#director's cut game

[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 as for a previously unpublished fun fact, i mentioned in if i could reach the stars that aysar has siblings, and i hc that aysar is the eldest since 1) he calls his siblings annoying and as a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! 💛💛💛

[ticklygiggles]

for the director's cut game:

how did you decide how ticklish each of scara's tickle spots were in this fic? I'm always curious how other writers decide things like that ^^

I was actually rereading this one hehe, it's not that bad, if I say so myself lol

Omg I usually just look at the character and my tickle infested brain is like "they're ticklish right there" and I just marry the idea looool xD

Wanderer has always been super ticklish on his inner thighs to me. I'm probably super biased because of his shorts, but yeah.

Thighs, ribs, underarms are all some of my favorite spots, so of course he's gotta be ticklish there. It just fits him. Sometimes I do look at characters and think their feet are ticklish, even though feet are not really one of my fave spots!

So, I don't really know how I decided it? I just looked at Wanderer and my brain did the rest hehehe

[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)

[saltyoaktree]

for the director's cut game: what was your favourite scene to write? Or perhaps the one you came up with first 👀♡

Hi!! Thanks for the question <3. I'm not sure what my favorite scene to write was because I had such a blast with so many of them :D

The first scene I came up with was the one where Edwin is trapped in the attic while the zombie teacher scrapes at the door. I remember doing an evil laugh inside my head at the opportunity of torturing my boy edwin. The idea that the zombie would be scrapping the flesh off his fingers came to me and i was like "wow that is terrible and disgusting. I have to write it."

[eilinelsghost]

I am loving Atandil, as you know. Can you say more about your inspiration for the very moving funeral rites in A Shuddering In The Air?

Thank you so much for this question! I really enjoyed working on that section. I'm not sure what all would be interesting to unpack, but here are a few things that went into it.

I initially decided to include a scene with those when I realized that Finrod would need some context to know what to do with Bëor's body when he dies. Granted there is some more conversation that I'll include around that later too, but I really wanted him to have a frame of reference for what it looked like to see one of the Edain buried. It was really important to me that he felt the defiance and sting of that firsthand before having the full weight of it crash down when it was Balan whose body was being set into the ground.

As to the rites themselves, I knew I wanted seeds to play a role in that because of an aspect of how Finrod buries Balan and later visits the grave (I won't say more about that here because I'd like to leave that until it shows up in the narrative), but then I wanted that to connect through to the overarching tradition. And seeds as part of the burial ritual worked really well for that.

Another reason for those and for the surrounding benedictions was a bit more rooted in our own world. I've always found the inclusion of the "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" reading in the Book of Common Prayer's liturgy for the Burial of the Dead to be very poignant and compelling. When contemplating the Atani and their own burial customs, I kept thinking what it would look like to include that same kind of sentiment, but as a cry of defiance rather than a theological statement. Death defied and mocked, even as his sting is very much present, his victory very much before them. And so the burial with seeds: life from death, even in our rotting, and the song at the end. It felt a very Atani sentiment to have a burial ritual that spat in the face of their own fate: death might take each of them, but it was not a true victory if they laughed in his face or turned his destruction back to beauty. A bitter beauty, of course, but one of their own making.

One last aspect of those that I am very attached to is the benediction Balan gives to each body: “Honor be upon you, my mother/father. Valor rest within you, my sister/brother. Peace take you within her arms, my daughter/son.” I loved how this connected their whole clan together in a society of mutual dependence - each is mother, sister, daughter or father, brother, son to all others. A loss of any is a loss of that communal family. They are not just co-citizens or the same traveling group, they are a community bound together with a much more encompassing understanding of what "family" entails. This is also seen in Estreth's "small stubbornness" of holding apart from joining Balan's people in order to remain, as she sees it, unbroken from her own communal family.

I feel like there are more things I had to say about this, but I just got back from a road trip this evening and my brain is pretty shot. If I did not cover an aspect you hoped I'd mention, let me know and I can keep going!

Thank you so much for this question - I really loved working on this part of A Shuddering in the Air and getting to talk more about it has been a blast!

[zarla-s]

i dunno it was like 3 am

(based off this meme)

[patreon]

[nickolashx]

Scratches (2006)

Scratches is a horror point & click adventure game by Nucleosys. Scratches is the first commercial adventure game ever to be made in Argentina.

Dark Legends surround the old abandoned Blackwood house, secluded far away in the northern wastelands. For writer Michael Arthate, this cold, solitary atmosphere is fodder for his restless imagination. But Michael soon becomes distracted by the mysteries offered up, as he follows a trail exploring and delving into the secrets of the past.

[darius20020]

Yipeeee

[lawrencesflower]

BRAZILIAN RANDALL PURPURA AAAAAAAAA

randall belongs to @mortis-fox !!

[hogans-heroes]

⭐? 🥰

(From the Director’s Cut Fanfic Ask Game)

Oooh the star one is hard because I don’t know what fic to ramble about. I guess one thing I find intriguing in general is that a large majority of my fics are set in the stalag, without my meaning to, soI suppose there’s something about that setting that appeals to me creatively; Learning Curve, At The End (We’re Still Together), Branded and Glass and Bone.

I don’t know why necessarily, but 90% of my new fic ideas are also oneshots set in the stalag, I just have sooo many: Bucky gets drugged while in the cooler, Gale disassociates after childhood flashback when being accidentally locked outside, Gale getting whipped as punishment and trying to hide it from the others, Bucky developing touch-aversion from his experiences after being captured, Gale signing up for medical experiments in exchange for food and supplies for the men, etc. I could come up with a new one every day smh. I should start putting them out as smaller oneshots instead of feeling like I have to make them all big fics and then never writing it.

[syaolaurant]

So I finally finished The House Cup quest yesterday, and it really pissed me off.

