. When I first wrote the note, each brother was listed in birth order and given a one-line summary of his character (Voryn's is 'Our protagonist :)'), and as I wrote, I also put what they did in the fic under their name until some of them had enough material for their own notes. By now, I don't need the reference as much, but it was super helpful when I hadn't yet written enough to solidify them in my head.
Chapter 1:
Every mer, even those born after the conquest, seems to have thrown off two centuries' worth of anger in favor of joy.
I rewrote this line at least four times, and I'm still not entirely happy with it, but I also couldn't find it in myself to cut it.
There's a prickle of irritation deep in Voryn to hear it – something that rankles at seeing a common Chimer from a small House pull himself to exalted rank – but Nerevar has well-earned the fruits of his ambitions.
This line came about because it seems reasonable that even if your society thinks that daring and ambition is a virtue, for the existing movers and shakers, having some commoner (one assumes from the fact that Nerevar was once a caravan guard) from some random small clan (according to Douglas Goodall) pop up and rapidly rise to prominence would be seen as a threat to their own power. Even if he is your friend.
Touching his hair is an intimacy that very few people outside his family have ever dared to presume.
It is clear to him by now that the gesture means something different to Nerevar, that it's simply a marker of their friendship and something that soothes or amuses him.
I feel like these two lines together kind of sum up the first part of this fic.
First he goes to Nchuandhurz, the Dwemer city that dips into Red Mountain
Dagoth Ur – the dungeon – is a Dwemer ruin, so I thought I would give it a Dwemer name. Nchuand means "radiant", which seemed like an auspicious word to put in a name.
Nerevar stops by briefly not long after on his way to Mournhold. Endus takes the excuse to dig up a case of the best alcohol from their warehouses for him. He jokes that Nerevar has earned the Nords’ share that they used to grudgingly hand over as part of their diplomacy with the invaders to minimize trouble for their territory, and in return Nerevar praises the quality and promises to save the rest for a worthy occasion.
This scene originally went on for longer (and involved the Gilvoth/Vemyn fight Voryn mentions), but halfway through, I realized it was killing the pacing and not interesting after all, so it got shortened and mostly cut out.
The treacherous waters of the Sheogorad, with their hazardous stone columns and few natural harbors, may never be the best shipping route.
I showed my mom – who is not a geologist but knows more than me about geology – a screenshot I took in the Sheogorad, because I was curious if there was a more precise name for that kind of geography. She took one look at it and went, "Oh! That isn't real!" in a delighted voice. We did do some searching together, but it seems that 'stone columns in the water' is probably about as good of a description as you're going to get.
Sil's brilliant work on the propylon chambers and indexes was incredibly useful for transit during the war, and now they make it easy to send messengers across the whole of Resdayn.
It's my headcanon that he invented those – they had to come from somewhere, didn't they?
indigo with an auspicious double-cross pattern
This was my attempt to describe something like the sayagata pattern that we see on doors in the Mournhold ruins in Tribunal. I'm not sure it worked, and perhaps I should have taken it out since it's not important.
Nerevar gives him a curious sideways look. "You know," he says, "Ayem and Vehk and Seht have all told me that this isn't going to work, not for long. That we should quietly prepare to make war with the Dwemer next. I'm getting a little tired of hearing it, actually, and I know that the same thing is happening on Dumac's side. You may be the only one who hasn't advised me that this peace won't last, and I don't think it's only because your House has the closest ties with them."
There have been times of bitterness between House Dagoth and the Dwemer as well; but his ancestors figured it was better to live in the unpredictable landscape surrounding Red Mountain with allies, when it was possible, rather than yet another enemy. Over the centuries, they have traded ceramics and metal and occasionally spouses. It hasn't helped Dagoth's reputation with the other Houses, but it has suited them.
