"Every Strand" author commentary pt. 9

[allekha]

Chapter 34:
This chapter was originally set in a cave, and it also originally had a wizard of some kind or another being the one to create/collect the monsters. But after having had a wizard just cause some trouble, I wanted to mix it up and came up with another reason and a new setting.

How doth the little kwama now
This is a reference to an old "moral" poem for children that nowadays is only really remembered for its parody in Alice in Wonderland.

Spotted, striped, iridescent.
There's a mod for that last one, if you want some pretty shalk beetles in your Morrowind.

This place is absolutely infested with rats.
I was thinking of that moment you might get in a tabletop RPG or a game where you get to mow down low-level enemies with your now-powerful PC and remember how far you've come.

twisted Telvanni experiment of a trio of rats fused together at the tails.
Inspired by the rare phenomenon of rat kings in our world.

Voryn in all his time pining after Nerevar has never uselessly spent money like this.
It was fun to write another small bit of Voryn getting sniffy over someone Doing It Wrong, he Would Never.

Voryn getting pulled into some manner of slime beast, getting rescued by Vivec, and then having an intense bathing scene with Nerevar was the part of this chapter that I really wanted to keep instead of skipping over. When I first came up with this chapter, that was pretty much all there was in it!

Some Argonian swamp slime
Voriplasms, or something like them.

Nerevar takes it from him, pouring a little here and there as he rubs the layer of filth away, freeing his hair one section at a time
Is it an overlong hair kink fic if you don't have tender hair washing?

Once upon a time, the original plan was to have Voryn first confront Nerevar about making him wait forever, but that moment ended up getting changed and moved up, so it was no longer necessary to have it here.

Red-orange paints the horizon above the estate wall, fading into a greenish yellow that slides into the deep purple-blue of the twilight sky. The dusky colors are interrupted only by the occasional parasol mushroom or tree silhouetted against them.
Inspired by an actual sunset I had seen about a week before writing this.

"You are," she says, "in love with my husband, are you not?"
I reworded this several times to get to the version that sounded the best. 'are you not?' felt like it had a faint tinge of desperate denial in it that I liked.

Chapter 35:
Hoo boy. This is The Chapter.

I was pretty anxious about this one after spending so much time building up to it (and then leaving everyone hanging for two weeks), especially since the week leading up to it, I had a big project due at work and didn't have much time for writing. While I did go over it several times, I had hoped to get in another read-through or two with extra time to let it settle. So I was happy that readers seemed to find it impactful (thanks, all).

This was also something of a strange chapter in terms of the writing process in a couple of ways. First, while I knew this scene would be there since pretty much the beginning, with most scenes I had planned that far ahead, I knew the bones of what they would look like. Sometimes they changed around, of course, but generally, the initial strokes stayed intact. But this scene was one where I was never entirely certain about how it would go down, and it shifted around a lot as I worked out the story and started writing it. For example, some of the previous, sketchy iterations of this scene in my head looked like this, from the very early versions to slightly later ones:

• Almalexia is upset by word that Voryn is fucking Nerevar and goes to Kogoruhn to confront him, which includes drawing a dagger when it sounds like he's confirming the rumors, but he's able to talk her down to the world's tensest tea party, and they end up calling Nerevar over


• Almalexia comes over to discuss rumors in a very 'ha ha :) so crazy :) these couldn't possibly be true right :)' manner, and Nerevar ends up walking in on the world's awkwardest and most upsetting tea party


• As the story firmed up more, I realized that it made no sense for Almalexia to force this confrontation in Kogoruhn, of all places, so it moved to wherever they would be staying after the monster-hunting scene while they were supposed to be resting. In this version, Almalexia asked Voryn if he was in love with Nerevar but was more upset from the beginning, through still in denial that Nerevar might return those feelings


• Nerevar walks in on Almalexia and Voryn having a tense standoff about Voryn's feelings. Almalexia loses her temper and ends up drawing a dagger on Nerevar. Voryn pulls the dagger away from her physically. Things spiral downward from there as everyone gets increasingly upset. Voryn at one point becomes so distraught that he starts casting recall, and so does Almalexia. Nerevar is determined to take both of them to the sea estate at the same time to try to work things out somehow.

You can see that I really didn't know exactly how this should unfold for a while there! You can also see various themes and moments that did end up making it into the final scene, although sometimes in modified form. The seaside estate was a late addition to the story; I originally imagined that Nerevar would to force their reconciliation at the palace, but that runs into a similar problem as Almalexia going to Kogoruhn, where that would require Voryn choosing to go to the place where Almalexia holds way more power and has way more support than him, which seems like a big ask in a delicate situation where nothing is good and everything hurts for all of them.

I think part of the reason why this scene changed so much was also that I was still developing the Almalexia characterization for this story, especially in the very earliest stages. We only really get their personalities from a time waaaaay after this fic takes place with, of course, some rather big events happening in-between, and with Almalexia in particular, her writing is... not always great. I remember being pretty disappointed when I was first reading the Morrowind-related ESO pages, seeing how much they had fleshed out Sil, and then scrolling down to his dialogue about Almalexia, which more or less just doubles down on her being incredibly self-deluded. So I was left trying to figure out how to integrate her being unwilling to face reality in a setting where she hasn't yet murdered her husband and made herself a god, while trying to avoid the unfortunate 'women be crazy' implications that her original writing can have.

I ended up writing it more as her having a greater than average capacity for denial, which goes deeper when it goes from a topic she's already very upset about (probably not being able to have children) to a topic when she's even more upset (husband has been having an affair) - and has someone to be mad at, who she can attempt to make the problem, especially with her paranoid tendencies. But she doesn't take it to the same complete level of delusion we see in the games. Hopefully that feels like it worked.

Another issue I ran into with writing this chapter was that, as I think I mentioned in another round of commentary, I have a hard time holding dialogue in my head. While, when it came time to write it, I thought a lot about the chapter would go and had the major beats of the scene in mind, the specific dialogue that I came up with mostly slipped away. That made it hard to sit down and start writing. And this chapter, aside from the little bit at the end, is entirely dependent on the dialogue. Eventually I made myself sit down, and I ended up writing most of it in one sitting.

There's a rigidity to her limbs, to her face, painted a very flattering gold by the sunlight.
The way the light changes over this scene was very strong in my mental image of it, and it also serves some nice symbolic purposes. Sunset -> Azura's hour and a time of transition. Almalexia stands in the light -> she is 'bringing things to light' by finally kickstarting this conversation. The scene turns dark -> everyone's heart is in a pretty dark place at the end.

She resembles the statues she has had built, a glowing bronze.
I really like a good bronze and think they can be very beautiful - but like her statues would have been built to portray the people they represent in a particular light, Almalexia is trying to put up her own image/front here.

She doesn't buckle before him, though, no matter how harshly he stares or how much height he has on her.
I wanted to add in a mention of her not being intimidated by his trying to loom over her.

Chapter 36
Voryn's health in this chapter was meant to be a combination of genuinely overworking himself to deal with the situationship (previous chapters mentioned him having digestive issues, headaches, and fatigue, which can all be signs) and an episode of depression brought on by see previous chapter.

Probably tried and failed to undo the spell.
It was mentioned was back in chapter... 17... that "even his brothers have yet to figure out how to undo his locking spell." I originally thought that line would be a bit closer to when its consequences would come into play!

Six characters all talking is always a lot to handle in one scene.

This is the very most inner sanctum of House Dagoth, where the clan head may sleep easily.
A sad irony.

I know they usually say that the sick should eat easy things like soup and porridge, but porridge is kind of thick. Why not start with your favorite foods?
It was nice to write Araynys being a lighthearted contrast to Voryn and Endus in this chapter. Felt like it might do Voryn some good as well, while he's waiting.

cakes made of pounded saltrice
I don't think there's any canon mentions of rice cakes, but I love mochi (and also biko, and also the one time I had tangyuan I enjoyed that), so Tamriel should get to enjoy them, too.

We have a place prepared for you at dinner
Reference to "I have prepared a place for you".

Chapter 37
More lighting symbolism in this one, like with Almalexia mostly appearing in shadow here.

indulgently large windows made of many small pieces of glass
Probably more 'Oblivion' than 'Morrowind', but I had these kinds of windows on the mind.

You cuckoo-beetle
I went back and forth about that '-beetle' since I wondered if it didn't sound a bit silly, even though I wanted to make it a reference to some kind of insect.

sea-birds and beetles float on the wind
I gave them a break from the cliff racers, since they could all use it :p

some red and some brown, perhaps from crying so hard that night.
It is possible to get little spots (petrichae) from crying with so much force that you burst small blood vessels in your face.