Chapter 1: A Sort of Homecoming (or: Romance Dawn on Ravenser Odd)
Disclaimer, since apparently this has been a consistent issue for readers - this fic is not going to be actiony right away. Hell, let me put it plain; this first arc is probably going to feel slow as hell, because we're trying to sketch out a shitmillion OCs, a few of which will become main characters through the whole fic, in as short and as effective time as possible - which is still looking to take like 16-18 chapters.
So, broad sketch of situation for those of you wandering in -
Arc 1 is low action, high character interaction, low plot - threads as being laid down, seeds being planted, but nothing is going to be happening right away because they need time to grow. Like, there's a few fight scenes sprinkled in, but they're super short and low-stakes with a lot of non-fighting space shoved in between them because we are dealing with a physically disabled protagonist.
Arc 2, as planned, is going to be 'better' by most of those metrics - there will still be new characters, but most of the main cast will be established by then and the plot is planned on being engaging and largely self-contained mystery plot for that island. It is planned to be shorter than Arc 1, but might not be depending on how certain elements congeal.
Arc 3 will have Mercy D. Witt show up, for those of you that are asking - along with some other OCs will end up part of the permanent cast, because we are very much interested in making sure he doesn't eat the fic and turn it into his own show. This arc will probably run into a few of Arc 1's issues in 'low action/low drama' but, as currently planned (which is not full detail yet), should be a lot faster paced and energetic along with having more action in general, along with resolving/building on a couple of the threads established in Arc 1.
Arc 4 and beyond is where active drama and action will become regular presences, because enough groundwork will be laid for that to be feasible and I will not spoil anything further than that for those of you invested in that.
There are several other arcs planned after that for the West Blue Saga and Grand Line - Paradise Saga, in high enough detail where there is a pretty damn good chance of us lasting a fair bit for all the prep-work we've put into doing just that. On the plus side, Monica drafting chapters is making them come out faster than before so it might end up being faster to get to some of these places than the previous pace of 'roughly a month between uploads' - we've managed to pick up the pace to twice in one month already, so take that as evidence.
However, if you are uninterested in Arc 1 as described, this might be the time to leave. We are not going for continuity lock-out, but there is a fair chance that if you don't read Arc 1, you will not have any idea of what's happening with the characters or why certain things are happening - no, there's not going to be a huge cornerstone of information dumped there, but it still will cover several backstories, why the hell the first 5 characters are even in the crew to begin with, how X character got Y valuable item, and why Z character counts as a cyborg after a certain point.
Stonecutter Island was a fairly quiet island. It's hard for it to be much of anything else; it hadn't seen any proper form of human inhabitation in nearly half a century, which was when a minor plague had killed off a good number of the inhabitants, chased off the survivors and a good number of their neighbors from its sister island with the grief of their loss and no small fear that they'd be next, and then continued to ward off any ideas of return with the lingering specter of sickness that had taken over all tales of the place.
That wasn't to say it was silent or empty, however. There were always sound from the winds and storms that battered the islands on a weekly basis, varying between the whisper of drizzle and a steady chill breeze to the sort of tumults that rattled windows and rafters with an intensity that was only tame by the standards of those that had spent their lives surviving the worst weather Grand Line had to offer. And then there were the birds.
Both Stonecutter and its twin Ravenser Odd were home to a great number of seafaring birds and a few others that weren't quite as adventurous but were still fond enough of the place not to bother leaving for sunnier shores. Petrels of many different names and natures, albatrosses, sea faring ravens - for which the island Ravenser Odd might have been named at one point, though the history was long since lost to its original inhabitants, even before they'd died off -, cormorants, pelicans, pigeons, peregrines, puffins, gannets, frigatebirds, skuas, auks, skimmers, starlings, lapwings, and a frankly dazzling variety of swallows and swifts.
Once, the sister islands had been conjoined at the hip, but time, tide, and tectonic movement had gradually eased them apart, slipping a small but distinct gap between them.
This was of little object to the birds, of course, but to Meryl Dacey, who's ability to fly was quite subjective at best and who's ability to swim was unquestionably nil, it was something to be concerned about, because it required two particular flavors of knowledge to get around.
