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#director cut ask
bitterclan · 1 month
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how old is foxflit in the recent updates here? also glowcall ;__;..... how is she holding up after his passing?
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Foxflit is 130 moons old as of the last update. As for how everyone's taking it. Well
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turrondeluxe · 1 year
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I love how you draw April, she still looks like an older woman, but she seems more… refreshed. (is she like in her late 50 in the last ronin? I suppose this makes her in her early 60 in your au?) Guess the stress of Hiroto's existence is slowly withdrawing from her not-so-old bones :)
thank you!!! she is indeed called grammy april after all!
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skitskatdacat63 · 7 months
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Boy King AU | Vettonso + Martian | 1.3k
There's something about putting the future emperor of the Holy Realm on his knees like this. About how easily he goes, how willingly, how obediently. What would his adoring public think if they could see him now. If they saw their beloved king pressed down like this, in the cramped space between Fernando's legs. When they realized their little boy king took it like he was a little concubine instead. 
Fernando's bitterness is lifted away in moments like these, like taking off a heavy cloak on a winter's day. It was hard to feel humiliated about his own situation when watching Sebastian debase himself like this. 
He always gives himself up so easily. When Fernando threaded his fingers through his thick curls. When he pulled them, and then when he pressed his face down further down into the vee of his legs.  Sebastian rubbed his cheek into the coarse fabric of Fernando's breeches and blinked up at him. Fernando had to smother an embarrassing sound; he was just like a little cat!
Sebastian quirked his lips up into an odd little smile and slightly rose up on his knees, "What's funny?" Fernando swallowed lightly and schooled his face back into being impassive, "Nothing. As you were." Sebastian simply smirked at him and let himself be pushed back down by the fist clenched in his hair. 
Fernando scoffed internally, there was only so much pleasure in putting the other man in his place when he instead acted like this, this degrading action, was his birthright. He took to ruling and indulging in carnal pleasures as if they were of equal gravity. To be privileged to hold such high station and also let himself be taken apart like this…Fernando felt embarrassed for him.
He is dragged away from his musings when Sebastian moved to settle his hands in Fernando's lap, clutching his hips over the fabric and slightly squeezing; Fernando fought against the urge to shiver. Sebastian pushed up the skirt of Fernando's waistcoat and smoothed his hands over the opening flap of his breeches.
His eyes darted up at Fernando again, a daft smile on his face. Fernando scowled at him, "What?" Seb's grin sharpened, "You could stand to be a little more gracious. This is your future emperor, and future husband might I add, kneeling for you on this dirty, depraved, derelict- ah–" Fernando tugged on his hair again and hissed, "Well then, why don't you show me how eager you are to perform your marital duties?" 
Seb licked his lips, completely unconcerned by Fernando's annoyance, and unbuttoned one side of the closure to Fernando's breeches and moved to open the other–
The door to the carriage flew open, arrival announcement dying on a wheezing breath as the servant took in the image the two kings made. One splayed across the seat, exuding power, the other kneeled, debauched, between the former's legs. 
One would be hard pressed to determine which was higher on the totem of power and titles. 
There was something gratifying about this to Fernando, about being caught. He had been humiliated enough throughout the entire courtship, what was one more thing? And, certainly, what was one more thing if he could drag Sebastian down into the dirt with him. 
"Oh Mark, don't act so abashed! It's nothing you haven't seen before, in fact, we have been in this very position not even a fortnight ago!"
Oh. Yes. That. 
It was hard to be completely pleased when he remembered how Sebastian had already spent years prior to their engagement sampling the palace's ample selection of fellow high-born men. And how all those men seemed to be completely and utterly wrapped around his little finger.
Fernando released his hand from Sebastian's hair as if it had burned him. He did not understand why he felt ashamed with Mark looking in on them like this. Fernando was the one marrying Sebastian, not Mark; Mark was just a lowly courtier who had the esteemed duty of spending practically every waking hour with the brat…something he himself was decidedly not looking forward to. 
Sebastian stayed kneeling, staring impassively up at Mark, still fiddling with the clasp on Fernando's breeches. Fernando gritted his teeth and looked up from where he was watching Sebastian's clever little hands; Mark stared back at him placidly. 
Mark's indifference made the entire situation worse. Fernando now felt as if he was not doing anything unique, not doing anything particularly new. How many other men had Mark caught Seb with in this exact position? Fernando felt like he was just another plaything of the boy king, soon to be boy emperor, except his position was forever, permanent. He was the "Kept King", the king who only kept his throne due to the whims of a boy who doesn't even understand what power is.
Mark coughed, "Well," he says, "Your Majesty, I do believe you have a meeting to attend." Seb pouted at him and whined, "We were just getting to the main course," but still braced himself on Fernando's thighs and got up off the carriage floor. 
Seb pranced down the steps Mark had placed next to the carriage, miming tripping sown the stairs, snickering when his action made Mark reflexively reach out to grab him, and then playfully skipped off the final step. 
Fernando couldn't help but stare as Mark made the weirdest grimace in response, and he inexplicably felt all his mortification seep away from him. Huh. Maybe Mark is-
Seb then turned around and frowned at him, seemingly disappointed, but his eyes are deceivingly sharp, "Fernando, I regret to inform you that I have other duties I must attend to, you will simply have to wait." He then grinned up at Mark next to him and giggled as the other man stiffened when Sebastian looped both of his arms through Mark's. 
He leaned all his weight on the other man, Mark not so much as shifting his weight, "Oh Mark, won't you carry me back to the palace? I'm so very tired after all the horse riding," Seb looked up at him imploringly.
Fernando observed as Mark rolled his eyes and shrugged off the man, though notably not pulling his arm from Seb's grasp, and he got the distinct feeling that this exact scene had been played out countless times before. 
Fernando clenched his jaw as he watched Seb turn and saunter off, Mark trotting alongside him like a loyal dog. Fernando was supposed to be the unaffected one in this partnership, the unflustered one, the unconcerned one. And yet here he stood, in broad daylight, in a foreign kingdom, on the steps of a carriage with his breeches half unbuttoned and his cravat in disarray. 
