It was actually a Hobbitkink prompt! 

A long long time ago in a galaxy far away, I read a prompt on this livejournal kinkmeme that sparked an image in my head: Thorin Oakenshield waking in the Halls of his Maker after the reclamation of his home and the ruin of his hopes, and asking him, ‘why? Why did it happen? Why did you make me so flawed?’

Before I knew it, I had written SO MUCH. Seriously, I had 50K written in a couple of weeks. My mind flew everywhere. I wanted to write it all.

Then came the nuts-and-bolts part of it. All this excess inspiration had to be painstakingly hammered into something cohesive (something I am continually doing, every time I write a chapter). I had a cast of LITERALLY hundreds of people and I was adding more all the time. I began researching frantically. I wrote tons of notes (character bios, mostly, but also cultural aspects and headcanons about music and dance and food and gdi, so many more things). 

At first I was able to write so fast because I wasn’t working with the massive weight of all this background, and because so much time passes before LOTR really gets started. I love all my characters, though – all of them (yes, even Dagalur!) – and even though the pace has slowed so much, I hope it is still engaging and moves at a good clip. 

It has deviated in a couple of ways. For instance, when I began to add all my beautiful Dwarrowdams, I hadn’t considered all the various representation I would eventually add. People would ask me ‘have you thought about neurodivergent characters?’ or ‘have you thought about adding a trans character?’ or ‘have you ever considered writing a lesbian character?’ 

And the answer was, mostly: well why not? The world we live in doesn’t have hegemony. Why would Middle-Earth? Why does that character I have thought up have to be ‘presumed anything’? So Baris is a lesbian. Dori is ace. Thorin is bisexual. Bifur is demisexual. Nali is dyslexic. Merilin is trans. Jeri is nonbinary. Wee Balin is autistic. Narvi is a woman. Orla is black. 

I think the world I am writing is richer for all the differences, and I hope others think so too. If they don’t, meh. There’s other things to read. 

Another deviation is the length. Seriously, I never meant for it to get so MASSIVE. It’s a bit daunting for new readers now! I kick around the idea (now and then) of separating it into ‘books’ like LOTR, just to make it slightly LESS UNWIELDLY AND SCARY. But IDK. I probably won’t.

Finally, I never really meant to begin the Appendices! But I had all these superfluous ideas for all these characters, and I wanted to tell these extra stories… and so, they came about. Now other people have written their headcanons and stories based in the Sansukh universe, and I am so happy I COULD EXPLODE. 

I have blabbed before about how I came to write Sansukh (and why) on my writing tag: how does a dets write? if you’re interested, Nonnie!