First, it required a sense of timing; the daily tides themselves would reveal a natural 'bridge' of columnar basalt and piled sand filled out by a fair bit of human intervention on a rather predictable schedule.
Second, it required one know exactly what parts of said bridge were sound ground and which were not.
Thankfully, as a long-term resident of Ravenser and a regular visitor to Stonecutter, she had both, along with the good sense not to test the edges of that knowledge too vigorously. Timing the tides might be as reliable a science as clocking the dawn and the matter of safe footing as easy as hopscotch - admittedly, hopscotch across smooth saltwater slick stone, which was a bit of a trickier business in practice -, but there was still the chance of foul weather or other intervention throwing a wrench into the works.
The crossing complete, Meryl turned her eyes and thoughts the question of where she would be going today.
Her requirements were few - a bit of peace and quiet to go with a good view of the birds. Which birds, she didn't always care, and there wasn't exactly a shortage of solitude on Stonecutter Island, but it was still a question that required consideration on the exclusive merit of 'and what will it take to get there'.
Skellingar Peak, for example, was always a reliably calm and peaceful place, with an atmosphere the exact opposite of the pirate town on the other end of Ravenser, along with the added bonus of being one of her grandfather's typical haunts, but the process of getting there was a tricky one and if her estimation of the weather conditions were correct…
Meryl looked at the scattering of trees growing on the mountain and then at the birds, just to cross-reference as she made the mental calculations again.
Hmm… no, definitely not. The wind was too strong to risk the narrow cliff paths and their near complete absence of handholds, for all that her ultimate destination would be protected from the worst of it. While she could probably catch herself if she slipped - she'd managed the trick before, just barely in time not to make that fall her last -, it wasn't an experience she wanted to repeat anytime soon.
So that left sticking to lower ground.
That wasn't bad. It wouldn't limit her birdwatching by much, even if it shifted the demographics of her artistic subjects a bit. And besides -
The optimistic thought cut off as a blast of freezing cold wind hit Meryl out of nowhere, physically forcing her on her heels as it nearly ripped her satchel open and whipped both her shawl and her hair into a wild frenzy of stinging threads. Immediately, she ran with the wind towards one of the few buildings still intact, ducking to the right of the doorway as soon as she was clear of it.
The house, like most of the structures on Stonecutter, was of the blackhouse style - drystone walls with cracks packed tight with dirt and sand that could stand up to the worst weather, though neglect had a way of tearing them down faster than Meryl could understand. This one, however, had held itself together well, with even the thatch roof being surprisingly complete for at least fifty years of neglect, though its absence of a proper door to shut the elements out completely was a stark reminder that it was only matter of time until the rest fell apart.
Still, it would hold long enough for one Meryl Dacey to pull herself back together in relative safety.
As soon as she had both her shivers and hammering heart back under control, she checked her satchel to make sure her art supplies were still secure - they were, despite her initial panic - and then, after letting go of that long held breath, took a look at the world outside.
Yes, not making the climb was the right choice; that same blast of wind would have done much worse than to simply ruffle her feathers on the cliffs - it would have knocked her clean off and into another impromptu flying lesson. Considering how well the last one had gone - that is to say, not at all -, she wasn't exactly upset about dodging her remedial, unintentionally or not.
Still, for all she was safe, Meryl couldn't quite shake the feeling that that blast of wind had been a warning, some sign that something was coming. What that 'something' was supposed to be, she couldn't say, but there was a feeling in her bones that said it was nothing small.
She pulled out her sketchbook, hoping that it would provide her some relief from the sudden anxiety thrumming through her veins, even if all she produced was random scribblings rather than any 'proper' art.
It did help a bit, helping wind down the tension that had seized her shoulders and chest with every scratch of the pencil on the paper.
And then she looked out at the sea again and the tension came rolling back in with the waves.
"A boat?"
"So it would appear, éinín [little bird/birdie]."
Meryl did not jump, but it was a near thing. "Garathair [great-grandfather]!" she snapped, spinning around to face her grandfather where he stood behind her, the blank eyes of his bird mask staring out at the horizon. "You promised you would stop sneaking up on me!"
"Tá brón orm, gariníon [I'm sorry / literal - 'sorrow is upon me', granddaughter/adopted-daughter/niece]," he said, tilting the beak of his mask down in a nod that was more acknowledgement of the misstep rather than an apology for it. "That aside, what do you make of it?"