He heard a cough from beside him, jolted and looked to the side. Sebastian's loyal Horse Master stood there, lounging against the side of the carriage. Fernando had forgotten who had even been driving the carriage in the first place. After Seb has let himself be pushed down, his hair still windswept from their ride together, everything else seemed to fade away. His thoughts were reduced only to how he could mess up the younger man's hair further. 
Jenson grinned at him wolfishly, and casually crossed his legs,  "First time?" he inquired. Fernando glared at him. The other man laughed openly at him, "What? He's a busy man with big prospects. You're not his majesty's only conquest, you know. Now your throne on the other hand…"
Fernando seethed, it was one thing to be humiliated by the future emperor, but to be patronized by the king's horse boy? No. It would simply not do. He closed his eyes in annoyance, pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaled, and prepared a speech about how he was not about to be talked down to by a man who didn't even have a throne to speak of! 
But when he opened his eyes again and opened his mouth to begin his tirade, Jenson was already wandering away to tend to the horses. Dios mío, Fernando was not mentally prepared to spend the rest of his life with all of these impertinent morons. 
#i love how i kept saying to people: no no i shant write any fic for this. only art.#me like two weeks later: hey guys :)#this is just: i was sitting in class and had a drawing idea but then im obv not drawing *this* in class so my brain went into narrative mod#not exactly 'baby's first ficlet!!!' but moreso ive not written in a while so i hope its alright???#but aaahhh this was actually pretty fun!! idk i think it was bcs i was also being brainrotted by the image of seb kneeling....#maybe ill draw it. but it felt like something that needed the context of narrative and not just oo here is a drawing!#anyways you can always ask me for a directors cut-(PLEASE PLEAE BEGGING PLEASE)#see this is why im not cut out for writing fic#its not like i dont think it can speak for itself. more that im just an overly reflective person who wants to explain all my thoughts#if i wrote fic itd really be just: chapter 1. chapter 1.5 chapter 2. chapter 2.5#anyways i think its pretty obvious but this is before their wedding and just like peak bitterness.#well not peak. peak would be the first year- first few months of their marriage#but this is fernando who is only just realizing how naive all his expectations of seb were and getting a glimpse of his future#but mostly: mindgames and power play and: whos actually really winning?#also my god jense is literally the best chara in this au. he is vibing and basically just witnessing ye olde reality tv#mark and fernando are always in a weird powerplay with seb(even if seb isnt even consiously doing so) and jense is just free from it all#hmm now how does one go about tagging fic#vettonso#f1 fanfic#formula 1 fanfic#f1#formula 1#martian#sebmark#also idk why im always so concerned abt tagging when im basically just writing this for my little boy king following i have somehow formed#hahaha! it is art to me!:#catie.art.#boy king au
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curator-on-ao3 · 6 months
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for the director's cut thing, i would LOVE to hear you talk about the light before dawn! (sorry if you've already done it lol) it's one of my absolute all time favourite pikeuna fics <3
Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Thank you so much, @belannaswlonkderfulworm!! ❤️ That’s so kind of you and deeply meaningful for me. 🥹
To explain: The Light Before Dawn lives in my heart. I started writing that multi-chap during Strange New Worlds’ first season and I think about it often with so much affection. I know fandom wisdom is people don’t like modern AUs, but I wanted to write it anyway. Something about that story just needed to be told.
I began by trying to figure out Una’s secret. I would have liked to have made her in the United States illegally, but then marriage could fix her problem and I didn’t want that pressure on her and Chris’ relationship. I also considered making Una trans, but I don’t feel qualified to write that experience. There was the option of making her a religious or ethnic minority, but then she would hopefully have a community and not be so alone. The idea of genetic engineering correlating to medical device implantation and ableism finally hit me and really resonated.
For Chris, my first idea was that he could be an equine therapist. But that didn’t work out geographically and, once I figured out Una’s secret, I also decided I didn’t want Chris in any kind of medical profession. (That’s why Joseph and Christine are barely in the story.) Making Chris a modern-day peacemaker seemed right.
Once I had the facts straight, the story had one rule — nothing bad could happen during the course of the narrative. This would be a story about emotional recovery from trauma. Even misunderstandings (like the one Una and La’an had) would be in the service of recovery. I feel like that came through, in part because one of the story bookmarks has the note “comfort in words.” I’ll tell you right now that there are times when I’ve had a shitty day, I look at or think about that bookmark and it helps me feel better that my words were able to comfort someone.
All that being said, there was so much I wanted to fit into that story and couldn’t:
I had this idea in my head that when Chris and Vina got divorced, Chris wore brown loafers with tassels to Family Court because he knew Vina hated those shoes … and he felt guilty at doing something so petty, but also free from trying to please her. As Chris made his way down the front steps of the court after the divorce was finalized, he nearly danced on the concrete with the shoes his wife — ex-wife — hated.
Speaking of Vina … there are songs on my fic playlist for Vina, a character who doesn’t even appear except for Chris mentioning her. But I have so many thoughts about Vina’s frustration with Chris, her pain at him pulling away from a life she thought was good. Vina, a financial planner, helps money make more money. She shops at chic stores and pays too much for haircuts. She moved to SoHo after the divorce and doesn’t really enjoy sex with her dates but does it to reassure herself that she’s “normal” and “fun” and “cool” because all of that is so desperately important to her. I hope she snaps out of her need to impress others, I really do, because Vina’s life could be better if she just lived it for herself.
I considered including that in the mornings when Chris’ light didn’t go on that he was at Judge Batel’s place feeling like absolute garbage. But then who discriminated against Una and cost Una her dream? It got too messy so I just left Batel out and I’m glad I did.
I was going to have the kitchen renovation company belong to Hemmer but when the show killed him, I nixed that.
At the last minute, I edited out a part where Una told Chris that when she was little and her parents would drive past the garbage dump, she would get scared they would drop her off there and leave her. But that was just too sad, even in the past.
In the universe of the story, Rukiya 100% lives to be an adult. There is no cygnokemia in New York City. After they read and run around at the park, Joseph and Rukiya go home to Debra and the family plays board games until it’s time for dinner.
