#director’s cut ask game

[uncleasad]

for the fanfic writers director's cut ⭐star⭐

So…it’s taken me forever to get to this 😢 So Sorry, and thanks so much for your patience, Rika! 🙏

Since you gave me ⭐star⭐ for writer’s choice, I have selected this summer/fall’s The One with Hope’s Wedding, so without further ado, some Director’s Cut fun facts and commentary!

(If you are someone who hasn’t read that fic yet and thinks you might want to…BEWARE, MAJOR SPOILERS below!)

. . . . .

With that out of the way…

Fanfic Writers: Director’s Cut

The One with Hope’s Wedding

This was the fic that broke me out of an 18-or-24-month writing slump! (I had pushed out a few one-shots, and made minuscule progress on some of my long-suffering WIPs, during that period, but I couldn’t write consistently.)

This past summer, Nick at Nite had a Friends block in the evening, which happened to coincide with the hours I’d be making and eating (and cleaning up after) dinner, and there was nothing else on, and I’d only seen a few episodes of the show here and there (the finale, but never the pilot, for starters), so why not?

After watching for a few months, I got an idea on July 4 and started writing the next day. (How naïve, thinking it’d only be 5-6 more scenes and another 2400 words [for 4800 total] 😂 It ended up being more than 16K words!)

This was one of those fics where I had one scene in mind and had to write the whole rest of the fic to get to it…literally the last scene. (See these reblogs about this writer’s meme.) If you know anything about Friends, I imagine you can figure out where this is going…there are a few iconic scenes, including the two-part fourth-season finale where Ross gets married (his second attempt at marriage…which, too, is doomed to fail).

I remember standing in the kitchen and my brain suddenly said, “Wouldn’t it be fun to write the wedding scene where Hope says Josie’s name?” Yes, brain, indeed it would be fun to write that scene! Unfortunately, doing so requires writing a ton of scaffolding to get to it.

Most of this two-part episode of Friends was set (and shot!) in London, as Ross’s fiancée is British (they met because her uncle was Rachel’s new boss, a butler-esque head of personal shopping at Bloomingdale’s). In at least one of my long-suffering WIPs, I have spun Malivore (Landon’s father) into Sir Malcolm “Mal” Ivor Kirby, a minor British aristocrat, so I took that route here, too, and started filling in characters, backstories, and actual words on my fic’s scaffolding.

In addition to the actual wedding/name screwup scene, there’s another iconic scene for the series in this pair of episodes, the one where Ross’s younger sister Monica and his best friend/college roommate Chandler semi-drunkenly and shockingly sleep together—and then become the series’s other major couple. Hope, of course, doesn’t have a true sibling, but she could have a BFF Lizzie and a college friend/BFF Penelope, which let me keep that important subplot and have a chance to write my second(?)-favorite Legacies pairing, enemies/frenemies-to-lovers Penelope Park x Lizzie Saltzman!

One of the things you realize after watching 10 20-24-episode (only 30 minutes each, thankfully!) seasons of Friends back to back in couple-hour blocks is that the eponymous friends spend a lot of the time actively poking fun—and, worse, being actively cruel—at each other. In 30 minutes a week for half the year, it’s not so apparent, but in any sort of binging…they become tedious. So I tried to tone some of that down to keep the characters more likable, make Josie-as-Rachel a little less selfish, and so on.

The other fun thing is that the Friends showrunners stuffed that pair of episodes chock full of British cameos, everyone from Richard Branson to Sarah, Duchess of York, to Olivia Williams and noted comic actors such as Hugh Laurie and Ab Fab’s Jennifer Saunders and June Whitfield. While members of Landon’s family were already mapped to Legacies characters, I wanted to keep a few cameos, especially Hugh Laurie’s man on the plane whom Rachel annoys by incessantly relating her and Ross’s entire relationship history. I finally settled on Tom Felton for this, someone younger and still well-known who could pull off a grumpy man successfully (not just Draco Malfoy, but also Julian Albert / Alchemy from The Flash).

The other cameo I kept was the airline ticket agent Rachel/Josie encounters trying to get to London. Since I had toned down Rachel’s selfishness for Josie, I could make this scene play differently, too. I eventually landed on Sister Beatrice from Warrior Nun, since there’s a lot of overlap between the Hosie and Avatrice fandoms. I also thought “Beatrice” was appropriate as a name, since in Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Beatrice is Dante’s guide out of Purgatory and into Paradise. So unlike the ticket agent in Friends, Beatrice is fully supportive of Josie’s quest to get to the love of her life in time.

Sadly, I don’t think very many people recognized either of these cameos 😭 But I still had fun writing them. (And such difficult research that was, staring at pictures of Kristina Tonteri-Young in costume in order to describe her recognizably 😏)

@persevereforahappyending has convinced me to make this a whole series of episodes. I don’t know how many I will ever write—too many fic ideas, not enough time, but I do I have a whole document full of ideas and additional character mappings for this series—but The One with Hope’s Wedding ended on that cliffhanger, so everyone is waiting impatiently for the resolution! 😂 I was making good progress on the sequel until it came time for Hosietober, and I’ve been pulled in too many different directions since then, but it is 60-70% complete, so hopefully sometime this winter 🤞

And there you have it, my rambling Director’s Cut!

Thanks so much for the ask, Rika, and for your patience until I could find time and space for this to all gel in my head and then write it down 🙏 I slipped it in in just under 2 months 😂

( @unsiredtribrid, now I have to start thinking of my next Director’s Cut for your ⭐star⭐ Ask! 😂)

[wordsinhaled]

end of year director’s cut ask game

thank you to @many-gay-magpies for the tag! 💕

ask me about any extra lore or meta about any of my fic from this year, or a dealer's choice fun fact that didn't make it into the fic itself. ask anything you want about any fic i've written, any questions or curiosities you have—i will happily yap about any of it!

no pressure tagging @nix-nihili @tumblerislovetumblerislife @carebeardean @saltyoaktree @lolotr @shadowquill17 feel free to do or skip as you see fit! and anyone else who would like to do this feel free to consider yourself tagged, i’d love to chat about your fics✨

[jamietarttsnorthernattitude]

⭐️

Thank you friend!

@jamiesfootball had me talking about whumptober so here is some background info on no thing's so sure that I can't learn to doubt it.

As I mentioned before, I had the general idea before whumptober and planned it to be a one shot. I quickly realized it was going to end up being 2 chapters. And then it was going to be three chapters. I couldn't find the best place to end chapter two, and I looked at the prompts and saw flatline, and that's how I ended up including that as well as filling the prompt. And of course Jamie flatlining was of course the end place to end the chapter :)

[tokuvivor]

Director's Cut for 'New Yolk, New Yolk' :)

Oh, this’ll be interesting!

I never really planned on this one initially. Again, it just came to me after a New York City visit with my best friend in December. On the bus ride home, just thinking about everything I experienced, out of left field, I was thinking, ‘Fendra holiday story.’ But then I figured that there was only so much of New York (at least, in what I saw) that I could capture in one story involving just those two. So I extended it out to just being a Team Science holiday story. Some cute couple shit between Fenton and Gandra, Gyro being dragged along by Huey and Boyd, stuff you might expect.

I was somewhat won over by the idea of a Team Science holiday story in the first place late in 2021, thanks to @therivergirl’s story The Chemistry Tree. I was also inspired a little towards the end of the story by the Netflix show Dash and Lily, which does a brilliant job at conveying the holiday season in New York City, and even though I don’t know how I could convey them, it was kinda fun to think of hypothetical scenarios for other things the five of them could do in the city in nods to that show.