Vivec says: "In that time I was but a junior counselor to Nerevar, and Nerevar's queen, Almalexia, and his other favorite counselor, Sotha Sil, always doubted that such a peace might long survive, given the bitter disputes between Chimer and Dwemer, but by negotiation and compromise, Nerevar and Dumac somehow managed to preserve a fragile peace." But what did Nerevar's loyal general have to say about it? Especially when his House lived in the same area as many of those Dwemer strongholds and ages later, their symbol would be found on objects in Dwemer ruins? When, much later, the ash vampires wear beards that look awfully similar to the ones seen on Dwemer ghosts? What did he think of this alliance? (I mean, we also only hear this 'everyone totally knew the peace wouldn't last' with the benefit of hindsight and knowing it went down in such spectacular flames that it took the Dwemer with it; did everyone think that the whole thing was about to blow up for the whole ~250 years it did last?)
Perhaps it is more typical where he grew up, similar to how Voryn was taught to be polite in the south by taking a step closer during conversation and in Telvanni territory by speaking an extra step apart.
This comes up a little more later in the fic, but I liked the idea of touching on possible cultural differences between different areas/Houses in Resdayn.
that House Mora has been curiously mute given that one of their own has become Resdayn's hero
Not getting into fic spoiler territory here, but this line was the start of something that came from this observation:
House Mora: Supposedly the origin of one of their country's greatest heroes, one who was elevated to sainthood after his death
Also House Mora: An obscure footnote of a House that was quietly absorbed into House Hlaalu
Chapter 2:
I had a blast writing all the descriptions of the clothes and wedding in this chapter :)
all round, for there will be no inauspicious four-cornered tables at the royal wedding
And also coming up with what their wedding customs/rituals could be.
Sil shakes his head. "No, it's nothing. Only... seeing that everything is ready had me contemplating my gift for Neht and Ayem again. There were a few things I couldn't figure out with the design, and I wish I had been able to perfect it in time."
Sil originally had a different worry, but it ended up not going anywhere in later chapters and didn't make that much sense anyway, so I changed it to this.
"Took them long enough to get around to this," he says.
"They weren't engaged for long at all."
"No. But you could see the idea of it in him ages ago. At least she accepted when he asked."
I find Vivec's attitude towards Almalexia in some of the sermon passages and the canon-adjacent writings like What My Beloved Taught Me to be... interesting, even if it's softened here.
The black kohl around his eyes makes their pale gold color seem even lighter and more piercing.
I know the fanon is for Nerevar to have blue eyes – Almalexia and Vivec also tend to get an eye color change from their actual models, haha – but while it looks pretty in fanart, I decided to go with what seem to be the Chimer-standard gold eyes for this fic. But still special gold eyes, lol.
Voryn folds his hands behind his back. "I have been told that one of the most important aspects of a good marriage – even purely political ones – is that the parties are able to talk well with each other. In which case, I should think that this one will be excellent."
"Told by who?" Nerevar asks, glancing up at him.
"My mother. She once said to me that she and our father hardly knew each other when their engagement was first arranged, but she decided that they would work effectively together and might well fall in love when they were able to stay up til Azura's hour talking, and so they didn't marry as strangers. And she also said that speaking honestly every night they were together was what kept them happy with each other, even through more tumultuous times."
This is another section that got rewritten a bunch. I think it still sounds a little awkward, but it is what it is at this point.
The plaza fills with guests dressed in all manner of extravagance – Telvanni magisters in shining enchantments, Redoran councilors with highly decorated ceremonial bracers on their arms, Indoril nobles with tippets embroidered with precious metals and gems, Hlaalu council members in brightly colored watered silks, a few Ashlanders whose clothes sport iridescent shalk-wings, and standing out among the Chimer, the Dwemer with their elaborately curled or braided beards strewn with plenty of gold.
I particularly enjoyed coming up with ways the various Houses might dress to the nines slightly differently depending on what their fashions or specialties might be. I never see beetle wing embroidery or the like in Morrowind fic/art, but it seems like an obvious choice for decoration with all the bugs they've got over there.
Once they have made their way through some of the food (it turns out that the ash yam tarts are particularly good, made with rich yams and cloves, and he can somewhat understand Vivec's earlier theft of them), it is time for the more secular rituals of weddings, starting with the presentation of gifts to the couple.
I originally came up with the ideas for the gifts other than Dumac's for a fic I never wrote, which was about Almalexia and Nerevar's wedding. The only other thing I remember making it from that idea to this chapter is the colored lanterns.
Voryn thinks he clings too much to rhyme, but he has an ear for rhythm and prosody, making for a charming song.
I'm going to be honest, this one is more my opinion. We only get a few examples of Vivec's poems between the sermons and ESO, and... they're not good. The strained rhyming in them doesn't help. Sorry, Vivec. (To be fair, I think that writing 'characters who are good at poetry' is hard, because most of us aren't!) At least he has the excuse of being young here.
(or in the case of one Redoran who has drawn a crowd of impressed onlookers, in the manner of an acrobat as he performs on the small space of a shield)
While I was writing, I ran into the official mod that includes the weird little entertainment plot I'd totally forgotten about, including the very traditional Dunmer shield dance.
lit purple and yellow by the lanterns
I had this prescient image pop vividly into my head when writing this part of the scene and couldn't resist including it.
Not all the days to come will be so bright and happy; but this one is.
A favorite line of mine 💕
Chapter 3:
This one is something of a transitional chapter, so not the most exciting.
He takes only Relmyna and one of his other retainers as guard and company and keeps his hood pulled up to reduce the attention he receives.
If you read something like The Tale of Genji, or start reading about medieval nobles, one of the striking things is how little anyone seems to do things alone. Even when sneaking around on a secret mission to have an affair at night, they always seem to have a handful of people with them. Of course, safety is probably a little less of an issue for a powerful sorcerer.
He seldom goes out shopping like this, and it feels odd to stand in the store and look over the shelves.
This line was inspired by a book I was reading. I did not make it all the way through In the Shelter of the Pine, which is a diary by an Edo noblewoman about her husband, who was close to the shogun, but there was one scene that struck me. Her husband hires a bunch of people to build some cottages in his garden, then hires people to play shopkeeper in them, just as you hear about 18th century French nobles building themselves 'rustic hamlets' (although apparently they didn't actually cosplay farmers in them). Because the shogun's wife was visiting, and it simply was too far below her station to go shopping like a normal woman, so having somebody create a fake shopping street was the only way for her and her ladies to have that very everyday experience. It was pretty sad, honestly.
He recognizes the man as one of the attendants of Councilor Nevas
He originally had a name, but then he never came up again and I didn't seem him doing so in future plot events, so in the interest of reducing OC name overload, I yanked his out.
House Mora. Yes. There are stories about their ancestry. Some of them may even be true.
Obviously, I'm not the first to pick up on this idea, but if a people's religion literally labels one of the gods of the world as attempting to ruin their bloodlines and purity, and someone is from a place known for having foreign ancestry, it seems like that is going to be an issue that comes up when they marry the queen. Maybe it was a purely political marriage and everyone was okay with it if no kids happened. Maybe Nerevar with his 100 personality and speechcraft was just that good at soothing everyone's worries. Maybe they all knew to shut up when the guy who just defeated an army and his besties were around.
Voryn lets him wait to hear his punishment for speaking so stupidly; waits himself to contemplate the best way to do so and to feel the rush of power over this man
Aristocracy sucks in the real world, but sometimes it's fun to write someone going on a bit of a power trip. By the way, using forced penitence as a punishment for slander used to be a real thing (at least in England) - normal people would take each other to court over insults. Link if you're interested in reading more.
The... doll?
I like the ash statues. They are creepy-cute and menacing, but we never get a good idea of exactly what they do or how they work. And I also like the idea that some of the creepy House Dagoth stuff was once (like the House itself and its members) fairly normal before getting twisted into a nightmarish version of what it once stood for.
Re: Nerevar and Voryn's conversation: There are many people far better informed than me to speak about this topic. However, I'll just say that while the context is different, if you feel like playing a heartbreaking game, My Child Lebensborn is an excellent raising sim designed to raise awareness of children born of war and based on the experiences of such children in post-WWII Norway. If you check it out, please mind the content notes if you need to.
"I told him not to lollygag," he says
No lollygagging :|
