#it's just taking me a while

[thickenmyblood]

With 15/20(?) chapters completed for hand in unlovable hand, I still can’t understand how any version of Laurent could have a sexual and romantic relationship with a person he barely knows and clearly doesn’t love. It seems so totally out of his nature. I respect you making this choice for the story you wanted to tell, I guess I’m just curious why you made it. Pacat said that Laurent is an “all or nothing” person, so the idea that he could dump Damen and shortly start hooking up with some random jerk like Maxime is really hard to fathom. The guy seems like a pretentious, performative douchebag that the canon Laurent would have ridiculed and excoriated, not someone he would have considered as any type of partner. Laurent choosing to have sex with someone like that is inconceivable and unrecognizable to me. I love how you write Nicaise and a lot of the other relationships, and again, it’s your story and so whatever characterization you choose is your right! But regardless of whatever in-story reasons your Laurent has for being like this, I hope at some point you as the author will also talk about why you wrote him in this way. Thanks for reading my opinion.

hello! my reply will be below the cut.

i don't think we're at a point in hiuh where you can fully understand why laurent started seeing maxime, so i don't exactly fault you or anyone else for asking this kind of question. this reply will sadly give you very few spoilers on laurent's motivations. what needs explaining will be explained in the fic, and whether you or other readers agree/disagree with it (as in, laurent's intentions and actions and thought process), from a moral or even psychological point of view, exceeds the limits of my writing.

however, what does concern my writing is the characterization aspect of your ask. i understand that fanfiction, by definition, does not exist in a bubble. it is a derivative work. it comes from somewhere else. obviously, when compared to canon (where laurent turned down every single romantic/sexual offer he had before and after damen), hiuh exhibits a lot of contradictions and apparent ooc-ness. it is impossible not to compare fanfiction to its original source. without the og material, there would be no fanfiction.

having said all of this, i think your ask and overall perspective overlooks the main point of the fic itself. in order to understand hiuh (boiled down to its bare tags: a breakup fic), you have to understand why laurent dumped damen. for the first half of the fic, damen himself doesn't understand this. he looks at the truth and denies it, time and time again, rewriting the narration of their break up to fit into a more comfortable lie: he didn't dump me, it was a mutual agreement. later on, once damen has had some character growth, he realizes that it was laurent that initiated the breakup and why.

laurent did not break up with damen because he was cheating on him, because he was bored, because he was suddenly straight. laurent broke up with damen because he felt that damen was hurting nicaise, emotionally and psychologically. in fact, we have seen in early chapters how nicaise absorbed damen's harmful messages on mental health/masculinity/self-expression. whether or not that was the right decision is not the point. whether or not laurent became the Perfect Single Parent after the breakup is not the point. laurent broke up with damen because they were vastly different and they were no longer good for/to each other. that was laurent's reasoning, flawed or not, morally correct or not, hypocritical or not. in real life, people make decisions and convince themselves of why they're right all the time. why should fiction be the exception?

now that we have established that the breakup was not simply a whim on laurent's end, we can perhaps approach laurent's dating life with a more balanced perspective. is laurent truly and irrevocably in love with maxime? so far into the story, damen doesn't know, which means we don't know. he sees them together, they seem happy, he concludes that they're in love. has damen always been right in hiuh and, dare i say, in canon? no. why did laurent start dating someone so radically different from damen and yet so much like him? have you thought about how much damen and maxime might have in common and where they differ? why is maxime more awful than damen? maxime made some bad, reproachable comments. but so did damen at the start of the fic. has damen not been pretentious throughout the fic? has he not thought himself above others, judged them, ridiculed them, and hurt them? has damen not hurt laurent? (yes, laurent also hurt damen, i will address this in a different ask). i know i have said this before, multiple times, and i stand by it: economic class is NOT examined well or thoroughly in hiuh. however, are maxime and damen not rich? do they come from different economic backgrounds? aren't they both slightly out of touch with reality? what is it about maxime that truly gets on your nerves?

it is more than okay to read this version of laurent and 1. not understand why he is the way that he is, given that it hasn't been explained in the story yet and 2. not like it. you and anyone reading the fic is completely, 100% allowed to dislike, hate, loathe, be irritated to the point of tears by this version of him. what i care about is that when the fic is done, you look at him, IN THE VERY SPECIFIC CONTEXT OF THIS STORY, and see a consistent, well-written characterization. this is not about readers rooting for lamen, for laurent, for damen, for true ever lasting love... this is about the story making sense. that is what i care most about: coherence and consistency.

to answer your final question: why did i choose to write laurent like this? i chose to write laurent the way i saw him to be in canon. snarky, smart, sometimes unjustifiably mean, and at his very core self-hating. that is my personal interpretation of laurent. from the moment we disagree on any of those pillars, it becomes quite difficult to think that we are talking about the same character. yes, he is frigid in canon, he is saving himself for the grave, he is not at all promiscuous. but to me, his self-hatred is perhaps his most defining feature. and, obviously, my favorite. which is not to say you can't read laurent as someone that doesn't hate himself in canon. you can. these are not my books, and even if they were i wouldn't dream of telling you what you can or can't think about them. yet this is my vision, this is how i see him.

as for the "all or nothing" quote, i believe you are talking about a snippet from the summer palace. if not, correct me. i have many, many, many issues with that short story. that is why i have decided to exclude further commentary on that from my reply. i hope you understand. either way, I don't see how that statement contradicts what's happened so far in hiuh.

i don't want you or anyone reading this to take my reply as a slap on the wrist or some sort of "angry writer yells at a cloud" exposition. i am not mad, and i like getting questions and comments that challenge my writing, that ask for clarification, that complain. this is part of being a writer and sharing your work with others and i am more than fine with it. i wish, if anything, that i had more time to explain and reply, to quote my own work and give you specific examples for things, but i do not have that luxury.

thank you for your time!

PS. this entire commentary is not to be taken as The Author's Interpretation Is The Holy Word.

[juiche]

a moment of peace before the whole world shatters 😇

get your own print here ❤️

[perfectlyripeclementine]

calling my lover "mine" but not in the way that my toothbrush or notebook are mine, mine in the way my neighborhood is mine, and also everybody else's, "mine" like mine to tend to, mine to care for, mine to love. "mine" not like possession but devotion.

[theshadowrealmitself]

I like to think that Vulcans who come to understand that Humans just can’t try to process emotions the same way as them, it’s just healthiest to let it out in harmless ways, decide that venting and stuff should be taken just as seriously as Vulcan’s meditation time, and will encourage the Humans around them to complain about what’s upsetting them

People who are used to aloof Vulcans who avoid Humans at all cost running into one comforting a Human

“-and then they said my cheesecake was subpar, and they didn’t even bring a dish!!!”

“The purpose of this event was that every participant brings a food item of sorts, correct?”

“Yeah!!”

“And they did not follow this rule while insulting dishes that were brought?”

“Mostly just my dish but yeah >:(“

“How illogical”

“That’s what I’m saying!!!”

[elodieunderglass]

changes and trends in horror-genre films are linked to the anxieties of the culture in its time and place. Vampires are the manifestation of grappling with sexuality; aliens, of foreign influence. Horror from the Cold War is about apathy and annihilation; classic Japanese horror is characterised by “nature’s revenge”; psychological horror plays with anxieties that absorbed its audience, like pregnancy/abortion, mental illness, femininity. Some horror presses on the bruise of being trapped in a situation with upsetting tasks to complete, especially ones that compromise you as a person - reflecting the horrors and anxieties of capitalism etc etc etc. Cosmic horror is slightly out of fashion because our culture is more comfortable with, even wistful for, “the unknown.” Monster horror now has to be aware of itself, as a contingent of people now live in the freedom and comfort of saying “I would willingly, gladly, even preferentially fuck that monster.” But I don’t know much about films or genres: that ground has been covered by cleverer people.

I don’t actually like horror or movies. What interests me at the moment is how horror of the 2020s has an element of perception and paying attention.

Multiple movies in one year discussed monsters that killed you if you perceived them. There are monsters you can’t look at; monsters that kill you instantly if you get their attention. Monsters where you have to be silent, look down, hold still: pray that they pass over you. M Zombies have changed from a hand-waved virus that covers extras in splashy gore, to insidious spores. A disaster film is called Don’t Look Up, a horror film is called Nope. Even trashy nun horror sets up strange premises of keeping your eyes fixed on something as the devil GETS you.

No idea if this is anything. (I haven’t seen any of these things because, unfortunately, I hate them.) Someone who understands better than me could say something clever here, and I hope they do.

But the thing I’m thinking about is what this will look like to the future, as the Victorian sex vampires and Cold War anxieties look to us. I think they’ll have a little sympathy, but they probably won’t. You poor little prey animals, the kids will say, you were awfully afraid of facing up to things, weren’t you?

[bacchuschucklefuck]

typical tavern scene

[mipexch]

I WAS MADE FOR YOU // YOU WERE MADE FOR ME

[egophiliac]

was this anyone else's first thought, or

[bathroom-sand]

paramount and spyglass are trying so hard right now to save face because jenna ortega rightfully left the scream franchise after they fired melissa for supprting palestine. nobody is dumb enough to believe the excuse that it’s a scheduling conflict hours after rumors she was trying to get out of her contract cause she was pissed. i’m very thankful that jenna is risking her career and using her position to do the right thing. she’s been outspoken about palestine for years now. i hope this begins a trend of zionist losing money for their support and complacency with an active genocide

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

going through my old journals as part of therapy homework and i'm reading a section written in the emotional wreckage of a full-on breakdown when i get hit with this line:

There is never a satisfying answer to ‘Why didn’t they love me?’

like wow babe. good fucking point

[rika-mortis]

Made a silly alternate version for the previous comic

[thatkoiboi]

//WARNING: meltdown, dissociation, spiraling//

I'm proud of you and all your accomplishments! Everything will be okay <3

[stil-lindigo]

scorched earth.

a comic about a princess who died in a fire.

(this is a sequel to bite of winter, a comic about Snow and what became of her after her death.)

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creative notes:

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all my other comics

store

[sableeira]

And Dazai is like: omg how did he figure it out?!?!?!?

[cringefail-clown]

been thinking about no-sburb/alternia escapees au

[girlboyburger]

had an identity crisis, prime time for a slight sona redesign!

it's cow! (again!)

+ a closeup because i'm really proud of the eyes