In terms of good stuff, I’m really pleased with some of the details in that story — Una’s nail polish bottles, Chris’ Eagle Scout award (the highest award in Boy Scouts), those two discussing leaky scaffolding (a relatable New York City experience), the reveal of what happened to Gabriel Lorca. Also, I know I’m biased, but when Una set the stars at the planetarium to Mojave, California, so she could see what the sky looked like for Chris when he was a child at night, I think that’s so goddamn romantic of her.
I’m less pleased with my decision to have Una’s quick conversation in the mail room be with a nameless neighbor. My original thought was the neighbor could be any one of the Discovery women — Kat Cornwell, Michael Burnham, Phillipa Georgiou, etc. Meh. Then I wrote and deleted a whole section that made clear the neighbor was Christine Chapel. Maybe I should have kept that and removed the fleeting Chapel reference later. I’m not sure.
I stand by the Spirk joke at the end, though.
I also stand by Una not being a model patient. She’s mostly good about things, but she doesn’t always carry her card with her … just like a real person. And I am gleeful that Eagle Scout Mr. Moral Compass Christopher Pike uses the work printer for personal documents because, come on, we all do it.
Oof, I could keep talking about this story but I should stop. Thank you for this absolutely lovely opportunity, @belannaswlonkderfulworm, I’ve enjoyed every second of babbling about my beloved The Light Before Dawn. ❤️
Want more information about a fic I wrote? Send me an ask.
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runa-falls · 5 months
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⭐️ (director's choice bc im behind on my reading but want the tea)
he smells like flowers (steven grant x reader)
i like to think of this work as my love letter to steven because every time i re-read it, it flings me back into my obsession with him. i feel like i was in a trance when i wrote this bc i don't remember putting out these thoughts lol.
here are some excerpts that i'd like to expand on:
even after a week long mission, he still smells like that mellow mix of tender flower petals and syrupy nectar. ambrosia that glides thick on your tongue and begs you to swallow him down.
i don't know how describe it but i feel like his scent is not a smell, but a feeling. like pure ecstasy, it makes you curl up in a little ball and once you have a taste, you'll never get enough of it. it's a magnet that pulls you closer -- one that you could resist, but never want to.
these two sentences are absolutely extra asf bc all i was really trying to say is that i want steven to fuck my throat + cuddle me :)
he has a habit of chewing on his bottom lip when he's nervous, excited, or generally overstimulated, sucking it raw until you tug it out from under his teeth and help him lick the wounds. sometimes you think he does it on purpose -- wanting to feeling you grace his lips with yours -- other times you worry that if you weren't there he'd do some real damage to himself without even knowing it.
kissing doesn't always have to be sexual. in this instance, kissing is caring, showing someone that you'll be there to comfort and reassure them when times become too much.
i have a habit of biting my lips when i'm anxious so i kinda forced that compulsion onto steven bc i've never had someone care enough to notice. i figured that if i could take care of him in that world, i could do the same for myself here.
the sleeves of his clothes are tugged and stretched out because he likes the feeling of having something to hold on to, it grounds him. it comforts him when you aren't around.
like many others, steven and his oversized clothes had immediately enamored me. there's something about a man purposefully trying to make himself seem smaller that makes me feral.
i made steven a bit clingy in this fic, where he always wants the reader near and touching him. i love writing steven as touch-starved because i think he definitely deserves to be touched in a loving way. he should be craving my love and leaning into my touch, not flinching away from it!
i also understanding having that one comfort-person. even in a room full of friends, there's always that one person that makes me feel undoubtedly safe. so that's why i added this part!
you groan against his slick heated skin -- he tastes like a box of heart shaped chocolates: saccharine, rich, and indulgent. you've never had a sweet-tooth, but steven is a dessert you could eat any day.
if you didn't catch it, this was a reference to steven + his box of chocolates after being stood up at a restaurant. poor romantic steven :( of course, steven doesn't actually taste like chocolate (or does he?), but he's such a sweetie that he might as well be a chocolate rabbit <3
^^i love doing this director's comments asks bc it helps me reflect on my work!
director's cut
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teejaystumbles · 3 days
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⭐  give us the bonus features/making of for your big bang fic!
Ooooh! OK!
For "Hell or High Water" it all started with a poll I made in May 2023 to decide which kind of fish half to give merman Hob. The British or Common Skate won and my merman Hob was born. The rest is kinda history lol.
For months I drew sketches and came up with a few scenes, like Morpheus being a freediver and dropping the ruby for Hob to find. I watched a documentary on freediving ("The Deepest Breath"), and skates of course. I talked a lot to mutuals like @amielot who helped me come up with some ideas for the story and whose drawings of Hob and Johanna shaped the way I wrote their relationship a lot.
Thinking about mermaids and movies with mermaids made me remember "Dagon", which has an ending scene that has very much made a lasting impression on me (and made me realise that I am quite a bit thalassophobic), and so I thought - "let's make it a bit creepy, a bit Lovecraftian."
I listened to "The Shadow over Innsmouth" and a lot of other Lovecraft over the next months, put together a playlist for writing and got to work on gathering more information to build my world. I decided to go with Lovecraft's love for ancient cultures as the cradle of weird/inhuman cults and made Hob's ancestors be descendents of Tiamat, originally living in the Mediterranean and Red Sea, using Accadian and Cuneiform writing as their form of communication. I have a whole Gdoc dedicated to notes for the fic, and another one for the story outline. I really put in a lot of effort but it was worth it. I love research and world building, I loved learning about freediving and revisiting my knowledge about Accadian language (I did two semesters of "Oriental studies" at the beginning of my time as a university student). At that point I don't think that I had decided to write the fic for the Big Bang, but then I thought, "why not? The pressure will help me actually write it." And it worked!
While writing I think I changed a few ideas of the story. For example, I had debated to let Thessaly try and romance Morpheus and make Hob even more jealous, but I decided to cut that short and let her focus on the ruby. I also needed a lot of time to figure out what to do about Johanna's selkie skin, there were different ideas, like have Morpheus stumble upon it where Jo had simply forgotten it. I think the final solution came to me fairly late into writing, but I'm very glad I thought of Rachel. It was my first time taking part in a Big Bang and I hope to take part in the next. There's nothing better for me than a project deadline actually forcing me to focus on one thing, as I tend to let my creativity wander and drop things halfway if I don't have to finish something.
