Hello, all.

If there's anyone left to mourn this fic: mourn now. I'm not going to finish this. I've always looked back at this trilogy and hoped, hoped I could refind my motivation for it. I stopped and started with other projects, unwilling to start anything new without having first finished this. And now, at the time of writing this (5am, for interested readers), I've logged back into my old and still beloved-to-me account. Looked back through what I wrote.

I'm never going to finish this. I can tell myself I will but I won't. I started this trilogy in 2014 and it's 2017 now. I'm never coming back to this specific world and I need to accept this. However, I won't leave without a final chapter. After all, I used to write this daily: this fic used to consume my life. Working the twists and turns out, interacting with the loyal readers and reviewers; it was all a journey I'll never forget.

Consider this, then, a thank-you note, and as cleanly as I can write, a dump of what the Jacquerie trilogy was designed to be. This may seem over-dramatic, but I have my reasons. They'll become clear in due course.

A Thank-You

I've never been a fan of the Hunger Games. In fact, I felt, like all other worlds I write for, that it was a story with great potential that I never enjoyed the final execution of. As a matter of interest, I always found the first film the most enticing; the imagery and weirdly hallucinogenic quality of the Capitol was a source of enjoyment for me that the shoddy worldbuilding of the next 3 could never recapture for me. I'm a fan of Seneca Crane and Caesar Flickerman. That much you may have gauged.

In 2012, I wrote a Hunger Games SYOT that never went anywhere, but it was the precursor to this trilogy. The only submission to truly survive it was Lexus Valerian, a character who returned to this fic as my way of having Seneca Crane bounce off someone and speak candidly.

Then, after a couple years of idly surfing the SYOT community, and becoming tired of tropes, I decided to dip my toe in the water again, but with a highly different intent to most of my fellow writers: I asked for significantly less tributes, and Capitol characters. I feel like I never explained this properly. My intent, from start to finish, was to craft a truly interactive fic that went beyond the 'copy-paste' story format I was seeing in other SYOTs; a fic with a huge narrative arc and true complexity. I opted to stage it in a Capitol-themed arena: as much as possible I tried to play with space and make it seem real. Despite some characters having… certain issues (it's difficult to get past an MC being called Theon), I tried to add as much complexity as possible. When I started this fic, I was 15-ish, I believe? As such, I failed in many respects. Still, so many of you persisted in reading. I can't imagine why but I love you all for doing so.

I wrote daily. It was my obsession. I got up, went to school, spent my bus ride there and back (40 minutes apiece) writing a 2-3000 word chapter, formatted and uploaded it, then the next day the same. I was addicted to cliffhangers and never before or since have I felt the glee of what I was doing there in writing this fanfiction.

The immediacy of writing and responding that this fic created meant I got to see your predictions, your opinions, change over the course of the fic. At the start, you (a term I'm continually using to mean a tiny community who cared so intensely, who I loved so dearly) were disparate and invested in your own characters, understandably. As I started making it clear that I was working towards a collaborative, rebel-led endgame, however, the joy of dicing with character's lives and making you care deeply about a few people in a big world was addictive. The power of mythos was never stronger to me than when I was writing an idiotic Hunger Games fanfiction. I played with your creations, made them interact, and with a call-and-response almost as immediate as an oral retelling, you reacted, you predicted, you analysed what I had written and tried to guess my intent.

I broke Cesal, Glace, Theon, Quint, Emil, Elizabeth and Emma out of the Games. I'd never felt as powerful as when I bent my little world to make that happen.

Now for the sappy bit.

When I started writing Jacquerie, it was a sideproject dreamt up on my dad's sofa because I was bored of certain SYOT tropes and wanted to play around a little with the format. My endgame in life as a whole was to be an investigative journalist. I had taught myself teeline shorthand. I had met countless industry professionals and networked my 15-year-old self all over the shop. I had thrown myself into it without thinking if I had really wanted it or just thought it sounded reputable.

Now, I won't say some dumb fanfiction I wrote changed my life. That would be excessive. But to say it wasn't a contributing factor to the path I'm currently taking would be a lie.

I had never felt the power of writing as strongly as when I wrote Jacquerie. Fanfiction, as a platform, and beyond its fandom aspect, is an incredible and unique experience, and it's addicting precisely because of its community aspect. I built my own little fanbase, a group of people who even returned from 2012 to find their characters all over again, and I gave you, as best I could, a story. I wrote without editing. It was, essentially, an improvisational tale I was spinning as much as I would be if I had you all round a fireplace. I still look back on the year I wrote this incessantly as the year that improved my writing more than any other. Just- check the first two and last two chapters of what I wrote. You'll see.

I changed my career path to writing. I threw myself into that as much as anything else. I settled, and as of writing remain settled, on television screenwriting, but I'm remaining open to other forms. I applied to university, and got an unconditional place to study English and Creative Writing at what's considered the best university for it in my country.

That moment I will unequivocally thank the year I spent writing this for. I'm studying a subject I love because this dumb trilogy gave me just enough skill to apply and win it.

That's why I have to drop it now: because I need to start writing again, this place was my greatest ever training ground, and I simply can't finish this particular story. The gap between my experience when I started and my experience when I ended is simply too great. This can't be addressed without fixing the entire fic, and I don't have the time nor patience for it.

