#this is going to be hell to revise

[dyrewrites]

WiP Questionnaire

Tagged by @winglesswriter (hello new fren!) here

I am taggin @rowanmgrey-author and YOU

--Big Post Coming Through--

Answering for "Before Deluca"

What was the first part of your WIP that you created?

->This<- which became the introduction/beginning of the first chapter. Most of it was wildly altered...but it's why I have a 130k words of novel now.

If your story was a TV show, what would the theme song/intro be?

It's not much for a theme song, but for some reason my brain says this one;

What are your favorite characters that you made? Why?

Lucient is the favorite of this WiP, it should be Ludovico/Deluca (who is telling the story) but it's not. I love him too but Lucient's just so much fun to write and more complex than he initially seems. Also he's bratty but loving and earnest and just...he just wants this man, ok. Forever, only him. And I love it.

What other pieces of media do you think your fan base would share?

Honestly, no idea. My brain cannot wrap around the idea of a fan base for anything I've done. Just does not compute.

What has been your biggest struggle with your WIP?

Getting the two main characters to stop making me write sex scenes. I kid (it's a problem I don't really mind) but the biggest struggle has been the real world setting and how much of it I want to replace with the magic I've injected into it. Historical fantasy is one thing, but it's more Alternate Earth at this point and my brain gets angry when it has to conform to rules it didn't create.

Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them!

Unfortunately not. They wouldn't be safe around the main cast. There are vampire who behave like animals, and by that I mean they wholeheartedly believe they are dogs due to abuse and mind-control and it isn't pretty. So...no animals, I am sorry. At least not yet, there may be a cat at some point (I tend to put them in everything).

How do your characters get around? (Ex. Trains, horses, cars, dragons, etc.)

A great big ol' sailing ship that begins with the name La Lune Royale but gets another one later. She is very beeg and covered in magic. When landbound, they use carriages, coaches, a train here soon, and eventually a car (maybe, I dunno if either of them should be trusted with such a thing).

What part of your WIP are you working on right now?

The time-skip that takes them through the rest of their first century together and into their second (and final). So...halfway point? You will recall the 130k I mentioned at the top, yes? Help me.

What aspects (tropes, maybe) of your WIP do you think will draw people in?

The vampires probably, and the romance, and maybe the magic? I dunno. It gets weird and doesn't seem to follow some of the tropes expected of this genre...I write weird vampires.

What are your hopes for your WIP?

To have it done by the end of the year would be neat, like done done, published and all.

->blank questions under cut<-

What was the first part of your WIP that you created?

If your story was a TV show, what would the theme song/intro be?

What are your favorite characters that you made? Why?

What other pieces of media do you think your fan base would share?

What has been your biggest struggle with your WIP?

Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them!

How do your characters get around? (Ex. Trains, horses, cars, dragons, etc.)

What part of your WIP are you working on right now?

What aspects (tropes, maybe) of your WIP do you think will draw people in?

What are your hopes for your WIP?

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Flower Empowered.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[dayurno]

this is somewhat of a vent post & something i said i would not do again but has been plaguing me enough that i think getting it out might feel better. so. has anydoggy else been. Baffled and upset by nora sakavic’s refusal to speak on how terribly aftg has treated its characters of color? with the author of the series coming back with a new book and starting up on her online activity again, and questions of what she’d change about aftg bubbling up, it’s particularly glaring to me that we are all playing this very long game of pretend where we ignore how badly the non-white cast has been treated & her lack of thoughts on it

and i understand not wanting to bring up nicky and thea because people pick on her for it. i’m not trying to discredit nora sakavic’s terrible history of getting harrassed online by aftg fans. but i think it is very cynical, and it is very juvenile, and most of all very cruel, that she gets to ignore the very real ways the books have set up these characters to be hated. i think it’s obvious why the characters who get the most hate are the only canonical characters of color, and i think we do not get to treat this like a deliberate decision on the fandom’s part when the books have put these same characters in degrading and embarrassing and terrible positions in the first place. aftg is not a story about nice characters with clean pasts, but there is a very specific nastiness to the only characters of color being a brown man who sexually harasses and later assaults the main character, a black woman whose only scene is her lashing out at her love interest after being ignored for the first two books, and the japanese villain who gets maybe two lines of complexity before he goes back to being a terrible person. the white cast, in comparison, while not at all free from flaws, are never shown to commit mindless evil; all of their actions are ultimately justified. the book goes out of its way to give them concession after concession. we know exactly who to side with, because aftg tells us who these people are. does nicky’s assault ever get addressed in the books? does riko’s reasoning to be the way that he is ever gets more than briefly aluded to? is thea reserved even a shred of humanity or grace in her one scene?

anyway. it’s been years of talking about this and the fandom has been constantly hostile to criticism in this regard, and more recently any criticism at all, and it’s Grating to be on the other side of this discussion. it’s exhausting to know that in ten years we do not get even an acknowledgment besides the author saying she will not answer questions about nicky and thea anymore. it’s upsetting and it’s ugly and i wish no one had to talk about this again, but we do because what i thought was common sense has been washed away by a sudden influx of no-nuance adoration for the trilogy. basically i hope we all explode

[noxious-fennec]

Vampire bats establish bonds by sharing regurgitated blood, un-self-aware cannibals are much the same.

