I decided to make a post detailing the ups and downs I’ve had the last four years when it came to birthing the idea of my current FanFiction and how the idea for it was born and evolved over the years. I’ve struggled with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Bipolar Disorder so it’s made writing a challenge for me in the sense I’m always innovating but to a point it becomes a hindrance because I could never finish anything I started since I got a better idea or so stressed that I would quit only to restart again.
Background
Growing up I always loved Skyrim and Harry Potter. I remember watching a fan made movie called Dragonborn (https://youtu.be/YyHZn_nC3kc) which was a cinematic machinima of Skyrim’s main story. This would go on to inspire several of my playthrough backstories as I had taken a deep fascination to the Default Nord protagonist who we see in Skyrim’s trailers and the Dragonborn movie. As a weak kid, heroes like that inspire you to better yourself and it was around this age of 13 I started working out and running to be more like my hero.
Harry Potter and the Beauxbatons Academy of Magic
As time passed and I started growing up I began reading several Harry Potter FanFictions that I felt were pretty interesting at the time. This inspired me to write my own which was called Harry Potter and the Beauxbatons Academy of Magic. The only other stories I’d written prior to this were some comic based stories of the Green Arrow since he was popular at the time and I was a dumb 16 year old. The HP FanFiction wasn’t that good but it was around this time that I started playing Skyrim as a Breton and modding the game to be more fantasy like.
Modding Skyrim to be Norse
I started with bigger dragons, better guard armors, snow everywhere on the land, monster mods to populate the overworld. But my small Breton character needed a backstory for this new Skyrim with an alternate start. You see at this time I was 17, and after an injury became very sickly and frail and I saw myself more in the Bretons then the Nords.
I wrote a small one-shot called Skyrim Revival to be a backstory of this Northpoint orphan beggar who somehow ended up in Skyrim. But as I played I found myself deeply unsatisfied since the game, despite all the mods, was largely the same in terms of story. It wasn’t fun. It got boring to go through bleakfalls barrow again. While I spitballed story ideas for another Harry Potter FanFiction it came to mind I could extend Skyrim Revival into a larger backstory. So I retrofitted elements of Stesha Jade (my character) into becoming a 14 chapter backstory of a Wayrest noble instead called Skyrim ‘Breton’ Edition.
The Old Kingdom
But why stop there? I could never achieve the Skyrim of my dream in game but I could through story! I scrapped all my other FanFiction ideas and focused solely on a 70 chapter epic called The Old Kingdom. This story would see Skyrim’s main quest and several faction questlines rewritten and the world of Skyrim was completely different too, more fantasy like I modded but also surpassing the mere visuals of modding. It would’ve seen Miraak as the primary antagonist with vastly differing Thieves Guild and College of Winterhold and Volkihar vampires quests (the latter part would take us to Atmora, Stros M’kai, Bleakrock, the Dragontail mountains, and all over the new Skyrim), which was supposed to look more like how Skyrim was described in lore prior to the game and the pocket guides, with the ancient Nordic pantheon as well. All snowy and more Nordic Nords. A weak, flimsy Breton would seem interesting when plopped into a world like this. And it would’ve been thrilling to see how he would have survived.
Yandere
But I stopped this when I got the overwhelming urge to write Yandere instead. A FanFiction which featured characters created by the wiki set in the 11th Era at the behest of the Return of the Dwemer. A steampunk Tamriel with a twist villain story some here on the wiki can attest to.
The Arcturian Trilogy
It was around this time I started to realize Tiber Septim and Lorkhan was a better candidate for main villain than Miraak. So I set out again to write a rewrite of Skyrim which had no differences aside from the main quest which would see Talos (not Lorkhan here) as the bad guy in The Elder Scrolls V: Chrysanthemum. With a default Nord protagonist.
But I got ambitious and decided I needed to embellish. So I extended this concept into The Arcturian Trilogy (The Nightingale, The Chrysanthemum, The Redfall). The Nightingale was a thieves guild rewrite with Brynjolf as the main villain and Rune questing to find his identity. I made a post about it which you can read here if you like ( https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003513507 )The Chyrsanthemum was set in the Imperial City for some reason and inspired by gladiator and seeing Talos as the main villain. The Redfall was the aftermath and would explore a fallout with the Thalmor and a fall of the Empire in a potential Tes 6 story in Hammerfell.
