JESUS H CRIPES THE FIC IS THE SIZE OF A HOUSE

HELLO. BACK FROM ITALY. MORE ABOUT THAT SOON.

FIRST, BIG BANG.

Holy FUCKING shit, I can't believe I'm making this post.

*_*

Title: Accidental Memory in the Case of Death
Pairing: Something about an, errrm, Arthur and a--what was it again, Mervin? Merlane? IDEK.
Rating NC1746353754.
Warnings: Uhm. Uhm. Okay. Well, porn. That should be a warning. A lot of that. Bit of dubious con, dubious reincarnation, dubious--oh, just about everything. Also a bit (hah) of angst, character death (but, you know. IT'S REINCARNATION, so it sort of has to happen at some point), language, boys being all rough 'n tough, or maybe just generally stupid, and word count. Yes. You saw that right. Word count gets its own warning.
Word Count: 75.5K, BBS.
Summary: Tony O does not befriend losers. Tony O is not gay, not crazy, he is not particularly nice and he is most definitely not royalty. Destiny disagrees.

Arts! I HAVE ARTS, MADE BY FIVE AMAZING, AMAZING PEOPLE. Some I had a chance to admire beforehand, some I saw today for the first time, and I'm still walking about flailing due to the sheer AWESOME shown by these little human bundles of brilliance. Thank you all SO, SO much. I AM HONOURED AND HAPPY THAT I GOT TO WORK W/ EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU, in one way or another!

♥ A/M vs A/EM by xenakis_ and yue_ix
♥ A and Em by ladykuja
♥ A and M by likeasugarcube
♥ A TRAILER! by cherrybina

And now, I'm going to talk about my fic at length. YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW LONG I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS MOMENT. SO LONG, it gets its own cut.

Uggghhh. When did I start writing it? Febuary, ish? Even before that maybe, before the Big Bang even started, because I remember I'd just finished--the RPF fic? Or maybe I hadn't even written that yet. I was reading fic and stuff, and was thinking about fic, and possibilities of Merlin fic, and I was on the train back from school and my coach was basically empty. There was one other person, a man, across the aisle, idek what he looked like anymore but but I was staring at his pants (I HAD SUNGLASSES ON, IT WAS OK). And this is the exact lame line of thought I followed:

"Merrrrrlin. Merlin. And Arthur. Why aren't they real? I want them to be real. Haha, I'm stupid. What if they were real, though? But they didn't know it. What if the series accidentally hit on the truth, or part of it, and like, omg reincarnations and shit in actual RL how cool would that be, how COOL, OMG I COULD BE ARTHUR AND NOT KNOW IT. AND THE DUDE RIGHT THERE COULD BE MERLIN. AND NOT KNOW IT. AND WE'D BE IN THE SAME TRAIN AND WE WOULDN'T KNOW IT. Oh wouldn't that be cool. Wouldn't that be--oh, and then the train would go like, DEAD, and we'd be stuck and--"

And from there on out it just. Madness. Mostly madness. I wasn't going to write it at first. It seemed to ridiculous. "M/A FIC BASED ON MY LIFE! AKA COMMUTING AND SLACKING ON SCHOOLWORK, YESSS!" Who'd want to read that shit, really? I didn't even know. But then I'd be in a bus or--as usually--on the train back or to school, and I'd be bored and I'd just start thinking about it again. Came up with random scenes that only ensured me that this idea was completely batshit. Merlin on a skateboard? WHAT? PLAYING THE PIANO, WHATWHAT? ARTHUR'S MOTHER, UH, what, uncontrollable rutting sessions in the middle of a field, WHAAAAT?

But then I had to pick a BB plot. It was either this or a Medieval roadtrip. I don't know what made me pick this one over the other, but at some point I just did that wonderfully 'FUCK IT!' thing and went with the insane.

It took a loooong time for the plot to come together. I had snatches of ideas, scenes, but they didn't fit together. I didn't know which one would go first, last, didn't know how it'd end or what the point of it all was, and what with all the other crazy things I was doing--Gayms, anyone? COMMENT FIC MEMES? MORALLY DUBIOUS VARIATIONS ON A SHIP?--and all in all, it took a long time before I finally sat down and actually started writing it. The first paragraph. I don't think I've edited any bit of the story more than I have the beginning (oh god that was a hard one), but the first sentence always stayed the same. And now I can't even look at it without bursting into INEXPLICABLE over-emotional bouts of weeping. MY FIC! MY STORY! THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE FOR SO LONG! YOU ARE SO WEIRD! WHY AM I SO ATTACHED! etc etc.

Finally, I had a plot doc. Eight pages, and for ages it seemed like I wasn't going to get past page two of plot. There was so much to tell, even though it was all so unsubstantial, and a lot of times I didn't have the patience to wait for the goods bits so I just didn't write at all. CLEVER LITTLE PERSON THAT I AM. I tried to explain the story to a couple of people, and also on LJ, but whenever I do it all just--muddles into weird exclamations of PORN! and TRAINS! and SKATEBOARDS LOL! which is accurate, but also not very, and I still can't really tell you what the fic is about. Only that it's about something, and that something takes 75K to explain.

