#original shit

we interrupt the usual fanwork spam with some original stuff. This is Ilassan, a character I’ve developed around 16, so god damn it, 16 years ago or so. I even wrote a story with him at 17/18 and tried to get it published. Ahhhh, of course, I was too silly to know that other kids who get works published at 18 know the right people in the industry and thus get to become “storytelling prodigies”, same as JKR was a poor single mom writing on tissue paper, and it has less to do with real undiscovered talent. That, or self publishing on Amazon, which thank god is a little more accessible now, but was definitely not an option back in 2006 (it’s for the best).

The real gimmick was when Avatar came out, and the few friends who’d seen art of him told me “hey this kinda looks like those cat people you used to draw!”, which of course to me translated to “so then if someone beat you to it, why bother”, and it had all been scrapped. But it still lives in my head and heart I guess?

More info for those interested:

So a few of you have seen talks of Eye of the Storm or My Original Work™ or at the very least know Anders isn’t originally a SWTOR OC, but an OC-OC I just used in——

<blah blah blah later>

So in my youth, when I was still big eyed and energetic and passionate and nerdy and hadn’t had my self esteem and creativity completely eroded, I’d decided to write a low fantasy AU of history, as many do. And it had a lot of stories, spanning dinosaur age to present times. Because I was a really creative child (bless my heart).
And yeah, it had everything. Because back then I thought it’d be a cool idea to mix mythology with science and history. You know, the whole “well see, dragons exist in several continents so what if dragons were really real but vanished magically somehow” or whatever. A lot of stuff was scrapped from then, but some I’ve kept into what eventually became the single, isolated, standalone story some of you have heard / seen snippets of. The whole WW2 AU thing, which I GUESS is a dead giveaway that it’s gonna transcend into urban fantasy sooner or later, but that’s where my hints for it end.

Well, alongside the many other stories, there was Ilassan’s.

So, I used the whole multiverse / wormholes / aliens thing in the setting, because of fucking course I would. And I also used the alien sightings on earth mixed with mythology - and bam! The Fae were an alien species that used wormholes to travel to earth (and spawned in mushroom rings. Fuck it).
Well, back on Fae-land, a long long time ago, there was civil unrest. There’s several subspecies of Fae, with a common ancestor but different evolutions. Think Neadenthrals and Sapiens, for example.
So there were the Noble Fae, who were more evolutionarily blessed, and a few different fae more suited for other environments. Such as the Wild Elves (wow creative yes), of which Ilassan is, who were adapted to live and hunt in forests and mountains - a lot more agile, and a lot more catlike looking than the ‘blessed’ Noble Fae, and thus deemed by them too bestial and inferior.
Yes. Fantasy racism at its finest. What can I say? I read a lot of fantasy growing up.

So to avoid the civil wars, a lot of Wild Elves simply traveled to Earth (or other planets) via the wormholes, and settled in suitable environments thereabouts. But of course, this is fantasy racism, so the British standins eventually followed through to exterminate them.
So back at 17 or whatever, what I used Ilassan for was the very basic storyline of “the british elves invade, he gets separated from his sister Aissa, he spends years trying to find what happened to her with the help of a ragtag team of allies, and eventually faces the Big Bad Elves (but is captured in the meantime)”. I remember he originally died to save a friend but that’s been long since scrapped.

Well, over time the story shifted to a totally different take, and the one I do eventually want to return to covers a time of him already being a prisoner to the Big Bad Elves.
See, as you may know from mythology, humans can get lost in Fae Land too, not only Fae visiting us. So there was this human girl, Kendra, who’s a tomboy/transboy, and who gets lost in Fae Land. Fae welcome Kenny with open arms until the point she starts being all “stop expecting me to wear dresses and jewelry god damn it.” At which point they’re like bad girls go scrub the prison shit, and send Kenny down to the prison, where she and Ilassan bump into one another, eventually planning an escape together. This story dates back to 20 fucking 14 or so, but I’ve also discarded it for being too on the nose. Surely, noone wants to read about an allegory of “normal” society shunning queers and people of color, huh?
Well, times fucking change and now that’s a super popular subject, so I’ve been more and more tempted to write it out. At least I know there’s a possible audience now, whileas back then I was simply trying to write my own experiences being shunned by other people for being gender non-conforming, and when I presented it to my very straight very gender conforming friends for opinions they were kind of doing the whole “ha ha <transphobic jokes>” thing. Oh well. Times change I guess.

So I gotta admit, this short story has been burning and itching more and more to get out throughout this year. Maybe I’ll have the time for it, maybe not, who knows. But I sure have the time to answer questions if any of you have any, since I tried to keep this as short as possible to not bore anyone, cause idk if there -really- is possible interest? dunno.

Thanks for reading <3