Almost 4 minutes cutscene to finally end the whole journey and they didn't even border adding Sebastian in one frame. I mean, c'mon, I didn't turn Sebastian in. He just disappeared to thin air like the dev canon he was expelled. Ok maybe he was sobbing somewhere maybe in the Undercroft and not attending the ceremony but, BUT, how about adding a scene when MC interact with Sebastian, to let us know that he is still there?

And look at the sadness in Ominis eyes, while everyone in other house was cheering the Slytherin table was just silenced.

Maybe Avalanche was out of time, maybe in the future they will put another better version of The House Cup quest. Until then this still sadden me =[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[

[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! ❤️💕💖

[ticklygiggles]

⭐️✨

I was hoping no one would send the star hahaha

Anyways, I think I wanna talk about this fic because it was such a delight to write it. Tbh I was also super lazy to write it so I was writing it on the translator and I posted it and didn't notice until later on that the pronouns were incorrect, thankfully no one had reblogged it so I quickly beta read it and change all mistakes loool

But anyways, yes, I'm so so in love with this manga, I had already read it a couple of times and it's just so so precious. To be completely honest, I looooove love love love writing lees with d*sabilities, but of course I don't do it often because first, I don't want to offend anyone and second, the media I consume rarely features a person with d*sabilities.

I enjoyed writing for the manwah 'Sign' so so so much. One of the boys in the main couple can't hear properly and in this manga one of them can't see.

But anyways, yes, I loved writing this fic very much and it has a special place in my heart hehehehe❣️

[bluecatwriter]

Hmmm, Director's Cut on Butcher-work?

Thanks so much for the ask! I have a lot of Feelings about this one. :)

(The fic in question.)

CW for description of blood/injury below:

-This fic was directly inspired by Re: Dracula, because the scene with Van Helsing staking the Weird Sisters was just. so horrifying. I loved the way that Alan Burgon voiced the part, as well as the sound design that emphasized just how gruesome it was. This is no triumphant killing; we believe Van Helsing when he says, "Oh, my friend John, but it was butcher-work." I listened to it, and had to take a break afterward, and my first thought was, "Oh man, he is gonna have some trauma about this," and this fic was born.

-As long as I was having Van Helsing deal with trauma, I figured that he should also have some deep lingering regrets about how he handled Lucy's situation. Although he doesn't admit to doing wrong, I think it's noteworthy that he treats Mina very differently than he does Lucy— there is no yeeting Jonathan away from Mina's side, for instance— which indicates to me that his attitude toward vampires changed as he gained more knowledge, and it just made sense that he would second-guess how he acted when he was first trying to aggregate all his fragments of knowledge about vampires.

-A dream sequence seemed the best way to explore his doubts and trauma in a vivid way, so I settled on the most dramatic setting possible. I was a bit inspired by fairerforafleck's excellent fic "There is Some Fascination," although their setting is even cooler than mine!

-The image of Lucy looking up at him innocently while he brushes aside her hair to place the stake over her heart was one of the earliest moments I thought of when brainstorming. I made myself very sad thinking about it. :(

-"She screamed. Blood hit him like the slap of an ocean wave, salty and bright, and in an instant blood welled up from the floor and rose, knocking him off his feet. He fell into the rising tide, drowning as he felt his own body flying apart, limbs rent from their sockets, chest cracking open, entrails spilling out. Blood in his throat, his guts, his eyes, blood dissolving the cells of his body like acid, blood so thick it was impossible to tell where sensation ended and the scream began." I figure that if you're gonna go with the nightmare imagery, you might as well go hard. When I write a paragraph like this, I draft it with the weirdest, most intense imagery I can think of, throwing together associations even if they don't make sense, and in a later draft I sort through them and pick out the ones that I like the most. Oftentimes phrases that seem nonsensical at first glance end up being the most evocative. (I am very much a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" writer.)

-Even though Jack/Van Helsing isn't the point of the fic, I knew that I wanted someone to be there for him when he woke up; I think there's nothing worse than waking up alone from a nightmare. So I put Jack in there; he can't fix anything or bring any closure, but he's still there, and that still counts for something.

-"Art gets these dreams too, John told him once. Perhaps it is just the price to pay for rescuing a soul in such a manner." Someday I am gonna write a Van Helsing & Arthur fic where they either bond or clash (not sure which) over the shared experience of staking a vampire. Meanwhile Jack is holding fast to his conviction that Van Helsing made the right decision, because he can't emotionally handle it if VH is wrong.

-In the end, Jack asks if there is not any peace for Van Helsing to find, and he answers, "There is not." I wanted to capture the feeling of being caught in a trauma that feels like it will never end; there is no way to find peace in the foreseeable future, and the trauma can only be borne in the meantime. Usually when I write hurt I write comfort to go along with it, but I left the ending a bit raw and unfinished.

-The last two lines are, "Moonlight bathing them in silver. His chest aching with tears he could not shed." I liked the play of visual and tactile detail and the unfinished feeling of it all, emphasized by the sentence fragments.

Thanks again for the ask, I really enjoyed picking this apart!

(Ask game here)

[saltyoaktree]

LORE - anything about death of all things you wanted to share?

Hi manic!! Thanks for asking, I do have some (slightly gross) lore to share!

When I was thinking about the zombies I knew I wanted them to give me opportunities for a lot of suspense. So I based them on two creatures: the clickers from the last of us (fungal, poor vision, sound-oriented) and the monsters from Until dawn (don't move or they'll kill you!). As they grow older, their bodily structures are slowly replaced by fungus, so they become slower and less coordinated but also a lot more contagious

[pyratbytes]

They’re hereee!

The first set of chibi hard enamel pins featuring characters from Purple Director’s Cut & John Doe are here! You can get yours here: