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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.