Thank you for asking, I hope this was a bit interesting. 🥰
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millenari · 6 days
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the funniest thing abt that Tom Hooper commentary is Ian McKellen asking him what the relationship between Jellyorum and Gus was supposed to be and Hooper apparently just going 'well if YOU dont know then I'm just going to cut the part and make it a solo lmao'
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clare-with-no-i · 4 months
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Hello I totally agree with your explanation of “Deddies” and I love it so much. Can I SOLICIT a director’s cut for back to the old house? (If you feel like it!)
kelsey omg! pls you know I am always one to chitchat about my fics (I am narcissistic). thank you for asking! the entire time I was writing I kept thinking CHANNEL KELSEY CHANNEL KELSEY CHANNEL KELSEY so I hope this connects with you! I knew from the get-go that I wanted to write you something Order-era, because I know you enjoy those stories :) I also knew it was going to be a little angsty, a little contentious between James and Lily. there had to be some distance between them to create conflict. and you said you liked canon divergent! so!
The new recruits don’t know that the potions closet has a spring-loaded trap fashioned onto the doorknob.
the first sentence is actually one of the most important of the whole fic. I wanted to try and set up a few things right off the bat: first, that there's a new group of people entering the scene who are important to the story. second, that the narrator (shortly, you'll find out, it's James) is in a position of authority over them, and is intimately familiar with the setting. third, there's going to be some interaction between wizarding concepts (the potions closet) and muggle technology (spring-loaded trap on the doorknob).
essentially, this one sentence captures the essence of the entire plot: a new recruit (lily) not knowing that muggle tech is going to be key to an Order operation which James is running. I rewrote this sentence a few times, and once I landed on it, I ended up writing a lot of the story around it.
When he was little, before he mastered any sort of magic, he used to bandage the broken wings of birds he’d find in the back garden, gauze nicked from the muggle-junk cabinets his mum kept, fumbling fingers dumping alcohol wherever he saw blood. One of the housekeepers told him that he might just be prolonging their suffering instead of helping them like he thought. He was too young to understand what she meant, or maybe too headstrong to care about anything past what he thought was right. He would always release them, but now that he thinks about it: did any of them ever fly?
another passage I found really important. James has a bloated sense of responsibility in this story, which is something I usually write him with across all of my stories, especially in canon. we see him agonizing over whether he's coddling these new recruits too much, almost to the point of being neurotic about it. he's an unreliable narrator, as we'll learn: he wants to blame himself for things, or try and fix things over which he has no purview. here, he's getting upset with himself for trying to help animals as a child. like, hello? lmao
The eyes he meets when he looks in front of him are Lily Evans Green — she has a patented shade, or at least, he’s always thought of them that way, somewhere between hunter and sea — and narrow. The last time he saw her was at Leaver’s Ball. She’d been a wisp, a moment, an apparition between bodies in ornate robes and gowns. He doesn’t jolt, but he knows from a sudden crick in his neck that he doesn’t stay still, either.
the "he doesn't jolt" sentence is another favorite primarily because we're pretty sure he did actually jolt. you don't just end up with a crick in your neck from barely moving. but it's so fun to see him downplay his reaction to seeing Lily (at least it was for me), and that was part of the reason why I tried to indicate across the story that she sort of knew that he had feelings for her, at least at some point in their lives. he's way more transparent than he admits.
She mumbles a quiet thank you in cadence with the rest of the lot, as though they’re really strangers, as though he’s just a tour guide and she’s not at all surprised to see him, as though she doesn’t care at all that he’s in front of her, except the tips of her shoes point at him for a few delayed seconds, long after the others have walked away. One of her socked ankles fidgets.
I pulled from one of my favorite new girl episodes for this haha. the 'a man's feet point toward what he wants' thing with nick and jess is so cartoonishly stupid but just the right amount of delusional that it felt really authentic to have him fixate on it. especially now that she's given him this bodily reaction of fucking his head, where before he was speaking above his audience. it also gives us a little distance from lily, again: we don't know if she's looking at him or not, or what her expression might be.
A glass bottle full of brown hydrangeas wobbles. The label’s been ripped off, but it was Firewhisky before it housed dead things, and its wide, stained edges keep it from tipping over.
another important sentence here is the firewhisky bottle line, which I've talked about a bit before. the central motif of the story is vessels: houses, primarily, as this all takes place in this house-turned-headquarters, but also bottles — for potions, for alcohol — and to me, in this moment, the firewhisky bottle was just a gigantic metaphor for the entire Order of the Phoenix. all of the Order members had identities before they became soldiers cloistered in this house, and it's those little indicia of their past selves ("wide, stained edges" from holding firewhisky) that keep them from collapsing entirely. James's resilience and humanity; Sirius's humor and fighting spirit; Lily's cleverness and kindness. I promise I actually thought about that as I wrote it and am not just now doing a close reading hahaha
“Hang on.” Inexplicably, James holds his hand up to stop him. The scrolls crinkle as Jeremy clutches them back against his chest as though looking for a threat James has identified. Instead, James elaborates, haltingly, “You’re—uh. You’re going to take up the whole dining table with that.”
it was important to me that this moment was ambiguous in meaning: whether James was trying to keep the plans a secret or whether this was just him reverting to a schoolboy crush by forcing Jeremy to keep the maps in his hands so that Lily has a place to sit with her tea. could be either or both :)
He gets up, suddenly and almost entirely against his will, thinking of the way her lips flattened and unfurled as she whispered, magnets, magnets.
he just wants to be around her! this is the thoughtless beauty of liking someone — you just want to be around them all the time, right? you want to stick to them like, pardon the obvious reference, a magnet.
