Hi, I'm really sorry for the inconvenience, but I wanted to ask if you would give me permission to take one of your drawings, this drawing to be specific.
I really loved this panel and I wanted to ask if I could make a more rendered version of it myself but if you don't allow me, that's fine. I just wanted to ask if it would be okay for me to do so.
And again, I'm really sorry for the inconvenience. I just want to ask your permission.
(and also, I apologize if something is not understood. I used Google translator because I don't speak English.)
hey apologies if i missed you covering this, but question keeps eating at me: in the role reversal AU where killie was the one who ran away/got disowned and became a Professor MumsLastName. what was the inciting incident???
because like. their characters are so built around charlie being the one who leaves, around it feeling retroactively inevitable, and his motives are layered but the Event is straightforward: got caught being bisexual.
this seems very unlikely to be what happened with killie because 1) he is sufficiently aspec that this was simply less likely to be a thing that came up 2) hard to imagine Young Killie like. acting on a crush he did get enough for parent types to notice 3) he is pretty clearly not coupled up in that timeline.
but given how this family clings to its own and how thoroughly killie runs through life in blinders, i simply cannot generate a plausible theory.
he was really mad at charlie after getting tackled off the horse and into the tea tent, was what happened charlie's fault??
The role reversal AU is so STICKY! The original idea is courtesy of @switchbackhyperloop , with @chameleonsallinvermillion contributing a lovely ficlet. From there @flyingseacow had a great idea for a scene from which we got an AU comic with some frankly banger lines if I do say so myself, and a ficlet from @accountforerrors making it the stickiest of all scenarios. But I don’t have any fixed idea myself for how they got there.
I can definitely see how different and interesting ways the dominos would fall once they were in position. How do we get them into position?
The breaking of the Tiernan dynasty is a classical tragedy: the story says that it is indeed inevitable that everyone’s character (histories, personalities, sexualities, neurodivergence, behaviours learned and inherited, plausibly deniable psychic gifts) brought us to this point, and once they were there, the tragedy was that they could not stop the tragedy from happening.
The tragedy - a single moment in which nobody could stop themselves, which defines the arc of their lives - has weight behind it, because a tragedy says: they could have stopped by making different choices earlier, and they did not; and when the Moment came, they chose wrong.
And to really break the family in one single blow, for it to really hit,
Bill technically values Home and Family at least as much as he does Winning (because they’re the same thing, and you only Win at all because you’re the heir and pilot of the dynasty.) he has to choose wrong. With the weight of generational trauma, with the weight of survival; with all the weight of tragedy. You have to make him break upon the impossible, in a situation designed to break him, and do the wrong thing.
The twins as a unit are functionally a whole person, a whole mind. They’re a stable (ha) molecule. They’ve shared everything since they were in the womb. They’re embodied in each other. They read each other’s minds always choose each other. To break them apart, there has to be something seismic. Not only does one go where the other can’t follow, but one betrays the twinship.
In Throw Your Heart Over, Killie betrays Charlie. He chooses wrong, too. Tragedy says: they couldn’t help it, but that doesn’t mean anything, and they damn well could’ve helped what they did that created the situation.
TYHO is a bit of an odd beast because it doesn’t end with the tragedy: it’s about the aftermath, in which people are made to grapple with who they are and what they’ve done, and what tragedy means. We know, going in, that Killie’s “a terrible person.” Hopefully readers will forgive him and me. Hopefully he’ll become better. (Get in losers we’re living past the end of our myth.) but at the moment of fracture, Killie does the wrong thing.
Charlie isn’t entirely passive, either. Bill’s traits - fatal temper, black-and-white thinking; decisiveness, initiative, taking the reins - are also at play in him.
So the easiest steps you need in the dance are:
Bill, fatally, makes an ultimatum he doesn’t mean: conform or lose my protection.
One twin betrays the other.
Some ways you can do it that keeps this precise Bisexuality Crisis (Bill: stop sleeping with men; Charlie: no; Killie: why the hell is that even an answer) could include
Charlie is caught and frames Killie, thinking Killie will forgive him and Bill won’t turn on the heir. Charlie gets it very wrong.
Twincest - real or implied. I am not into incest/twincest, but as a mechanism it would be almost overpowered in how much dark and awful plot it would move here.
Charlie caught, both twins blamed, both twins leave - but Charlie goes back.
Then you could think of some precipitating circumstances that aren’t a Bisexuality Crisis. Here’s one off the top of my head.
As a united front, the Tiernan dynasty have decent resistance to the external pressures of the horse racing industry - as a united front. For example, it would be a fatal mistake in Ireland to, say, bribe, threaten or blackmail a Tiernan jockey into throwing a race, and still a pretty bad idea in the UK. It is somehow impossible to dope their horses. Even the stable lads, traditional weak points, are all family members. The Mearing Grange, the heart of their little empire, will always exist to retreat to: the ranks will close: they have some moderately dodgy heavies of their own, so you can’t even offer to break their fingers without having a reciprocal kindly worded offer. They can ride out (ha) most external threats.
What’s a threat that can’t be ridden over? What if someone compromises, betrays, or is believed to betray the heart of the Grange?
I have got to write this book so I can write some bloody fanfiction
Ok, this poll doesn’t mean I’m gonna start writing the winning option immediately, but I do wanna write it! I just wanna know what sounds more appealing to all you lovely people! I seriously can’t thank you guys enough for your support on my writings, y’all mean everything to me 💜💜💜
How do you feel about having people in your life who remind you of the past just by existing?
"I feel guilty in a lot of ways. I guess that's something that always stays with me. Guilt. Shame.
I think a man should only have so many regrets in his life, and that after a time, when your beaker is full... Your life ends.
But I don't have that luxury, and my past is some great beast that just keeps growing. I've got baggage but then suddenly- I've got the whole airport.
I don't like to talk about her. Ingeborg. I am even scared to say her name. Scared that someone will use it to hurt me. So I protect her. Protect myself. Keep her secret. Even though everybody already knows. It's spelled out all over me.
So I don't talk about her, but I see her everywhere, in the eyes of my friends, think of her always.
I wrote poetry in my youth, you know. I started slow, to figure out my emotions and to practice my writing skills. But when I met her? That's when the words started flowing, and one line comes to mind:
"All the things I love, will forever echo with my thoughts of you."
She really loved that line, and would embroider it into the hem of her dresses and my shirt so we could carry it with us. The combined efforts of two artforms that had fallen for each other.
And I still feel that way every time I find something I love; it reminds me of her. Every time my heart flutters, and I have to catch myself when I perk my head up and look around the room, searching for her gaze, for her smile, desperately wanting to share my joy with her.
We grew up so closely that I feel part of me will always be shaped in such a way that it can only be completed by her. I know I shouldn't think that way- I am my own person and am perfectly complete on my own. But it was just such a comforting thought when she was still with me. To be part of a pair.
But... To circle back to your question. I often feel like I am trying to find Ingeborg in other people. Dhalia's gentleness, Felicity's passion, Nova's adventurous spirit, Candido's safety.
It feels... Manipulative. And disrespectful. Searching for some... Little part of my wife in someone else. Disregarding their individualism to sate my own longing. .....But I can't help it.
I convince myself I just "have a type". When it comes to friendship and- well, partners too. But I am honestly not sure.
Then there's the other side of that coin. I will try not to prance around the subject, so here goes: Zyme probably has the worst of it. He reminds me a lot of- ehm.. Alexander.
Lord knows they are vastly different. But in the way they carry themselves... There is just something to it. Something I admire, i suppose.
And I hate him for it.
Not genuinely. I have a lot of respect for Zyme, and if... Me going back to him again and again and helping him out with- just about anything he asks is any indication... Well, I'd say I even like him. I can't help but be drawn in by all that... Macho..? I don't know how to explain it.
Somewhere deep inside I think I'm trying to heal something that was broken in me when Alexander left me to die.
If I can get Zyme to respect me, to take me in, to need me- then maybe..! Maybe I can stick it to Alexander. Maybe then I can prove to him that he was wrong, and that I am actually worth keeping around.
Ha ha.. It is such a stupid thing to believe. Alexander is dust and dirt by now. He died not remembering me and was better off for it. It's just something I have to accept.
But I choose not to think about it, like a fool. And play games with Zyme, instead. Convinced that these things don't bother me.
...
And here I thought old men were supposed to be wise."
Open to: f/nb
Plot: your muse is Joseph’s new personal assistant he doesn’t really need, the position was mainly created out of charity for a senior employee who needed a job for their child/relative but she’s cute and actually helpful so Joseph has become fond of her and maybe more. Age gap welcome. (And if you want maybe your muse’s parent/relative is actually trying to steal/screw Joseph over and she gets caught in between 👀 or maybe she was in on it but switches sides 👀👀)
There was a rumour going around the offices that Joseph had a heart after all, that he wasn’t just a jaded old man. He wasn’t sure he liked that but what was done was done. The focus of the office was more on the young woman after all, running errands for Joseph and helping out the secretaries with their work if Joseph couldn’t come up with anything else. The person who talked Joseph into giving her the job probably tried to climb the ranks but Joseph kept them at bay.
He did however become closer to his assistant, some could say he was becoming very fond of her. Sometimes he found himself slightly too close to her, towering her when she was working, giving her a ride home, a couple of paid days off. It wasn’t all innocent on his part but he played the long game he pretended it was.
Joseph wasn’t aware she’d become to trust him as much as her call revealed to him. Her voice on the phone was distraught when she asked if Joseph could come and get her. He didn’t hesitate a second leaving a formal dinner, driving fast and running a red light. When he spotted her on the street being bothered by some man he stopped the car and got out quickly. He didn’t attack, that would have been rash and he didn’t want to upset her more than she already was so instead he ignored the man, stepping between the two and facing her, “Are you alright?”