[lynxindisguise]

⭐️ author's choice :)

Hello world-building friend! I’ll use this space to ramble about the frankenstein of magical worlds that is Please Don’t See Me.

So the concept of a tournament comprised of different Wizarding families who compete for “control” of the Wizarding World is 100% stolen from one of my favourite modern fantasy novels An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard. But then I drew on lots of hp concepts and tried to make it feel like it actually evaluates all the different skills of that world.

And then the “hedge magic” — both in concept as an underground movement of those who didn’t get to go to Hogwarts and the way it’s described as precise, mathematical hand movements is totally stolen from The Magicians, but I wanted to use it to better discuss the inequality and prejudice built into the system of the Wizarding World. (There’s also no Voldemort, like he’s very pointedly already been defeated, but no one is any better off).

And then finally, the non-magical side of things, aka the pub, is 100% based on the actual pub I work in because I love when hospitality fics are written by people who’ve actually worked in hospitality!

[shadowquill17]

End-of year Director's Cut ask game!

Aaaand this question is about my fic your fangs in my neck (like an anchor like a vow). This is for @nuttersinc who asked:

your fangs in my neck: how did you come up with the premise? And I loved it, it was so hot and also so touching ❤️

Thank you so much for the question! I'm so happy you liked the fic. 🥰

The way it happened was, I had been thinking about writing a vampire fic for Dead Boy Detectives very early on.

But, fun fact, at the time I had immediately decided I wanted to subvert the trope of "prim posh repressed white boy = vampire, rebellious fun angry bisexual = werewolf", and I wanted it to be switched. (I might still write a fic about that, actually. Just have to find the right idea for a smidge of plot... but also @jube-art has a whole bunch of AU fanart with vamp!Charles and werewolf!Edwin here and here, so if you like the concept, RUN! 😜)

Anyway, despite my best efforts to subvert the trope, my brain was apparently feeling lazy, because it just LATCHED onto the idea of vampire!Edwin. The repression, the starvation, the fear of imposing on Charles with his feelings/needs... you know. Some of the messages I sent @lolotr at the time said, and I quote:

"oh god vampire Edwin is so tastyyyyy"

"and I know I talked a lot more about Charles being the vampire but goddamnnnn Edwin being the vampire works so well with the themes, fuck"

Also I just looked it up and I'm pretty sure I also saw this fanart by @kazalmilk around that time, and I think it kind of encouraged a vibe of "Edwin drinks from Charles and H A T E S that he has to" (that's what it did in my brain, at least).

Then I agonized over what Charles could be. He could be a ghost, but then the conflict would have been about Edwin drinking from someone else, and I ended up rejecting that option.

He could be a werewolf, but I was still kind of mad at myself that I was writing vampire!Edwin before vampire!Charles, and I didn't want to give in FULLY. 😜 Also, werewolves are mortal, and I didn't like the idea that 1) they hadn't spent 30 years together, because I didn't want to reduce their long history to only a few years and 2) I didn't want their future to not be forever.

I also toyed with the idea of making Charles an angel, like in this gorgeous fic by @shanastoryteller (I'm oversimplifying, just go read the fic, it's excellent). But then there was some other issue with the concept that made me lean away from that as well. I think it was something about how I didn't want to separate them that much? Like I didn't want Charles to be Heaven-related with Edwin being a vampire, because then their whole history would have been changed.

I was still just playing with the whole thing, writing bits and pieces, absolutely not convinced it would ever be finished or that I even had a solid story to tell (well, beyond that thigh-biting scene 😁).

But THEN I wrote the pub scene. And completely without thinking about it, I wrote Charles turning around to snarl at that guy who was flirting with Edwin, and suddenly there was fire in his eyes and he had a sword and a CROWN?!

And I went, okay, that feels right. Of course Charles deserves a crown. What kind of entity could have a crown? And with a bit of research I found out about Devas from Hindu mythology. That gave the crown a shape, because suddenly it was a mukut, and it gave body to Charles' supernatural nature.

The more I read about it, the more right it felt, and from that point on I knew I had the fic. 😊

Thank you so much for your question @nuttersinc, I really appreciate it! I hope you liked my little rambly answer. Happy New Year! ❤️💕💖

[not-freyja]

For the director's cut, I would love to hear more about Legend's thought process and motivations once he met Hyrule in Adjuration! 🥰

Thank you for an actual scene selection everyone else had me pulling out a random number generator. Fucks sake. Love you guys. Also sorry this took like… a month, writing is hard.

This is going to be long. And though it might be analysis for chapter two, it will contain spoilers for the whole story.

Key: [quoted text in brackets] my analysis out if brackets.

[Time to deal with the strange Hylian. The same strange Hylian who came out of a now-vanished portal that also spat out a monster.

Link did not get this far in life by being the trusting sort.] Okay this sets the tone. Legend is immediately suspicious. He knows something fucky just happened, and that this person is involved.

[“So…” he says to the figure now sitting up on the ground. “Who the hell are you?”

There’s a faint mumble from the Hylain shaped pile of dirt at his feet.

Link sighs. “You need to speak up a bit.”

“I’m…” the kid's voice is raspy, as if he hasn’t used it in a while. He coughs, trying again. It’s a bit better this time.] Crying in Rulie-loving sorrow. This boy has such a hard life. I wanted to make sure the readers understood that without rubbing it in. I also wanted to make it clear that Legend was noticing these things. [“I’m no one. Just a traveler.”] Nick name establishment. Also secret world-building. I have so many thoughts about the world-building of each of their eras. And I was holding myself back chomping at the bit not to pull a Tolkien and overshare.

[“Bullshit.”

The kid’s eyes go wide. “No, really!” There’s an almost raw edge of panic to his voice now, and Link almost feels bad. “I’m not anybody important, I’m just passing through. I’ll be on my way now, thank you for the help.] They have known each other for about two minutes and Legend is already aware of a few things. This kid is involved with some kind of Dark Magic, he’s on the run, and he does not want to reveal his identity. This is ringing some trauma bells for Leggy. He is seeing himself, and he is getting sympathetic.

[And before Link can so much as laugh at such a pathetic attempt at a lie (and it is a lie, he’s been on enough quests to be able to tell a nobody from a somebody) the traveler scrambles to his feet.] Little meta joke here. We the player, we the reader can tell an NPC from a main character. Legend, who thinks in meta terms, can too.

[The thing is, Link is retired. He’s put in the work, done his time. He’s spilled enough blood and lost enough of his life to goddesses and princesses and lost wayward souls that this is the point in the story where he wants to take the guy at his word.] So… Link. Not Legend. Link. He is so tired, and so done. Its been four lifetimes of misery and he is done, thank you. [Link wants to shrug, turn around, and continue on his way home. He wants to turn and run through the woods, back to his house and slide the bolt in the door and have Ravio tell anyone who comes calling that the hero] This is the only time that Legend thinks of “hero�� in the general lowercase noun and not “Hero” as a proper noun. Why? Well because a hero would do such a thing as to hide from a quest. A Hero would not. [is not home because he is not going to be answering any more calls to greatness. There will not be one more quest.] oh buddy. *sobs* Rulie’s “got one more in me” later down the road as the direct foil to this thought. Rulie’s death is the catalyst for the rest of Legend’s character arc, like his entrance into Legend’s life is the catalyst for the plot.

[He’s retired, by the Three.] Yeah man keep telling yourself that.

[But right before he can do just what it is he wants, the stranger goes to leave first. And the poor thing takes one step, yelps like a kicked dog, and crumples back to the forest floor.

