#yendelion

[littlestsnicket]

"He didn't get much from it," he muttered. "He didn't get much from our friendship. He had little but trouble because of me. He constantly had to get me out of some scrape... help me..."' She leaned across the table, put her hand over his and squeezed it hard without saying anything. Her eyes held regret.

Blood of Elves

this makes me insane. totally and completely insane.

[thirillia]

I am thriving off the Yenskier content in the first chapter of Blood of Elves.

Yen is being so soft for him. She thanks him for travelling with Geralt so he may not be alone. And Dandelion is insecure because he thinks he was nothing but a nuisance in Geralts life. But they both just care so much about him and and that’s what they connect over.

I love this.

[littlestsnicket]

wip tuesday

thanks for tagging me @astaldis !

i am, as of rereading the relevant part of blood of elves and spending literal hours doing rewrites because i finally managed to put my finger on what it wasn’t quite working, finally making forward progress on the yendelion fic! (just have to finish writing the sex. yes, this is where i thought i was when i set my writing goals for the week but i know what the sex is supposed to achieve now so i mean it this time.)

snippet:

“I’m in your debt and you’re responsible for me,” Dandelion said, easily looping back to earlier in their conversation. “I suppose that’s the purpose of the Law of Surprise—to tie this sort of mess up with a neat bow.”

“Perhaps. Should I claim it?”

“I don’t mind—being in your debt, that is—as much as I would have thought. I can’t imagine I have much you would want, surprise or otherwise. And,” Dandelion’s expression shifted from serious to impish in a blink, “if you used the traditional formalism, you might be left waiting a very long time for me to return home.”

“You shouldn’t show your hand like that.”

Dandelion shrugged. “You’ve always had the advantage, I don’t suspect it matters much.”

Yennefer studied him with a frown. “Regardless, I accept your earlier offer. You may repay me in song. It is what your life is worth.”

“Others might take that as an insult, my lady, but song is my life’s purpose.”

tagging: @whoslaurapalmer @gellavonhamster (i have your one piece fic open in a tab waiting for me to read the comics or be in the specific fey mood where one can read fic that they know basically nothing about the source material) and anyone else who wants to play :)

[littlestsnicket]

title: worth

word count: 3.3k

what if, after yennefer rescued dandelion from rience, we saw the rest of their conversation, and then they had sex because yennefer is lonely and FOND of him; obsessively canon compliant

The pair sat in the near empty inn, watching the embers of the banked fire. Heavy thoughts lent themselves to heavy silence. Yennefer ought to rise from the table. She hadn’t intended to spend her evening with Dandelion—never mind that the proprietor had yet to return with her wine. The service left much to be desired. Inexplicably, she remained in her seat.

“Oh, you’re staying?” Dandelion asked, sweeping his somber, contemplative mood aside as easily as drawing open a curtain.

He sprawled back in his chair and cleaned chicken remnants from under his fingernails with a pen knife. It was, beyond any doubt, the closest thing to a weapon he had on him. But Yennefer caught his gaze flicking towards the door in uncharacteristic hypervigilance. She had no need to skim the surface of his thoughts to confirm that he felt vulnerable and unenthused at the idea of being left alone.

“Someone ought to look after you. I’m not convinced you won’t do something stupid instead of immediately returning to Redania like I told you.”

“You saved my life so now you’re responsible for it?” Dandelion’s tone was all levity, despite the seriousness of the matter. Yennefer’s responding laugh rang hollow.

Dandelion leaned forward conspiratorially, chin settling on his hand. “I don’t make a habit of admitting to mistakes, but you did save my life. I’ve already thanked you and promised to rehabilitate your reputation, but I find it’s not enough. I was wrong about you.”

[continue on ao3]

[littlestsnicket]

“there was something between us. that’s why i know him a bit. he does not like having help imposed on him. and if he was in need of it he would seek it from those he could trust. a year has gone by since those events and i… i’ve not had any news of him. and as for our debt, i owe him exactly as much as he owes me. no more and no less.”

i am very normal about them.

(also very normal about yen and dandelion. who else do we see her be vulnerable enough with to admit how sad and insecure she is about geralt to? certainly not triss. certainly not any of her sorceress ‘friends’. maybe ciri. but that’s very different.)

(yen is so lonely and it fucks me up.)

[littlestsnicket]

ahhh for the WIP game you know I gotta learn about your Dandelion and Yen fic!!

one of my key takeaways from reading the witcher books was that more people should be shipping book!yen and dandelion, so this fic is basically, 'what if yen and dandelion had sex after yen rescues him, but really what if they kept talking first and we learned even more about how they feel about each other and geralt (and bonus dandelion has a vampire kink cause i think that's really funny)'.

i got kind of side tracked because i miss remembered a line of dialogue and need to re-write a medium sized chunk in the middle because this fic is obsessively canon compliant, and then... actually write the sex having, but i'm having SO MUCH FUN WITH THEM THEY ARE THE BEST!

snippet below the cut:

Yennefer huffed a surprised laugh. “You shouldn’t show your hand like that.”

Dandelion shrugged, “You’ve always had the advantage, I don’t suspect it matters much.”

Yennefer studied him. He probably believed that. “Regardless, I accept your earlier offer. You may repay me in song. It is what your life is worth.”

“Others might take that as an insult, my lady, but song is my life’s purpose.”

“I know,” Yennefer replied with a mysterious smile. She turned and stared into the fire until Dandelion began to fidget. She could hear the tap of his fingers against the table. What she felt about his childish behavior was fondness, and it disgusted her. 

She turned to him, a reprimand at the ready, but her gaze alighted on his restless, clever fingers and her mind immediately turned to other matters—other rumors. Yennefer, over the course of her long life, had found that many women were dreadfully easily impressed by the smallest of effort put towards their pleasure, but perhaps the rumors about Dandelion had some merit. They really must for so many women to ignore his reputation as a cad. It had been such a long time since she had lain with anyone, let alone someone with hands as elegant as Dandelion’s. She thought of Geralt, who, though his hands could not look more different than his friend’s, also had clever fingers that were elegant in their own way. This only strengthened her resolve.

“Come up stairs with me,” she told Dandelion, bluntly. The man looked at her vaguely, but she could sense a flickering rush of images skittering across the surface of his empty, echoey mind space. She could pick out images of herself: piercing violet eyes, the elegant curve of her neck, a cascade of ebony hair, the way she smiled a little meanly to hide amusement; but mostly it was Geralt: Geralt frowning in concentration, Geralt bearing his teeth in a sad parody of a smile, Geralt with his face studiously blank, Geralt smiling a rare smile that actually met his eyes. She prepared herself for Dandelion to say no. 

Eventually, he said, “Alright.”

She should tease him, a man of legendary charm, for such a bland response, but she stood, trusting him to follow. Though she was loathed to admit it, she was relieved that she wouldn’t be alone.

(p.s. though this was originally going to be 'only one bed' fic, i changed my mind. there is not only one bed, yen is just lonely, horny, and feeling weirdly understood by the poet-man, and i never updated the title)

[littlestsnicket]

oh, so i was not in a bad, overly self-critical mood when i last read the klaus&lemony fic draft. it is that bad.

but that’s ok! i am, many years later (the google doc says it was created in 2019!!), much more confident in my ability to throw most of something out and figure out how to salvage the bits that are working into something else. and i have some ideas of what to try instead.

[littlestsnicket]

want to write brìan/eredin fic but me, being me, i need to re-watch the show first to be sure i'm getting the vibe right, but current things i would want to work in:

the moment where eredin doesn't say yes right away. he doesn't even say yes after that long stretching moment. merwyn has to leave and allow him to think. and how brìan looks a little bit nervous and sad but not surprised. i just think that is so good.

balor saying he gave eredin everything he wanted and eredin still betrayed him. how many awkward baths did they take? what was balor thinking of during them? was eredin thinking of brìan? or was he always on too high alert around balor to be thinking of his lover? would balor actually be able to come up with anything specific that eredin wanted?

eredin who seems so cautious and careful in every other situation with every other person letting really important classified information slip to brìan and not even being that upset when brìan uses it against him

just... fascinating relationship dynamic portrayed really economically in a show where stuff is happening all of the time.

[littlestsnicket]

perfectly good pair of scissors

Dandelion’s watching her. He couldn’t hurt her (she’s seen him hold a knife); she doesn’t really think he’d try. But he’s the sort of person who’s accustomed to having what he wants. That knowledge unsettles her at odd moments.

He tilts his head. “I understand certain things require a level of dramatics, but I have perfectly good scissors.”

Milva frowns comically. “Are you seriously criticizing my haircut?”

“Don’t be defensive! You ought to’ve made a better effort.”

Milva feels light without her braid. She tips her chin up and laughs. And Dandelion laughs with her as their compatriots watch, confused.

[littlestsnicket]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers (except me because obvs I have done it). Spread the self-love ❤

ahhh this is so hard!! i ended up going with ones i felt were personal achievements at the time rather than trying to decide which ones were objectively best or my favorite because that was too hard :D

worth (3.3k) yendelion; missing scene from blood of elves. this was a nightmare to write and worth every minute of it. i am so proud of myself for sticking with it until i was genuinely happy with it instead of giving up and saying good enough.

in which ciri acquires an emotional support bard (18.5k) post season 2 fic. this is by far the most complicated thing i've ever written. there were so many character arcs and relationship dynamics to track and make sure they started and ended where they were supposed to to be obsessively canon compliant. i think you can get in the habit as a fic writer of really only dealing with two characters at once, so this felt like a huge learning experience. i had to come up with a whole productivity tool to finish it too.

You can’t just say you’re leaving and head to the airport, or, Real Life is messier than a television finale (3.4k) abed centric community season 6 finale fic. this was something of a milestone for me. it was, at the time, the longest and most complicated fic i had written and also the first thing i had beta read. i still have literally all the feelings about this show and this fic.

slipping (.300k) olivia caliban fic. idk, i just really like this one and interconnecting drabble sequences are so much fun to write. and i feel like i always rec the same asoue fics, but i'm also really proud of all the drabbles i wrote for this fandom.

that wasn't here before (.100k) ian&barbara; doctor who. it's the very first drabble i ever shared with the internet (back in 2014), and i still think it holds up. and it's so on brand--somehow fan-wanky but joyful about it. doctor who is just riddled with 'continuity errors' and it's so much more fun to make them magical instead of whining about them.

(thank you so much for asking!)

[littlestsnicket]

For the writing ask game:

☀️ Has anyone ever left you a comment that made your day? What did it say?

💡 What’s the weirdest thing you’ve been inspired by?

(please & thank you!)

has anyone ever left you a comment that made your day? what did it say?

really, all comments make my day! just the feeling that someone liked something i did enough to go out of their way to tell me is lovely in and of itself. @kuwdora's comment on my recent yendelion fic was extra special.

what's the weirdest thing you've been inspired by?

oh that's an interesting one... i think i'm mostly inspired by other people's fan works--the 'oh that was so good but what if...' feeling is my favorite, but the 'grrr that is wrong' feeling is also fun to write from. but those seem like a very normal thing to be inspired by.

i don't have a good answer for this... uh... i thing that kept me going when i wanted to give up on ciri acquires an emotional support bard was my realization of the jaskier&geralt and ciri&dara parallels. which is weird solely because it is such a small, minuscule, tiny part of the fic, but it felt really important to me. and i couldn't articulate it as meta so i *had* to write the fic.

(thank you so much for asking!)

[littlestsnicket]

it’s wednesday it’s sprint board update time! 2/4 tasks complete last week, not great but it’s ok.

retro/planning/vague ramblings under the cut

so, one of the sprint tasks last week was write something, and i was staring at the doc on my phone telling myself ‘you just need to write like two sentences and you can call this task complete’ and i couldn’t make myself do it.

part of the point of this exercise is to harness the ridiculous amount of joy i get from checking off task lists or moving sticky notes around, so if that’s not enough to make me want to do something, i’m not going to force myself. this is a hobby after all. but it is quite frustrating. i want to want to write this fic so badly (which is unfortunately a distinctly different feeling from actually wanting to write the fic) but it’s not working.

the plan, as can be seen from the updated sprint plan, is to write some tangentially related meta in the hope that it will inspire me, and if it doesn’t i’ll just fill out move on to something else next week. i *will* come back to this, but it’s been sitting in my drafts for literal years (years longer than the yendelion fic), a few more weeks/months isn’t that big of a difference.

it’s not like i can’t write at all, i very much did write and post a other scavengers reign drabble this week. it’s just this fic that is resisting coming together.

and i’ve been keeping up with the fic rec challenge! i keep forgetting about that when i’m trying to account for my creative energy and even though i’ve given myself permission to just put these out there and not try to sell it to hard, it’s still quite a lot of mental effort. (especially dredging these stories out of my fairly scattered memory and then physically finding them cause i don’t actually bookmark stuff very much.)

i had also meant to spend a chunk of time going over my notes and planning last night, but instead i ended up at a queer cabaret event at a hyper-local (like 15 minute walk from my house) brewery (i didn’t know this was happening and had meant to meet a coworker for a drink and then because i was intrigued by the cabaret and the taco truck, i was there until 9pm), and i have no regrets. (except for consuming any amount of alcohol in this heat, but i drank enough fluids afterwards and felt fine by the morning so i don’t *really* regret that either.)

[littlestsnicket]

1/3 tasks completed last sprint. it’s ok though, i POSTED THE YENDELION FIC. I DID IT!!

retro/planning notes under cut

writing wise i achieved nothing over the weekend, but i managed to do most of my normal weekend chores done and attend a bridgerton watch party on saturday and then i spent all day sunday getting my tomatoes planted and repotting house plants (and then i took a bath and didn’t quite finish reading poor things). and then i’ve been scrambling to finish the stuff i didn’t get done over the weekend and pack and stuff.

basically the entire next sprint i’ll be visiting relatives and going to the beach, but i should be able to finish poor things before i leave and i’m going to bring The End with me and should have plenty of time to finish it. It’s not a long book.

also thinking about how i’m going to make this work for the earlier phases of fic writing while i’m working out the shape and stuff. i don’t really plot or outline before hand. things just kind of take shape as i write things out of order. and then having the sticky notes for the scenes that half exist in my head and committing to actually writing them is very helpful, but i don’t have those scenes until i’ve written stuff. i could make timebox commitments as i’m working stuff out. we’ll see.