“You can’t tell me that we weren’t…I thought we were starting to get close in sixth year, is all.” To say that he has a physical reaction to this wouldn’t be inaccurate, but just as well, he’s the longest-serving member of the Order currently living in this house, and he has spent years learning the art of avoiding disarmament.
this is a turning point for a number of reasons: we finally get an insight into how Lily feels, and we James refuse to process it and instead just make immediate reference to his work in the Order, something about which he is confident and assured. I had to find a good enough reason for them not to be together or even really be on speaking terms, and the only catalyst I could think of was to have this big, destabilizing event (James's parents' deaths) really personalize the war for him earlier than it might have done in canon. of course, we know that he would have joined either way just because it was the right thing to do — and so does Lily — but I tried to give the impression that he's not sure, and it's a point of insecurity for him. it was also important that I get across the "oh my god he was just a kid!!!" perspective here from Lily as a proxy for the reader. because now that I've altered the timeline of canon, we presumably won't have that happening with Harry; it's all been transferred to James.
There is an acute sensation which James has experienced only in this room, in the last six months, of realizing that being beholden to a movement and a person are two very different things.
the moment with Dumbledore in his office is where we get a little bit more information about what's going on, albeit in these distorted/fractured formats. Remus is doing work that requires him to be away from his friends; it's at Dumbledore's behest; the mission that we later learn involves Sirius, Marlene, Fabian, and Gideon living undercover in Malfoy Manor has been going on for roughly six months.
“I just think I’m better suited in the field,” one person says. “I can’t be stuck here mixing herbs all day.” “I know. You’d think they’d ask us instead of us having to ask them. I mean, were we recruited to pass out flyers?” “Or fold the clothes they left in the closets.” “Bloody hell.”
another little easter egg here, which connects to something in the first scene! we know that there are four empty rooms in the house. we now know that there are clothes left in the closets in them. we don't know where Sirius is, or why James has this undercurrent of panic beneath his internal narration, but at this point hopefully the pieces started to come together.
When he leaves the lab, he shakes out his overwarm hands, watching the crescent imprint of a fingernail disappear from his palm.
this was my 2005 pride and prejudice hand-flexing-scene moment, in all candor
“You don’t want to be healing me,” he posits, slurring his words a little. “I don’t want you to be hurt,” she replies in her top pupil voice.
I felt pretty comfortable giving Lily the more blunt-force romantic lines here because of the setting and because of how completely frazzled I make James in her presence. we see her have her moment of reckoning earlier, when she's out smoking, basically putting it all together that he didn't just stop liking her in sixth year — he had this massive traumatic event that he didn't even think he could tell anyone, and he had Dumbledore pulling strings in the background to get him to fight for the Order. so, coupled with how blatantly clumsy he acts around her (despite him thinking otherwise) and how often he seeks her out, it would be pretty easy to surmise that he still has residual feelings for her. but, again, we're not getting the full story from him, and she doesn't know what's going on with the mission, so I hoped to create this sense that she couldn't really discuss their relationship until all of his cards were on the table.
Her eyes stay closed for a good few seconds. He can’t tell if he’s fantasizing or reading her expression correctly when he thinks that she’s sitting in the moment, luxuriating in it. He feels at once completely in himself: in this twenty-year-old version, learning what it’s like to have something and let it have you in return. The leaves of a nearby tree cut through the sunlight and splotch their bodies with shade. The wards are down, for just a little while.
after they finally kiss (!), it was important to me that we see him actually start to believe that they're as close as he wishes they would be. he's starting to trust in the face-value reality in front of him: that she's just sitting in this moment, entirely comfortable with where they are, and with him. hopefully the buildup here has been sufficient, but I thought it was a poetic sort of resolve here, that he's been able to fulfill this wish that he's had since he was sixteen, this age where he became stunted in his emotional growth because he was adopted into this grassroots war effort.
earlier in the story I refer to him as a "time-turner body," because he has this incredibly curious, contradictory relationship between certain parts of his identity. he's grown up faster than his peers in that he's become a senior member of the Order after fighting for four years. he became an orphan at sixteen but was taken under Dumbledore's wing. he has this unrealized teenage crush which he has been forced to confront after she becomes a soldier. he's been run ragged by worry and by fear as his friends take on these roles that he can't help with. so here, finally, he's at peace with his twenty-year-old self: his friends are all in one place, he's gotten to fulfill this one-who-got-away romance from his teenage years after getting to know her as an adult.
finally: the wards were my other big motif, essentially just giving visual representation for how trapped James feels by his environment. we know that someone had to "let Lupin in" from the previous scene, AKA take down the anti-apparition wards, and now they're down until the mission is over. finally, he sees into the outside world, a world not limited to this house and this war.
woohoo! thank you to any and all who read this absolute phd thesis. my god. kelsey as per usual you are too kind to ask me for these things and I appreciate you!! and another HUGE shoutout to Hafsa for organizing this wonderful wonderful event!
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startistdoodles · 1 year
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added text for his thoughts :)
YEAH HONESTLY
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bitterclan · 5 months
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can we see how mousepaws doing in starclan? :( they were my fave
He's watching over his bro...
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wutheringmights · 6 months
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<shakily rolling into your inbox> Would you gift us with chapter commentary, please?
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Your wish is my command:
Framing the past section around headlines was not my original plan. I wanted to do a repeating refrain of "This is how the war ended," but when it came time to actually write it, I was bored with it. Yeah, kinda thought about it too hard. So I went back to the drawing board.
I also considered framing the chapter around the passing seasons, but that seemed too boring. I wanted something with a bit more pizazz.
Plus, one of my favorite genres of fan work is in-universe media like newspapers and magazine covers. This is a pretty weak attempt at it, but at least I threw my hat into the ring.
I've been trying for a while now to imply that the original HW storyline is what was spread as propaganda to the people of Hyrule, but this is the first time I made it really, really clear.
So the engineer being assigned to the coast is a reference to how the DLC that features Toon Link is the one where there's suddenly an ocean. Very smooth of me lol
This chapter ended up being a bit of a dumping ground for all of the relationships I was ignoring in favor of writing about the brothers, ironically because I too was too consumed with the engineer and the child to write about anything else, which in turn really drove home how all-consuming their presence was for Link
The fun thing about Midna's scene is that her and Link going on nightly walks together was one of the very first ideas I had for CTB by virtue of it being inherited from when I thought I was going to write a romcom. Incredible that it took half a million words to finally get to it.
My favorite part of the past is the bit where Link writes all of the letters to the engineer. It's just a lot of fun to sit there and figure out what kind of bullshit he would spout to kinda apologize but not really. It was even more fun to punch him back down with Lincoln's brutal response. Just rereading it, I feel like you can tell I was having a blast.