“Fuck.” Link can’t help the curse] The sympathy is now at a boiling point. Legend cannot help but care. Cannot help but try to help. [and he strides forward, towards the kid, away from home.] OKAY so the “away from home” bit is both directionally in the scene and narratively in the plot. [It’s only a few steps, but it’s the wrong way, and Link has done this enough times by now to know that it really is those first few steps that count.

Those are the ones that you can’t take back. The ones that all the rest come after.

Link takes them anyway.] I can’t even start with this part. The repeated theme of Legend “going the wrong way” of him doing the dangerothing anyway, despite his well-earned survival instincts. I… listen, Legend was suicidal. From day one. He knows he can’t undo this. He knows that another quest will probably get him killed. He does it anyway.

[“Hey, easy there,” he all but whispers, dropping to his knees next to the filthy kid. “I’m not going to hurt you, okay, Traveler?”

Big eyes stare up at him. They are full of fear and distrust, and a painful glint of hope. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Link sighs, takes another deep breath. “Is it your leg?”

That gets a weird combination of a nod and a shrug. “Ankle, actually.” The kid smiles at him. And it really is a nice smile, soft, and a bit shy. “I got my foot twisted under a tree root.”

He can’t help but wince because, yeah, been there. “Well that’s not too bad then.” Link grins. “A brace, a red potion, and a few days rest, and you’ll be good as new.”

The traveler nods, some of the stress seeming to bleed out of his shoulders. “That’s what I thought too. Thanks.” He pauses, gulps before continuing. “Thank you for handling the moblin for me. I… I’m not at my best right now.”] This whole section is about deepening the sympathy. He is looking at Rulie amd seeing his younger self (I have Rulie at 16 and Legend at 20) and he just wants to help. (Time: “Let me help.”)

[“No need to thank me.” Link’s smile, previously genuine, turns bitter. “That’s what heroes do.”

Just as he was starting to loosen up, the stranger tenses again, every muscle going taut as a bowstring.] So they have different reasons for the same action (getting tense). Legend is a ball of angst. Hyrule is afraid if being recognized.

[“You alright?”

“...What do you mean ‘hero?’”

And that tone of voice right there? Suspicious and untrusting? Waiting for the other shoe to drop? Link knows that tone of voice. He uses that tone of voice on the daily. He loves that tone of voice. But only when it’s coming from him. Out of another mouth, it just sounds sad.] Here Legend is an inch away from self awareness. So close. But more importantly, his recognition if the self in Rulie is getting even stronger. Every moment is another moment that they are more alike in Legend’s eyes.

[But hey, in for a green rupee, in for a gold.] LOL.

[“That would be me,” he says with his most winning smile. “Link, Hero of Legend, savior of Hyrule, chosen by the Goddess… you get the gist.”] Here I have Legend give the titles of three out of five Heroes that Link will be. Chosen, Legend, and Hyrule. This was foreshadowing no one noticed because why the fuck would you? What I did to this boy was unhinged no one saw that coming.

[And the kid just stares.

And stares.

And stares some more.] Me too buddy. Legend is so pretty.

[This is getting ridiculous. Link shakes his head. “Listen, I’m not really in the market for any missions, or quests, divine or otherwise. Firmly out of the whole kingdom-saving business. And the princess-saving gig as well. So why don’t you just tell me where you’re heading, and I’ll make sure you get to the nearest town in the right direction in one piece and we’ll call it even?”] Last attempt to avoid the situation, and he is still trying to help. What a dumb bitch.

[Those deep green eyes staring up at him suddenly roll back, and the boy goes limp.] Baby boy! Also the green here. Yes it is Rulie’s eye color. But it os also Ravio’s eye color, and every single detail Legend notices about this kid gets him more attached.

[“Well, shit.” Link grumbles, running a hand through his hair. What could have been an hour-long detour on his day is now a problem with a capital P. Because as much as he might want to, Link isn’t actually capable of abandoning some poor homeless-looking teenager in the middle of the woods. Especially not one who fainted at the sound of Link’s name.

That thought makes Link pause. Did he faint? A monster was chasing him, it could be blood loss. It could be more than just his ankle.] Standard worrying here. He feels responsible for this kid now.

[He reaches out tentatively with a small brush of magic and almost sighs in relief.] OKAY BIG MISTAKE. Rulie is the Triforce. Legend loves the Triforce. And the Triforce loves Legend. They magically harmonized here. Imprinted. Zinged. From this moment on they were both attached. [The issue is clear now. There’s an empty well where the kid’s natural magic should be, almost drained but nowhere near dangerously so. The fainting wasn’t about Link at all, it was the adrenaline fading off and the strain the poor kid’s body was under finally catching him.

The memory of that strange portal flares in his mind. That incident coupled with this guy being certifiably drained of magic after falling through makes Link realize a couple of things real quick.] Smart Leggy. Good Leggy.

[First, this kid probably made that portal. Second, he came through it as a last-ditch resort. He was running from something, or someone. Third, this poor Hylian has a lot of magic at his disposal (not only did he make a stable portal but he and a moblin went through it before it collapsed), magic that still pushes out in a wave, nauseatingly strong despite its low levels.] Bitch that’s the fucking Triforce.

[Link is almost afraid to learn how much the kid will have after he recharges.] Again, the Triforce.

Now to fast forward about three paragraphs, because while I like those paragraphs very much they can be entirely summarized as: Legend is so suicidal. How did none of you notice?

[One arm slides under bony knees, the other behind the prone Hylian’s back. Nayru’s tears, he won’t even need a power bracelet for this, he’s so thin.] So… I’m not crying, you’re crying. Their first moment together perfectly mirrors their last, and that is fine, that is so fine. Nothing is wrong here, I am okay.

[The Hero rises, an unconscious stranger held delicately in his arms.] Here we go. The pivot to Hero as a proper noun. The acceptance of the call. The attachment is personal and magical, and our journey begins with Legend carrying Rulie to safety, when he knows it will kill him. (And kind of hoping that it does.)

…this is a loop. The beginning is the end.

[chaotic-neutral-knitter]

hello! I’m here to humbly ask for director’s commentary on Impure Thoughts: Some

(only if you want to!)

I'd love to! Thank you for sending in this ask 😊 Here's the ask game for anyone else who's interested!

I remember exactly what made me want to write Impure Thoughts: Some. It was this gif and the tags I saw someone leave on the original post.

I did a few writing warm-ups that were just Ed thinking about Stede with this vibe in mind. I was really struggling with finishing another fic (Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise, still unfinished but I got some weirdly accurate s2 vibes in there so that's neat) at the time so I was just trying to get myself to write anything.

It turned out to be really fun, just letting myself write something lighthearted and self-indulgent, and all those writing warm-ups fit together pretty well, so I decided to write a final chapter with the duel as the end. The goal was to have it pretty much follow canon, with another scene of Ed realizing the depth of his feelings for Stede.

And then I saw this gif:

And I figured Ed just had to kiss Stede at the end because LOOK at him he wants to kiss Stede so bad holy shit.