[littlestsnicket]

it’s wednesday! it’s sprint update time! 3/4 tasks completed last week, which is really good actually since i was in a fugue state of over tiredness when i planned.

plannning/retro notes under cut

this is working. i did two of the tasks yesterday, and if i hadn’t made the commitments i would have just been like… eh i can start this later. read the part of the end i wanted to read (and decided i really need to reread the whole thing and probably part of tbl even though that is less relevant but it’s been a long time since i’ve read either of them, been more focused on the witcher and the last things i wrote for the snicketverse were about moxie) and wrote a whole 300 words of the new attempt at the klaus and lemony talk about things fic.

i think it will be a bit harder for me to write as much in the spring/summer so i’m going to try and scale back my commitments a tiny bit. there just seems to be more stuff going on and this is a hobby, it should not supersede my desire to be puttering around outside whenever it is nice out. (also need to replant most of my houseplants, watch bridgerton, and prepare for trip to visit family this weekend—did i over commit? nah, it’s fine…) (also my desire to be outside wins out over allergies so i’ve been kind of groggy even though i’ve been sleeping ok. i should try taking claritin.)

i think also switching between fandoms is kind of tough when i’m doing more than nebulous planning, so i’m going to focus on snicket stuff and we’ll get back to the radovid thing later.

And! I am finally posting the yendelion fic! I’m going to do it tomorrow! psyching myself up because i am uncharacteristically nervous about posting it. that’s my emotional support fic i started before season 2 came out and have rewritten like half a dozen times now! what do you mean i’m supposed to say i’m done with it? intellectually, i know i’ve gotten it right this time, and i need to let it go, and it will be good to have it out there so people other than soymimikyu can read it, but it feels like a lot!

(there are other things that have been in my wip folder for longer but i’ve not been as actively coming back to them and/or they are going to be >10k when complete, so the amount of time i have spent trying to get these 3k right is really something.)

[littlestsnicket]

updated sprint board, 1/2 tasks completed last week. i knew i was going to be busy but was somehow even worse than i thought (all good things, parents were visiting and then friend was unexpectedly in town so i was out being social most of the day sunday instead of recovering from house guests and writing). but! i am so so close on the yendelion fic after LITERALLY YEARS of poking at it. if my brain was not a pile of goo from last nights ‘why the fuck is there water inside my house’ adventure i probably would be able to finish the task today, it can wait until i’m actually awake and functioning. still needs a tiny bit of editing but it’s so close!

should have a normal amount of free time this week so committing to more things than i have been. also, i want to write the twin peaks fic so bad, but i need to do some pondering. there’s a lot of story i want to tell but i also feel like i used all the really good ideas for the wonderfulxstrange drabbles i wrote about caroline. that doesn’t mean i can’t reuse them, but i need to give it some thought.

[littlestsnicket]

oh no! i forgot to do a sprint board update! i was thinking about it yesterday but was apparently confused about what day it was and what that meant. anyway 4/5 tasks complete!

retro/planning notes under cut

so much stuff done! sort of. or well… yeah. a lot of the tasks were small, but i put a huge amount of time resulting in meaningful progress that i am really excited about on the yendelion fic, it just didn’t quite line up with what i committed to. and then i had a lot of time i could have spent doing fiddly editing but not the large chunk of dedicated time i needed to sit down and write emotionally intense and vulnerable sex.

i could have guessed that was going to happen, but i committed to what i committed to based on the writing advice that you shouldn’t be editing as you write, but i was reminded that, while i intellectually understand why people say that, it does not work for me. a lot of the time, when i’m struggling with something, having the scenes before and after ironed out and working really concretely helps.

idk, i think that’s bad advice for me. i could see how it might be necessary advice to finish something novel length? or maybe if your writing something novel length you can have entire placeholder scenes that you work out in the next draft, but if your writing under 5k word fic it’s just not useful or necessary to think of things that way. but something to think about—i am theoretically interested in writing two really long things (witcher pseudo-cyberpunk au and the current tentative scope of the snicket siblings schism fic is like… cover all the canon events from jacques’ perspective, that’s not going to be what it is but i think for it to be interesting it will need to be long and complicated), and the way i write needs to change somewhat/get more efficient if i’m going to achieve those things. but also this is a hobby so… we’ll see.

anyway, only two tasks for this week cause my parents are visiting (brother was supposed to come too but he caught a stomach bug) so i will have limited time and want to give myself plenty of time on the one task that will be really hard. (i can to it! i am confident now! but it will be hard!)