I also had a lot of fun finding ways to show symptoms of Link's alcoholism getting worse without him realizing it. The constant headaches, the nausea, the shakey hands, the sensory sensitivity-- him experiencing all of this and going so deep into denial that he can't understand why his body is reacting that way.
It's been so long since I've managed to give Toto some screen time that I kinda forgot how much I like his character? He's just a guy, but I like that he's just a guy. But I don't think I made it too clear in the chapter that in their friend group, they were the least friends with each other. Link was closer to Anders, and Toto to Uri. They're being driven together by virtue of being the only ones left, moreso than I initially conveyed.
And, of course, I got to talk about Uri again. Again, Uri is always so interesting to handle because he is a character who we will never see in person and Link is too traumatized by the death of to think about in detail. Even now, Uri feels like a mystery. All we know about him is how Link feels about him.
And finally, Zelda. The thing about Zelda is that I feel like her goals are really transparent, but I always get comments from people who want there to be this moment where everything about her is spelled out. And, despite the fact that she monologues about her feelings here, I don't think this is exactly what everyone was hoping for. The more I read it over, I can see how she probably just got more confusing.
Also, I know I need to stop writing monologues. But have you considered that the monologues are sexy?
I feel like I should say something about how Zelda's relationship with Hylia, but it really speaks for itself. I will say that as much as I like how BOTW is so ambiguous with Hylia, I am a little bit more fascinated with the idea that "your god is real and they specifically hate you." Like, how are you supposed to cope with that? We should all be thankful Zelda isn't more fucked up than she is.
I should also say something about her thoughts on the engineer... so first, my goal with that relationship was always for it to be toxic from both ends, with the engineer trying to use her while she uses him-- which gets even more complicated when you consider all the ways Zelda echoes Link. Like Link, she sees parts of herself in the engineer. Unlike him, she wants to save be saved, so she in turn saves him. Link hates himself so much that he has to drag everyone else down with him.
In the era of everyone wanting Zelda to no longer be a damsel in distress, it's kind fun to give her the traditional goal of being saved by someone else, to then twist it around. She is begging to be rescued, but she won't fix anything herself.
This idea really goes against the popular depictions of HW Zelda, which is why I have iterated before that this Zelda is not Artemis. She's her own thing.
There was going to be more about how the war ended, but I decided to keep it for next chapter because (you guessed it) the word count got too long.
On to the present--
Congrats to everyone who said they wanted to see more of Spirit and Warriors talking shop. You really won with this chapter.
That being said, I always think that I never write what people want when they want it. Like I will write a chapter with a lot of action, so everyone says they want more action next. But then I follow it up with a chapter of people just talking, so I get a lot of people requesting more of that. But then, it's back to heavy action.
All that's to say that I feel bad that there wasn't more character drama this chapter
Also, I feel really bad for not including either Hyrule or Wind in this chapter. Those two are the characters people ask me to write more about the most. But unfortunately, the thing about juggling a large cast of characters is that some times you have to sit down and get a few of those characters out of the way for a bit so that we can focus on other things.
I don't want to make it sound like I was targeting those two on purpose. They just had the best excuse for not going on the Nephus mission.
Speaking of which, I feel terrible for constantly finding ways to leave Lana and Linkle out of the action-- and that's after I've talked so much about adding more women into the story to balance out the default nine dudes LU requires me to add. But again, there are so many characters that I have to find ways to leave some of them behind. And again, it was really easy to give them an excuse to not be in the main action. But It's probably a bad thing that they are easily excused. I should work on that.
And I know I can write scenes with a shit ton of characters talking together. I've done it plenty of times in CTB and other ensemble stories before it. But it's a lot of work, and when I need to focus on more important plot points, the last thing I want to juggle is balancing every scene so that everyone has something to do.
Sorry to belabor that point. Sometimes, I get really annoyed with how big the cast it when it's not even my fault.
It is my fault. I just want to complain.
I appreciate everyone who has their own version of Spirit going on more legendary adventures while he is wearing his OSHA mandated work uniform. I know the Heroes of Hyrule are not unionized, but I at least would like to make sure he is properly dressed with an adventure.
That being said, his Castle Guard uniform was partially inspired by the uniform for the Free Planets Alliance in the original Legend of the Galactic Heroes:
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That is not a great photo, but I was envisioning something like this-- "this" being a more modern cut with clear nautical influences (cause the Castle Guard was probably originally a navy)
Also the crest on Spirit's uniform is Tetra's pirate emblem. Do not get be started about how I fucked up the crest of the New Hyrulean royal family back in chapter 6 and how I have been looking for some band-aid to place over that mistake so that it would look like I did it on purpose
I didn't expect the scene where Spirit talks to Four to be so polarizing. I didn't even think it was a significant moment when I wrote it. Yet I've seen a huge gambit of reactions, from people calling Spirit cruel or others saying that the moment was sweet. That being said, I am living for this. If there is one thing I want right now, it is for everyone's opinion on Spirit to be split.
Did you guys enjoy me trying to write about how machinery works? Honestly, I could have probably cut all that, but I did so much work establishing the mechanics behind the ganons in previous chapters that I felt like I had to go through with it.
My original plan was for Warriors's plan to involve taking Philo hostage from the start, but I changed it because writing a kidnapping scene would have been too much work. It still really bugs me. The way the chapter is written now feels really cheap, but again. I didn't feel like I had enough space.
I also ran into the fun problem of wanting to show the nuances of Philo and Icarius's relationship when one can't speak and the other would not speak Hylian. Legend saved my ass a bit with this one, but I don't know if all of the little details got through.
Speaking of which, I should talking the House of Nephus
So obviously, I wanted the House of Nephus to reflect the original brothers dynamic. The idea is that they are what Warriors, Spirit, and Time/Mask would turn into if both Spirit and Mask stayed.
Except, in practice, I had to give them their own distinct personalities so that they wouldn't be boring as fuck
Icarius and Philo got away with getting small but really effective changes. They both still feel like reflections of Spirit and Time respectively
But Nephus.... so my original personality for him was someone as jaded and mean as Warriors is at his worst. But he felt too much like Zelda or Impa. So I went back to the drawing board to find some character angle that would be really interesting and effective for how little screen time he will ultimately get.