[mellxncollie]

Voor the Director's Cut ask game: Which gifset you made in 2024 are you most proud of and how did you come up with the idea for it?

thanks for asking! i think i’m most proud of the last edit i made in 2024, this edit of monty to the song pajarito colibrí by natalia lafourcade.

conceptually, it was a very long time in the making, but it only took about 3ish hours to make when i sat down to do it. i’ve always wanted to include more non-english stuff in my gifs for dbda, but seeing as this is the first fandom ive actively created for where the source material is nearly 100% english, it’s a bit harder to justify (i used to make gifs for various non-english bands as well as wrote fanfic for some multilingual tv shows and movies, so including other languages felt more natural there).

in early december, i made this edit, and it was a personal challenge to put my music library on shuffle, pick a lyric from one of the first 10 songs, and then i gave myself 30 min to make the gifs. on discord, i mentioned it being a bit difficult because my music library has a lot of different languages represented, and @tumblerislovetumblerislife @idliketobeatree both encouraged me to actually do something in another language so i started to be on the lookout for song lyrics i wanted to make edits for.

at the same time, ive been listening to a lot of natalia lafourcade recently and this song in particular was on heavy repeat all december.

also, @aletterinthenameofsanity was working on this ghostcrow holiday au fic that i was reading while traveling to visit my family over the holidays, and i was strongly identifying with that version of monty during the journey.

the song is about a hummingbird as a messenger, telling us to live life freely and embrace nature and happiness, which felt representative of monty’s goals in kenna’s fic (and reflected in canon), and was a messsge i was trying to internalize and hold with me as a reminder while being around my family during the holidays.

all of these things collided on christmas eve and i put this gifset together. it’s not my most complex gifset, and i don’t think it’s necessarily the best one ive made, but im really proud of it and its personal meaning.

[tumblerislovetumblerislife]

hiiii directors cut for any fun facts about aysar that you haven’t shared yet? 💛💛💛

hiii olly!! oh my god you shouldn't get me started on my specialest blorbo or i'll never stop. okay so depending on where you're at with the acu, you might not know that i've given him a husband called sekani, who's got a similar personality to charles (what can i say, aysar has a type) and now i can't resist putting them in every fic where i can get away with it lmao. as for a previously unpublished fun fact, i mentioned in if i could reach the stars that aysar has siblings, and i hc that aysar is the eldest since 1) he calls his siblings annoying and as a younger sibling i know we are, and 2) he's an amazing big brother, which has the bonus of making charles fall for him more since they have that protectiveness in common. thanks for the ask, hope you enjoyed the aysar fun facts! 💛💛💛

[jessicas-pi]

is it possible for the ask game, if you could do either starbirds and wolves or a guide to the mythical and mysterious (the sabezra mythical creatures au) with directors commentary?

OOOOOH MYTHICAL & MYSTERIOUS DIRECTOR'S CUT ok buckle up I think you've unleashed a ramble monster because this AU has SO MUCH WORLDBUILDING that I haven't got to yet, and I might go off on some tangents. I'll try to restrain myself but I make no promises.

Soooo, I'm just gonna kinda read through it and talk about things as I come to them!

Okay, right off the bat, there's the framing of the fic. It's basically one long scene of Sabine & Ezra hanging out and reading each other's diaries for fun, with a ton of flashbacks. But in the first draft, the framing of the story was completely different! Instead of Sabine & Ezra reading the diaries, it was Rune (their adopted daughter) and Jacen who stole the diaries and were reading them! It had a lot of funny lines, so when I changed it, I saved all the old scenes to be reworked/rewritten into a companion fic.

Oh, another thing! So, Hera is a siren in this AU. Something I learned while researching mythical creatures is that there's basically two types of siren in mythology: the ones that are the same as mermaids, and then there's bird-women with singing powers. She's the bird-woman kind of siren because she flies! (Also, I made her a siren because the first thing Kanan noticed about her was her voice. In the very first draft, she was a selkie, and she and kanan had a meet cute where he very innocently picked up her coat that she'd dropped to return it to her and she thought he was stealing it and tackled him.)

And on the topic of selkies, Zeb's a selkie! He's purple because of a prank gone wrong. (Sabine thought the dye would wash right out of his coat! Honest!)

OOH, so, I just got to the part where Sabine's diary entry is about Ezra joining the crew, and that reminded me! One flashback scene that I wrote and ended up cutting was how Sabine and Ezra met. It was very little-mermaid-esque, but with a lot more confused screaming.

Hmmm, not much I can think of in the next few sections...

AH WAIT OK SO THERE'S THIS BIT!!

It had been rough at the beginning, but ever since he got rid of that red crystal pendant he brought up from the trenches of Malachor, he’d been much easier to get along with.

So, in case context doesn't give it away, the crystal he took from the trenches of Malachor is basically the Sith holocron. Dark side planets/places in general (Malachor, Dathomir, etc.) are various trenches and such in this---the deeper in the sea, the Darker the place. And Malachor itself...

Well, lets just say, I may have been slightly (incredibly) obsessed by the deep sea as a kid, so Malachor is my JAM.

Instead of a Sith temple, that giant pyramidal structure is replaced by an underwater volcano. The various pillars and columns scattered across the surface of Malachor are now hydrothermal vents (my beloveds). There's also a lot of bleached bones---whale falls, and (more creepily) merfolk skeletons.

OHH AND THAT BRINGS ME TO VARIOUS DARKSIDERS.

So, Force-sensitives are all merfolk in this AU (but not all merfolk are force-sensitive). But Dark-side merfolk look much different than regular mer. I'm drawing a lot of inspiration from creepy deep sea animals (also my beloveds). All merfolk have bioluminescent patterns that shift colors, but Dark-siders have theirs permanently turned red. partly because of the red lightsaber thing, but also because no red light reaches the deep sea, so a lot of animals are red because they're essentially invisible, UNLESS they're seen by an animal that emits red light and can therefore see/hunt/kill the red animals, so emitting red light symbolizes how the Dark mer have become exclusively predatory and destructive.

uhhh I got kinda distracted there. ANYWAY,

Oh, there's that line about how Ezra has a habit of curling his tailfin around people's legs so he doesn't float away mid-conversation! So, there's lore to that. Basically, it's a mer-child thing. Little Mer don't have enough control of their body in the water to stay in one place. Kanan doesn't do it, because he grew up with the merfolk and in this AU he was an adult by the time they were wiped out, so he learned to adjust himself in the water with little movements. Ezra was a child when the merfolk were killed, so he never learned that and the habit of holding onto people with his tail has carried over, which is why he still does it as an older teenager.

Pff oh yeah also. that "this is... detailed" thing. I know the details. I know all the details. I will not be elaborating. Some things must remain unknown.

Oh! And the scene where they're talking up in the crow's nest of the ship and it's mentioned that Sabine spends time up there! That was a reference to Krownest! Get it? Crow's nest? Krownest? hehehe i'm so funny

OH OH OH SABINE'S BACKSTORY!! This wasn't elaborated much in the first draft but with the rewrite it got more attention. Although the circumstances are different than in canon, I tried to keep a lot of it the same---Sabine goes into a situation willingly trusting someone who doesn't have her best interests at heart and gets blindsided by their betrayal. ALSO ANOTHER FUN FACT!! In the original version she was an Amazon and not a Valkyrie!! But then I changed it up so she only joined the Amazons for a time after leaving her old life behind. She was determined to join their ranks and fit in, despite all the culture clashes, but when her Amazonian battle-sister left her for dead after she was injured in a skirmish, Sabine cut all her ties with them and left.

Ahh yeah this bit never fails to make me giggle.

“All right, all right,” she laughed. “Maybe I was a little slow in admitting my feelings for you.” “Aha! So you do have feelings for me!” He pointed a victorious finger at her.

At first glance, it's cute banter that hints that their friendship has started developing into a romance. Gains a new level of comedy when you reread it knowing that by this point, they're married.

Heheh the boat ride to krownest scene. Kanan's blind and he still knows they're silently flirting with each other.

OOH! JET! K I'm gonna probably go on a ramble now, anyway: Jet was Sabine's pegasus since she was a child. She left Jet behind when she ran away. During this AU's version of "Imperial Supercommandoes," they're confronted by Gar Saxon and his cronies on pegasi. He tells Sabine that after her mother became the leader of the Valkyries, she "generously gave us access to her stables." In reality, Ursa's hand was forced and the pegasi were taken from her. Sabine recognizes one of the horses there as Jet, and he recognized her. During the fight that followed, Jet's rider was shot, and Sabine grabbed his reins and she and Ezra made their getaway with him.

