#an ever-fixed mark

[just-another-weird-artist]

Self indulgent little thing inspired by one of my guilty pleasures, @amarguerite 's fic from the amazing "An Ever-fixed Mark" series. I have never read such a brilliant and genuinely touching story that spawned from such a crack-y idea.

Bonus atty sketches for fun.

[thedabblingshepherdessbindery]

An Ever-Fixed Mark by ninepiecesofcrait

Cover based off 1904 “Love Finds the Way” by Paul Leicester Ford.

Typeset & design by me!

[jessonel]

"an ever-fixed mark" by ninepiecesofcrait

A The Little Prince-themed bind??? Hell, yeah! From the moment I started this wonderful fic, all I could think about was the impact The Little Prince had on the story, and I immediately knew exactly what to do. I picked up my own Brazilian edition of the book (O Pequeno Príncipe, translated), a really popular edition here that I bought when I was a teenager, and got to work. 👑

For this project, I redrew Scorpius as the Little Prince, with his mushrooms instead of flowers, his cute black dragon plushie, and his favorite book (inception moment here because I drew the exact edition I have, which also inspired the bind itself haha). 🍄

For each chapter, I added a different constellation (first and last chapters are son and father), since the story is mostly about Black family traditions and their magic. The stars were a natural choice when it comes to the Blacks, after all — and the dinkus represents Draco, Hermione, and Scorpius forming their own little constellation as they become a family.

At the end, I also added the NottPott spinoff, "a merry hour"!

I had so much fun making this bind, and I’m really happy with how it turned out! This lovely story warmed my heart, and it’s the thickest bind I’ve made so far!

Typeset and artwork by @jessonel

[more photos]

[sylvanfreckles]

Wanna guess what I'm doing this weekend?

An Ever-Fixed Mark (working title)

EraserMic's platonic wedding is finally here!

Title is from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 (Let me not to the marriage of true minds), which has inspired a lot of what I'm working on. Get ready for Yamada making a truly hideous breakfast, Aizawa trying to explain platonic life partners to three teenage boys, no one agreeing on the wedding party (except wanting Eri to be flower girl, while she just wants to help Satou make the cake...flour girl hehe), Ms. Joke and Nedzu fighting to the death over who gets to walk Aizawa down the aisle, and more!

Huh. Maybe they should just elope after all.

[amarguerite]

Hello! Just wanted to say that I've slowly but surely been making my way through all of your P&P AUs (I was way too excited when I realised that there was a Temeraire crossover) and I just wanted to say that your stories are so incredible - from the pacing and action to the dialogue and romance. You have such a remarkable grasp on the social satire of the era too. Honestly, you've made Elizabeth/Colonel Fitzwilliam into such a genuinely heartwarming pairing and have entirely converted me to their cause! Thank you so much for writing these!

oh my gosh!! Thank YOU so much for the kind comment!!

[aniron48]

It's WIP Wednesday!

So, I have a few projects at the moment that I'm having so much fun with, but unfortunately the rest of my family now has COVID and I'm focusing on keeping everyone healthy and happy, so the odds of me posting any of the things I had originally planned for this week are....slim to none. 😩

But in the meantime, it's WIP Wednesday! Today's excerpt is from my WIP "An Ever-Fixed Mark," which is a little follow up to my Glass Onion fic, "A Good Man." Finished work to include Blanc and Phillip's first date, a Very Significant Painting, probably some croissants, and even a little mystery solving, as a treat. Excerpt is below the cut:

Caught up as he was in his maudlin thoughts, when his phone finally did ring, he nearly dropped it, fumbling to accept the call before it stopped ringing.

“Shit. Ah, sorry. Hello?”

“Good evening,” drawled the voice on the other end of the line. “Do I have the pleasure of speaking with Phillip?”

“Yes—ah, yes. Hi. Hi there.”

“Excellent. Phillip, this is Benoit Blanc. We met last weekend, at the dinner party.”

“Blanc, of course, I remember. How are you?”

“Well, I’m afraid I have to start by asking for your forgiveness. I’d hoped to call you quite a bit sooner, but I got pulled into a case the day after we met.”

“I’m sure you must be very busy.”

“I am, it’s true. Frankly, it’s better for me to stay busy, in the grand scheme of things, but I find it can be inconvenient at times, too.  Take right now, for example. I’d wanted to ask you to accompany me to dinner, but this case has been somewhat all-consuming, and there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight.”

