ORIONSpeaking of Orion, the ten-year anniversary of the release of Atlantis is this Friday. FOR REAL. My first fandom/fansite/fanfiction! There are a variety of activities tying into the anniversary that you can learn more about here. I would like to do some more stuff with my A:TLE fanfiction universe…
Okay, so I made the name changes for the story, and then I thought I might go through and make some revisions and… no. No, no, no, no. That fic is just too stupid. It is too stupid to exist. I mean, aside from everything else, my absolutely clueless approach to life in the early 20th century… the way I clearly assumed that schooling in 1902 was the same as it is now (4 years of high school, 4 years of college), not to mention the commonplace presence of phones in rural New York?! (It didn’t help matters that in the movie itself, there was Mrs. Packard jabbering on the phone to her friend Marge… from the submarine… in 1918. I’m so sure.)
I couldn’t bear to read it. It’s so embarrassing. I just used auto-replace to fix the names and shoved it up. I really kind of want to take it down, but there are actually people on Fanfiction.net that like it (how??!?!) and so I’d feel bad doing that… I’ll just shove it under the carpet and try to pretend it doesn’t exist. ;_;
When I think about myself and the kind of person I was and the kind of writing I produced in high school… it kind of makes me sick. Can I get a do-over?
Let me tell you a tale of one of my REALLY old fanfics.
So, today I was on DeviantART and I stumbled across a fanart of Milo Thatch and Lisa McGrath from Atlantis. You may not know that in the A:TLE canon, although this was not mentioned in the movie itself (but it is brought up in several of the tie-in books and on the DVD), Milo was apparently involved with some girl named Lisa McGrath back in the day.
IKR? Milo had a girlfriend (besides Kida, that is). I can’t wrap my brain around it.
Anyway, waaaaaay back ten years ago, I was writing a fanfic called “Tales From Atlantis” that was about Milo and Kida before the movie, like the Tales From Agrabah book about Aladdin and Jasmine. I did actually write a Milo-got-his-heart-broken-in-college chapter, completely clueless that apparently that was also the case in canon (thus, the girl had a different name). Then a friend told me about the canon girl, and what her name was.
And I promptly went batshit crazy, because my name is Lisa. This was very distressing to me. How could I write about “Lisa” breaking Milo’s heart, that’s like writing about myself! I would never break Milo’s heart! I’d also never date him in the first place, but that’s not the point. I couldn’t do it.
Well, now ten years have passed, and I’m looking back thinking, “Geez, Lisa, you can’t screw with canon like that! Just get in there and change her freaking name!”
So that’s what I’m doing right now. But can I just say, writing a story where a character has your name but is not you is totally freaking bizarre?! I have never done it before. I don’t know how Jane Austen managed it. Every time I see it I’m like, “Wait, what? Me? What?”
It doesn’t help matters that my name is fairly uncommon. I’ve only met maybe two or three girls with the same name as me in my entire life. I was only actually friends with one of them. Likewise, I very rarely come across my name in fiction, either. So whenever I hear my name or see it in print, I’m like,
Nevertheless, I shall press on.
I was sitting there reading an interview with Stephenie Meyer about The Host, and I got to, “Did any of the characters surprise you while writing?”
And she said the usual, “I am constantly surprised by my characters when I write—it’s really one of my favorite parts. When a character refuses to do what I had planned for him or her, that’s when I know that character is really alive. There were several characters who caught me off guard with The Host.”
And I was sitting there going, “Oh please, Smeyer, whatever, don’t give me that crap, you can write your characters to be whatever you want,” when I read the next sentence.
“One in particular was slated for a bit part as the wingman to the villain. Somehow, he knew he was more than that, and I couldn’t stop him from morphing into a main love interest.”
And then I went, “OH MY GOD. ORION. IAN IS ORION. HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS BEFORE?”
Orion is a character from my Atlantis fanfic, The Dark Ones*. He’s an original character that I originally intended to just be a wingman to the villain, but then all of a sudden he just morphed into this really important character. He also happens to be the most popular character in my A:TLE fanfic universe. I have had people send me fanart of this character. I love Orion to bits and I laugh about how originally he was supposed to be this little toadie and OMFG I AM SMEYER. I AM SMEYER!!!!