She looked back at the boat, adjusting her glasses as she watched the boat inch its way towards the shore. It was a small vessel - not the smallest she'd ever seen, but still a far sight smaller than most of any of those that came into the port on Ravenser Odd - with a single sail, and no visible crew.
That last detail didn't feel right.
"People are… supposed to be on deck when the ship is coming to shore, right?" Meryl asked.
The old druid shrugged, the wild brush of his long grey hair and the bristling coat draped over his shoulders rising and falling with an astounding amount of dignity for a physical declaration of ignorance. "I wouldn't know, though the assumption seems logical enough."
Immediately, she felt the need to argue, to demand a proper, helpful answer from her grandfather, but…
Meryl sighed, the anger slipping away as quickly as it came.
The truth was that Grandfather Ruith probably didn't have a better answer - of all the members of the family that had ever set to sea, he had never followed any of them and thus had no experience with what that lifestyle entailed. All he had, much like Meryl, were assumptions based on distant observation, and considering that he had been blind for the better part of forever, Meryl probably knew more about the art of sail than he did.
"I suppose there's no way of knowing without going to look, is there?" she asked, knowing full well the answer to that question.
She flipped open her sketchbook, turning to a drawing she'd completed earlier that week - a colored pencil and ink recreation of one of the ravens that her home island had been named after, one that she had slaved over in an attempt to capture the subtle iridescence of the feathers without using the rare glittering inks Zahlia had gifted her for her last birthday.
Pressing her fingers against the page, Meryl uncurled her power carefully, threading it through her drawing slowly… and then pulled.
The bird shuddered and swelled as it shifted from two dimensions of existence to three, the texture shifting from dry paper rasp to liquid possibility and then to firm reality. As it finally pulled its claws free of the paper, it gave itself a good shake over, feathers puffing out as it adjusted to its new state of being.
Meryl knew that it was otherwise indistinguishable from her original subject. She'd taken too much time and care for it not to be.
"Alright," she said, as much to herself as her grandfather or the bird now perched on her wrist. "Let's see what a bird's eye view makes of the situation."
She threw the bird into the air, watching it take wing from two separate viewpoints - her own and that of her creation - for a dizzying moment, before it caught the wind properly and started towards the seemingly derelict ship.
It was an odd little thing to look at, compared to the vessels that populated the docks of the pirate town of Ravenspurn. It was a black-bodied sailboat, sides a bit too smooth to look properly real, with a striking red sail the only flash of bold color to be seen on it… and the only sign of movement, either.
As Meryl had suspected, there was no hand at the tiller, nor any one attending to the ropes that would keep the sail at the prime angles to catch the wind. Landing on the thin rail, she turned her bird's head around to look at the deck. Even if she didn't know anything in the matter of boats and rigging, there was still a sense that whoever had last been aboard this vessel had known even less than her.
Hopping down towards the ajar door leading down into the innards of the boat, Meryl peeked into the dark warily. This space was better and worse than the deck of the ship, in a way, both in the sense of looking like a person had actually lived there and the fact that the way they had lived had been messy, with things scattered across the floor as cupboard doors swung on their hinges with every passing wave.
She pushed her raven onward, each wary step taking it further into the darkened space of cabin, even as she picked her claws carefully over odd objects that were increasingly terrifying for their familiarity - a cracked pair of glasses and a heavily worn stuffed animal merely stood out as the most unique and humanly terrifying for that fact. There was no scent of decay or rot, but that didn't mean much coming from a copy of a creature that depended on its eyes far more than anything resembling a nose -
Meryl jumped - both as herself and her puppet bird - as something long and pale flopped out of the bunk she'd been about to pass, spidery fingers weakly grasping in the bird's direction before falling lifelessly against the floor. A head - hair half-shorn away in a messy cut that didn't quite seem like something a person would do to themselves - lifted for a moment, fixing dark glassy eyes on her for a moment before dropping back down to the mattress.
That was no corpse. At least not yet.
"Garathair [Great-grandfather]," she said as she returned to herself, heart hammering in her chest once more. "I need your help."
I woke up slowly, the murky mental oblivion of sleep slowly clearing as my brain went through its normal boot sequence. There was no particular push to be awake, yet, save for maybe finding a glass of water to wash the taste of 'early morning gym sock' off of my tongue and the beginning of a twinge in my back from laying in the same position for too long, so I just lay there as the cobwebs cleared, enjoying the sensation of a soft warm bed in the face of an outside world that was more than likely cold and miserable.
It was Michigan in December - or was it January now? Time was an illusion until I checked a calendar or my phone - and that alone was a near perfect promise of it being shitty outside, even if this winter had been generous in its lack of snow.
Probably saving it for… wait, no, if it was January, we were already past my birthday. Still, if we weren't, that was all the more reason to savor this cushy little moment of existence while it lasted.
Of course, that meant that my brain immediately decided to interrupt it.
'Hey.'
What.
'There's a problem.'
No. Absolutely not. I am trying to enjoy this peace and quiet for as long as it lasts, you son of a-
Skipping right over my desire to not think or have to stress about anything for five minutes, my brain continued. 'Did you notice that this place smells wrong?'
Well, I've noticed it now. And not in the usual way that things end up smelling wrong at my house either.
There was no fresh stench of biological mishap or even the crawling ick-fog of some outside event like someone burning trash down the road. This was… the kind of smell I hadn't experienced in decades; the musty scent of neglect.
Fine. That was enough to justify getting up and figuring out what was going on.
I opened my eyes to find an unfamiliar ceiling cast in the murky grey light of an overcast winter morning - wood panels supported by thicker wood beams. For a moment, I could have mistaken it for the family room of my own house, but… no. Even without my glasses and for all that it looked to be the same kind of cedar in the same color finish, I could still that the height and width of the ceiling was too different, as were what I could see of the walls.
There was also the fact that the only bed in the family room belonged to my dog and that it was inside a dog crate that had never quite managed to stop smelling like leaky nervous dog.
This room might have been a lot of things I didn't know much about yet, but it not having the rank stink of dog piss hanging around was already a very solid point in its favor.
I pulled myself out of the bed carefully and with no small amount of regret, not just because the air was chill and the floor was freezing against my poor naked feet, but because my back was already snapping and popping at me for daring to move.
One good thing about the cold though - now my brain was fully awake and firing on full cylinders.
Alright. I was in a room. Treat it like a locked room mystery. What did I have to work with? Besides the increasingly convoluted terms and conditions of my existence.
I had my clothes. Clothes I recognized as my own, though I couldn't quite remember if I'd been wearing them the last time I'd been awake. They certainly felt like I'd spent a lot of time sleeping in them, but that didn't prove anything except that I'd gotten behind on laundry again and that I hadn't changed my habit of 'not actually using these pockets for anything' any time recently.
But worse is what a search of the room turned up - namely, 'a whole lotta nadda'.
My glasses were nowhere to be found, the contents of the furniture - which, while really nicely made, was also obviously not used that much - tapped out at linens, blankets, and the sort of general goods that got shoved in those sort of places as an afterthought. A few loose knickknacks, a handful of foreign coins that probably had a net value approximately equal to a cup of Chuck E. Cheese token, a couple journals that I decoded enough of the scrabbly handwriting from to realize they wouldn't be doing me a whole lot of good.
More interesting, but just as useless - I'd even checked behind the frames just to be sure -, was the décor.
All of the pictures on the wall - and there were a lot - were sketches of birds; detailed ones, often capturing the subject in flight, the kind of stuff that I expected to see as samples from a Victorian nature guide or something in a similar vein, and with signatures that seemed to indicate that this was the work of only one or two different artists. Not the worst shit I'd ever seen, if one had to operate on a scale of 'tasteless white people bullshit' to 'something out of a horror movie' - on second thought, that scale might have needed more thinking on, given that there was a lot of overlap between those two categories by default -, but I was still getting vibes from this that I didn't like at all.
On the other hand, my brain was hardwired to favor paranoia and anxiety as a survival tactic, so maybe I was reading too much into it.
Something to consider later, I thought as I pulled down a curtain rod, stripping it of the simple fabric that had blocked out a second story view of a sheer cliff face of dark, harshly cleaved stone and some kind of evergreens behind whatever building I was in.
