compared to royal cries, this fic didn't get that much attention — but i had fun, and i hope the people who stuck it out with me also had fun with me!! and to those people — you're all the best!! and i love you, and i am so, so grateful! i hit a big slump during act one, and what got me through was readers showing me any type of support. so, if it hadn't been for you guys, i probably wouldn't have even finished olden crown.
olden crown feels very different from royal cries, and of course it is for obvious reasons — but it mainly feels very different to me because i feel like i planned a lot better for olden crown than i did for royal cries. i always planned on taking elisa into heroes of olympus because i never felt like i did her character justice in royal cries, and i always wanted to try and fix things i disliked about heroes of olympus. and for a while, i was only going to write elisa; no delaney and no abilene — but i felt like i hit such a standstill while i was planning. i wanted there to be more, and i felt like elisa's character would have become stale if i just added her and only her. but i always had ideas for her, and those ideas needed other ocs to push them through — so then came abilene, and then came delaney.
elisa's character arc was very relationship-based, not just romantically but friendship/familiar-wise. and that's one of the things i love doing with ocs — giving them relationships outside their romantic interest. i feel it makes their characters much more realistic and human. it was very easy to slide elisa into the lost hero; the friendship with piper, jason, and leo worked out so well — especially the friendship with leo. but i think delaney also helped further elisa and her character arc in act one. elisa and delaney had to come to the understanding that even if they were enemies once, they can work to work together now, and they can learn to forgive each other. i think the summary for elisa is: her character arc relies a lot on forgiveness and understanding — and not just of other people, but of herself as well.
i didn't create delaney just so she could be character fodder for elisa. i created her because i wanted to explore an ex-kronos ally fighting for the gods after the second titan war ended. i don't know how well i did, but i definitely did try, and that's what matters. and how this idea originally came to me was from an off-hand line in royal cries act two — there's a bit after the big battle where there's an unclaimed kid (named claret ulmer) who had a white shroud. the reason i added "claret ulmer" in was because i just personally wondered what happens to the unclaimed kids who die fighting for the gods. that's it. that's where delaney's story came from, which is honestly crazy to think about. like how one off-hand line has developed into a whole character.
i didn't originally plan on adding delaney when i added the white shroud bit, and i didn't think of adding delaney until i started act three of royal cries. but i realized i could do something with claret ulmer and thought it'd be interesting if claret ulmer and her death were a hoax. and then it devolved from there — claret ulmer as a fake name, the oc can use the mist to further the hoax, and they fought on kronos's side and that's why they faked their death. i think out of all my ocs, delaney has one of my favorite backstories. i love how it slips into the universe, and how it still makes sense to her character and adds depth.
but one of the most important things i wanted to push when it came to her character was — she didn't necessarily have guilt for fighting with kronos, but that she realizes it was wrong. i like to think i nailed that.
abilene had such a different start. her idea started off as a daughter of prosperina that was "claimed" by ceres as so to hide the fact she was a daughter of prosperina, and then at the end of son of neptune thanatos tells abilene the truth about her mother. i sat on that idea for some months, not really liking the idea but liking the premise — and then i had THE idea while coming up with another plot. i wasn't in love with the daughter of prosperina idea, it felt like having a twist just to have a twist. but i liked the idea of being "wrongfully claimed", and it just wouldn't leave me alone. so i decided i just needed to jump the shark and make abilene a daughter of gaea.
i didn't want to make abilene a daughter of gaea at first. i felt like i would just be falling into the trap of making super overpowered characters, but it just ... needed to be. i like to think i've worked through the "potentially overpowered" by handling abilene's powers the way i did. and i think it also helps that abilene doesn't fall into the trap of being ... rude(?) as a lot of overpowered characters can come off as.
a lot of things just worked out — like the love interests. i think both delaney/jason and abilene/frank have interesting dynamics, and i like how i got to redo jason's love interest. (i love piper, don't get me wrong. but rick dropped the ball with her character *eye twitch*). i think all of the heroes of olympus characters deserve better, but especially jason and frank. i cannot wait to explore each relationship more in the next book — so get ready!!
and i also changed a lot of the cannon — especially cannon characters. and i think the heroes of olympus characters are really divisive, especially the lost hero trio. personally, i love all the characters, but it took a little while for me to get there — and it also came from me ignoring some of the cannon and writing them myself. like with jason; i fucking love him. he has so much potential, only that rick riordan just did nothing with him. and with piper, she was written as pick-me in TLH (*shudders*) when i think there was a better way to write her just not being into feminine things without demonizing feminine things. and leo, a walking stereotype.
i think from TLH that had the most changes from me was piper. and i'm not sorry. i really love chapter 19 of act one. i think i rewrote her pretty well. and with leo, a lot of it hasn't come yet (i can't wait for elisa and leo in the third book), but some of it has. i think he just needed a character who was similar to him — and that is elisa. they both understand each other, and i think that helps leo realize he isn't as alone as he thinks sometimes. and jason <3 i love when fics write him and their oc learning each other, and that's what i wanted for him and delaney. like, he needed someone who didn't have fake mist memories of him already, and would get to know him for him and not from what hera preprogrammed him to be (in a way) — and that was delaney.
i didn't change much from son of neptune, really. i think the only thing i changed was the topic of frank's body issues. i didn't like how riordan wrote frank's self-hatred, especially when characters from their povs would call frank like a "panda" or an "ox" or something like that. and that's the only thing i changed from son of neptune.
but drew tanaka — don't even get me started. actually, do. I LOVE HOW I WROTE HER <333 i still kept the bitchiness because i thought it would be interesting to see how much she really was affected by silena's betrayal and sudden death. i think it adds a lot of depth to her character (and more depth than rick was ever willing to give her and any of child of aphrodite — but i didn't say that! hush, hush.)
i want to know your final thoughts/opinions on the book: what did you think of elisa? of delaney? abilene? if anything shocked you, what shocked you the most? what are you looking forward to the most for the next book? what scene/scenes from olden crown was your favorite? favorite friendship/relationship from olden crown? do you have any headcanons?
one last thing, the next fic will be published on march 8th (which is elisa's birthday lol) and is called Kingdom Come!!
& the memes!!
elisa and delaney about to row:
hera haunting jason the entirety of act one:
delaney when she was called out for being a liar:
elisa meeting the others after that venti guy:
jason when delaney suggests something violent:
the son of neptune four (well except for hazel):
vv much abilene:
abi when gaea says she disappointed in her:
idk octavian or something lol:
frank giving a speech to the others on the roof of his mansion: