To my ever-appreciated readers,
Somehow, this fic isn't dead. It is wounded and twitching on the ground, but not dead. But the next update probably isn't coming for a while.
So, I realized that one of the things that was slowing me down was trying to incorporate every possible idea. Another was trying to do some plotlines before their time. Another was trying to incorporate the books as they came out, clumsily trying to cram the lore into place. Its just a mess. Which of course leads to a bittersweet announcement: I'm rewriting the fic.
There are a few glaring issues in particular I need to address. The plotlines that never really went anywhere. Trying to reconcile new information from the books that conflicted with what I had already written. A frankly embarrassing lack of polish on some of the earlier chapters. A lot needs to be reworked.
I was initially going to try to have the whole rewrite complete up to the chronological point I left at, but I've been advised that it was perhaps too ambitious of an idea. I'm not going to mark this fic as complete just yet, it isn't, but I will once I've started posting the rewrite.
Let's just hope I can get that first chapter out before the one year anniversary of the last one.
-Venompen