I'd discounted the window as a potential escape route early on - I'd never been a great climber, between my fear of heights and physical disabilities, and without any sign of a landing space, I didn't trust my legs not to snap like twigs if I made the attempt. Besides, my joints already hated me enough without heaping that kind of abuse on top of them.
Turning to the door, I turned my thoughts on how to get past the damn thing. The hinges were on the outside, so it wasn't like I could go to the step of attacking those, though depending on the quality of the wood, I probably could try kicking the damn thing down - but that was a last resort, because it'd be impossible to cover up the noise or my going once I'd done that.
Too bad my pockets had been empty. The door knob looked to be of an old enough style that a simple jimmy with credit card would work, unless there was a deadlock on the other side…
As I pressed my body against the door to get a sense for its strength, there was a squeak of unoiled metal and the moment of perfect horror as something one presumed a stable surface gave away under my weight. I managed to catch myself as the door swung open, only looking like a mild fool stumbling around in the dark after a stupid assumption rather than a complete idiot with a face full of broken teeth from kissing the floor at high speed.
"Alright, that part will be funny once this is over," I muttered as I pulled myself back together, slipping back into the no-frills mentality I needed for this.
The hallways I was in wasn't all that different from the room - the wood paneled walls were covered with framed pictures of birds I couldn't hope to identify, the floor the same cold wood save for the faded woven carpet that ran down the center of the space, and the ceiling near the same height. There was a difference in lighting, though, that served to change the character of those things immensely; the window at the end of the hall was too small to cast more than a faint glow in the gloom, increasing the sense of neglect I'd begun picking up in the room while also casting eerie shadows across the floor.
That was fine. My eyes were better suited for the dark anyway, even if they still weren't much good at fine details at the moment. The casting of the shadows in the direction I wanted to be not-noticed in was less so, but again, it'd be livable for the next few minutes.
What wasn't livable was the crawling sensation running up my spine that said I was already being watched.
I stepped carefully down the hall, easing back into old habits of perfectly silent walking as though I'd never left; putting my weight on the ball of my foot first and then easing the heel down, keeping my breaths and movements as slow and smooth as possible with my clunky joints, sticking as close to the wall as I could because that's where the floorboards would be the least creaky. It was easy, without shoes, and I hadn't had any sense of this house being a bustle of any kind of activity that could get me noticed but I knew better than to let either of those things make me too careless.
The hall opened up into what looked like… like a balcony overlooking the main hall of some grand manor. Or maybe even a mediocre one; I'd only ever seen them in movies and it wasn't like it was that weird a design choice if I took the time to pick at my immediate reaction.
Whatever it was, it was obvious that this part of the house was older than the section I'd been housed in, because the wood paneling only followed the wall on my level, giving away to stone for the first story's walls and floor. Looking up not just revealed a chandelier I could just make out as being made of interlocking antlers, but a high ceiling supported by an interlocking web of rafters and trusses that looked to be the perfect perch for bats or birds… if they could have entered the building in the first place.
Considering the vibes I'd been getting since I'd woken up and the fact that I wasn't close enough to the lower floor to check for any telltale signs of shit, I wasn't entirely sure they couldn't.
Whatever case could be made for the absence or presence of real birds, there were certainly enough fake ones around. The framed pictures mounted on the wood paneled walls were now joined by three-dimensional models carved from wood and winged figures woven into age faded tapestry.
"Really not liking these Bates Motel vibes," I quietly informed the figure of an owl with wide-spread wings and glass orb eyes as I passed under it, making my way towards the stairs.
It did not reply, instead dutifully staring me down like the intruder I was in this place.
Fair enough.
As I crept down the stairs to the main foyer - I wasn't really looking forward to finding out if the stone was going to be colder than the wood, even if I was pretty sure that the door out of this place was on the other side of it -, I happened to look sideways at one of the framed drawings. Unlike the more technically perfect ones I'd taken note of and dismissed before, this one was clearly a child's drawing; abstract, bright, and scrawling in a way that was infinitely more interesting than something that was a few shades off of being a photo-accurate reproduction. There was still a measure of care in it that said this kid just loved birds and had watched enough of them to learn how to make the proportions and pose look fairly accurate to the spirit, if not the reality of one, but other than that, it was just obviously the product of fun and a desire to create.