My inspiration came from the Virginia Woolf seminar I was in when I first started working on CTB. I was thinking a lot about rich, British assholes; very specifically about the kind who are self-prescribed intellectuals who fetishize non-white cultures while maintaining the superiority of Western imperialism.
So with that in hand, I got rid jadedness and turned Nephus into a guy dripping with charisma but is unaware of how terrible of a person he is. And as a reflection of Warriors, he works thematically.
But you can make the argument that this is not the story for this kind of a character, especially when I have already gone through such lengths to clarify that Hyrule is an imperialist nation that echoes America. You can see me poking fun at it in some of the dialogue during this scene, but still.
(And it gets worse when you look at the subtext of how light vs dark magic is treated between Hyrule and Faovaria).
So, yeah. I deserve some criticism for this one. I know it. But I didn't change it because I just liked how immediately interesting Nephus was. I couldn't think of an alternative that would have been as effective as this affable evil. Sorry about that.
Another idea I had was that Nephus was going to be the Faovarian equivalent of the Hero of Hyrule, and he would even have his own dual blades of dark and light magic to prove it. I ended up not doing this because it was too heavy handed.
I originally was going to keep the swords, and I even realized that if I had planned things out a bit better, the dark magic sword could have been Ghirahim. I decided that it would have been too out of left field to have worked, but man. I have regretted since day 1 that I cut Ghirahim from the story. I'm sorry, Ghirahim.
And then I didn't even include the swords. Motherfucker.
That actually was a genuine mistake on my part, because the point of the swords would have been to give Nephus's speech on his religion more credence. We as the audience know that the goddesses exist. And yet... why does there seem to be more to the gods of this universe? Are Hylia and the Golden Three really just oracles? If Nephus has these cool swords, what other powers and weapons does Faovaria have within its borders? You know, just world building stuff.
I came up with too much story for the House of Nephus than what I will ultimately have space to include in CTB. I'll try to strategic so that you won't be annoyed with the lack of answers from some of the questions you probably have.
As important as Nephus is, he's ultimately not the main antagonist of the story. If I was willing to write 20 more chapters, I could do a lot more with him, Philo, and Icarius; but I would like to see the end of CTB someday lol
Originally, only Time, Spirit, and Midna were going to go with Warriors to meet Nephus. There was definitely going to be this bit where Spirit and Warriors were going to be like "oh fuck, he's hot" as Nephus flirted with them. Meanwhile, Time (a married man) would be sitting there like "really??? both of you have horrible taste??"
I am also realizing I forgot to write a moment where Warriors is horrified to realize that Nephus was going to make Philo sit there in pain instead of rushing him to a doctor. Fucking hell.
Also, that Nephus's spirit feels normal to Spirit is important. Not on a plot level, but thematically. Just hang on to that thought next time you think about the whole spirit sensing thing.
I always knew that CTB was going to evolve into a Triforce quest story. There's no way I could write about a guy who's supposed to be this brutal strategist and not let him realize he has an easy solve to everything. But I also didn't want this to be easy or feel cheap. It's why I went through all that effort to establish that getting those pieces would involving going up against the Royal Family and the Knights of Hyrule. It's going to be hard, and it will involve all the fighting and manipulating you expect CTB to have. It'll also involve moral dilemmas.
After all, we've been talking about the moral dilemmas presented by the Triforce since at least chapter 6 (remember when I said that there was so much set-up in that chapter for stuff that was for far later in the story? Hello, pay off!)
All that's to say that I am worried that people don't like this direction. I have gotten a few comments about how excited people are for Warriors's plan, but only time will tell if this ruined the story for some people.
And I know I worry a lot about ruining CTB. That's not a problem that's going to be solved any time soon, so let me have this one.
Finally, the chapter was going to go until Time's talk with Warriors. Decided to move it to next chapter because, you guessed it, space.
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skitskatdacat63 · 9 months
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I'm so salty there's no direct footage of this moment, but omg the clip is still making me 😵‍💫
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revengeromance · 5 months
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Leo ☆ 18 ☆ He/Him
Film major ☆ Writer ☆ Programmer
I make punk music and block freely. Decolonization now and forever. Death to the military industrial complex. Liberation for all. We will see a free Palestine in our lifetime. Revolution girl style now!
@mookquartetarchive
texasisforever.com
ko-fi / commissions
🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇲🇽🇺🇸
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runa-falls · 5 months
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scratches and bites?
scratches and bites - miguel o'hara x spider-girl!reader
s&b was my first miguel fic and was initially going to be a smutty one-shot, but clearly i had issues sticking with some plotless porn. first there was one part, then two, then three, and now 4 (the last one has been sitting in my google drive XD).
i really enjoyed introducing an "extremely-new-doesn't-even-know-about-her-powers-yet" spider-girl into spider society because it was almost like i was writing how i'd react to the changes the spiders go through.
the first part introduces grumpy impatient!miguel and the reader who's barely through her transformation into spider-girl. i used this part to create some undeniable tension in their first meeting bc i wanted to make it clear that despite miguel's rough nature, he'll always fall for the reader.
in the second part, when the reader goes to nueva york, i wanted to focus on the dynamics between different characters (peter, gwen, hobie, etc) + how miguel and the reader's relationship evolves (jealousy, missing each other, defiance for attention). this chapter had the most plot and least interaction between the love birds, but i thought it was important to push miguel to the edge.
the third part was...mostly PORN. finally right? it did seem like most people skipped the second part (which is a bit disheartening) but i get it. i mean, i wrote this series thinking it would only be porn.
this part included the big fight scene and the big FUCK scene. i love writing arguments but irl i HATE conflict, so this is how i get my fill <3 from what he almost says (he was interrupted by the reader lol) it's clear that miguel wants to keep the reader safe, but he isn't ready to admit that he cares for her.
i know it seems to early for miguel to have feelings for someone that he barely interacts with, but the reader is the only person he's even considered opening up to after all these years. i think the fact that the reader is so new to being spider-girl makes miguel feel like he's needed + that's all he's really wanted since the accident.
later, after the fucking and sedation-kink, i wanted to highlight miguel's attachment issues due to his past. i mean, he's particularly needy in this third chapter (NSFW):
“Be mine, baby, and I’ll take care of you forever.” His claws dig into your web-pasted as he works himself into you, post-orgasm slick smothered carelessly over the both of you. “I promise.” He whispers breathlessly next to your ear.
sry this was so long. i honestly didn't know i had this much to say, but i guess i just wanted to convey my understanding of the story in case anyone is curious.
