I looove how passionate you are about the things you like and the characters and scenarios you write, you've got me to care about characters i previously wouldn't glance at twice, though i think i might've told you this before. You're also a very necessary person in this space, your meta posts are some of the best i've seen on the tbosas side of tumblr.
I'm so very happy you reached out, you're so fun to talk to! i'm kinda sad my shyness kept me from dming you earlier, but better late than nothing!! Thanks for everything, I hope new years goes amazing for you <3!!!
Kiku had sent them a sophisticated messaging system that allowed for longer messages to be sent through radio signals and decoded into their devices in under a minute. And then Gabriel broke it.
So now the only way to talk to him was to way until the ancient satellites were aligned in position. It gave them a ten-minute window to send a six-word message once every day and a half, and it was driving Arthur insane.
[What's your position today? Water yet?]
Unnecessary long minutes of wait and Arthur started pacing around their base anxiously until the reply came:
[No water. Found you a seashell.]
He wanted to murder him. They were rationing their water to their limit, Gabriel's expedition to find them a new source of water was taking too long and he was going to far out into the radiation zone, what did Arthur care about seashells?
[Give position now. Text the essential.]
Their device beeped and the satellite went out of position, he'd have to wait another day and half for a reply. He felt like breaking something.
Their shelter ran on solar power, which was good because after the ice caps melted there was plenty of heat and plenty of sun. What they didn't have plenty of was drinking water. And maybe socks, but he could survive without those.
He went to Francis to complain and to his credit Francis listened to all of it before shooing him out of his lab.
A day and a half later, their device beeped in the middle of the night with a message that made his heart stop.
[Antonio found animals. Not friendly.]
The radio went silent for a week after that. No matter how many texts Arthur sent, Gabriel's end kept quiet.
Francis took pity on him. Kiku locked himself in his corner trying to come up with a signal localizer.
And then a new message came.
[Got it. 42°48'0" N; 1°22'0" W]
Kiku typed the coordinates and it showed them a river in the region that used to be Spain, not too far from them, and Arthur allowed himself to lay down exhausted on the ground.
Arthur was going to kill Gabriel. He was going to kiss him, and then he was going to kill him.
I'd be interested to hear some of your headcanons on engport. PS: I love your blog, you really have made it very cute and elegant.
Thank you!!! I'm glad you like it :3 I wasn't sure what hcs you were looking for, so I just did a random collection of ones I haven't seen around. If you wanted more of a narrative of their relationship or something, lemme know.
1. I mentioned this hc here, but I really like the idea of Portugal bringing Arthur gifts from all over the world, not in the way someone does to deliberately woo a lover (although as they got older there was a certain undertone of that that they laughed about), but more like the way a cat brings back dead birds and stuff; it’s just cuz they love you and wanna feed you and take care of you and share their precious things with you. Port started doing this when they first met, and originally it was just bringing him a pretty stone or a little wildflower. The one thing Arthur truly yearned for, however, were books. I think Arthur is someone who truly loves learning and intellectual pursuits, but because of his upbringing and work he was never able to go university until the late 1600s.The best ones during the Middle Ages, in any case, were located around the Mediterranean, especially in Italy, as well in the Abbasid Caliphate. So when port started sailing further, he would try to bring Arthur copies of texts such as the Continens Liber, the Canon of Medicine, the Trotula (all medical texts) as well as texts on foreign flora and books like The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices by Islamic scholar Ismail al-Jazari, which featured machine automation! In the 13th century!!! These manuscripts were probably harder to find than most jewels or trinkets and Port had to translate the ones in Arabic for Arthur — and secretly, because the inquisition was like, kinda a thing during this time — but it was worth his delight and absolute adoration. These are all, by the way, real books that existed or eventually made their way to and had a great influence on Europe!
2. I don't know why, but I love the idea of Port having a masters degree in English Literature from Oxford. I think his personality is just suitable: thinks unnecesarily deeply about things, sees symbolism in everything, loves playing devil's advocate. He must have gotten it recently as well, since eng lit wasn't a thing in unis until the mid 1800s and Port and Arthur's relationship didn't normalize until after 1974. Anyways yeah, I think Port did it in part because he genuinely likes english literature, and in part because it was a semi-valid way of getting off work and he could spend a year with Arthur. Plus a hot Portuguese man with an Oxford eng lit degree is like, catnip for Arthur.
3. Also a fruk hc, but: England owns a little house on a hill, overlooking the ocean in Calais, France. He’s had it since he owned the entire port of Calais back in the day and it’s kinda of safe house, a place where he can escape and read books and fiddle with his potions and magic and flowers and just be happy. Only a few people know it exist/have been there, and only Francis has ever been inside, when he spent 2 years recovering there during the latter half of WWII (this is stolen directly from newamsterdam's For the Dust to Still Series, which I am forever obsessed with). Despite it being a “special place” for Arthur and Francis, the front gardens are filled with lavender, which Arthur only started planting and tending to in the 20th century. When they lived there together, during the war, Arthur would sometimes just sit silently amidst the flowers. Francis never commented on it.
4. For a more modern hc, when they go on holiday Arthur and Port like to go surfing (mostly Port), freediving, and sometimes scuba diving — and pls don’t hit me with the “Arthur can’t swim”, mans a Type A personality and control freak, and you’re telling me he’s gonna spend his life on the open sea without knowing how to swim? Nah. And no one can tell me that Port doesn’t want see the fishies on the coral reef any chance he gets either. That’s his habitat. When they don’t have time to go abroad they have aquarium dates like the sappy little losers they are. Port has a membership at the Oceanário de Lisboa, because of course he does. They've also gone wreck diving at least twice -- it unsettles them both a little, because they can easily imagine themselves going down with the ship, as well as the men who must have died too -- but that also seems like the kind of emotional masochism those two idiots would be into.
