#anyway this comic was partly inspired by my parents' move and having complicated feelings about Home and Family

[semi-entropy]

application deadline for bucfa has passed so i can finally post this custom portfolio piece

[rosedenali]

bluets background/commentary

if you haven’t read the fic, you can find it here !!

so i got like the sexiest comment ever on bluets on AO3, and like.,., i don’t like replying to comments there bc it inflates the number, so i’m gonna answer it here !!! but basically, they were just asking questions about the characters’ backgrounds and what happens after the story ends !!

this is going to be REALLY long bc i love talking about my fics and honestly, with bluets, i have a lot of thoughts. 

Where is Rose and Jasper’s dad? - Yeah!! The elusive father I threw in there bc someone’s name needed to be on the deed to that deathtrap!! When I was putting together the story, I thought about having him there in the house in a scene, but I also wanted to kind of push the idea that the Hale twins are wholly unsupervised and spiraling in their own ways- Jasper with drinking/etc and Rose with her strangled relationship with Logan.

I pictured the absent Mr. Hale having some kind of job on a boat or some other kind of water-involved job to match Bella’s description of the house as a pirate ship. Something like a dredge operations supervisor or something like that, who knows? What I do know is that every time he comes home, Jasper leaves in a cloud of angst, and Rose tries to cultivate a somewhat healthy relationship, but they’re near strangers at this point. He’s met Logan once, briefly. Approves of him, sturdy boy.

Where is their mom? - Not to pull the classic tragic backstory, but in my notes there’s like one sentence about each parent, and all hers says is “died, twins age 2″ so I killed that poor woman off sixteen years ago and never gave her a second thought, until now. 

I’d imagine Mr. Dredge Supervisor isn’t around that much, and when he is, he certainly doesn’t bring up his late wife- and because of this, Rose and Jasper don’t know much about her. It bothers Jasper just a little more than it does Rosalie. But they never knew her and never had a chance to. 

Though alternatively, if she were alive, I’d still need her to be out of the picture. And I’d hate to make her an unfit mother, but it’d be even worse if she had a new family where Rose and Jasper didn’t exactly feel welcome. :’(

I’m gonna stick with Death !! That’s bluets canon now, I just decided. 

Edward - To clarify, Bella, Rose, and Jasper are all 18 (seniors), and Edward is 19 and graduated high school the year before. Edward and Bella dated for most of the year prior and at the beginning of Bella’s senior year. All of the Cullens are spread out across the country in college, and Carlisle and Esme move from Forks and settle in a place where the sun shines bc they can !! They’re human !!

Edward took a semester off to stay in Forks with Bella, but when Carlisle and Esme moved, he broke up with her and moved with them. Their relationship wasn’t nearly as intense as it was in canon, but he was Bella’s first boyfriend, and he just ended it one Tuesday at sunset like it was nothing. :/

Charlie - Ugh, we Lov Charlie!! But honestly, he has no idea what to do or say to Bella. She’s miserable for weeks and then she finally makes a friend, and she seems a little better as time goes. Maybe he shouldn’t, but he puts a lot of trust in her and expects her not to drive around buzzed, which I guess she does a lot in this fic (didn’t even realize how edgy I made that until just now).

I guess that when she’s hungover, he just sees is as her Depression Creeping up on her. But I think the timing of his shifts and school and all her times at the rotten mansion just have them always just missing each other by a few minutes, almost comically, even. Though he probably calls when it’s getting ridiculous. I didn’t really think about this at all when I was putting together the story lmao. Oh we lov plot holes in this house !!

Bella and her funky blue flask - So obviously, a romantic relationship with Rosalie isn’t going to magically stop her drinking. I know I didn’t really focus on it much in the fic, which made it seem like it’s okay, but it really isn’t. Jasper’s still a wreck bc things haven’t really changed for him, but Logan’s gone so Rose is back in a bigger way, and that helps. 

And Rosalie doesn’t like her drinking at all. She doesn’t drink herself with the exception of the pirate crew party, which was mostly just to show her in a way other than tightly wound while still maintaining her sort of natural appearance of togetherness. I have NO idea if that makes sense, but... yeah. That’s a No from her. And when Bella gets fucked up, Rose is just like: fuck you, I’m going upstairs, I’ll see you in twenty minutes when I fall through the ceiling. 

And I think Bella retires the flask on her own, partly bc of yknow healing over time, but mostly bc she doesn’t want to keep taking advantage of Charlie’s trust in her, drinking at school is like dodging bullets in real time, Rose hates it, and it just isn’t worth it in the end. And I know that’s not like romantic or anything, but sometimes things aren’t... romantic. Besides !! There are better things to romanticize than teen drinking, like.,.,., Rosalie !!!!

Other Topics (stuff I wanted to add just bc)

The House - So the house was really just bc I have to have humor in my stories or else I’ll die, and usually I keep it within dialogue, but Bluets was a chance for me to drop kick my usual formulaic fic writing style and use my actual writing style which is admittedly weirder but a lot more fun and more me !! 

BUT it wasn’t without other purposes. The rotten house reflects the Hale twins in a lot of ways. They’re essentially abandoned in the forest and full of unprocessed feelings and teen angst and all that marvelous stuff. Then as the story goes on, it just keeps falling apart, but not because the twins are getting worse, but because things are happening. Just having Bella in their lives is like throwing a wrench into the gears of a complicated machine and it’s changing a lot of things around.

Like.,., it’s not that deep, and I’ll die before I write using symbolism, but it’s kind of fun to think about. 

Blue - So the color blue is extremely prevalent in the beginning and I was going for something more integral to the plot, but it started slipping from me about halfway through. So that’s why Bella points out things that are blue, superficially and less introspectively and emotionally. I tried to make it a central theme but it started to blur, so I just went with it this time bc why not???

But anyway, this entire fic is inspired by the book Bluets by Maggie Nelson which is pretty much a sheer freefall beneath the oubliette of the color blue and depression and all that good stuff. I just skimmed the surface, but it worked for what I was writing lmao. We’re writing twilight fanfiction out here kids, it’s for fun !!

--- So this was probably too long, and I have no idea if any of you actually wanted to know more about the universe, but here it is !!!! But like if anyone wants to know more about Bluets or any other fic just ask !! As u can see I’m more than happy 2 write an essay 4 u !!! <3