Editing Story:Another Continuation of LCB (section)

===Preface===

There are two notes which should be made about the way I wrote this.

The first component is stylistic - I wanted to emulate the style of the author to the best of my ability, to do it justice. Make it into a worthy continuation. Accord the story with the respect. For better or worse I am a massive faggot who takes his dumb fanfiction writing way too seriously. I think that my mimicry fell apart near the end, after taking a long sabbatical and forgetting to be as rigorous as I once was. I slipped into my normal writing voice. Regardless, I tried my best to emulate it, and make it feel like a proper continuation.

The second component is where I chose to begin, which flies in the face of what I just stated. Xenophon (a much more accomplished writer than myself) had the humility to begin at the very word where Thucydides left off. I had the hubris to choose where I began. I began shortly after the beginning of chapter 8. Come the appearance of the Sponge Weed house, I had a feeling that the author was growing tired of the story. Things started moving fast, and the ensuing events contrasted starkly with the rest of the work. It seemed out of place compared to the rest, and it felt rushed in its construction. As Taldeer said early the story, trying to end it now rather than end it right. By the time I sensed some hesitation in the pen of the author, they had already written themselves into a corner. Perhaps I am wrong to make such assumptions. Maybe I’m misreading the work. Perhaps that outcome was planned all along, and I missed the hints.

But that isn’t my gut sense as a writer. I have done my best to continue in the spirit of the first 7 chapters. The result is longer, and not necessarily in line with DoW canon (or the broader canon of 40k, for that matter - I enjoy taking my liberties with it). If that bothers you, then you probably wouldn’t enjoy it. There are also areas where, like most writers for 40k, I fill in the blanks in lore with my own speculation. I tried to supply sections with similar detail to the original, an example being Bloomwriter's blurb about the Exitus. Some other ways I stretch or violate canon include Eldar that are, in essence, pretty much human. This was done in part because the Taldeer which Bloomwriter created is pretty much human - at least as far as I can read her - and I wanted to maintain contuity with him as best as I could. I also feel that Eldar lore makes them sound interesting as a thought experiment but very boring as characters - they have to be flat and archetypal lest they fall to temptation and excess. I've elected to make them a bit more expressive and emotionally similar to humans, and have tried to make them more alien in other ways - some of which I've touched on in this story, but most of which I'm saving for later, in a planned sequel. I felt it would be inappropriate to focus on my own fluff in a continuation. This is about Liivi and Taldeer: their bond, their struggles, and how to make it work.

Another note should be made for what it ''is'' that I wrote.

Ultimately, I think most of us want this story to have a happy ending. Given the situation Taldeer and Liivi were left in, their prospects are pretty grim. There are only a few ways they could make it out. To that end, I envisioned a plausible situation where the probability of them encountering a friendly squad of Eldar was very high. Frankly, I struggle to believe that the two of them could single handedly sneak through an imperial spaceport and hijack a ship: thus why I engineered a plausible scenario where they would actually have some support. I determined that, if I was going to add characters to support them, then it would be bad writing to just leave them as 2 dimensional characters who only exist as a means for the escape of the protagonists. After all, I want to create something ''good'', and flat characters are not good. Instead, I tried to create real, human characters that the reader can grow attached to or dislike. This means that Liivi and Taldeer have to share the spotlight a bit, and it took some time to figure out how to balance that - whether or not I succeeded is for you to decide. I also saw the addition of side characters as an opportunity to have Liivi and Taldeer grow in different ways. If they made it back to Ulthwe, there are a litany of issues they'd have to address. Rather than leaving those for the reader to speculate on, I bring those issues into the story using these additional Eldar characters. Taldeer's loyalty to Liivi versus her people, her guilt for having led her army into death and disaster, the different attitudes people will have towards her and Liiv, among other things. Liivi faces new challenges in terms of social interaction, working as part of a team, and generally just "being a human." Perhaps another fair warning is that the Liivi I wrote is also going to take more time to lose his more "mechanical" features. He's been through a lifetime's worth of training and indoctrination, and he's still a young man. It isn't something that will slip away easily, I figure - another reason why I felt having him socialize would be useful: it would chip away at that training much faster.

In any case, I felt all of that was important to note because LCB originally just dealt with their budding romance and how they overcame their inner demons, literally and figuratively. By expanding on the number of issues addressed or overcome, other things necessarily have to share the spotlight. This might be viewed as a distraction, but hopefully if it is written well, it won't be viewed that way.

It may be that you would rather have the less plausible scenario that focuses solely on Liivi and Taldeer. That's fine. All I wanted to clarify with the above is that, firstly, what I have written was not an oversight on my part (it was intentional), and secondly, I didn't insert my own characters just for the sake of it (I felt getting off world without support was too implausible, and additional characters could help grow the story). I knew I couldn't please everyone, so I just tried to write what I felt was objectively the best story (and characters) that I could.