5. Not a relationship hc, but neither of them are afraid of animals. Arthur dislikes big ass spiders, but isn't petrified. Port has no fear at all. At times this has caused a genuine issues.
How long have you been writing? Have you written originals or just fanfiction? In general, how have you felt about your progress / your path in this great hobby? Pd: You are amazing, minha querida 👉❤👈
Gracias, Ika! ;_; <3 <3 You're amazing too!!
I've been writing on and off since I was 14, so that's 17 years.
I have a few ideas, but they still need time (and a lot of work) to mature haha
Sometimes reading some of my old stuff I get a little caught up in the feeling of "oh I'm past my peak and I'll never write anything as good as this", but then I find the joy of writing again and that's the best feeling. I used to be very worried about finding my own style and my own voice, and I compared myself a lot to other authors I liked thinking I'd never be as good or as successful, and I think that robbed me of enjoying myself for a while. I can't say I'm 100% free of self-sabotage, but I try to be kinder to myself nowadays haha and as a consequence I think my writing gets better when I'm having fun.
There’s also the thing about writing in a foreign language. I love writing in (Brazilian) Portuguese, it’s my mother language and it’s the one I’m most comfortable with. I don’t doubt myself half as much, and even though I’m also constantly editing, I’m able to bend the words and change them and create them a lot more freely. I’m also a lot more unorthodox in my use of grammar, and I take a lot more liberties with it.
It ultimately bleeds into my use of English, which I know is heavily influenced by my Portuguese. It’s a fine line to walk, and I’d be caught dead if I ever let it show in any other more professional writing, but I also understand that it’s part of who I am, like speaking with an accent, and I wouldn’t want to erase it completely.
All in all, I think good writing is subjective. Writing, like any type of art, should always touch your heart and make you feel things, good or bad. And as a hobby, writing should make us feel happy and confident. So what if a fic didn’t come out perfectly? I can always go back and try again.
I feel so lucky to be able to share my stories and read everyone else’s, we already have such busy lives that it’s nice to sit down and read something that makes you cry because your two idiots are falling in love again in someone else’s story. What’s not to love? haha
(You didn't say which, so I'm gonna just give a broad comment on titles)
I suck at titles (and summaries), I am very very bad at them. Sometimes I have a bout of inspiration, but most of the time I feel that my titles are all very lame and I hope people will forgive me and look past them.
However! I do have a few favorite ones, like I held sugar between my fingers, under water and The earth devours (which is from a poem by Voltaire and I thought myself very clever for using it for a fic about zombies).
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What is a line/scene you’re really proud of? Give us the DVD commentary for that scene.
Oh, man. This got a little long so I'm gonna put it behind a read more.
I have several from a lot of different fics, but I'm going to pick two from We meet in the middle:
"It had not been hard. It was easy to pick fights with drunks. It was easy to let them have it, to take the punches and fall down on the ground. No one cared that he was only seventeen."
and
"Something clear and simple was understood between them, something that rose above the complicated mess of their young lives."
I wrote most of this fic on my old phone after I had surgery done to move my compressed ulnar nerve earlier this year. I couldn't use one of my hands bc my elbow had to stay immobilized and I was bored out of my mind.
I still want to maybe rewrite the first half of it, there are some pacing issues in the beginning that kinda bother me, but overall I'm pretty happy with the result. I understand it's not a fic for everyone, it's a bit heavy, there's a lot of sex, it's mostly centered about teenagers trying to claw their way out of their messy lives. But I find that there's something very raw and human in teenage anger, and that's something I like to read and write about, this living, breathing feeling of being alive and hurting and wanting to be seen and comforted. Of not quite understanding the rules of the world because you have only been living in it for such a short amount of time, and no one really explained them to you because no one actually knows either. Of having to figure things out for yourself and having to deal with all of that pain by yourself. All three characters go through that and they each find different ways to cope. For Arthur and Francis is angry sex, for Gabriel is fights.
(Therapy would do wonders too, but they aren't self aware enough quite yet to figure that out.)
And the second quote, at the end, when Gabriel and Francis look at each other and understand how the other feels about Arthur, to perceive yourself through your perception of the other, to empathize because you have felt the same way, and how that brings them together instead of pushing them apart. I felt that it was a necessary ending because I hate love triangles. I hate this idea that someone has to have their heart broken. I'd much rather have this, whatever it is, this shared custody of their hearts, a deeper understanding of what love actually is, not selfish, but selfless.
💜freeze! ✧ ─=≡Σ((( つ•̀ω•́)つ you’re under arrest for being so lovely. copy this message to 10 other blogs that you think are beautiful and deserve it. keep the game going and make others feel beautiful!💜
Not a real question but-I LOVE THE MINI FRUK HEADCANON, I also usually come up with a lot of fruk-engport ideas, because those two have been really important in the life of England, so I think it is inevitable to make both complex and fascinating relationships intersect. I like how you take into account how various countries have influenced England! Relationships are usually complicated, tangled, they happen with the people you least expect and affect you at different levels, it's great to see
I was actually worried that you didn’t wanna see fruk content in an engport ask, so it’s great this worked out. But yes, it’s very important to me that I portray England’s relationships holistically in the real context of his life rather than in isolation. Personally I actually struggle a lot trying to reconciliate Arthur’s relationship with France and Port, because I just adore both pairings, but I also wanna make it realistic and not just have cop-out hcs where they all just live happily ever after, or something.
