#it’s technically 7 not 5 songs but shhhhhh

[mindless-bug]

My top 5 Sleep Token songs

1. Euclid & Descending (they’re tied)

2. Sugar

3. Granite

4. The Apparition & Blood Sport (also tied)

5. Take Aim

[pynkhues]

fic asks!! 5, 7 for CYF, and 19 and 22 for pirates pls and ty

Ahhh, I'm sorry this one's coming so late, it was briefly swallowed up by my inbox 🙈

5: Share a snippet that you’re proud of from an upcoming fic/chapter.

I'm actually proud of a lot of the last chapter of To Face Unafraid, namely because it moves through a few different conflicts and builds off a few different dynamics, and weaving them together in a way that gives every character agency and makes them all feel present in the way a family gathering should feel (even with characters who aren't technically there) has been a really fun thing to explore.

I've shared a lot of bits and pieces of it already, haha, but I like the opening, so I'm going to share that. I think it's a good little mood-setter

-

It’s the shift of the mattress that wakes him.

The twist of weight at his side, disrupting the sheets, blankets, throws, then the movement of the smooth, warm dip of the waist that holds his hand. It slides slowly, slowly, until his arm slips off and drops to hit the bed with a thud. It’s all it takes for his eyes – still bleary with sleep – to snap open, to search out the disturbance, the disruption, and he can’t even really see her in the darkness of their bedroom, but he smells the soft geranium of her face cream and the lavender of her shampoo when she leans back over him.

Smells that sweet, perfect thing that’s just her underneath it.

“Shhh, shhhhhh, go back to sleep,” she coos at him, her voice light and airy, like he’s one of the kids of somethin’, and before he can even really get his head on straight – the exhaustion stretching like an animal in the cave of his skull, she’s gone. Slipped out of their room like a breeze done rufflin’ his fur, and Rio rolls over, eyes finally adjusting enough to see the time on the clock on his bedside table, and - -

Fuck.

7: Were there any ideas you had for [insert fic] that you couldn’t make work? What were they?

Yeah, actually! I had a whole grocery story action sequence that I ended up cutting from Cross Your Fingers and condensing to a much smaller sequence + the scene with Beth in the carpark with Slav's guys. It was a bit of a shame to lose, as I think it was really good and thick with tension, and it revealed a lot more about Slav's operation in the process of that, but in the end, it was kind of irrelevant to the plot, and I didn't want to detract from the sequence at the hotel that was coming up, so I endeed up cutting it for flow purposes. Still! It was a sad one to lose!

19: 15 words to describe the aesthetic of What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have.

Oooo, okay, I did this one before, but I'm going to do it again: corset strings, stiff bedding, waves crashing, whale songs, almost touches, salt-crusted lips, a deep breath.

22: Have you used any symbolism in What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have? What does it represent?

Yeah, I have quite a few symbols in the pirate au! I feel like a lot of them are pretty unsubtle, haha, like the vase at the start representing not just Dean's lack of care of Beth's history, but Beth's earthly ties slowly being severed. Things like that.

But of course, the biggest symbol in it is water. I try to feature water in a few different ways during the story – in bathwater, in rain and storms, and, of course, in the ocean – and really tie to it this idea not just of opportunity and freedom, but also this sense that Beth feels at home in water. One of the first scenes of the fic is her in the bath, and it's this time where she's uncertain in a lot of ways, but she's also reflective and peaceful in that uncertainty.

Her and Rio having the bathtub in their cabin in that sense is sort of this extension of that, where they see each other in water and it connects them even without them realising it, because they have a similar relationship to it. They might not be able to articulate it, but water is a part of them both, and there's something in seeing the other unwind while it laps at their skin that speaks to them, and when they eventually bath together, it's more meaningful because of it. It becomes an act of peace and understanding and opportunity, because that's what the water gives them.

Fic ask game