04.08.08 - Sorry for the weird pauses between updates, I promise I'm not abandoning TbF. :) My schedule allows me way too little time I can dedicate to writing, and when I do have time, at this stage I've realised I need some more lore knowledge and now I'm spending a lot of time mulling things over and shaping certain aspects... This last chapter has been nearly ready for over a month, but part of why I couldn't bring myself to post it was because I wasn't completely happy with it and wasn't sure I wanted to go in that direction... But I'm hoping to start posting a bit more regularly now. :)

I guess it's time to write something about myself, eh? Don't laugh - I've been on FF.net for some time and have been regularly posting chapters for a month and yet have only just discovered exactly how to edit my profile... XD

Anyway, I am a very weird person who's turned sixteen sometime last November. I'm Russian by birth, Ukrainean by nationality and German by residence... Can hardly speak a word of Ukrainean, though. XD I've got an odd little range of interests including but not limited to spiders, RPG and stealth action PC games, furry creatures, dragons, unicorns, vampires and ecology. I torment myself by dividing my free time between drawing and writing chapters for my Oblivion fanfic. 'Luckily' playing Oblivion itself is out of the competition because my computer recently screwed up (again)... ~_~ ...and won't handle ANY games. Nope, probably not even one of those wonderful old Sierra ones that nobody appreciates anymore, although I haven't tried installing them...

My favourite games include the NWN series (diceroll of anti-doom!), the Thief series, and Oblivion. Lemmesee what else I could write here...

Oh, right. My Oblivion fanfic. Some notes about the story...

Firstly, the usual disclaimer yadda-yadda, because we all want to be on the safe side. So there it goes - Disclaimer: Oblivion and the original story are owned by Bethesda. The character Liallan and whatever parts of the story that deviate from what you see in the game are my own creations. Although, frankly, if you've played Oblivion (which is logical given that you're here looking for Oblivion fanfiction), it should all be pretty obvious to you. And naturally - do I really need to spell this out? - since the story is mainly about the main quest, it contains spoilers for the main quest. There, it's done. Don't blame me for not warning you... :P

My fanfic is practically a creative novelisation of the main quest, meaning there may be some relation to the other questlines, but not much. And 'creative' is supposed to imply that it won't strictly resemble the way things were handled in-game - and that's a soft way to put it. Generally, my way of handling things may be different, but the end outcome may be the same. Or not. I really find myself unable to generalise about this sort of thing... I must also warn you that I'm quite the drama queen. I enjoy making things dramatic and difficult for the protagonists, maybe a bit too much... XD

Another note: When faced with a lore/logic conflict, there's no telling what I'll do. I might take whatever oddity the game has and come up with a reasonable explanation, possibly expanding it to a part of the plot and the overall conspiracy. XD I might simply write it out, as you'll later see with my version of Cloud Ruler Temple... And sometimes, even when there's no conflict at all, I might just change things for the heck of it. XD As I said, drama queen. :) Additionally, I like to use symbolism and puns as a form of foreshadowing... Take that however you want. Also, anyone who's fed up with the original ending of the main quest as well as the fanfics that keep sticking to it should find what they're looking for in Trial by Fire - eventually.

I must warn that my own knowledge of TES lore is 'okay', but not very extensive, and there may be some things that I might simply forget to account for. So if anything appears inconsistent in the sense of Tamriel lore, jabs and nitpicks are welcome and will be carefully pondered, weighed and ignored. (Just kidding... XD)

Aaaand another note, on the whole originality issue, specifically because there are some superfluous similarities between my Trial by Fire and Pheonicia's Twist of Fate - the OC's names, hair colours, heck, even the titles are similar! O_O But that's exactly what those similarities are - superfluous. You'll find that the things that matter are vastly different. As for the character herself, I have proof that I've been playing her for a long time, longer than Twist of Fate has been published.

Naturally, since I'm an enthusiastic reader of Twist of Fate, I can't actually guarantee that her story doesn't have some influence on mine, especially since we both take the same approach in regards to the story - the approach of reason and a protagonist with a lick of common sense. However, I will do my best to keep ideas that I wouldn't have come up with on my own out of my fanfic.

I guess that's all, save for one thing - reviews are heartily encouraged. I've never written anything long before, so I'd appreciate any feedback on what I'm doing wrong/right. Let cookies be served!