Amber's Writing Journey - Tumblr Posts
They say that fanfiction is all stanning. But has anyone stanned the source material to the point of getting distracted from writing fanfiction?
You know what I mean, bookworms? Just to give you a window into my oscillating thoughts: If my guy Jon Snow has returned to the Wall post-ADWD with his betrothed Daenerys Targaryen, yeah I'm gonna stan what came before and make shit up like crazy. The struggle is real! I love the romance of these ‘soulmates’ but I also love everything that makes asoiaf what it is. (Within reason.)
If I stan too much, I write slow-going passages like this:
Jon’s heart felt full as he left her side, his mind brimming with thoughts of their eventful morning so far. My love, where do we go from here? He knew where he was going, at the least. He would find Samwell in the Flint Barracks. In the three days they’d been at Castle Black, both men had yet to break from meetings to tend to personal interactions. With the increasing days among the Watch, it became more strange to think of himself and Sam as former members of the order. He’d expected the feeling even before they’d left Winterfell, yet as he walked across the courtyard and felt the gazes of a few dozen black brothers upon his back, it shook him all the same.
Yet another feeling warred within Jon Snow. On the right step he’d sense the men. On the left step he’d sense Daenerys. Her attention and love thrilled him, as like it had only one other time. On Dragonstone. Their home.
But if I hold back on the stanning, I write meatier passages like this:
It was hard to say if anyone took offense enough to the executioner’s blade hanging above them, for as often as the Northern lords, free folk and warriors large and small came up to the dais to present themselves, did the displays of fealty reassure her of Jon's leadership. Strikingly, the free folk never kneeled, but they did offer gifts, the most sobering of which were a pair of bearskin boots given to Queen Daenerys by a group of spearwives.
She took them graciously and wondered if the wise men would believe the gesture had given King Jon’s uncertain frown a rosy flush. That he was charmed enough to tell her a tale of the hunter who’d fashioned them was welcomed with her whole heart. As she listened to him describe the father of two who fell to the Others at the event many had come to call the Passing Through the Ice, she wondered if the scribes of history would tell of this pair, the last he ever made. And as Jon sort of sat and looked at her for a long time, she wondered if they would believe she was hopelessly lost for him, as well.
So it's coming! If anyone has read "A Long Way Home" and is waiting for the next fic in the series, I'd like to get Chapter 1 up before House of the Dragon comes out in June. (Because of the competition, you see, from their very same Team Black forebearers.) That's the goal, anyway!