good omens fanfic writers throwback thursday~
an arm to be held at the wrist
thank you @curiouspupsicle and @copperplatebeech for getting the ball rolling on throwback thursdays, and to @quitequaintrelle and @carry-the-sky for further inspiring me to participate!
monday marked a year since i posted the final chapter of this gift fic for @portraitofalonelydyke (who also made the attached cover!), so i decided to look at it again for this week's throwback thursday.
in the runup to devin's birthday last year, i asked her for a gift fic prompt and she gave me 'tattoos'. i came up with a human au idea and a canon setting idea in response (the latter of which i have now forgotten!), and decided to go with the human au.
much of the time, the inception of my stories involves an image i have in my head of a scene, or a small fragment of a scene (like a line of dialogue), that i want to flesh out into a full fic. i start by figuring out the context of that image and then work around it, planning how the characters will get there and sometimes, but not always, what will happen afterwards.
for this getting together fic, i had an image in my mind of aziraphale tattooing crowley in his studio, declaring that everything in it is his - he wants crowley to know that that statement includes crowley himself, if he wants it to. and crowley does. that was the foundation around which the story was built, and interestingly, when devin created a second cover design to accompany one of the chapters, she picked up on that very moment as one to include without us having discussed it.
seeing this made me feel as though my mission had been accomplished, because the scene i saw as central to the fic, perhaps even as its most significant moment, had translated as such to the person i had gifted it to. it was a delight to receive this amazing accompaniment to the story, along with the cover, which both capture the mood and aesthetic of the fic so well!
back in january, @outrageousring5655 posted a podfic of this story, and listening to it for the first time was definitely up there with favourite fandom experiences. it was fascinating to hear how ring delivered the dialogue i had written according to her own interpretation of it, and the masterful atmosphere she created with her recording. it's a podfic i have somewhat selfishly gone back to several times since my first listen!
if there was one thing i would change about this fic, it'd be the epilogue - reading it back, it feels very bare-bones, and i think i could have fleshed it our or spent more time developing the writing in it to really honour the story told in the rest of the fic properly. maybe this is something i can rework in the future!
here are the details of the fic: