Hello!

I enjoy reading, writing, and thinking. If you're a fan of any of those three things, we're likely to get on well enough provided you're not out to kill me. I write when the mood strikes me - I read every day - and I tend to think quite a bit. What I write should be self-evident by simply looking a little south of this text; please give it a look and leave a review!

At any rate, I do enjoy chat, so feel free to PM me with story and pairing requests, thoughts, ideas, suggestions, or just for conversation.

-Valasania the Pale

Update regarding The Last Rose: (8-26-2020)

So the fic is on hiatus. It's not for lack of ideas (the story was planned out to the end before I started posting chapters), nor for lack of energy (I've got the mojo, if 'Chronicles of the Lily of the Valley' didn't demonstrate that for those who've read it), and it's certainly not for lack of care. I love the Last Rose and it's one of my first, great achievements as a writer even in its incomplete state. Hell, even the response it's garnered has surprised me - for such a small archive, the following is significant and I adore every last one of you who gave it a chance and found yourself enjoying the story. I put a lot of hard work into it (something like 400 hours writing and planning and editing and proofreading and tinkering over and over and over again until scenes were as perfect as I could make them).

The problem is RWBY.

I've said it in authors notes, but I really, really loathe the direction the show has taken roughly since volume six, episode four. Oz isn't my favorite character in the show but seeing him so brutally treated by the cast really hurt a lot of the sympathy and connection I had for them. And that didn't let up as the volume drew to a close - to me, the show veered off course into themes that I just can't get behind (the self-righteousness of the characters, the lack of care for consequences, emotional or political or for their characterization, it goes on). It wasn't the thing that lost me, but it was the beginning of the end, the first on the list, you could say.

So I took a break, hoping that Volume Seven would recover and start working to fix the things I saw as mistakes in Volume Six, and found myself utterly disappointed as it simply doubled down.

I won't ramble on - RWBY's burned me. It's not fun to watch for me right now. The characters I love - Ruby especially - just aren't hitting the notes I NEED to vibe off of to write for The Last Rose. There haven't been many stories in the archive that I've really been able to draw some inspiration from either (not a Jaune fan, sorry. Fun secondary character, but he is Not My Protagonist). So for now, the story is on hiatus.

I'd love to return to The Last Rose in the future - Some of my favorite ideas for the whole story are towards the end and I had a lot planned for the middle as well. I didn't enter this as an idle project - when I started writing I had a problem to solve and that problem was the Give Ruby an Interesting Character Arc Initiative. Show how Ruby has great characterization already and take it somewhere by placing her at the center stage without having to share the narrative with roughly five other Primary Protagonists. Among the first scenes I conceptualized for The Last Rose was the very last, and that closure is something I'd like to give - to myself, to the Ruby I have written, and to The Last Rose.

So yeah.

That's where I stand right now. I don't have plans to lift the hiatus any time soon because I don't really have much faith that the show will take a turn that draws me back in. Me and the writers are working with different fundamental philosophies and themes, writing-wise. This fall I plan on giving some original writing a go, and I have a second chapter for 'Chronicles of the Lily of the Valley' in the works (Which is really a side project with no long-term plans; it may very well end with the second chapter and I'd be pretty happy with that).

And... yeah. I am incredibly sorry for those of you who've invested in my story (I KNOW HOW YOU FEEL). But I can't force myself to work on it right now, even with how much I've already invested. A conservative 400 hours of my free time in the middle of college is no mean investment to simply drop. But I can't right now.

Cheers, y'all. Stay safe, stay healthy, stay classy.

-V