Exalt (Fire Emblem Awakening)

A Brief Disclaimer

The story you're about to read is OLD. And I mean VERY old.

As such, you're probably going to have all kinds of questions on it, whether they be stylistic choices or the writing, the latter of which I'm going to do my very best not to insult. Well, rest assured. You have questions? I have answers.

I officially joined Wattpad in the seventh grade, right when I was 12 years old and months away from getting braces. I first began writing Exalt when I was 13. After reading a few stories by my fellow FE authors of their own adventures, I thought I would try my hand at creating my own story in the world of Fire Emblem Awakening. Of course, I had attempted my own fanfiction during my first year on the platform, but this would be my first fully fledged story that would directly follow the events of Awakening... more or less. At the time of me writing this, I'm 18 years old now and just recently finished my first year of college. 

Let's just say that when I first wrote Exalt, I didn't have the... "social maturity" that I do now. It's not something I talk about often, but I am autistic and when I was in my early teens, I never felt I had the same maturity that someone else at my age did, which felt especially apparent when I was 12 and 13. If what I'm saying isn't making any sense, when you read through Exalt, you'll see what I mean.  Obviously, I definitely feel more mature now, but even so, I still feel like I haven't aged past 15, which, more likely than not, is thanks to the pandemic for screwing up my perception of time. 

And, I'm getting off track here, aren't I.

TLDR: If this story seems like it was written by a very young Wattpad user, it was.

Now let's talk about some... "stylistic" choices for this story. X-Reader stories were insanely popular on the platform at the time, though I still feel that they are superior in terms of popularity, and when I first began writing Exalt, I thought I could try my hand at an X-Reader story, as I hadn't seen many in the Fire Emblem community. However, as I began to find my footing with the story, I changed my mind and wanted to scrap the whole X-Reader thing, opting instead to use my own character like others of my fellow writers have. That character would then go onto be known as Sienna. However, I decided it was too late to drop the X-Reader part of the story, but eventually figured "why not do both"?

And now we move onto... the writing. Again, this was a story written by 13 year old version of myself. I'm not entirely sure what my thought process was while writing this at the time, but I think what happened was I got way too overexcited to write Exalt that a lot of ideas seem either rushed, immature, or like I generally had no idea what I was doing. What I am sure of was that I realized this months after I first finished writing Exalt. But, I didn't want to delete it, as this was my first story to pass a thousand views. However, I decided rather than just delete the story, why not start over and rewrite it? And so, as my ninth grade year began, I got immediately to work on the revamped Exalt. The rewritten version of Exalt still exists today, however it is incomplete. As the school year progressed, work had suddenly become a challenge, even more so than in my previous years. So, writing unfortunately had to take a backseat. Again, the rewritten Exalt still exists today, and you're more than welcome to read that instead, however please keep in mind that unlike this version, it is incomplete. However, I don't want to permanently abandon it. It is still a story I hold dear to my heart and as I've gone into my high school and college years, I've gotten back into writing again (multiple times). I do miss the FE community on Wattpad a lot. Really. Maybe I'll go back and finish it someday.

And with that, I think we've covered just about everything there is to cover here. I want to thank everyone whose read this note all the way to the end, as well as everyone whose read Exalt over the years. Although this story is extremely dated, it was still my first story to pass one thousand reads. And it's always going to hold that status. Like I said earlier, as the flaws of the story began to stand out to me, I didn't wanna just delete it. I didn't want to then, and I don't want to now. 

But on that note, I think I've more than gotten my point across, so I'll leave you all with that. Thank you all once again for reading this far, and sit back, relax, and enjoy, as I present you all with Exalt, as it was first written.