So...hey everyone. It has been quite some time since I've published, and that might win the Understatement of the Year award. How have you been? How's the family? As far as what's new with me, I got married a few months ago, so that's cool. I know what you're thinking, how did I go outside long enough to find someone. Well, it's a funny story…. but that's not why you're here. I know that this is the sequel that I teased, but there is good news!

I have started working on this story again. In an effort to find a home that feels best for the story I want to write, I have started publishing chapters to Archive of our Own. The story title is the same, and I'm using the same username so it'll be easy to find me. But the best part: I'm going back and editing/rewriting as I publish. So even if you've already read the story, you can go back and see what I've decided to do with it.

As a little backstory as to why I decided to this, when I first started "Even This Darkness Must Pass", I was a sophomore in college. This story started as a piece of brain crack that wouldn't leave me be until I had put my fingers to keys and wrote it. And to share my brain crack child with the world as fast as I could, I was originally publishing the story in its first draft form. There was obviously editing for things like spelling and grammar (or there was at least an attempt to do those things), but what was published was, more or less, hot off the presses. The first few chapters are...rough to put it mildly. Eventually, I had a beta reviewing the chapters before they were posted, and the quality is markedly better (shout out again to Certh, even though they probably won't see this).

This story was the first time that I wrote something from start to finish, and I'm very proud of that, and I love the little community of us that grew up around it. I look back at the reviews, and I get such a warm, fuzzy feeling in my heart remembering all the fun I had interacting with you guys.

But after going back and reading the story again…it could use a facelift more than an aging Hollywood movie star. Beyond going back to fix formatting errors or horrible Elvish translations, I just know I can do better. There were leads buried, opportunities missed, and just generally things that would have been fixed in revision if I had taken the time to really think over what I wanted the story to do before pushing it out into the world.

So as far as my plan goes, I'm going to leave the original story here in its entirety. I played with the idea of replacing the chapters with the revised versions, but I like the idea that Braedia will live here as I first wrote her. I also know that change is scary, so I didn't want anyone to get freaked out if I just went and changed the story without telling anyone. I'm not completely closed off to the idea of reuploading the story with the revised chapters, but who knows what that would do the reviews (no seriously, if anyone knows, please let me know because I'm actually genuinely curious). I also would not do that until I had finished with the revision of the whole story and then I would replace everything at once to avoid any confusion.

What I'm publishing over on AO3 will be essentially the same story (because I can't change canon THAT drastically), but with a few good additions, reworks, better character development and a better foundation to build on. There is also a better, more robust comment system in place, and I hope that will help me engage with my readers in a better, less cluttered way. I do not have a set publishing schedule, but I'm going to publish as often as I feel comfortable.

I'm hoping that this whole project will help me to move the story forward in a way that feels authentic to the characters I've molded but feels polished and matches the tone of this new version of Braedia's story. That all being said, if I can move the story forward into a sequel, I want to publish the sequel here in addition to AO3, because this is where the story began. But if the rework drifts too far from the original, it may not make sense to keep the original and then publish a "sequel" to a story that may be the same in name and have the same bone structure but may have completely different insides. As an aside, that was actually the problem with the original sequel that I wrote. Once my beta and I had moved the story in a different direction, what I had written as a sequel did not make sense anymore. And I could not figure out how to make the two stories meld. Also, life and mental illness happened, and I'm not saying that I've got either of those two things figured out, but I digress.

So this was just an update about what's been happening with me and this story. If you want to check out the revised version, you can find me under GuilelessAesthete on AO3. I hope you guy like what's coming next and let me know what you think. I've updated my account settings, so I'll actually get emails now, so if you've got any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to let me know.