(In Heroes of Mandalore, instead of being bad at flying a jetpack, Ezra got stuck with a pegasus who hated him and kept trying to buck him off in midair lol)

Hmmm going on...

Oh! Ezra is an ocean Merfolk, and like saltwater (ocean) fish, he can't survive (shapeshifted into his mer-form) in freshwater. That's why it was so dangerous for him to jump in after Sabine fell through the ice---it was a freshwater lake.

Also, the scene where he deliriously asks her to take him to Valhalla if he dies, because "merfolk don't have anywhere to go," is a reference to the original fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, where mermaids turn to seafoam when they die.

Ahhhh yes, the necklace! I think I said this before in the tags of one of my merfolk art posts, but, so, for merfolk, giving handmade shell-jewelry is usually a marriage proposal, but it's not, like, automatically legally binding or anything. So basically, when 15-year-old Ezra gave Sabine her shell necklace, it was the equivalent of if you jokingly got down on one knee and offered your unrequited crush a cheap plastic ring from a cereal box or something, expecting her to roll her eyes, but instead she's like "Aw thanks! A ring!" and she starts unironically wearing the cheap plastic ring all the time and now you realize that she doesn't know it was a joke proposal because apparently rings don't go with proposals in her culture and you can't explain the joke now, it's way too late, and you want to die of embarrassment.

Oh yeah also Ezra found a pair of elaborate jewel-encrusted daggers in a shipwreck and gave them to Sabine. This is a reverse necklace situation--to reuse the metaphor, it's like if your best friend got down on one knee, pulled out a gorgeous diamond ring, and said "I found this in a gravel pit! It's for you cause I know you like cool rings bestiegirl!! :D" and you're like "...uh... thanks!" and you take the ring because it is a cool ring and you do love cool rings and you don't tell him that he basically proposed because apparently rings don't go with proposals in his culture.

mmmm yeah the love's lights scene. ahhh so much I could say. I guess, it was really fun in this part (and throughout the whole fic) to explore how Ezra wasn't entirely human, and how his merfolk instincts would affect him, especially regarding the way merfolk fall in love and the once-a-year merfolk festival. I actually have an outlined idea for a fic in the series that's about weird merfolk quirks and different traditions they have, so I might explore things more in that one.

ah man I am never gonna get tired of writing Sabine deciding to do random impromptu flirting and Ezra bluescreening over it.

oh yeah shoutout to Robert Louis Stevenson by the way, I stole a plot device from him (character hides in an apple barrel and overhears Important Things)

And then Rune and Jacen come in at the end! This was an adaptation of one of the original scenes of the fic that I mentioned at the beginning of this.

One other thing, I guess--the character named Koti is an orphaned mermaid girl that Kanan and Hera took in, so she's Jacen's little sister. the "guppies," as Rune calls them, are her three merfolk siblings--two of them are adopted and one is a sabezra kid. (said adopted children may or may not be rey and finn.) (Oh, and the guy Rune has a crush on? Poe Dameron. Obviously.)

Hmmm I think that's about it for this director's cut! Which is probably good considering I just dumped slightly under 2k words of ramble on ya

Thank you for the ask!! :D

[uncleasad]

For the fanfic director's cut ask game: ⭐

So…it’s taken me forever to get to this 😢 So sorry, and thanks so much for your patience, unsiredtribrid! 🙏

Without further ado, some Director’s Cut fun facts about Have at Least One Totally Epic Love!

(If you are someone who hasn’t read that fic yet and thinks you might want to…BEWARE, MAJOR SPOILERS below! Also TW for discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic.)

. . . . .

With that out of the way…

To quote Hope, “I’ll just start at the beginning.”

I wasn’t a huge The Vampire Diaries fan. I did see part of Season 4, most or all of Season 5, and all of Season 6, and then I stopped watching (though I came back for the finale). I was really intrigued by the family dynamics of the Mikaelsons, though, so I watched most of Season 1 and all of Season 2 of The Originals before growing weary of the constant infighting and betrayal. I never saw Season 3, but for some reason I started watching Season 4…and that’s the reason I’m here today, Summer Fontana as young Hope…she just blew me away. I came back for Season 5 despite Summer having been replaced by Danielle after the time jump, and she portrayed the travails of teen life and being supernatural and a Mikaelson so deftly. When I heard there was a spin-off featuring Hope, I was there for it.

By the end of the first hour, I had found a new reason to stay in Kaylee’s Josie, who was so complex, so very much more than met the eye. By Hope and Josie’s second interaction, ‘The Poking in the Park’ as I like to call it, their chemistry, their connection, their caring…all screamed at me, and I was a Hosie (although I did not know that was ‘a thing’ until I read an article at TV Line or one of those sites about the show after the end of the season, and it mentioned this popular ship fans had dubbed ‘Hosie’). And then the wish AU, and the crush confession, and…Hope and Josie were screaming to the whole world. Well.

I had found Landon Kirby, the townie server who had memorized the attractive girl’s milkshake order (and, honestly, we all would have done the same, right?), sweet. He seemed compassionate and provided a normalcy Hope needed in her life as The Hollow sought to overtake her once again. When Hope met up with him again in the beginning of Legacies, I thought, ‘Oh, it’s that nice boy again.’ Somewhere in that first hour, though, everything changed. He seemed shifty, he started lying to Hope, and then he stole the knife and got a bus full of innocents killed (ultimately neither were his fault, but…). And then Hope and Josie became kindred spirits, and it was all over for Mister Kirby. (The writers’ writing constantly insufferable behavior and repeating the same things over and over again effectively completely sabotaged his character, which, uh, didn’t help.)

Where was I? Ah, yes, so I’d realized I was not alone in liking Hope and Josie together. I’d been reading fanfic off and on for years, initially on random sites, later on FFN, and about that time AO3 won the Hugo, so I learned it existed 😂 Sometime in the fall of 2019/beginning of Season 2 I started reading Hosie fics on AO3. They were awesome, there were a bunch of incredible authors and super-nice folks (👋 @avengerskye), and despite the awkward turns of S2, we were all excited.

My first-ever thing you’d call a fanfic was an extremely awkward follow-up to War and Remembrance I wrote in middle school. I had sixth and seventh grade teachers who encouraged writing, and I wrote a ton…that fanfic, new installments of my long-running (since third grade) sci-fi series, lots of other stuff I can no longer remember. High school really beat the love of reading and writing out of me, and college and grad school drove it further into the ground and piled rubble on its grave. But it was slowly coming back, and Hosie, well, Hosie had me excited again.

In early 2020 😳 during the month-long break between 2x13 and 2x14, I came up with an idea for quick one-shot (famous last words, I would later learn) idea that would honor Hope and Landon’s connection from The Originals and then move on to Hope’s true epic love, Josie, that the series was shoving in our faces yet doggedly refusing to actually pursue. Hope had just chosen saving the twins over saving Landon! I remembered Hayley’s letter to Hope from S5 and went to look that up. And I started writing. Nearly a thousand words later, I’d written…a prologue 😂 But I published it, and people seemed to like it and left lovely comments, even though it was the first fiction I’d written in ages.

So I wrote the second chapter, which clocked in at 2200 words, still covering well-trodden ground, but introducing some Hosie elements into their pasts, including during 1x07 while Hope was trapped in The Necromancer’s mind and the twins were in Europe. And now my one-shot was going to be 3 or 4 chapters. Another 1600 words, officially picking up after the events of 2x13, and I had written the first 1½ scenes of what I was then envisioning as Chapter 3.

Chapter 4 clocked in at almost 4400 words, longer than the entire fic so far…and there was still one more scene from “Chapter 3” to come. Chapter 5, almost 2K words again. From my end note on the chapter:

Incidentally, this concludes where I envisioned the original chapter 2 (in the original 3-chapter conception of this story) ending. That also means this is the end of “past events” and everything going forward will be happening in the present, at least in theory.

😂

Incidentally, that was also the last chapter written and published before the country finally shut down 😢 We had seen one more episode of the show by then, 2x14, the first therapy box/noir-world 😍, where Hope had chosen the twins over Landon again. (And yet! 🤬)

Chapter 6 came next, on March 24, two days before what would become the season finale aired. (We’d seen the Sadistic Seventeen/The Merge episode the prior week.) There’s a line in the chapter’s beginning notes:

I heard on the radio Saturday evening that local-ish band REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” was back on the charts again 30-some years after it was originally released, and it felt like kismet while writing this chapter.

That moment is seared in my memory, oddly enough. I was down near the river, harvesting sand that had been deposited by the spring (late winter) floods. I had two 5-gallon contractor buckets full, and I wasn’t going to carry them both all the way back up the hill. So I brought the van down the path, and as I was loading the (quite heavy) buckets in the back, that bit of news came over the radio, followed by, I’m fairly certain, the song itself.

This section from the end notes for Chapter 6 pretty much says it all:

It’s become increasingly difficult for me to write the latter part of this story as things out there worsen; I think these rambling, no-action chapters are my subconscious way of trying to put off the impending battle (and the angst and hurt that will surround it) while the real world is hurting. But I don’t think I can interpolate any more chapters, so either the pain will come or this story will end up on hiatus.

While I had all of the rest of the story in mind at this point (except the epilogue, or parts of it), I think it will surprise no on that the fic did, in fact, go on hiatus. It’s hard to write a potential armageddon in the midst of a viral apocalypse.

In April, to try to get writing again, I started After Ten Long Years; by May, I was 15K words into it and trying to wrangle plot threads, but I had a short fluffy idea that became the first of my seasonal Tales from the Salvatore Kitchen series. By June I was stuck again, and I began writing another new fic, my Old West Hosie WIP.

In August, inspired by AdeleDazeem’s summery treat summer lovin' had me a blast (wait, no, that's just the leaf-blower) (add it to your reading list if you haven’t!), I’d written another Tales from the Salvatore Kitchen installment. By September, I’d gotten stuck on Old West Hosie and begun yet another fic, the Hosie Alternate Realities WIP. In November, another bit of fun in the kitchen—that little series of fluffy one-shots was cooking! 😩 [Bad puns also being a trademark of the Tales from the Salvatore Kitchen…]

At the beginning of February 2021, 10 months since I left off, I was back with the final lead-up to the climactic battle, aka Chapter 7. And then 10 days later, the final chapter! From Chapter 8’s notes:

A year ago(!) when I started writing this story, “Mad World” was showing up all over the place, even before the pandemic had hit the US; as I was plotting the end of the story, that seemed like a fitting lyric for this chapter. (If somehow you missed the quarantine acoustic version from the singer and his teenage daughter last April…go listen!) And, hey…I’ve managed to finish my story involving Malivore’s resurrection before canon got him resurrected…barely! Go, me! (Thanks, pandemic…but not really.)

(It really was wild how “Mad World” had shown up on several shows just before the pandemic exploded; the one I still remember is Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist.)

I’d had the idea to resurrect/reembody Malivore back in 2020, well before the show aired episodes hinting at that direction, so it was wild to see that we’d both had similar ideas!

This chapter was also my first experience with AO3’s lovely habit of not prompting you to update the publication date of a draft chapter before publishing, so it was published in the middle of page two or three of the Hosie tag, and I didn’t notice for two days! So, other than the subscribers, no one knew Chapter 8 existed 😂

But all was not lost! I had one sentence in my notes that I’d wanted to include in Chapter 8 but couldn’t make it fit, so it’s epilogue time! (It’s somewhere in that final paragraph, but I’d have to both find and attempt to decipher, after all these years, my notes to say for sure.) Josie and Hope as a folk duo! The Siphon & The Tribrid, later Persephone & Eurydice! With a song about Landon inspired by a classic Gordon Lightfoot tune! And some very special moments on the Seine to wrap it all up, two days shy of a year after the fic began.

(So, to recap: work title from a Hayley Marshall quote, plus chapter titles from an REM song/lyric, a Tears for Fears lyric, a Winston Churchill book title, a play on a Gabriel García Márquez book title, and another Hayley Marshall quote. And a fake song title that’s a play on a Gordon Lightfoot song title.)

Also to recap: a one-shot became a two-shot became…8 chapters and an epilogue! (Like The Cape, only better 😂) It has never failed that any fic I begin to publish serially before completing the writing always spawns at least one more chapter than I’d planned on writing 😂

If you’ve made it to this point, congratulations! You have far more patience than me, or a morbid curiosity about how my mind works 😂

A few more notes before wrapping up: this is also the only fic that’s first-person POV. I don’t know why it felt right when I began. (I think some of my early writing was first-person, but I think the bulk of it has always been third-person. And all of my subsequent fics are.)

If I everWhen I finally finish those first three WIPs I began during the writing hiatus on Have at Least One Totally Epic Love, it’ll be very odd, because my opinions of both Landon and Alaric have soured considerably since then, Landon as the frustratingly bone-headed writing of his character and his and Hope’s “relationship” persisted, despite all the potential for Hosie they also wrote into the series, and Alaric because, well…

This is the work that has the most hits, most subscriptions, and most bookmarks, and I doubt I’ll ever approach those levels again. (It also held most comment threads until this summer’s The One with Hope’s Wedding and most words until 2022’s And I Will Always Love You; most kudos has belonged since 2021 to You Couldn’t Even Bother To Check On Me?, which is second in just about every other stat.) It’s weird to seem like you peaked with your very first fic 😂 but such are the vagaries of fandom!

I’ve kinda wanted to tell the story of this fic for a while now, before the parts that aren’t documented in the chapter notes get lost to time, and it is so entwined with my becoming a Hosie and finding AO3, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity, so you got a very long, rambling Director’s Cut!

Thanks so much for the ask, my friend, and for your patience until I could find time and space for this to all gel in my head and then write it down 🙏 (I actually got to it faster than I did to Rika’s 😳😂 a little over a month 😂)

[bluecatwriter]

⭐

Thank you, dear anon! I decided on "Angels Unawares" because I want to gush about my OCs. ;) "Five times people helped Jonathan Harker reach safety between Castle Dracula and Buda-Pesth."

(Major spoilers, discussion of Christianity)

-I was inspired to write this fic based on the gigantic gap between Jonathan lizard-fashioning down Castle Dracula's walls and showing up in Buda-Pesth, and began to think about who might have encountered him along the way. From my days backpacking the Pacific Crest Trail, I am very aware of how difficult it is to travel large distances without good supplies (just finding enough water is a huge headache!), and I kept thinking that he had to have people helping him along the way.

-This fic was very inspired by my solo travels around the U.S. (and a bit in Europe) when I was in my early 20s— I was never in dire circumstances, but the way that people went far out of their way to help me made a huge impact on me. I wanted to explore the themes of the kindness of strangers, and how doing one little useful thing can help set things in motion for bigger good to be done.

