LHM: Love the characters, hate the canon.

 I've been recovering from major surgery and, as such, have had a lot of (very brainfoggy) time on my hands. Conveniently, I happened to have just discovered the glowfic community, a genre of text roleplay that actually started out on Dreamwidth but has its own website now. Since I'm also constantly voracious for causing more Vanyel content to exist, but too out of it to write longform stuff on my own, this has been great. I'm really proud of some of the absolutely ridiculous fics that are coming out of this. Glowfic can get insanely high context really fast (it consists almost entirely of crossovers), but at least some of my threads make sense as standalones (for people who've read A Song for Two Voices, since they branch off from that rather than original LHM canon.) 

So, if anyone wants some weird crossover Vanyel (and Leareth) content:

therapeutic ethics: diverges from early book 3 of ASFTV. An off-brand Mindhealer from another world lands in Valdemar, yells at Lancir for his questionable practices around consent, helps Van work through some of his issues, and things go from there. 

after summer is winter, after winter summer: TYLENDEL RESURRECTION! Set right before book 3 starts; a half-human half-Lovecraftian-god pair of twins land in the Pelagirs, stumble onto Van and Savil traveling back to Valdemar with Starwind and Moondance, and decide to use their own brand of magic to solve Vanyel's biggest problem. However, this creates lots of additional drama. 

here in the angle of house and barn: A badly-abused Sith apprentice and her droid accidentally teleport to Valdemar, and end up saving Vanyel's ass on his first mission in early book 3, and then deciding whether to stick around and keep helping. 

hey, god is dead, did you know: this is starting to get higher-context. Instead of going to k'Treva after the, uh, drama with a certain trial in mid book 6, Vanyel goes home to Forst Reach. At which point he stumbles onto a magical door to an interdimensional bar, and meets Cam, an extremely OP character from yet another world who has a serious problem in need of solving with otherworldly magic. Of course, the person you actually want if you need "insane levels of knowledge about magic" is Leareth...

Now will never come again: debatable whether this counts as Vanyel content, since Vanyel is replaced by Abras, an alt of my friend's headcanon of Bruce Banner. Starts with Tylendel's death and goes from there. Abras is a lot like Vanyel, with a few differences, and IMO it's a fun and interesting contrast. All the other characters are around as usual. Continues with a sequel, the laws of truth I will obey. 

in the shadow of the sky (kind of abandoned, hopefully will pick up again at some point): no Vanyel, I'm afraid. Baby!Ma'ar (my version of) on his first reincarnation, runs into a character who he might be able to actually trust. 

There are a few more (see my author page on the glowfic site), but they're mostly "my version of Leareth teleports to someone else's setting", so are not LHM content per se. 

Finally done!

I'm linking the entire "book" here, since it's really a single unit and the previous draft was incomplete, but obviously you can skim or skip the first half if you read the previous draft. (There are a few relatively minor changes to existing scenes, and some number of bonus new scenes). 

The new material contains:
*Most of all, MOAR STEF!!! 
*Also more Jisa!!!
*Stef and Jisa being friends and getting up to shenanigans. 
*Some badly needed followup between Van and 'Fandes
*More Lissa content
*An extremely awkward Ashkevron family reunion dinner 
*Drama. All the drama. Book 7 is literally just 150K words of straight social drama over about a week. 

Book 7 full version epub
Book 7 full version mobi

This story is getting HARD to write and I'm not super happy with this draft yet, especially re: pacing, there is way less intense action and it's much more a bunch of loosely connected side plots than I would prefer, and it probably doesn't end in the right place, but it's already taken me forever and is at like 180,000 words, so here, have a rough draft :)

(Note: I have made a bunch of changes to book 5 since the last draft I posted here, which means there isn't perfect continuity between the old book 5 and this section. I've listed major plot-relevant changes below, and I've also linked to the more recent and improved version of book 5.) 