And, despite that lack of technical skill, despite that this was clearly the work of a child who could have so easily forgotten this drawing even existed by the next week, someone had taken the time to frame it with all the care and respect that had been given to all the other drawings on the wall.
That was enough to tell me that this home had been loved once. I'd never seen the art of an amateur honored in a home that wasn't.
And now this place was just a haunted shell of that. Not dead, not quite, but… getting there. Like a fading ghost going through familiar motions without having the body to make those motions mean anything more than a reminder of what it once was.
Somehow that made me trust this place even less than the creepy bird statues had.
Trying not to jump as I touched the stone floor - just as cold as I'd expected, but there was no way to ignore the needle sharp stab of that cold through my joints -, I took a minute to snoop. No stray shoes to steal, no coats I could find… but the door I'd assumed to be an exit was exactly that, if the coldness I could feel seeping through the narrow gaps of its frame was any sign.
Good.
I went to grab the handle, started to pull… and immediately stumbled backwards as someone on the other side pushed.
If I'd been smart, if I'd been lucky, I would have managed to stay hidden behind the door. Maybe been slammed into the wall, but I'd have gladly taken a lump or two for a few more seconds of not being seen by anyone. Hell, even turning heel and running the moment that door began to creak would have been an improvement.
I hadn't been lucky. I hadn't been smart. I hadn't even been quick. What I had was an ass on the floor and a piercing pain in my head from the sudden brightness my poor photosensitive eyes had just been exposed to.
"Oh, you're awake! Are you alright?" someone - the person who knocked me down? - asked.
Did I look alright? Did squinting in the face of the accursed daystar look like 'alright' behavior? Did not having shoes in this freezer of a house look -
Shutting off that train of increasing irritation, I answered, "I'm fine," even as I turned my attention to the process of pulling myself back up to my feet.
It was too bad that my voice was so tight that the lie should have been immediately obvious, but the fact that each clumsy and awkward movement was also a combination of painful and exhausting was enough to make me angry - at myself, at the situation, at every misfortune that had left its mark on everything I had to do just to get through the day - and there was no way I could disguise it as anything more than a lesser form of that. "I was just leaving-"
Small hands - not that small, but small enough after years of being manhandled by big ones - immediately locked around my wrist and started to drag me backwards into the dark. "You can't!"
"Excuse me? I am not your hostage-" I snapped back, already scrambling to twist free of that hold.
"You're sick! You can't leave until you're better!"
"No, I'm not!" I'm a cripple. That's a completely different animal. "And I am leaving right now."
"You can't! There's pirates down there!"
That brought me up short.
Pirates?
I turned to look at my 'rescuer' properly, my eyes finally adjusted enough to allow me to see something of the world around me.
They were smaller than me - not by a lot, but enough that I had to tilt my head down to make eye contact - with a mess of grey-brown hair that someone with a better grasp of exact colors would probably call 'taupe' threatening to explode out of the ribbon holding it back in a ponytail and a pair of round glasses that did nothing to disguise the deep molten pink eyes staring at me. The fishnet sleeves poking out from under the layers of woolen shawl were just the last nail on the coffin.
"Who are you?" I asked, already dreading the answer I had a feeling was coming. This wasn't the face of a stranger, for all I'd never seen it in real life.
The kid with the impossible eyes smiled at me, the clear panic melting away like ice in a bowl of hot water. "My name is Meryl. Meryl Dacey."
Oh good. That was exactly as close to my first Mary Sue's name as I was expecting it to be.
Author's Notes
Irish translations
Éinín - little bird / birdie
Garathair - great-grandfather. Yes, there is a reason for the translational disconnect beyond 'oh I just liked the sound better'.
Tá brón orm - 'I'm sorry'/ 'sorrow is on me'
Gariníon - granddaughter / adopted-daughter / niece
Alright, so here we go. The first chapter of my new One Piece fic.
For those of you who have been following my tumblr (same username as here, no frills, I've been nvzblgrrl too long to just stop), you may have noticed The Big Fat One Piece Fic Project tag and the mess of art and attached character notes that has been getting posted every so often.
