I was tagged by @callivich and @oathkeptroxas to do DVD Commentary for my art, specifically this image.
Which artwork is your DVD commentary about?
The final piece from this year's Kinktober.
When did you complete this piece?
On October 30, 2025
How long did it take you to finish?
Maybe like 2 hours? I tried to limit my time on each Kinktober image so that it wouldn't take over my whole day.
Did you have an initial idea of how you wanted this to turn out or were you inspired in the process?
I tried several different poses until I landed on one that worked. But yeah, initial idea for sure. I play Frankenstein with my reference images, gathering body parts from different scenes that are in the correct position:
Did it come out how you were expecting it to or did a lot change in the process?
It came out so well! I was really happy!
Did you add any fun details you hoped the viewer would notice? Did anyone catch them?
I loved putting the bullet wound scars on Mickey's butt cheek.
What part of the drawing is your favorite/do you really like how it turned out?
Ian's left hand and the shading on Mickey's back!
Do you have a designated color palette for your artwork? Did you use it for this piece or did you use new colors?
I had established a color palette early on for Kinktober: a bold color in the background with graphic polka dots, bodies outlined with black lines, generally black and white shading on the figures. But I broke the formula with this one and used a white background and full-color figures instead. A reverse of all the other Kinktober images.
Did you show your drafts to a friend/discord chat before posting? Did their feedback help in making decisions or completing the drawing?
Yeah! @francesrose3 was helping me all month. She looked at every image before I posted it to make sure all tattoos, wedding rings, etc. were in the correct place. As a thank you to her, I wanted the final image to be a scene that she's always wanted to see. She loves Ian picking up Mickey and throwing him against a wall. She said it's what the purple robe scene in Hall of Shame should have been. (She also would love if I'd used the word "baby," but that's way too fluffy for my dark heart.)
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Thank you for asking me to do this!! Kinktober 4eva!
@callivich came up with this idea of doing DVD commentary for fic on @shamelessdvdcommentary, which I think is brilliant because I love reading the thoughts and creative process of other fic writers, so I want to try!
The Needle And The Burning Body
Summary:
They're supposed to be running away together. Ian hates whatever fucking nurture-over-nature compass Fiona somehow instilled in him that means the one thing he's running back to is never the thing he wants to want. That Mickey's love makes him want to run away as fast as he can because this thing, this solid thing is so much. And he's already so much on his own.
Mickey had two burning torches for hands but he knew what to do with them. Ian's head was on fire and all he knew was how to run and keep running. How to find a cliff and jump off. How to make Mickey chase after him, again and again. And in a cold cell in prison, Mickey catches him.
Give us some stats - (when you wrote it, word count, how long it took to finish, is it a one-shot/multi-chapter, etc)
I wrote it in winter of 2018. I switched laptops around that time so I don't have the metadata for exactly when I made the doc/how long it took, but I remember bashing it out fairly quickly. I tend to get a flash of inspiration and then bang out fics in a couple of sittings. This one is a one-shot, 10,623 words.
What was the initial inspiration for your story?
I wanted to explore Ian's POV, why he went all the way down to Mexico with Mickey and what made him turn around and go back. I had this idea that the way Ian grew up, so dependent on his family, put a compass inside him that always pointed back to them, even when he'd rather it point somewhere else. And that metaphor just took on a life of its own.
If the story is written from a character’s POV, why did you choose this character?
Ian is so WEIRD and hard to pin down and I wanted to try. Part of it is the Shameless writers' bad writing, but I think Ian also goes through such drastic and traumatic experiences that he has no control over, and it really messes with the way he acts. A lot of what happens to him has less to do with his choices or actions and more to do with either his mental illness or just circumstances. Plus he's actually the quietest of all the Gallaghers, which is kind of crazy. I wanted to try and explore why Ian is so often contradictory or weird. I also really wanted to explore his confusion and insecurities that he doesn't voice.
What was your favourite scene to write?
The moment where Ian is sitting in the prison cell waiting for Mickey to get back and thinking about their past. I came up with imagery of Ian jumping off of a series of cliffs with Mickey chasing him to try and catch him at the bottom completely in the moment of writing, and it's one of my favorite things.
How did you come up with the title?
I'm terrible with titles, I usually end up using song lyrics or a bizarre jumble of words, but this one is so straightforward. Ian gets the needle metaphor in this fic, and Mickey's metaphor is being a constant burning. So it fit.
Are there any little moments or references you hope readers will notice?
I have a line in there, "Ian was better at finding whole things that weren't his and clinging to them. Mickey could make wholes from the smallest of pieces." I think it's a way of looking at their relationship that really explains well why it was the way it was pre-season 9.
Was there anything you struggled to write? If so, how did you overcome this?
The smut. I don't tend to write smut because I either find it unsexy when it's not done well or when things logically would be uncomfortable/physically impossible/unhealthy in a not-even-sexy-in-the-moment way. If I write smut I like it to be poetic and for it to mean something in terms of moving plot along. I tried to make it both sexy and poetic, and tried my best to infuse every action with emotion and also intent. A bit like the advice my drama teacher gave us in high school: a character should not move from point a to point b for no reason. If you want to go to a different spot, you have to have some sort of reason or motive or intent. In this case, it's more about sex than walking, but it fits. I think I did pretty good in this one, but I think the smut I wrote in my other fic Proof Of What You Want was better.
Favourite line in the story?
Well, it's more of a paragraph:
It had all felt so far away when he'd asked, foggy and dull, ready to push. You gonna want to be with me even if I don't? Everything far away. Watching everyone for betrayal the way Monica taught him. So Mickey's sigh had no written all over it, and that no meant reading all the other signs wrong.
But when you think you've lost everything except an identity you never wanted to have in the first place, you're bound to misread things.
Really, the sigh was the same Mickey always seemed to breathe into his mouth. The same way he'd mutter jesus fucking christ like he was so annoyed even though he wasn't, and then he'd hold on and jump after him.
Did the storyline change in any way as you wrote the story?
A lot of times I start a story in the middle and work outward, or start with whatever scenes popped into my brain first and work to connect them. I think this was one fic I actually wrote linearly from start to finish. I always intended the first half to be the ride to Mexico and the second half to be Ian and Mickey in prison together. But the metaphors and imagery I used really solidified as I was writing it. I had Ian's compass needle from the start, but Mickey as a pair of burning hands didn't come until later, and a lot of the other imagery just developed as I was writing. I didn't know I was going to have the two of them sit down and have an actual Talk about their relationship, and I'm glad I had Mickey basically saying like, 'I love you and I still want to be with you, but things are still fucked up and we gotta work on them.'
If you are writing a particular trope or genre, was it your first time writing this?
This was my first time writing solely Ian's POV (as opposed to an omniscient POV or Mickey's), but it's not a specific trope or genre.
What are you most proud about in the story? (plot, characterisation, dialogue, twist/cliffhanger, etc)
The metaphors! I'm sooooo happy they worked the way I wanted them to and came together so well and I'm soooooo proud of the last paragraph of the fic, which literally gave me chills as I wrote it.
Are there any deleted scenes that didn’t make it to the final story?
No, but I tend to do the opposite. I post the fic and then reread it once it's already posted and add to it. So I'm fairly certain there are at least a few sentences if not a whole paragraph in the fic on AO3 that doesn't exist in my original doc.
Are there any ‘behind the scenes’ info you’d like to share - e.g. what’s going on in a characters head in a certain scene or how you came to write a certain line?
The one I quoted above as my favorite line came about because I always felt like Mickey's reaction to Ian's questions in the breakup scene aren't a rejection at all or even disappointment or whatever. It felt to me like that sigh and Mickey's body language were more in line with his actions in 5x09 with the b vitamins and stuff. Like he realizes that he'd rather have Ian in whatever way and he'll be there for him, whether he's on his meds or not. It's not a sigh of "no I don't want to be with you", it's a sigh of "I'd rather it was some other way, but I'm not going anywhere." And I wanted to have Ian realizing that, and realizing that he'd interpreted Mickey's actions in the context of his siblings' actions, but Mickey's motivations and feelings are totally different from the Gallagher siblings. He doesn't have the context of growing up with Monica and he's willing to stick beside Ian, manic or not.