Book 6 MOBI
Book 6 EPUB
Book 6 RTF 



Covers:
*Savil and Van trying to patch things up after the events of the end of book 5. Drama.
*Some clarification on what Leareth is up to, in case you were curious.
*Lots of magical research.
*Stef and Medren have adventures.
*Political drama. Vanyel is not great at politics. 
*There miiiiight be a side plot where Need shows up.
*Jisa getting trained as a Mindhealer.
*Checking in Lissa, Karis, Shavri, Tran, etc etc etc (there are too many characters in this series and they are all amazing and deserve their own side-story, damn it Mercedes Lackey)


New Book 5 MOBI
New Book 5 EPUB
New Book 5 RTF








Major plot changes made from last draft of book 5: 
-Rolan doesn't come back right away, and Tran gets re-Chosen by Delian instead. (Justification: I think it loses a lot of the impact of Taver's death to have Rolan immediately show up as a replacement) 
-Jaysen still dies but no longer calls Final Strike (because my friend thought there it was too much "a chain reaction of spontaneously combusting Heralds") 
-MOST IMPORTANT: the mystery of Leren's assassination attempt is resolved within book 5 and Vanyel finds out it was Leareth's plot. (I mean, I *think* this was canon already, but main thing is that Van already knows what's up by the beginning of book 6) 

 ...So this thing has somehow metamorphosed into, at this point, 270K words, and I am kind of embarrassed that my first Serious Writing Project in 5 years is apparently a LHM fanfic, but what the hell. I did finally get brave enough to start posting the early chapters on AO3.  

(Brief summary of the premise for this: starting from the beginning, how would things go differently if everyone was basically a reasonable person trying to do reasonable things, and also Leareth was a hardcore utilitarian working on his version of saving the world.) 

I mainly wanted to ramble about meta for part 3, which currently covers a period of about 8 years starting post-Magic's Pawn time period, e.g. stuff that was not in canon, e.g. I can do whatever I like. Curious if you guys have ideas for what would be really cool to see onscreen in this part, or headcanons about what characters were up to. I have definitely already taken inspiration from some of the fics recommended here, but there aren't as many set in that time period. 

Links to drafts:
Part two - updated a bunch since the last draft I posted, is probably close to final.
Part three - rough first draft. 



Current notes I hit in part 3: 
*What the government would ACTUALLY be doing to prepare for a potential future war based on the valuable intelligence provided by Vanyel's dream. 
*Trying to show Van's process of maturing and learning over time and going from "whiny kid" to "really badass", because canon *super* handwaved this. He also has to be significantly more badass in this AU to have any chance of beating my version of Leareth. 
*Speaking of Leareth, this is where I got to start letting Vanyel have lucid dream conversations with Leareth which omg was hard to write, because Leareth is smarter than me. There may have been spreadsheet involved in mapping this out... Also there are arguments about deontology versus utilitarianism, and them quoting (made up) writings from Herald Seldasen at each other.
*Also speaking of Leareth, I may have done too good a job of making him morally grey/not as clearly the villain, because now my best friend who has read it (but not canon) wants me to ship Van/Leareth.
*A LOT of actually showing characters developing closer friendships over time (Van with Savil, Shavri, Tantras, etc). 
*Some epic action scenes. That was really fun. Vanyel being an idiot and usually winning anyway because he's that overpowered, then getting yelled at for being an idiot and trying to actually learn from mistakes.
*Developing a bit more how the government actually works and what Heralds do in this time period. 
*Some ongoing Magical Therapy with Lancir. Related to this, Vanyel starting out still pretty messed up, but becoming less so over time. (Part 3 ended up surprisingly upbeat, overall? Thought I'm sure it'll be less so once the Karsite wars start.) 
*Lissa being great. When she needs stress relief, she goes to taverns, gets drunk, and then beats up men who try to harass her. 
*Starwind and Moondance having a toddler. Commentary on parenting. 
*Van awkwardly reconciling with Withen after 5 years of zero contact. 
*Mardic and Donni being trained as spies, and kicking ass.