heavens-knife

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Tearsastablesalt/thederpystormtrooper from Ao3... doing my annual re-read of Frankenstein and I had to accompany it with your fic. It's still such a fantastic work and I love returning to it every so often. So much has happened since, I'm engaged, I've gotten degrees, and I've still returned to re-read what you've written. Hope you're doing well years later, too :)

Thank you so much for taking the time to tell me!! It delights me that my work still matters to you! I remember your lovely comments for while I was writing the fic too. ♥♥♥

I am doing well! Congrats on your degrees and engagement! In some ways it feels like no time has gone by since I finished Heaven's Knife, and in other ways it feels like a totally different time in my life.

But thanks again for letting me know that you're still enjoying my fic! I'm so pleased!

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idk if you're still active on this blog but i just wanted to say that i read all of heaven's knife tonight and it was JUST what i was looking for. you absolutely nailed every characterization, and it was deeply satisfying. i'm obsessed with how the relationship between victor and adam frankenstein is at times the relationship between lovers, at times the relationship of God to man, and at times the relationship of man to self. and i thought your fic touched on all of those aspects beautifully.

I do still check in here from time to time! I'm so happy you enjoyed Heaven's Knife! Even all this time later it's still my baby, lol. I wrote it because it was what I desperately wanted, and I'm so happy it was that for you, too.

I go feral for those two and I don't think I'll ever be over them. I did try to end up at more of a father son dynamic, though I don't know if I reached it. Henry is like *bonk* you're being a bad dad. And Elizabeth is like you know we could have done this normal way??? You could have had a baby with me instead of science but you had one so I'm going to help you take care of him.

Thanks for your ask!! It brings me such joy to know people are still enjoying this fic!

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Uuuhh uhh not me actually making this book 3 years after I said I was going to...

Feat. my inability to take good pictures.

The pictures go newest to oldest.

I sewed the last signature with green thread and it lines up perfectly with the part of the fic about Elizabeth and her green thread!

And you can't hear it because the printer's too loud, but I was playing The Modern Prometheus as I printed the book. It's take 2 because I messed up the first one, which I was ironically printing to Birth to My Creation. I guess I shouldn't be surprised it came out wrong. But it's fine, I tried again! :))) (No best friends or brides were harmed in this printing, promise)

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Y’all I just realized that some people actually make physical copies of fics!!! This like the coolest thing ever!! And now I’m bound and determined to make Heaven’s Knife a physical book! I’ve stayed up till 2 AM that last 3 nights researching and working on formatting the dang document in Word... it’s been a strug but I have never been more excited about a project! We’ll see if it actually gets done...

I really want to go the super extra road and bookbind it myself! But we’ll see how long my motivation lasts.

Have I ever made a book before? No. Did I know anything about it a week ago? Also no. But here we are!

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Hello, I don't know if you are still on, but thank you for writing this fanfic. I partially wish there was more, but I understand that writing is such a tedious process so thank you for going through to do all of this!

Hi! I'm glad you liked the fic! I poured quite a bit of my soul into those boys. And yeah, I do still check the tumblr every now and then! Maaayybe someday I will write a sequel. They are on the eve of the Napoleonic wars. And Victor and Elizabeth could go off and be doctors in the war while Henry and Adam go on that trip Henry wanted to... But I don't have any real solid plans to write more about them now. Just some vague ideas.

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The finished drawing of Clerval, done by my friend.

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Adam Headcanons Frankenfamily

Adam loves to garden. He lives in a little cottage on the Frankenstein’s estate and tends to various garden plots. he loves to get his hands in the dirt, and to tend to things and watch them flourish and grow.

Henry was all “Oh, I like gardening too!” and wanted to help, but it turns out his romantic poet soul just likes the idea of gardening and he doesn’t have enough focus to...you know, actually grow plants.

everyone likes the garden and Adam grows flowers for Elizabeth and Justine.

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Elizabeth and Adam Frankenfamily headcanons

Adam really wants to have clothes that are respectable and clean and fit well. Elizabeth always procures new clothes for him. He has no idea how much clothes of such an usual size cost, nor how much judgement and consternation Elizabeth has to put up with from the tailor. 8 ft tall clothes? What the devil could you want with a full suit of gentleman’s clothing for a giant, girl?