Now, in the unlikely possibility any members of my tiny community (or beyond) want to take up this fic: you are welcome to it. Take it with my blessing and my love. I only ask you follow the few story beats I had planned out.

To everyone who read this small story on this small website: thank you. You influenced my life more than you'll likely ever know.

The Story

Jacquerie was named for the popular revolt in France in 1358. Ivaylo was named for the leader who spearheaded a peasant uprising in Bulgaria in 1277. The intended final fic, Bagaudae, was named for the popular revolts that followed in the slow and horribly inevitable collapse of the Roman Empire.

Most of the following has been roughly transcripted from my story notes; as such, they're pretty raw. I can only apologise; I don't want to redo the story to look pretty. This was my intent, and I'll stick with it.

The arena in Ivaylo was going to be based off of Big Brother, a show I love and hate in equal measure. The strangely placed tone of the actual show was one I intended to recreate; a show intended as a dystopian social experiment, made cheap entertainment. You'll note that shows named as 'The Real-Life Hunger Games' have been popping up recently. This was to be a parody of that. I'd be lying to say that the excellent Doctor Who episode on the subject wasn't an inspiration. I had no firm idea on a story within the arena besides a lot of body horror stuff Saw and/or I'm a Celebrity style; being locked in rooms and being slowly and excruciatingly eaten away by locusts, that sort of thing. The idea of having it set in the Capitol was so I could have the Capitolians finally crack and break the children out of the arena. The irony of that particular story beat was that our society is going in the opposite direction when it comes to exploitative entertainment.

As for the revo kids, Lexus and Seneca, they were to find a nuclear wasteland city, a Humvee and a map home, as well as the truth behind the Capitol ruthlessly murdering a survivor coalition in Canada. That wasn't firmly formed as a story arc. That journey was mostly an emotional one, with Seneca and Lexus essentially becoming confused and emotionally unavailable parental figures to a group of fucked up kids.

Rufus was to become a ruthless dictator in the opposite direction to Snow, in different ways. The revo kids were to be stuck in the middle. I never got to heavily implement this, but Snow's in the early stages of Alzheimer's. I was intending to have Snow become a more and more unstable leader, with Rufus becoming a more and more cruel one. Slowly, Snow was to become a puppet leader dictated by primarily Caesar and Anamaria, with Rufus making great tactical decisions that murder legions, mostly avox.

Ivaylo closes with the Capitol rioting, the children in the arena first carried to freedom, then facing resistance, then ripped apart bloodily by the polarised crowd. Every child was to die apart from Nico, who survives primarily through help by Alec and a militarised avox force.

Bagaudae was to open with the Capitol in a shambles, Caesar directing a city state under martial law, and Snow left in a chair alone, to die in a room by himself. Rufus has directed his hugely cruelly directed collective of districts to war. The political corruption on all sides leads to the war becoming a set of skirmishes, and with the knowledge the revos (who by this point have allied with the avox) have of the nuclear war that had happened, suddenly the war turns to a fight to get to the long-abandoned District 13, where Snow had remilitarised the area with a new nuclear force. Under direction by Seneca and Lexus, the revos get there first; they have to kill a lot of people to do so. Faced with a set of nuclear missiles they can point anywhere they like, the revo kids face an ethical and moral dilemma.

Quint suggests, and the other revo kids agree, to blow the entire cache before Caesar or Rufus can get to it very, very soon; at the expense of their lives, but to prevent the war from becoming another nuclear wasteland, and hopefully save the cycle of nuclear war from repeating. They blow the cache.

I never decided whether or not they lived, or indeed how the war ended. I always felt finality after they sacrifice themselves to stop anyone else from dying, and never made a firm decision on the true ending. I had written a concept of the kids meeting after the war, however, in which Seneca has become an unwilling leader who moves democracy closer to a world of, like, technological democracy? Everyone votes like Greeks rather than Romans; instead of a representative speaking for you, everyone votes on everything via internet. I liked that handover of ancient civilisations.

Quint became my quiet lead through Bagaudae and to the end. In the ending I thought about where everyone lives, he's become a hydroponic farmer. He doesn't interest himself in politics; he works on improving agricultural methods. He's in a relationship with Nico 'n all that. The others all have a mix of fates. Cesal and Emil end up working with animals. Theon starts an orphanage. Glace skips between jobs in the Capitol, but she's seeing a trauma counsellor and doing better. Elizabeth goes into politics, trying to fix ethical issues with the system that's set up, but it's unglamorous stuff, not successful; she just enjoys it. Emma just wanders the districts a lot and turns her hand to whatever seasonal work needs doing, enjoying freedom of movement. They meet together at a war memorial and light bonfires for the dead. They all quietly discuss Elizabeth's theory on needing a security measure for protecting against Snow loyalists. Quint cries as he hears her discuss the need for safety. They watch ash rise in the sky, spreading out wings like an eagle.

I hope this ending is satisfying; or at the very least, gives finality to this story. I can't see myself returning to this, perhaps ever, so I hope this gives anyone who was interested a sense of closure. Writing out my notes for the ending was somewhat emotional for me.

Again, and finally: thank you all for reading this far. You can expect other writing from me in the near future, but this likely won't return.

But I'll miss it. Thanks, Hunger Games kids. It was a genuine pleasure.

-screening