And I love Ian so. I can’t imagine how that book would have been without Ian…or Orion. *facepalm*
*(Okay, shut up, I was 15 when I came up with that title)
I wrote “The Dark Ones” in its entirety during my junior year of high school, completing it in February 2002. Almost seven years have passed, and it is still the longest fanfiction I have ever written and completed. Looking back, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it stood the test of time (that is, considering the fact that it was written by a 16 year old, it actually didn’t suck). There were a few things I always wanted to revise, however; which is what led to the version you see now!
Most of the changes I made were minor; spelling and grammar things. I did, however, make three major edits. The first of these is regarding the character of Orion. When I originally wrote the story, I didn’t decide to make him one of the good guys until halfway through the story, which meant that he was portrayed in earlier chapters as kind of whiny and sniveling. He wound up being my most popular original character, though, as well as my own favorite, and I felt that his behavior in the original version didn’t do him justice. Therefore, his scenes have been re-written (and new ones have been added) to portray him in a manner that I feel better fits his character from start to finish.
The biggest edit I made was chapter seven. In retrospect, Milo and Kida’s behavior in the original version was grossly out of character, and made me largely dissatisfied with the entire story. I actually rewrote and posted the new version of this chapter in 2005, but never made note of it until now. For people who read the old chapter, I think you will agree that this one makes much more sense, and fits the characters and overall flow of the story better.
The last change I made was to the Atlantean words throughout the story; I made them into actual words. In most official merchandise, Atlantean is broken down into syllables, with the emphasized syllable in all caps. This is clearly done for pronunciation’s sake, since the words would be written in the Atlantean alphabet as opposed to with English characters. I felt like it really disrupted the flow of the story, though. If Atlantean were a real language, there would probably be some better form of translation, like romaji for Japanese. So I just made one up. I used symbols from the phonetic alphabet to indicate pronunciation for stuff that was ambiguous so that there wouldn’t be as many Hs in the words (for example “ë” and “ä” are “eh” and “ah,” and “ō” is “oh”).
I also cut out most of the Atlantean words that were in the story because, frankly, I only put them there in the first place as away to show off how much Atlantean I knew, which is just stupid. I only left Atlantean where I felt it was necessary. Here is a list of the Atlantean words I used and their definitions for you:
Mätim | MAH-tihm | Mother
Täbtoap | TAHB-toap | Father
Mëbelmōk | MEH-bel-moak | Great Flood
Täneb-toat | TAH-nehb-toat | Your Highness, etc.
supük | SOO-puhk | hello
niipuk | NEE-pook | fool
kiiyish | KEE-yihsh | quickly
shemubin | lava whale (like Obbi from the sequel)
ketak, aktirak, martak | stone-fish vehicles
wokano | Atlantean standard of measurement
-toap, -toat | honorifics; the first is familiar, the second is formal
Phrases:
mōkit gwënonik | MOH-kiht GWEH-noh-nikh | I’ll kill you for that!
Yädlug, Yädlugonik | YAHD-luhg, YAHD-lu-goh-nihk | Oh my god!, etc.
kwahm tëredsenen | kwahm TEH-red-seh-nen | don’t be afraid, have no fear (kwahm = no)
I didn’t make up any words or phrases, I only used official movie Atlantean. Keran_Shadlag has done an extensive study of the language developed by Okrand for the movie using a number of sources way over my head. If you are interested in the Atlantean language, I hope you will take a look at his work, which you can find here and here.
I hope these notes were informative. 🙂 Thank you all so much for reading “The Dark Ones” and I hope you enjoyed it!
*dead* I am soooo tired! I spent the last like 5 hours revising “The Dark Ones“. Yeah, it’s been done since 2002, but I’ve been wanting to update it and fix some stuff about it for a looooong time now (try two years). Well I finally did it!! Hopefully this will give me the spark I need to get plugging on “Guardians of the Earth and the Moon” again. *whistles*
It’s crazy to me, though: this is my oldest fanfic. It is also my LONGEST fanfic, and it’s the only multi-chaptered fanfic that I’ve ever finished. I wrote it when I was a junior in high school. Despite this, I’d say it’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever written. Apart from a few minor things (that I fixed in the new edition), and the fact that Milo+Kida romance is kind of embarrassing and oh-so-slightly Bella Swanish, it’s actually intelligent and exciting and well-written, WTF. Clearly I did not do this? Maybe an alien possessed me and wrote it for me?
Anyway, I hope that if you like Atlantis you will take a look at it and let me know what you think, since I need a little proofing for this new version.
I sleep now.