For those of you who haven't - whether that's because you've been following me for my other One Piece fics, thought the description looked interesting during your browse, or just wandered in looking for the restroom -, basically the situation was -
Me: Gosh, I've been in the One Piece fandom for how many years now? Like, a decade? How many fics and OCs have I made in that time?
My computer, blog, my unending memory of things that embarrass me: Too many.
Me: Well, maybe I'll do something with that.
FFnet: also that One Piece SI-OC focused story you're simultaneously ashamed and proud of that you promised to rewrite like five years ago has over a quarter of a million views.
Me: OKAY, SO I WILL DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT.
Also it was just more interesting to remodel old characters with interesting concepts (even the ones that only ended up with like, art and a two sentence description) into more rounded and developed versions of themselves rather than just crank out some new ones out of nothing at all… though I'm still doing that to some degree to fill out the story.
A few questions that I figured some people would be asking or have asked in the reviews of the older fics after I posted the first update regarding this -
Question: Who's Meryl Dacey?
Answer: My first Mary Sue, who originally was named Merle. I mean 'Mary Sue' that in the sense that she was my first character who was designed entirely for the purpose of wish-fulfillment, which in my case was 'I'd like to have a power suited towards my skills and then be treated tenderly by my favorite character'. Mostly her 'role' in her original story was to meet Brook (both regular and boneless varieties - it made slightly more sense in context), go through a sickfic arc as the caregiver, then go through a sickfic arc as the sick person, ?, and then profit. The Straw Hats were also there, for some reason, probably for some kind of drama or just so someone with actual medical skills could keep people from dying.
Look, I was like 16 and full of unaddressed issues regarding pretty much everything, considering my everything bagel tragic backstory was ninety percent done by that point. As far as fanfic goes, I could have been making like one of my high school ex-friends and writing Black Butler porn so awful that it'd haunt my unwitting beta's nightmares on-and-off for the next decade.
I still don't know what the other three holes were, Manda, and I don't know if I ever want that question to be answered, because even if the question of 'where' is answered, the question of 'why would you do that to those' would still be there. Why did you have me edit that for you. There was no saving it or the eyes of anyone that looked upon that wretched thing.
Anyway, Meryl came from that and my interest in my Irish heritage (which is a slightly loaded topic to talk about now because fuck you white supremacists), which is where she picked up the language (which I do not speak, not when I was 16 and not now - I sample a variety of phrasebooks and will try to avoid overusing the language, yes I feel bad about this) and the druid 'grandfather'. Yes, that's in quotes for a reason, just like how she calls him 'great-grandfather' in Irish but then 'grandfather' in English. It's not a huge mystery but it is something I'll be playing with for a bit with her character and I'm sure a lot of you will parse it out the general shape of it before too long.
Question: Isn't this project really ambitious? Are you sure you can handle this?
Answer: Yes! And no. Nothing in life is certain and asking me if I'm 'sure' of anything is a pretty good way to start me second guessing myself. I've also had a couple rough years of mental health stuff - which is perfectly normal and acceptable when you're finally unpacking decades worth of emotional baggage, combined with external stress factors (of which I am sure that most of you are familiar with from first-hand experience this last year).
However, I have spent nearly a full year planning and prepping for this. Perhaps not constantly, but certainly consistently. I have a writing partner who has been assisting me greatly on this, even if One Piece isn't a major fandom for her, and have plotted out quite a few arcs in advance - not too tightly, of course; my favorite part of writing is the journey of discovery along the way -, which was something I did not do with a number of my older projects.
So I think that I'm starting out from a pretty good starting line as far as this project goes.
Question: You're working with someone? Who is she?
Answer: My friend Monica, who can be found at Fezgician on tumblr. Her One Piece experience is limited to about two arcs, but she's got a higher quantity of common sense and has an excellent sense for story flow. She helped me visually redesign a lot of the main OC cast, along with helping me design a lot of the new characters that'll be filling out the setting, and I'd even say that there's a couple of my older OCs that are more her characters now for how much she's done to build them up.
She's also been the main driving force for a few arcs, the biggest of which happen to be quite a way's down the line, but her impact can be felt pretty early as well - you'll be seeing them within a few chapters, most likely. That's what I'm giving her co-writer status - even if I'm handling the prose, she's been handling just as much plot + character stuff as I have, along with catching any writing mistakes I might have made along the way.
Question: How regular are updates going to be on this?
Answer: I am hoping that updates will be regular, but knowing my life schedule and ability to crank out material isn't always consistent, I can't make any promises, though I have been working on plotting and planning with the help of a friend.
That part is fairly far ahead of where I am currently, so I'm optimistic that if writer's block or other issues hit, there will be something of a buffer between me and running out of material, but I am also aware that my neurochemistry is stacked against me, between it getting in the way of me writing and also making me post the moment I'm done with a chapter in a bid for a quick shot of the serotonin it can't make on its own.
Question: How far ahead do you have planned?
Answer: There is quite a lot of story mapped out. Not too tightly and there's a few gaps still waiting to be filled, which leaves room to make discoveries along the way, but I do have a fairly good bit of the story from the start (which is in West Blue and spends quite a bit of time exploring there before heading to the Grand Line) to Sabaody sketched out.
Question: Will everything mentioned in the older stuff be made use of? Even that bit about Witt not being able to read?
Answer: …probably not? Like, one of the things with Witt is that I came up with a lot of details off the cuff as I was watching the anime without a lot of regard for internal consistency, and I'm aiming for more of that this time around. That means planning ahead and making actual notes on what anyone can and cannot do at any given moment. Like there's a lot of stuff that will be held over, along with some stuff that I noticed on reread, but not everything will be carried over, usually for the reason that it doesn't work in any context other than a quick joke.
That wouldn't mean that I'd be beyond adapting a detail in a different way than it was originally used, though. Just because it's not useful or useable straight doesn't mean that I can't turn it into something I can use.
Question: Will you be deleting the older stories once you start uploading the rewrites?
Answer: No. Not only because the rewrite will be a different animal, but also because I had a habit of doing that when I was younger whenever I was mildly upset with or embarrassed by my work (which was often) and I've been working to break myself of it - a resolution that has been reinforced after being forced to rely on the Wayback Machine and my own imperfect memory to 'research' some of the older stuff for this project. There's also the matter of knowing that people have enjoyed the originals and that they are still being read and enjoyed regardless of my feelings on the works. So both Witt + Witticism and Luck Of The Draw will remain untouched.
Question: When will Witt be showing up?
Answer: Later, when I've established some other characters decently and can keep him from stealing the show completely. So give me a couple arcs.
As for his part in the straighter re-write, you won't have to worry about him having to share as much screen time with other characters.
Question: Why aren't you doing the straight Witt and Witticism/Luck Of The Draw rewrite first?
Answer: It's been hard even getting started with that. It has two first-person narrators who both demand that their stories start at certain points that are different for both of them - and one of them has insisted that I change around a lot of the original information to better 'fit' in with the universe without fully explaining how I should go about that business.
There's also the fact that I haven't quite managed to capture the magic that I used when originally writing Witt - because I was somehow able to write in real time reaction to my anime rewatch, which is where a lot of Witt's humor and decision-making process came from. I don't know how I did that back in 2013, but I do recognize that I need to find a way to do something close to that again to capture his character and POV - or at least part of it.
It is going to happen, but not right away.
Also, fun fact, neither Witt nor my SI are straight. Or cis.
Question: Are there going to be multiple fics for this 'project' then?
Answer: Yep! There's some of my older fics that simply wouldn't mix in with the bigger concept, thanks to irreconcilable differences in geographic or timeline, such as being set in a different one of the Blues or taking place during Brook's pre-Rumbar days, so those ones will be split off into their own things. They won't be seen for a while though, since I've been focusing my energies here. There might be some characters that appear in more than one though. Just a little something to keep an eye on.
Question: What's the pairing? [This question actually made me laugh, just because the idea of asking this question in 2020 on chapter one of a 30-so chapter fic that was first published in 2013 and was ended in 2015. Is just. Wild.]
Answer: Brook x OC. No, I think you're going to have to sit on this one for a while. This isn't a story focused on shipping, so even if pairings do appear, they're not going to be a major focus in the story. Until it's time to bone the skeleton of course.
Anyway, if there are any other questions or comments, feel free to ask in the reviews and I'll try to answer them in the next Author's Notes.