Reading back the story now, is there anything you’d change or add?
I don't think so. I actually frequently read back stories in the months after posting them and add bits and bobs. There's a oneshot fic I have in a different fandom that I wrote in 2015 and have been adding to ever since as inspiration strikes. So I tend to just add things if I decide something should be added. This fic in particular came out pretty much complete, though.
Would you ever write a sequel to this story?
I don't think so. Especially considering where canon went with the storyline of them in prison and their relationship in general.
Are there any ‘easter eggs’ in your story - e.g. references to other stories you’ve written, a trope you often use etc?
Not in this one. Mostly because it's the only fic I've written solely in Ian's POV. And all the easter eggs I use for Shameless fics are for Mickey's POV, so I couldn't easily slot them in here.
If you’ve chosen your most popular story, are you surprised by the popularity?
This was my most popular story for a long time, and I'm not at all surprised. It's the one I'm probably the most proud of in terms of all the imagery and also the denouement.
Were you nervous or excited to post this story?
Oh, excited, definitely. All the other Shameless fics I'd written before this one were shorter and more straightforward, less poetic. This was the one that felt the most artistic and that I felt really inspired the whole time I was writing it.
(This was really fun, I might do this with my other Shameless fics! Thank you so much for the idea @callivich!)
I saw one of these on my dashboard, and I was like, oh, I meant to do that! And I needed something to stop myself from using the last hours of these precious days off to do work instead of something fun.
Thanks to @shamelessdvdcommentary for the great questions!
Which fanfic is your DVD commentary about?
Two of Your Earth Minutes
Give us some stats - (when you wrote it, word count, how long it took to finish, is it a one-shot/multi-chapter, etc)
12,394 words. It was written in July and August 2015. I was originally going to have it as a one-shot, but added the next chapter b/c the response was so positive and talking about it with people gave me more ideas. :) Chapter 1 was written in about a week, and chapter 2 took about three weeks.
What was the initial inspiration for your story?
This post from Mellow_Yellow, which made me think about Mickey's line about Ian being alien-looking, plus my childhood love of the book series Animorphs, which had an alien character named Ax who, when in human form, had comedic and sometimes emotional hijinks trying to understand the human experience (often food-related). It looks like that post was in March, but I didn't start writing the actual fic until July, so I guess I was turning the idea of "Ian/Mickey + alien??" around in my mind for a while before I actually started.
If the story is written from a character’s POV, why did you choose this character?
Mickey's POV! I think writing this story from Ian's POV would have been much harder, since his perspective on what he's going through would be way more complicated and require more info-dropping for the reader than Mickey's. (Ax does have Animorphs books in his POV, but they're in the first person with an assumed human reader, so the info dropping feels natural.) It makes sense to me that the story felt more natural and "flow-y" coming from Mickey's more familiar POV. And this one did flow easily, much more than most of my stories.
What was your favourite scene to write?
Any of the "cultural exchange" scenes, where Ian is asking for Mickey to explain about a human thing, and then Mickey wants to know if Ian's world has anything similar. So, them talking about ice cream or music, for example. Obviously having Mickey explain stuff is funny and banter-y and thus easy to write, but I love that he also wants to know about Ian's reality from before, even though it's even harder for him to understand (or Ian to explain) than the reverse.
How did you come up with the title?
It's the name of the whole "aliens talk about Earth measurements" trope on TVTropes, and it comes from a quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is one of my favorite books. It's also a CONSTANT joke in Animorphs, as listed on the tropes page. ("It will take one of your hours." "We're on Earth, Ax. They're everyone's hours.") I did intentionally want this story to be "here is this specific trope, Ian/Mickey style," so I leaned into it with the name, as a nod to how unapologetically tropey it really is.
I think I once saw someone refer to the two chapters as being part of the reason it's "two" minutes, which is great and I love it, but that was just a coincidence, as I wasn't originally planning two chapters.
