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!