A while back, I told my readers I planned on writing a short\nstory before I began my final fan fiction. I gave them three options \u2013 ideas\nthat had been floating around my head, on and off of paper, for some time.\nAlmost unanimously, they selected a tale about Raelin\u2019s life in the war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As far as I can tell, the idea for this fan fiction began\nsometime in 2012, though it may have arisen long before that. It actually began\nby listening to a song, the name of which shall not be related here (ironically\nenough, the ending that was inspired by that song is nothing at all like the\nactual ending of this tale). History I was studying at the time gave it\nmeaning, and my knowledge of HeroScape gave it substance. And you, my readers,\ngave me the drive that enabled me to write it down. Without you, I likely would\nhave never become a writer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a moment I\u2019ll let you begin reading. However, there are a\nfew important things you should be aware of first. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I said, this fan fiction was inspired in part by history.\nThe history of World War One and Two, to be exact. It was further inspired by\nsuch books (nonfiction) as Testament of\nYouth<\/em>, and The Hiding Place<\/em>, both\nof which are about those time periods. Because of this, and because of the\nnature of the tale, there is a certain level of cruelty and violence that is\nnot present in my other fan fictions. Many scenes contain blood. A few scenes\ncontain graphic descriptions, though these are short. There is pain, cruelty,\nphysical and mental suffering, and injuries in this tale. People can and do\ndie. Unlike some other books\/movies, there is no strange force protecting the\n\u2018good guys\u2019 from harm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That being said\u2026 I do not linger on this violence. Some\nwriters include it for no reason. Some include it to make things seem more\nrealistic. I do neither. I have included this amount of violence because my\nfiction is not driven by some vague need to write. It is driven by a need to\nsay something. Though it is rare, in this case, cruelty aids this purpose. I\nhave included what I need, and then I have moved on. I believe gruesome scenes\nare genuinely difficult to read (which is the whole point), and I will\ntherefore include no more than are absolutely necessary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n THAT being said, some scenes are still gruesome.\nDescriptions, though brief, will occasionally be graphic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On a lighter note, this tale relates the history of the war\non Valhalla. Or at least such was the intention. As I developed the tale, I\nbegan to realize that I would never be able to include the entirety of the\nWellspring War. There were several reasons. I wanted to keep this tale short. I\nwanted to stay focused on my goal. I would need multiple point of view\ncharacters, something I definitely did not want. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, I had to take several large liberties with the\nValhallian \u2018facts.\u2019 I have tried to keep things as close as possible to what is\nknown, but in several places, this was impossible. There is no exploration of\nthe Ticalla. There is no writing of Thormun\u2019s journal. Many of the characters\nwe know and love are never even mentioned, including Vydar and Einar. There is\na very simple reason for all of this: these events did not further the story.\nIf I were to include them, the end of this book would contain a lot of\nunresolved narration that would ultimately be boring to read through, and add\nnothing to the tale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, I believe that I can now stop warning you about\nthis fan fiction. I\u2019ve told you what you needed to know. Now I will stop, and\nlet you read the tale for yourself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I hope you enjoy it! <\/p>\n\n\n\n ~TGRF. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Test excerpt of Author’s Note for RTR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-river-that-was-red"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiction.armyoffour.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiction.armyoffour.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiction.armyoffour.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiction.armyoffour.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiction.armyoffour.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fiction.armyoffour.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiction.armyoffour.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiction.armyoffour.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiction.armyoffour.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}