Are there any little moments or references you hope readers will notice?
References I've talked about before: I was big into Elliott Smith at the time, so the record-store owner is based on him ("Sam" is from one of his song titles), and the bartender is also named after one of his songs (Clem, short for "Clementine"). The record store is based on one I used to walk by on my commute to work, including the sign in the window. Mickey makes a joke about Icelandic nose flutes because of this ancient mini documentary about the filming of LOTR that I taped onto a VHS when it first aired (before Two Towers came out!!) and watched over and over with my fellow nerd friends. ("Very difficult instrument to master!") And the thing about Ian wanting to walk around with his shirt unbuttoned because he saw an action star do it on TV was a real argument I had with my mother when I was in preschool.
None of those were intended for readers to get, just jokes between me and myself really! I'm my own first audience, I guess.
Ian saying "I'm LOST" was, now that I think about it, probably a subconscious quote from Lilo and Stitch, aw.
Was there anything you struggled to write? If so, how did you overcome this?
Ah, it's been too long so I don't remember anymore! Except I remember that chapter 2 was much slower to write than chapter 1, because I wasn't in that same flow of immediate inspiration (rare and precious). Hence, one week for chapter 1, and more like a month for chapter 2. And I see I posted about a sex scene taking me forever around then, so that would be the one at the end of chapter 2. Choreography of where everyone's limbs are going can be exhausting, let's be honest.
Favourite line in the story?
"Yes!” Ian says. “That’s what I want. You. To be with me.”
(Clearly owing a debt to season 4's "this where you want to spend your day off?" / "you're here" convo, but coming in several years ahead of season 10's "i wanna be where you are, Mickey." Anyway, Ian Gallagher's romantic nature, boiled down to its bare essentials)
Did the storyline change in any way as you wrote the story?
It doesn't really have much of a storyline, if we're being real, since it's more of a "slice of life" situation! So, nope.
If you are writing a particular trope or genre, was it your first time writing this?
Haha, yes, it was indeed a particular trope!! :D I don't think I had ever written it before, that I can think of. But I definitely did a lot of sci fi in general after that.
What are you most proud about in the story? (plot, characterisation, dialogue, twist/cliffhanger, etc)
Honestly I'm just so happy that it made other people happy enough that sometimes people still recommend it to other people almost TEN YEARS later! That's always makes me glow with joy. The story amused and delighted me as I was writing it, but I did not especially think it was going to be well received. Some parts of Shameless fandom were kind of judgey about anything that was too "weird" back then; you can see how nervous I was from my preemptively self-defensive tag about Ian being in human form and my "well, that's . . . whatever that is" author's note at the end. But as it turned out, no one was mean about it (to my face, anyway, haha!) and I'm so glad that I did post it, after all.
Reading back the story now, is there anything you’d change or add?
Yes! I was reading through it just now to pick out a favorite line, and I saw that Ian had a line where he referred to the concept of "luck." They have a whole convo explaining "luck" to him in the Halloween special, so that would make no sense. Whoops! That's the kind of thing that happens when you write a sequel years and years later. Fixed now. None of you saw nothing, got it?!
I also think that the very first joke doesn't work well ("We put butter on it. Uh, the cow stuff. Not the body stuff.”) b/c I don't think that Mickey knows what "body butter" is anyway, so he wouldn't think to differentiate that. But luckily (?) I don't think readers usually get that that is what I meant by that phrase, anyway. So it's a flop joke that kind of unflops itself? So I've left that one alone. If I ever think of a good fix, I'll probably fix that too, though, b/c it does haunt me ever so slightly.
(I skipped some questions here b/c I'd already covered parts of them in my yapping above)
Anything else you’d like the readers to know about the story?
Rereading it now, their grocery shopping is a hilarious insight into what I was capable of cooking myself in my early 20s (not much!). That list would definitely look different if I wrote it now, but after all, people do write what they know, sometimes. :)
In closing, to paraphrase a blurb about NONA THE NINTH: You have loved alien!Ian, and alien!Ian loves you. And it truly means so much to me. 💚👽🍞