I am usually not that quick to admit this, buuuut even though the story most definitely stops resembling my life in any way the moment that train stops, or maybe it never did really resemble my life (HAHA I AM NOT ANTHONY, BELIEVE YOU ME. I'd be flattered to be him, really, the pup of an asshole that he is, but I'm not. DO NOT HAVE THE ENERGY, MAN), I put a lot of mahself into it. Niek is reading it right now, emailing me MAD RESPONSES OF "HAHAHA" because she's picking up on things I've told her about the loserish things I've done in my life and how I've shamelessly shoved them off on Anthony. I don't do that a lot, in fic and stuff, but in this case I couldn't help it very much. Tony is, if anything, a loser in denial and if I know anything about anything--it's about being a loser in denial. About confusion re: other people's feelings, relationships and Why Folks Do The Shit That They Do. The characters are mostly made up. But some bits, yeah, that's a little real. Just a little! :D

The last month writing this was madness. I was wrapping up the last term, getting my financial shit in order, and then some other RL crazies that shouldn't interest anyone but that still made it hard to concentrate. But I wanted to write this, MORE THAN ANYTHING I WANTED TO FINISH--to have this out there, whether for good or for bad, and to sit back and laugh, incredulously. Which I guess is what I'm doing right now. What the fuck! What the FUCK! HA HA! HA!

All the while, right about one third in, I had Bina there with me. I was sending her bits, every scene the moment it was finished, and we knew it was going to be a big fic (I remember getting to page 2 of the plot, at 20K, and concluding I'd finish at around 80K. You know what I said? "NO WAY. DUDE THAT'S--NO. I swear to you it won't be longer than 40. 40K MAX! MAXXXX!"), and I was getting excited and was imagining the end result in the sense of--how it'd just look. ON THE SITE. I imagined the review page (LOL AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO DOES THIS? I refuse to think so. I bet you all do it.), imagined it being either people going "...uhm" or, "HA HA HA HA", and not much else. OR, WHEN I WAS HAVING A HARD TIME WRITING, I imagined lengthy comments explaining to me all the places I went wrong and fucked up my story. I WAS FEEDING OFF BINA'S COMMENTARY LIKE CRAZY BY THEN. I had a growing 30+ fic on my hands, barely knowing what was going on with it, and everything about writing it was just FRAZZLED. I mean, not the writing itself (I hope O_O), but the process. Sitting down, talking about it, avoiding it, thinking about it--all frazzled, all over the place, way too excited for something so silly and porny.

Then, the last two weeks or so, as the end (didn't really) drew near, I--if you do so recall--begged together a small army of betas. cherrybina, staraflur, itachitachi and loftily. Staraflur opened a google doc with what I had so far (not a lot), and I added scenes daily while they beta'd as we went.

I WISH I COULD EXPLAIN TO YOU ALL THE STUFF THAT HAPPENED IN THAT DOC, BUT IT'S DIFFICULT. Live betaing can be hard to--well, come to terms with at times, BECAUSE I AM SENSITIVE LIKE THAT, but once I got over that (pretty quickly, actually)--oh my god. THE CONVERSATIONS. THE COMMENTARIES. THE LOLZ! THE RAINBOW! I think I'll miss that the most. I just had so much fun, watching that crew do their work and discussing things, or just exploding in caps, or the TOTAL FUCKING ADRENALINE THRILL OF FINISHING A CHAPTER and posting it and SEEING OTHER PEOPLE READ IT RIGHT THERE. God, how those girls saved my ASS. THE TYPOS THAT I MADE. THE TOTAL STUPIDITY I AM CAPABLE OF AT TIMES AMAZES ME, but I'm glad for it, B/C I LEARNED. AND HAD FUN. AND. JUST. I owe those four so much, idek if they realise. SO MUCH! DHKJHDFKH! ♥

And now it's posted. Fuck. Fuck! Yesterday there was Heineken beer in our fridge. We never have Heineken. I CRACKED THE FUCK UP. IRONY, YOU WILL NEVER STOP BEING HILARIOUS.

More people I would like to thank: zarathuse, WITHOUT WHOM THE ALT TITLE "THE HINEYKEN" WOULD'VE NEVER EXISTED and who'll never let me live down the bottle thing, which I am secretly grateful for b/c wtf, really. niekiej, who supported without knowing even when she was SHAKING HER HEAD AND GOING "DUUUUUDE. NO.", who listened to me talk about bottles Up The A when we were in a deserted church somewhere in the mountains of Tuscany. And to you, for enthusiasm and encouragement and all the laughter. Amazing, amazing people. All of you.

AND YES I KNOW IT'S ONLY A FIC DO NOT GIVE ME THAT LOOK.