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darkisrising · 8 days
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suuuuusssshhhhiiiiiiiii my love! Thank you for playing with me, and per our dm conversation you settled on the sex worker bobadinluke au series for the director's commentary ask game. Which is gonna be hard since you were there when I was writing it, I'm not sure what I can come up with that you wouldn't already know/vaguely recall, but I'll give it my best shot.
Right away, I'll say that everyone that knows me has dragged me at least once about my fic titles. I'm not great at coming up with them, and usually just pick something at random. At the time I was writing this series, I had this idea of grouping fics together with some very loose theme. Which is why my dinluke stuff mostly have a mando'a words as titles, the big BDL series are all lines from songs by Frank Sinatra, and this series has titles that are all songs from the 2000s. The songs have nothing to do with the fic, except that the one line I used for the title somewhat had something to do with the fic itself. Which I know drives @bronze-lorica crazy, lololol, and I'm sure she'd not alone.
This series started off as three prompt fills. Three people requested "sex worker" from a list of AUs but asked for different ships, and I decided to make my life easier by setting them all in the same, modern world. This series got me by the throat as I was writing, and I'd post a little more, only to be like "Oh! And another thing..." over and over, until there were 37k words of it.
I knew I didn't want to tell an angsty story with this one-- I love angst but I wasn't in the mood--so instead I went with the idea that Luke's a sex worker that's doing this as a means to an end, and is very clear about when the end will be. So, instead of seeing him hit rock bottom and let that be the motivation for the sex work, it's more transitory than that. This is only a moment in his life that we're seeing, and he's very clear about that.
His sex worker style I sort of based on the persona I take on in my client-facing/customer service jobs. Upbeat and patient. "You can trust me" and "We'll get through this together" vibes. And since I like my triads where everyone is a puzzle piece that fits in together, providing something for each person that's unique and different, it synced up nicely to make Din someone with a repressed/religious fanatic background. Luke's very open and non-judgemental, not to mention competent, energy is like Valium to Din. It lets him soften and be more willing to engage in a way that he doesn't really with his bristly husband. Boba's my gruff, blue collar man and when I hit on the idea of him dealing with chronic pain from an accident at a construction site (the Sarlacc building project, he fell into the pit, natch, and then after I decided that, I couldn't stop hearing Andy Dwyer singing "pit. I fell in it, the pit. You fell in it, the pit. We all were in that pit.") it made sense that Luke was able to help him if he was training to be a physical therapist. After that, it was all a matter of teasing those three connection points in different directions to see how the three of them could provide for each other in unique ways. That's really where the plot (such as it is) came from. Writing it was a really organic, natural process, which isn't normally the case for me. But, I guess, I started off knowing the characters in this incarnation really well (and with faaaaaaar more clarity than usual) so it was mostly a matter of seeing where that would take me.
(link if anyone else wants to play)
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lottiecrabie · 9 months
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the significance of galatea in ‘galatea, take one’
the song and the concept of galatea was an important metaphor throughout galatea, take one — pretty obviously as it is part of its title — and i really needed to talk about it. i decided to pour my thoughts out and send this bottle into the wild. i hope it finds you.
reader starts the fic as galatea, very obviously and even hinted on later. she’s just come out of this relationship with a painter who, at least in her point of view, saw her as ‘unfinished’ and aimed to ‘complete’ her. these feelings have left her reeling at the idea of being a muse and the material consequences of an artist-object relationship. there’s this initial reticence about matty because she doesn’t want to fall into this same dynamic again.
she starts the writing of this song with a clear objective. the first verse describes the beating, electric love between pygmalion and galatea, keeping a purposeful nebulous understanding of who exactly is the speaker. later, the song reveals it’s galatea, leaving us wondering if the mentioned ‘love’ is really this pure if, in the end, she’s literally made for this man.
but as she writes more and more songs about matty, she finds herself blurring her position as galatea. falling in love with matty and finding inspiration from him, reader is acutely aware that she’s placing him in the position of muse. now, there’s a fear that she’s romanticizing him, making him like her very own statue.
the galatea song, always being worked and reworked, changes because of it. the speaker becomes convoluted— it’s unclear if the point of view is of pygmalion or galatea, just as it’s increasingly clear to the readers how delusional she is getting in contrast. though there seems to be genuine care and feelings between the two, she makes them grander, wishes him to be better. she’ll twist his words until they sound like she wants them to, reflecting the sculptor of her story.
the more she wants him, the more the song changes. it’s briefly a love song— some desperate attempt to force feelings onto matty. ‘galatea loves pygmalion’ is a very comforting thought when you’re the sculptor. there is a certain sense of aphrodite breathing life into galatea to these new lyrics. in practically saying ‘matty loves me’, she’s essentially trying to make it magically true because she wrote it down. however, matty calls her out on it and she quickly goes back to her original meaning.
the song ends in this confused state, though leaning further into pygmalion. as a lyric uses ‘she’, it gives us an idea that it is him telling the story. she even borrows lines she wrote about matty for the song, making it clearly about him on a certain level. her friend does mention being unsure who the speaker is, which shows us that the nebulous point of view remains. still, by the end of its creation, the song and speaker has completely shifted. it is why she affirms ‘galatea’ would not have been the same without matty: this change would have never happened.
in parallel, by the end of the story, she also realizes how much she romanticized and made matty up in her mind, and has to come to terms with the fact that she is the creator of their relationship. this grandiose summer romance was mostly lived in her head. his marble crumbles to the ground and he’s left just like her at the end of her past relationship: bloody and bruised.
she is the muse and the creator, she is the object and the artist. she is the victim and the perpetuator.
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