[ruvviks]

Vitali kept cutting and cutting and cutting, tears dripping down onto his tank top and into the sink. He accidentally scraped one of the scissor blades past his finger- and his tears rapidly mixed with a few drops of deep red blood. He loved his hair. He had always done so- but his mother too. She had been obsessed with it, and when he had decided to bleach it she had been livid. But for some reason she had still allowed him to do it as many times as he wanted, as if she believed it would at least stop him from cutting it short, even after he had come out as transgender. And it had worked, somehow. He had never even dared to think about picking up a pair of scissors. Vitali let a single scream leave his lips as he threw the scissors down into the sink, gripping the edge tightly again as he nearly lost his balance. He was out of breath; shaky, shallow inhales providing him with just enough oxygen to not pass out, and he slowly looked back up at his reflection. And in that split second of realization, he regretted it. All of it. A sudden clarity washed over him and his sobs faltered, deafening silence washing over the bathroom as he carefully brushed his now neck-length hair out of his face. It was uneven; some strands barely even reached his chin. He looked different, now. Could barely recognize himself. — From Chapter 12: The Mother; read the full fic here

taglist (opt in/out)

@shellibisshe, @florbelles, @ncytiri, @hibernationsuit, @stars-of-the-heart;

@lestatlioncunt, @katsigian, @radioactiveshitstorm, @estevnys, @adelaidedrubman;

@celticwoman, @rindemption, @carlosoliveiraa, @noirapocalypto, @dickytwister;

@killerspinal, @euryalex, @ri-a-rose, @velocitic, @thedeadthree;

@jacobseed

[cult-of-the-eye]

I'm going to bash my head into a fucking WALL

[rosesutherlandwrites]

This revision is some slow going. I’m not sure it’s ACTUALLY going slower than Salty did but right now it sure freaking feels that way

this is my own fault for being Ambitious ™️ and later once I beat all the kinks out of this

[hjemne]

MOTHERFUCKERS I AM GOING TO SURVIVE THE WEEK FROM HELL 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[depvotee]

Making more bodiesssss

[walterdecourceys]

i have to stand in front of my entire church of old dutch people and tell them about how much i believe in jesus tomorrow did you guys know this. and i'm going to do it after pulling an all-nighter writing about chess the fucking musical

[sleepvines]

the pressure of working on a final draft vs the relief of it being the last one....

[evviejo]

ugh i kinda created a community - which i will probably regret (either because no one joins it or too many people join it) - but it's pending approval and it's taking forever

it's for writers of original fiction, btw. i'll link it when it gets approved

[whitestopper]

The change from Nick almost deadnaming Elle in the comics to Nick finding Elle vaguely familiar in the series is interesting. I get that it's because it would be a more natural way for Nick to acknowledge Elle went to Truham without (nearly) deadnaming her, but it prompts some suggestions as to why he doesn't fully know her:

Elle is wearing make-up - this was possibly something she never did at Truham or at least something she could do less obviously. This could work but the latter condition suffers from the fact that Elle's usual make-up isn't particularly out there (if we saw her wearing bold eyeshadow or lipstick, this would be more substantial).

Elle's hairstyles at Truham were different - we never see her canon hairstyle at Truham but we know she was suspended over hair length, so it is possible that this was more because she was braiding her hair and keeping it down or wearing low ponytails and such rather than her actual hair length. This is harder to find ground for because there aren't any Truham boys with long hair in focus for comparison - Otis also wears braids but his are chin length - and also potentially erases the anti-black reasoning behind Elle's suspensions (not that Heartstopper will likely acknowledge that as a possibility).

Elle's face has had some physical change (be this due to HRT or FFS) and there has been substantial progress. This makes some sense as Elle hasn't been at Truham since December and Charlie's birthday party takes place in April, with an even longer gap if we believe that Elle had medical leave and/or suspension which kept her out of school before Christmas holidays, and it would add to her fear of loneliness if she'd been that isolated for that long. But if it is the case, then it makes it all the more of a waste that this is never delved into with detail.

More generally, Elle has been absent from Truham for long enough that Nick doesn't recognise her.

[dyrewrites]

Aha, ha.

I can't get into Before Deluca...Deluca's head right now because of all the sad. He's not sad in that, he's remembering happy things.

That's why I pivoted to the series, where he's constantly masking misery and a few missed meals from a massacre.

It's fun when you figure it out, isn't it?

...not helpful, but fun.

[imflyingfish]

Aggh feeling super proud of myself like im getting on so well atm im learning to drive and im learching french and my art is going really well and ive been enjoying spending time with myself and ive been organising more things for my future and now it feels possible and i hit that deadline and ive been more equiped to deal with things that definetly would have given me a breakdown in march and like. This year is going to suck and im not getting everything i want done but its not going terribly either

[lookedlikethebins]

guys guys guys guys i think i finished it i think i finished the fic oh my god now i just need to like. reset my brain so i can revise/proof it but OH My GOD I THINK IT'S DONE!!!