-The title is a reference to a verse in the New Testament book of Hebrews, which one of the characters quotes in the first chapter: "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." This verse was used in my immediate and extended family quite often, to encourage us to be kind to strangers and do what we could to help (my paternal grandmother swore that her family gave food and shelter to a pair of angels who showed up at their farm in Iowa when she was a kid). Someone in the comments show that in some sense Jonathan is an angel— an avenging angel who will return to destroy the foe who is haunting this part of the world.

-In each of the chapters, Jonathan encounters a different person or group of people who help him get a little closer to his destination, told from the outsider's perspective. I didn't have any strong themes or motifs in mind when I started out, but after a couple chapters, I noticed some running threads emerging: 1) Jonathan receiving a gift from each of the strangers, such as shoes or a handkerchief, and 2) the viewpoint characters helping him because they were able to see someone they already knew/loved in Jonathan. After I noticed it emerging I emphasized it intentionally, and I think it gives the story a good kind of structure.

-Chapter 1, set in Romania fairly close to Castle Dracula, is told from the viewpoint of Pavel, who lives with his son and his grandma and is grieving the death of his wife from a vampire. This one was one of the most difficult to write, because of a language barrier (it didn't make sense for them to speak English, and I decided that Jonathan was in no state to remember much of the German he knows) and because of the overwhelming fear that the characters are facing: at first thinking Jonathan is a vampire, then learning he's a victim instead.

-This chapter features some herbal remedies that I pulled from a book my brother got for me called "Russian Folk Remedies." Grandma uses herbs for dressing wounds and treating rabies (and in a rare burst of doing actual research, I made sure the herbs would be able to grow that far south). 

-Jonathan reminds Pavel of the wife he lost, and Jonathan is sent on his way with shoes, a pack, and food.

-In Chapter 2, we meet Cristian, an old man with an estranged son. I actually made myself pretty emotional writing this chapter, drawing from my parents' stories about how difficult it is to let go of the childhood stage and accept your children as adults.

-It was important to me that Cristian is kind of a grumpy guy, and was initially going to chase Jonathan away. I didn't want everyone to be sunshine and rainbows— just ordinary people of various personality types who learn to have empathy, anyway.

-Jonathan reminds Cristian of his son, and is given Cristian's coat.

-Chapter 3 introduces Nicolae, the station-master at Klausenburg. I decided to make him young for some contrast to Cristian, and eager to do his job correctly. Meanwhile, I had to figure out how to show Jonathan's "violent demeanor" in a believable way.

-I decided to give Nicolae a seizure disorder to make him sympathetic to Jonathan having a meltdown in public. One of my family members has seizures, and even in the modern day, handling people's reactions when a seizure happens in a crowd is… not fun. There would have been even more social stigma back then, so I thought it was a good way to show that Nicolae is more open to Jonathan than other people might be because he knows what it's like to have people be afraid of him.

-I looked up some pictures of the Klausenburg station, but few of those details made it into the story.

-Nicolae gives Jonathan a sandwich with pickled garlic paste on it (yum!) and Jonathan can barely eat it; at this point it becomes a bit clearer that Jonathan is just a lil vamped right now.

-Jonathan reminds Nicolae of himself, and takes Nicolae's handkerchief with him.

-Chapter 4 introduces a retired nurse from the Romanian War of Independence, Maria. She's my favorite character! I based her no-nonsense personality on one of my sibling's in-laws, who was an ICU nurse for many years.

-Originally Maria was traveling with her niece, who translated for her, but the logistics got ridiculously complicated, so I left out the niece and just made Maria fluent in English.

-This is definitely the most gory chapter as we see the full extent of Jonathan's wounds. Fortunately he has someone to patch him up…

-Jonathan reminds Maria of the soldiers she tended during the war, and she gives him one of her spare shirts to replace his raggedy one.

-In Chapter 5 we finally get to Sister Agatha! I decided to make her one of the younger nuns working at the hospital, thinking that she probably wrote the letter not because she was the person in charge but because she was the one who spoke/wrote English most fluently. 

-At the time I wrote this, my spouse and I were watching the show Call the Midwife, and that vibe informed the way I wrote the nuns.

-Once I figured out that each viewpoint character would see someone they loved/knew in Jonathan, I was champing at the bit to get to this chapter, because I knew Sister Agatha would looked at bedraggled Jonathan and be like, "Yeah, that's Jesus." She also gives him a rosary, which burns his hand, but he doesn't want to relinquish.

-I liked the little epilogue with Jonathan, still disoriented, waking up and taking stock of all the gifts he's been given along his journey, even if he can't really remember what is happening. Although the story doesn't necessarily "resolve" in that he hasn't found Mina yet, he's left with a feeling that people will continue to help him along his journey… and they do!

Well, this got a bit rambly, but thanks for the opportunity to gush. :D

(Ask game here)

[antspaul]

end to end for director's cut

end to end, post canon kaneson, 5.8k, rated T

As the sun sets on the last day of Heungmin’s career, the sky over Tottenham Hotspur Stadium turns a deep shade of navy blue.

OMG okay so firstly this fic was written specifically for my beloved @roykentalwaysremains , whose fresh tottenham hotspur fixation i capitalized on to drag him into the pits of rpf hell with me.

In a lot of ways end to end is a love letter to max and you elle and everyone else we spent last season watching footy with. It’s definitely wish fulfillment!! But also me putting the hope out into the universe that a time and place that brought me a lot of joy stays whole & important in some way.

Commentary on specifics below the cut!

When it came to choosing which players would come back for Sonny’s testimonial, I struggled with imposter syndrome in a real way LOL. Obviously, I did not follow spurs at the time (or at this time currently. Or really in any other way than through my pocket of friends who are spurs fans) and don’t have a great grasp of those guys, their talent level & potential longevity, their narratives, etc etc. Future fics will never be evergreen but you never want something you’ve put effort into to be completely obsolete, like, three months later. Eventually, I leaned into the wish fulfillment of it all and decided to be vague about the specific roster of guys on Sonny’s testimonial team (as well as any details about their opposition)

I mean, testimonials are barely even done anymore LOL and I can’t imagine the trend will reverse in the handful of years until Sonny retires.

More than any of them, Heungmin knows Harry’s rough edges. There used to be nothing left of Harry to discover. Then Harry went to Germany. Six years later, Heungmin feels a bit like Brennan, wide-eyed and amazed, not sure what to expect.

This line, as well as a few others from later sections of the fic, is essentially all that remains of the first fic I had vaguely planned to write for Max’s birthday. That fic, discussed in length BEFORE spurs and bayern did NOT play into the kaneson narrative with their friendly in Korea this summer, would have followed their meeting there. messages i sent to Max when we were discussing it:

so much potential here tbh…. kaneson meeting again on the field after h left but in son’s home country….. something something home something strangers something something….. sonny had lived a full life in korea that h would never know, and until a year before son had known h in the only place he’d ever called home, but maybe in five, ten years h would be as strange to son as son’s life before tottenham was to h…..

i’m envisioning them meeting up after the game and son takes him to his favorite place back home and they catch up and realize like. there’s no separate harry or son pre or post spurs. they’re both complete people and always have been and the best thing about loving someone else is spending your whole life getting to know them because no one is ever truly entirely Knowable and spurs is not the end all be all of Harry and Son, it’s just the place where for a while they were able to exist together. and they’ll always love it for that….

spurs is a place and spurs is a time but more importantly spurs was something they chose to be together. and bitch guess what….. NOTHING CAN TAKE THAT AWAY FROM THEM

and then Harry Kane decided he wasn’t a team player and WASNT AT THE KOREA FRIENDLY 👎👎👎👎👎

anyways

I really debated where I wanted H to end up in his retirement MLS career. He WILL be going in MLS I have no doubts about this, but idk for some reason I couldn’t imagine him on the west coast, but I also couldn’t imagine him specifically at one of the two evil New York teams with their multi club owners LOL. For a minute I was like …Boston??? New England Rev?? But then I decided fuck it, if Lamps went into the City system so can Harry. to NYCFC it is

When Heungmin came to Tottenham the new grounds were nothing but an abstract promise, loose dirt and construction vehicles and scaffolding. Months often went by with little to no visible progress. Many times Heungmin wondered if Tottenham Hotspur Stadium would ever be more than a half-constructed pile of steel beams and rubble. Yet despite everything, in front of them shines this glittering, otherworldly stadium that Harry and Heungmin get to call home before anyone else. The gradual transformation makes Heungmin believe that what they’re building, he and Harry and all the other lads on the team, will grow to become what it was always meant to be.

