Chapter Text
I knew it would happen. I told many of you that it would. That one day...the light would just flip back on, and I'd come back to this, ready to go again.
I am quite certain that my taking down of this was widely noted. But I need everyone to understand a few things before I roll this story back out again (with edits and hopefully a little bit tighter, and cleaner, and shinier, and newer):
1). When I stopped writing this, I was under a profound grief. Every time I thought I was coming out, I had another loss. Three years in a row. A person does not bounce back from that. One's creativity does not bounce back from that. I am only just beginning to feel like this world without my parents and grandparents is normal. It's taken me three long years - grief will unfold in its own time, no matter what one feels about the matter. No matter how anyone else does either.
2). Let's name the elephant in the room: Yup, I've bounced around with other fandoms and other fics. That simply is folks. Take it or leave it. Anyone who is neurodivergent and creative knows this is just how the world turns for a great majority of us. We don't control it. Yes, grief squashed my creativity...but it also transformed it for a time. I could not pull back the spark to this story no matter how I've tried in the last three years (and I truly have). Like you, I have truly just had to wait for it to return and follow my muse down other paths in the meantime.
3). I always intended to come back and finish this story. Always. Admittedly, the lack of faith on the part of a lot of people did positively nothing to hasten my desire to do so.
4). I finally took this story down because I recieved a comment that just pushed me right over the edge. This story is my baby - it is the child of my own brain, the product of my struggle to bring it to life, and every single word is my own. Like Calls Unto Like does not and will not ever belong to anyone else and the suggestion that it should just burned what was left of my fuse right down. NO ONE gets to finish this. NO. ONE. That cannot and will not be taken away from me and I will not surrender that right to anyone. If it takes me 20 damn years to finish this...then that's what's gonna happen, because I will be the one to finish it.
5). I am sorry, however, for being flippant about returning to this story and picking it up again. I recognize that that hurt some folks - perhaps many. I acknowledge that removing LCUL from AO3 likely did as well. I don't owe anyone my life's story and there's something to be said for remaining vague with personal details on the internet, but I hope that in what I've shared, most of you can maybe understand where I was standing when I said and did the things I said.
6). I know trust me as a writer is broken. I can only pick up the pieces and press forward...and hope ya'll will come on the journey with me once again.
7). This story wore me down, too. This deals with heavy, heavy themes and I need ya'll to understand that this fandom is scary. Tolkien fans are not the easiest bunch to please and they are notorious in other fandoms for being so. I had to work through that these last few years. I will probably always work through that. But I am starting over again with the determination to write this for me...if I deviate from the lore, oh well. If I don't get the details perfectly correct, oh well. If by the end or at any point along the way you go "nope, you're still not selling me on this redemption thing", then I can't change that. I genuinely love this story, but in truth it and the fandom burnt me the fuck out on it big time. Life circumstances and mental health did not help.
8). I am ultimately responsible for my own thoughts, words, and deeds. But fandom is a two-way street and sharing creativity is a two-way street. Some of ya'll did wrong by me behind the scenes. It took time to unravel that.
9). These updates will be SLOW. But the updates WILL come. I'm aiming for about one to two updates a month at this time. I have other things I want to work on, and other things I want to finish. I'm on to something in another fandom that I think can be transformed to original fiction once it's done, so I am giving that the majority of my focus. However...this story will continue to unfold. All I ask for in return is kindness, encouragement, and patience.
10). For right now, I am focusing on editing what I already have, reposting chapters, and plotting the next steps. I had this grand and sprawling saga in my head for this story and I think that ground my creativity right on down - it was intimidating! I also need to negotiate my way around the canon changes that have now been established from Season Two. And I need to figure out how I want to pare this story down from the sprawling mammoth it was originally going to be (or else we WILL still be here 20 years from now). I will be updating edited chapters once a week. No more. No less. I'll be writing new content in the meantime in the background. Hopefully, this can keep us all going without a significant break for a while.
And lastly:
To all those who understood, to all those who understand, to all those who have reached out to me in the absence, to all those who still made time to encourage me even when I wasn't writing..
Thank you. This is, and will always be from this point forward, for you.
Chapter One will follow shortly in about a half hour or so.