The Old Kingdom (Again). The concept didn’t pan out so my bipolar brain decided to fling to Stesha (who I called Sebastien here) and seeing him back in a high fantasy Skyrim pitted against Talos who I called Ragnar Wyrmtongue here. I tried this twice, with and without siblings for Sebastian.
World of Fairmor
But my bipolar nineteen year old mind was like nah and wanted to see me suffer more so we trashed that and got Fables From Fairmor. My own original tes inspired fantasy world which would have 5 books set in different provinces with different villains.
Thinking about a Durmstrang Hp fic inspired me to look more into the College of Winterhold. But I then decided on another seraphian epic and we got 14 chapters of A Flower Wept. which would see users from the wiki creating characters once again for a story set in vanilla Skyrim after 200 years and Wyrmtongue who was Talos as the villain. (I really wanted to use him as a villain. But at this point I decided that Talos and Lorkhan were basically the same person, which I still believe). This story was extremely unoriginal, and untrue to me and it died.
The Fairmorian Trilogy - Going back to roots I condensed my fantasy series into three books: The Frozen Pharoah, where an evil elven prince is unfrozen and tries to kill Caesar, an immortal king. The Electric Wraith which was basically that Nigtingale story and featured Aisha Sheikh who inspired my Saadia in my current story. Then the Devil’s Twin where you’d learn Caesar was a bad guy all along and Ruvelion the Frozen Prince who died in the first book wasn’t evil but actually trying to kill Caesar since he was the real evil one cuz Caesar was my attempt at making a Talos like figure in an original world.
Back to the Roots
But fuck that so let’s go back to FanFiction. High fantasy Skyrim again with mister Stesha Jade the dude with no fade who now has to fight Shitlos I mean Talos in The Devil’s Twin/Queue To Suicide. which was shit cuz the characters sucked and the ending was meh. But I had written 40 chapters already, the farthest I’d ever gotten since I started getting medication and therapy I was able to write without bipolarity switching. So I came up with a plan after watching, playing, and reading Cyberpunk material.
Suicidal Neurosis
After going through intensive mental health treatment, after four years since the idea of a high fantasy Skyrim came to mind, it is now finally complete at 21 years of age for me. In the months since April I rewrote Queue to Suicide with better prose, a cyberpunk and super high fantasy aesthetic. It’s all done. All I have to do is post it, there’s no way I can fuck this up now lest I die. And after this I will finally be done and free. Finally unfrozen from my four years of mental imprisonment because of this one idea that refused to leave me alone until I wrote it.
Talos aka Lorkhan is a much more understandable and interesting villain here and the protagonist is a sort of a mix between the Default Nord and the effeminate Stesha Jade Breton into the Imperial Krest Armilius, who I think is one of the better characters I’ve written alongside Saadia, Dibella, and Talos. The ending and plot is something I’m also immensely proud of and is not the simple “kill the bad guy” that it would’ve been in my past attempts. It is a story I am so glad to have finished and over the four years, though they’ve been a struggle, the best possible outcome and story was born from it. A diamond in the rough. This version features dystopic and divine themes along with issues of ethics, gender, industrialization and imperial occupation with an important lesson I like to think. You’ll find plenty a flying whales, underground steam trains, giant trees, and a fully snowy fantasy landscape with mushrooms and other delights.
Inspirations included Attack on Titan, Neuromancer, Cyberpunk, the Wheel of Time, Vinland Saga, and Lord of the Rings. And actually the Bible’s stories too somewhat.
Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy Suicidal Neurosis as it is posted towards its completion. It will likely be the last story I ever write, as you can see how taxing writing is for a brain like mine with mental strengths but also great weaknesses. It took me 4 years to get one idea on page and grow it into what it has become, and it’s grown with me. But I’m tired of mentally torturing myself and I want rest once I post this story. My brain wants to write and try everything at times and it drives me insane. But I’m healing now and I appreciate everyone’s patience with my disabilities. Thank you.
If you’d like to read this story, it is in my bio. The story is on my laptop and it was completed this summer so no more bipolar switching to a new concept. I’m determined to beat my disorders and let the world see this story that exposes the shortcomings of our favourite archetypes.