I read Map for the first time last year, and a couple months later decided to already reread it. The first time around, you’re dropped into this story without knowing what’s going on in terms of either the character dynamics or the setting, and it’s like a puzzle you get to try to figure out. It’s delightful! The second time around, you start out with a lot more puzzle pieces at hand (but absolutely not all of them yet!) and you manage to connect so many more dots. (I swore to myself to not go overboard and still ended up with a ten-way colour-coding system with stickers and writing margin notes. More recently, I decided to read all the comments on the Map AO3 pages, and they are so much fun to read! So many readers have shared really insightful observations, and the author has written a lot of very interesting replies as well. But having to switch back and forth between the story and the comment section is a bit of a bother, and I sensed an interesting typographical challenge, and that’s how I found myself typesetting the fic again while adding foot- and margin notes to my heart’s content. The book ended up being so long though that I decided to split it into two parts :-)
As for the cover of the first half: Each of the DTA fics introduces you—and the main characters—to a new, larger part of the world. In Map, the focus lies on Cas’s cabin as the foundation for the relationship between the two main characters is laid, so Dean and the reader have to open the bead curtain together to get to that part of the story. If I ever get around to giving a similar treatment to the other fics in the series, the cover design would continue correspondingly: opening the gate to Chitaqua for Stars, entering Ichabod’s main square for Lights, and stepping through one of the paintings in the white room for Game.
I found some time the last 2 weeks (because I have a break from school) & I posted the first chapter of Book 2 in my Unofficial guide to Down To Agincourt.
The other chapters will follow but they might be a few months because I need to make my thesis :/
“I Fell for them, and they feared me. I trained them, and they hated me. They stalked me through the camp for the length of a day and when full night fell, they tried to kill me. I’m angry–no, I’m pissed. I’ve been pissed for two years, I’m not over it, and for a very long time, I didn’t want to be, and humanity could fuck itself with my questionable blessing. It didn’t matter what I did; Dean would die and so would I, we would lose, and the world would end. Even knowing that, I knew I would make the same choice again, I would Fall and survive, forced to live this miserable life, and that pissed me off most of all. You might say I didn’t take it well, but I’d like to see anyone else do better.
Then I met this Dean and he met me; then Dean died but I did not, because I had to save this Dean’s life; then the world didn’t end and we didn’t lose, or at least, not yet. Between then and now, he tried to die as stupidly as possible before my very eyes, asked me to shoot him in the head, taught me to play poker when we both realized we hated chess, and while I’m still angry–pissed, so very, very pissed–I keep forgetting that and no longer even want to be. I never regretted what I did, but now I’m grateful–grateful of all impossible things–that I survived, that I lived, and far, far worse, if I could do all of it again, I would change nothing. He’s my best friend and my commander and my lover, and while I would always have died and killed for him, now I find I want to live for him, too.”