It’s not the grounds, Harry insists. It’s them. Heungmin doesn’t see the difference.

A thread that runs throughout most of my writing is the way that memory dwells in place. This fic is certainly an example of that! My academic research has a lot to do with the way that people construct identities based on place and space, and that comes through in how I connect setting to character.

Taking Harry seriously as a competitor adds a touch of normalcy to their relationship that Son hasn’t felt for a long time. Their friendship is not a sacred, delicate flame to hold close to his chest. It does not need protection from the wind.

This is another remnant of the previously mentioned AU. It’s also one of my favorite lines in the fic.

“It was kind of nice, actually,” Dele says. “Made the rest of us look better for once. I swear, bro, I nutmegged you at least eight times that day.”

I’ve heard that Dele was notorious for nutmegging his teammates relentlessly back in the day.

“Really? All that for fucking Bloodborne?” says Brennan, looking at Heungmin, as Harry walks off.

Heungmin laughs. “Don’t look at me! I still don’t remember. I don’t think I would stay up late for two weeks.”

This moment is a really important one for Sonny, just as important as his and Harry’s kiss a few scenes earlier. When he doesn’t remember a pretty small detail that doesn’t quite match up with how he thinks about himself from back then, he’s prompted to reflect on how much he’s changed since then. In this fic, Sonny sort of lives in the past, especially in the moments of his past where he felt the potential for things that never truly materialized. On a small scale, he’s forced to reckon with the fact that no matter what, he is a fundamentally different person than he was during the period of his life that will forever define his career. I think Tottenham as a club — and Sonny here in this fic, representing them — has a tendency to self-mythologize. And when buy into your own narrative, it can be too easy to overlook the messier parts of your past that don’t fit so well into that narrative.

Anyways those are most of the thoughts I have on that fic!! Thank you for the ask elle ILY!!!

[tokuvivor]

⭐️ Bridging the Gap

Ooh!

When I initially came up with some ideas of stuff to write back when I was starting out, a piece revolving around Gandra and Huey was one of them. The relationship between them had some potential, especially given their mutual connection to Fenton.

Without a doubt, the scene in this story that I had fleshed out the most in my mind was their heart-to-heart talk where she apologizes to him for everything. That was really kind of the meat of the story for me, even though it came right towards the end. I can absolutely see Gandra still taking all that she had done in the past really hard, regardless of why she was doing them. And Huey would understand and try to put things into perspective for her.

Plus, there’s the “older sister” bit. I can 100% see Huey viewing both Fenton and Gandra as somewhat of older siblings to him. Possibly because as the oldest of the Duck brothers, he still wants someone to look up to himself. We clearly got that in the show with Fenton. And I’d like to think it would happen with Gandra, too. My idea was that, in one way or another, Gandra didn’t always have the easiest time when it came to really having a family, siblings included. So she just gets really kind of emotional when Huey calls her that.

And the hug. In the show, I think the closest we got to something like that was them hugging Fenton simultaneously in Beaks in the Shell! I just wanted something super raw conveyed by the two of them hugging.

Overall, I would say I really enjoyed writing that part of Bridging the Gap. Just something that conveyed Gandra’s feelings really well, and Huey’s overall response to that.

[ink-and-dagger]

In DWM, you had Silco and Astrid's first kiss during the sensual smoking scene, but you've also stated elsewhere that you were very tempted to make it during the blackout. What were the main reasons for you delaying their first kiss and how do you think the story would have changed if they had kissed sooner in the basement hallway?

*holds microphone up to your face expectantly*

*enthusiastically grabs your hand instead of the actual microphone handle so that you're forced to stand awkwardly holding the mic up to my face and unable to withdraw your hand whilst I blabber on with absolutely zero social awareness of how uncomfortable everyone is*

WOW THAT'S A GREAT QUESTION COI AND LET ME GIVE YOU AN ANSWER.

At this point in story Silco and Astrid are only just beginning to recognise the tension between them for what it really is, and I wanted them to sit with those thoughts and feelings for longer before anything happened between them. Essentially, there hadn't been anywhere near enough pining for my tastes. I'm a true slow-burn advocate, and I like to put my money where my mouth is.

The temptation to have them kiss during the blackout wasn't coming from Inky the Author™️. It was coming from Inky the Old Man Fucker™️. Ultimately, I had to give myself a bonk on the head and spend some time in horny jail.

Hypothetically, if they had kissed during the blackout, they would have dismissed it as an 'adrenaline-fuelled mistake'. These things happen right? Emotions were running high, it was simply a natural response to the situation. Silco would be cool and courteous, Astrid would laugh it off, and they'd mutually agree to not let it affect their friendship. After all, it doesn’t mean anything… does it?

The world beyond your closed lids illuminates, and Silco breaks from your lips with a pained hiss, raising a hand to shield his left eye against the sudden brightness. "Club's Cleared." You both whip your heads towards Sevika, who stands a little way down the corridor, glancing between your tangled forms with a small, shit-eating smirk. She jerks her chin at Silco. “Nice shade. Suits you.” Silco’s jaw tightens, tugging at his swollen, lipstick stained mouth. There’s no point denying anything; you’ve been caught red-handed. Or purple-lipped, as it were.

In terms of how it would potentially alter the story moving forward? It would definitely hang over them. I imagine it would pop up in their internal dialogues often, and they'd be hyper aware of one another. Overthinking interactions, contemplating potential hidden meanings behind words, unconsciously searching for signs of... they don't even know what. And they don't even know if they're searching in hope of finding whatever it is they're looking for, or fear of finding it.

And we all know that once that barrier has been breached once, it's all too easy to stumble across the line again. So, that being said, there's no way in hell that their drunken night wouldn't have ended in a snog at the very least.

"And it was nice, wasn't it? In the dark." Your nose is barely a few inches from his, and his right eye is just as heavily lidded as both of yours currently are. The alcohol on his breath might be making you even more drunk. "It was nice. Just the two of us. I liked the way you touched me. I like the way you kissed me. Mmmn you'sa good kisser—" Silco grabs the backs of your thighs, and sweeps your knees out from underneath you. Your head swims as you land heavily on your back, then blurs beyond all reason and sense when the heat of his mouth crashes against yours.

I don't think they would have gone all the way that night. But I could absolutely see a bit of messy hanky-panky on the sofa. Y'know. Hands shoved down the front of pants, fumbling around with zero finesse or technique. Very much r/Advice: I got drunk with my hot boss and we jerked each other off, what should I do?

It would definitely be a bit awkward between them after that. Astrid's cigar gift to him will have been more of a 'Hey thanks for looking after me last night and I'm sorry if I made things weird.'

The story would probably continue on as is from there. We'd get to the cigar smoking scene and it would be like 'okay so clearly it's pointless attempting to restrain ourselves so let's just bone already'.

Thank you for the question Coi my darling, I had a lot of fun imagining this little AU 🤭