Elizabeth makes Adam wash his feet, (because Adam never wear shoes)  and does it herself when she’s feeling particularly fond or if Adam seems upset.

Elizabeth doesn’t like playing the harpsichord. She can do it, but it’s mechanical, stiff. She will do it for William, if he begs. But Adam is always the most enthralled of audiences, and Elizabeth secretly loves playing for him. She never says no to him, even though she’s always self-depreciating about it. She’ll say no when Victor asks most of the time, but never says no to Adam.

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Justine and Adam Frankenfamily HCs

Justine is the first one to call him Adam Frankenstein.

She makes him some monogrammed handkerchiefs because adam tends to cry a lot and is always borrowing other people’s. The handkerchiefs say A.F. in the corner. He’s like, thanks?? What’s A.F.??? And she’s like, why Adam Frankenstein of course. Adam is like, but...I’m not a Frankenstein - that is to say, Victor has never said - I wouldn’t dare -”

Justine looks at him like he’s stupid and is like, “well I dare say you’re not anything else.” Adam starts crying.

Justine awkwardly looks away, and mumbles, “well, go on and use them then,” and pats him stiffly on the arm before slipping past him and hurrying away.

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Why I wrote Heaven’s Knife

Book!Victor is famous for his selfishness. But Book!creature is exactly like him. He kills innocent people to satisfy his own desire for vengeance. Also, he wanted Victor to make the bride so ugly that she would not dare to reject him. He wanted Victor to make someone else just a miserable as he. That’s pretty selfish given how much he and Victor are always verbally sparring about which is the most miserable man alive.

I wrote this fic to see if our boys could ever move beyond the double helix of hatred and revenge, out of the circle of selfishness. It was kind of a meditation on whether real love was possible between them, or if the characters were just incapable of it given their natures and circumstances. Because we all want them so badly to be reconciled, but it is impossible to imagine it happening at the end of the novel. It would feel like a lie.

The musical, however, gives us the barest hint of it, and after I watched it, I wanted more. There were no fics like I wanted to read, so I cursed the tiny fandom burning away my soul and wrote my own.

In the larger sense, this fic was my own tiny way of wrestling with how we can deal with suffering and malevolence in the world and in ourselves. The answer I reached was love, and the thing I discovered is that it is hard.

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Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley’s husband, wrote a poem about Mont Blanc, a mountain in the Swiss Alps near Geneva. This is that poem over various images of Mont Blanc. The Poem is sufficiently Frankenstein-esque that I thought you all might enjoy it!

Just imagine Adam rambling though the mountains and disclaiming this. Perhaps Victor and maybe Henry have gone with him. Henry is all for it, while Victor is like, really, a little over-dramatic, don’t you think? Adam raises one eyebrow and Henry chuckles at Victor... our boy can never call anyone over-dramatic...

Here’s a link to the poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45130/mont-blanc-lines-written-in-the-vale-of-chamouni

The pictures are as follows:

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Adam Headcanons

I could really dig Adam being Left-handed. especially since back then it was still considered to be a bad thing that should be hidden, almost a mark of God’s disfavor. Left-handed people are supposed to be smart, but also research seems to indicate that they often struggle with mental health.

Adam’s blood is darker than human blood. Victor created artificial blood because he couldn’t devise a way to acquire a whole huge body’s worth of human blood in one day (before it decayed). It has human blood, but also unholy substances to keep it from decaying and probably increase oxygen or some bs science reasons to support Adam’s enhanced strength.

If we’re going with the interpretation that there really is something different/inhuman about Adam’s dna, then that also comes from his blood. (Victor does seem to imply this, saying if he built a bride, they would perpetuate a race of monsters... if they were just sewn-together humans, they’d have normal human babies... so this lends some credence to the idea that Adam really isn’t completely human.)

Adam’s body is not entirely composed of human parts. The book mentions Victor raided slaughterhouses. I think that Adam’s speed comes from Animal muscles or ligaments or smthin. I would give adam goat eyes if I hated you all and myself just a little more.

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Clerval headcanons

Clerval is an odd fellow, because in the book, he’s not really a person so much as the embodiment of all that is good in a man, just as Elizabeth is the embodiment of all that is good in a woman. Because of that, he’s kind of hard to conceptualize as his own character with his own interior world. Also, I feel like Book!Victor idealizes that hell out of him and may or may not know the real Clerval at all.

Anyway, because of that, my Clerval is based kind of on musical Clerval and kind of on a great cadre of very solid, very good, very English characters. The only two I can positively summon are Sam Gamgee and King Arthur. The rest are more deeply buried in the dirt of my imagination and I can’t see them, but I feel their weight.

Clerval is a Good Man and a Poet.

Book!Clerval is kind of a pushover. Musical!clerval calls Victor on his crap and dies in the process. I tried to strike a happy medium.

That’s why my Clerval is kind of pushy and stern with Victor. He’s the You’re not going to ruin your life on my watch friend.

I imagine him tall, blonde-haired and blue eyed, with a mirthful face that’s got a beautiful tan. His hair is long and wavy, tied back in a queue. He consciously uses his humor to put others at ease. he liked to drag Victor outside and always argued staunchly for Plato while Victor defended Kant. Clerval is the kind of man who sees everything as sacred and lovely, while Victor sees (saw) the world as a tool. He’s one of those people that’s so alive you just have to stare at them. I call him sunshine man.

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A sketch of Adam, or perhaps the creature, drawn by the same friend who drew Clerval. The text says These Hands, as in the song from the musical. He may be tiny, but he’s our boy.

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Elizabeth Headcanons

Elizabeth is tall for the time, so around 5′7″ or so.

She is slender, with dark straight-ish hair and dark eyes. Her name’s Lavenza so she should be vaguely Italian. I have no idea why Novel!Elizabeth is blonde-haired and blue-eyed...

Musical!Elizabeth loves Victor because she sees marrying him as her only future. My Elizabeth gets to see him for who he really is, and she still decides to love him. More than anyone, Elizabeth sees the spark in Victor - his genius/Promethean/Romantic Will that sets him apart. She loves that in him, and also she loves the friend she grew up with. But she doesn’t do it so desperately as Musical!Elizabeth.

Also, if you think about it, Victor cheated on Elizabeth with science and created a bastard son made of corpses and hubris. But this puts Elizabeth in the perfect position to be Adam’s adopted mother. And she will %100 rise to the occasion if given the chance.

More things about my Elizabeth that never came up: she rides horses, and she doesn’t do it side saddle. She translates Sappho straight from the Greek. Knows how to play the harpsichord but dislikes it. Justine is better.

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Things that Influenced the Fic overall

The Musical!! (Frankenstein: a New Musical)

        My local college put on a production of Frankenstein, a New Musical, which I went to see more to support my alma mater than because I thought it would be good. I mean, a Frankenstein Musical? How? Why? But, on that night, an obsession was born! I have sprinkled in a lot of quotes from the musical throughout the fic, especially These Hands. That’s also where some of my headcanons come from in terms of how the characters look. (More on that in the headcanons posts)

The Novel.

      Can’t get away from this one. I did pore over the novel heavily for Victor, and for Adam. But Victor is closest to book!Victor. The Adam I ended up with is more my own. And I hardly looked at the book at all for Henry and Elizabeth. I know them from within myself. Also, I struggled to write realistic interactions between all the men in the novel because I am a woman, and so was Mary, so I feel like my source was hard to work with on that.

Reading The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky

      It’s a story about 3 brothers and how their wickedness and their love are entangled. I relied heavily on Dostoevsky to try to make some weak snatches at embodying real love in all its messiness and complexity in my own little story. That man can write - holy hell. And nobody knows love more than he... I also relied on it to feel very deeply that I am only a fanfic author, lol

Jordan Peterson lectures

             Dr. Peterson really wrestles with what it is to live a meaningful life, how we can face the malevolence present in the world and in ourselves, and why, in spite of it, life and humanity are the goodest of the good. Neat stuff, and I really relied on it to shape the realizations that both Victor and Adam have.

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This is how I see Adam. I have not found another art that looks more like him. Unfortunately, I can’t find the original art to link it properly, but whoever drew this, you are a “goddess here on earth” or maybe “the finest human in all creation”