“I understand completely,” Phillip said, his heart sinking. And he did. It was gentle enough, as let downs went. Perhaps in time, the possibility of what might have been would stop smarting entirely, and he would be left with an amusing anecdote of the evening Benoit Blanc looked at him as if he were a mystery he’d never be tired of solving.

“All the same, I don’t want to wait any longer to see you. It’s extraordinarily presumptuous of me, I know, but how would you feel about killing two of the proverbial birds with one stone?”

Phillip shifted in his office chair, his errant heart beating fast again. “What did you have in mind?”

“Well, Phillip,” Blanc said, the smile in his voice evident even over the phone, “if you’re amenable, I’d very much like it if you’d come with me to take a look at a painting.”

cc: @mi6-cafe

[thevioletjones]

when you see this, post a snippet of your wip

Mickey had slathered himself in the SPF 50 organic sunscreen that Ian swore by, and lied out on a cushioned chaise longue by the pool, sunbathing in a pair of Ian’s short red shorts, black Ray-Bans firmly in place. Maybe he could get used to a life of leisure after all. . . become a househusband with very little obligations. Turn his brain off, and be taken care of, and have free reign to do whatever he pleased. He could sip cocktails all day, and soak up the sunbeams, and when he got tired, he could take a nap. He could learn how to play guitar like he’d always wanted to, and take up whatever other hobbies popped into his head, and pay for private lessons to boot. He could start hitting the gym a lot more again, and get ripped like he’d been in jail, where there wasn’t much else to do besides work out. He should probably do that anyway, just to keep up with Ian’s rigidly maintained camera-ready physique.

Maybe Mickey didn’t need more in life.

Maybe he was being ridiculous thinking that he had to find a way to make something of himself. Something that wasn’t built on strong-arming, manipulation, and lies. The day-to-day could be simple. Fate had written that possibility into his future out of nowhere. Ian’s mere existence in his life gave him the easy option.

If he wanted it.

Did he really want it, though? Sure, a permanent vacation sounds great to anyone who’s had to struggle to earn money their whole life, but in practice, no work ever again could become tedious. And even if Ian didn’t mind him being a leech on his resources, Mickey didn’t think he’d be able to sit idly by forever and let another man do all the heavy lifting for him. Surely they’d both start to resent each other. And maybe that would fester and turn into something even worse. Soulmates weren’t immune to strife or hardships.

Mickey reached up to rub his forehead free of crinkles. Why the fuck was he thinking about all this now? He was supposed to be blank-minded, and just enjoying the warmth and comfort of the low-stress atmosphere. Something nice to hold onto during his shitty shift at his shitty job.

Man, it was embarrassing that Ian did something that paid who even knew how much more per hour of work put in than Mickey’s job did. But he had to hold onto the position just a little while longer. . . just until his parole ended. After that, maybe he could aspire to something more. And maybe by then, he’d have some fucking clue what that might be. Or take the easy way out.

Six months. Just six more months.

A shadow fell over him, and he opened his eyes to gaze up at Ian’s pleased smirk.

“Hey.”

[amarguerite]

#20 for the meta meme!

Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

One bit of meta about An Ever-Fixed Mark that I'm still secretly rather pleased with also has to do with the beginning and the ending. I didn't have it as specific as A Monstrous Regiment, where the beginning and ending words had really pointed meaning, but I did set up the scenes to once again be a mise-en-abime of the fic itself.

The whole fic begins with Charlotte showing Elizabeth her lack of mark as a sign of friendship, and a way of repairing their relationship. It was important to me to start off by immediately undermining the fake!English social rules I'd set up about soulmarks, i.e. that they always refer to your romantic partner and that you reveal them to said partner. And to also gave some aromantic/asexual representation off the bat in a fic that primarily deconstructs ideas about romantic relationships.

Given that we'd started off with no soulmark on a wrist-- I wanted to end not with a soulmark, but with another complication on the idea: a name Elizabeth deliberately chose. So the last bit of the whole fic is Elizabeth returning-- many years and many complications later-- to that initial conversation with Charlotte and giving her final answer to the questions they were asking each other about their soulmarks, about romance, and what that meant for their positions in society. She writes a letter to Charlotte about their families, their positions in the world and in society, and ends-- very pointedly, to my mind, on a reiteration of their friendship by signing "yours ever." Though she's newly married, that BFF relationship with Charlotte is still something that has shaped the whole course of her life in the fic. And in the end, she doesn't sign with the name from her soulmark-- she signs with the new name she chose, 'Darcy.'