i’ve been such a terrible participant for this challenge, i’m sorry
So, in response to the @creators-anonymous‘s challenge on our server, we were asked to write a Behind the Scenes blurb about one of our works. The work that I chose to write about today is Queen Elizabeth and the Demon King.
A little background: This two-shot was written as a gift for @bettybest2, as at the time, it had been a year since she began publishing her fic Enlighten My Darkness, but it wasn’t supposed to end up being what it...well, ended up being.
When @maybeishouldwait approached me about writing something, my original plan was to write a comedy a la Wild Thing. The scene was originally going to start with Elizabeth finding a smutty/dark romance in a bookstore and be caught reading one of the very, uh...racy scenes. Meliodas was going to catch her and read together--because reading/consuming porn together is a very romantic thing to do for any couple, obviously--while also making side comments about the characters. It was going to be funny, cute, and maybe sexy.
I can’t exactly remember when I decided to change it, but I remember re-reading EMD and thinking: Damn, Meliodas is such an asshole. I mean, they both are assholes and terrible to each other, but what is his damage. It’s gonna kick him in the ass later when he falls so hard for this woman that he breaks his nose. Lord knows what would happen if Elizabeth was as nice as she is in canon. Mel probably would have had his meltdown a lot sooner and--Oh. Oooooohhhh....
And just like that, the plan for the story changed. I had to think a bit about how to change it, but considering I enjoy making Meliodas cry, it wasn’t that difficult. I just had to inform Beth about it.
This was the snippet I sent her, eons and eons ago, a scene I didn’t even end up using:
“Meliodas, I need you to tell me all you know about these...these things,” Elizabeth says, then cringes as she adds, “Please.”
Meliodas pauses in lifting the glass to his mouth, his whole form going stiff. He slowly places the glass down at the bar, a soft tink the only sound in the room. He inclines his head only a little, but doesn’t turn to face Elizabeth.
“I’ve already told you what I know,” he says, his voice dull, too practiced. “They first arrived thousands of years ago, I and another were assigned to investigate them; we never caught the culprit. And when the Holy War started again...they just vanished. Went back to whatever void they came from.”
Elizabeth presses her mouth together. Yes, he told her this before, when she and Merlin had gone to “recruit” him. But that felt too...simple. Like something is missing from the story. She sees it even now, in how he hunches over the bar, she even hears it in his voice. Again, Elizabeth feels her heart thump with a sorrowful ache. She frowns against the feeling, knowing she can’t let herself be swayed so easily by compassion. Not for him.
‘He is a demon, Elizabeth,’ she reminds herself, her expression hardening. ‘The very demon who led his clan head first into a Holy War. A demon who would kill you without a second thought. Don't let him trick you.’
Beth’s immediate response was: Okay, explain...?
By the end of my explanation, Beth was screaming at me--in a good way, worth noting. That was enough to up my motivation to write this.
I wrote this fic over the course of at least two days, only stopping to take breaks. It’s over thirty pages long on my Google Docs, so it had to be split up into two parts, and even though it’s complete on AO3 and FFnet, it was originally going to be an interweaving of the EMD universe with canon. I still intend to continue it in some way, though maybe not in such a lengthy fic; however, this fic was the first one I truly ever finished and felt proud of at its completion. One day, I hope to come back.
