On the "writing endings" thing, I was just re-reading Cuffing Season the other day and admiring how you handled the ending there: i.e., that them having sex *wasn't* the end point, because that wasn't the central conflict to be resolved. Eddie figuring out that all of Steve's signals that he liked him and wanted to be around him were in fact honest was the central conflict, it just *looked* like it was sexual tension until that part was out of the way. Masterful!
ahh, i'm so happy whenever someone brings up cuffing season, lol. i love writing pansexual eddie <3
but to reply to your actual message - yes! that was one where the ending was hinging on eddie accepting steve's feelings (and his own!) and acknowledging them fully.
i remember struggling to figure out how to end it, and was so relieved when i finally got there. i'm glad the resolution felt right - my biggest fear is that someone would get to the end and be like, "that's it?"
oooh, I'd love to hear about "the small dark corners" for the WIP askmeme!
This is an incredibly vague "Izzy gets tortured and needs to be rescued" fic that I honestly need to properly outline or possibly scrap and start over. All I know is that I want him to be repeatedly almost drowned (possibly keelhauled???), and even that bit might need reworking. I do, however, have lines!
When Lucius returns with towels, Stede’s cut off the remains of Izzy’s shirt and is working on taking off his leather trousers.
“Lucius, would you mind holding him for a minute?” asks Stede. “I hate to cut his trousers off, and I don’t think my knife’s sharp enough to cut it anyway, but I think if you hold him while I pull—”
Lucius drops the towels on the floor and sits behind Izzy, bracketing him between his legs and holding him under the arms to keep him from moving. This close, he feels unnaturally cold and clammy, his wet hair soaking through Lucius’ shirt, and he offers no resistance as Stede peels his trousers off.
“There we are,” says Stede, tossing the ruined leather to one side. He picks up a towel and takes Izzy from Lucius, wrapping him in it and holding him close. Izzy’s head lolls against Stede’s collarbone, and Stede holds it to him with one hand, rocking a bit.
sorrelchestnut replied to your post “What I Learned From The Witcher 3”
i love everything about this but in response to your tag i feel obliged to say that ciri cannot be a distinguished bi because she is, in spite of yennefer's best efforts, completely fucking feral
This is true. She just seemed so competent in the little bit we’ve gotten of her in the game so far, though I suppose she’s competent in the way Geralt is; she also eats like an animal only badly animated, and leaves clothes all over the floor, so I should have paid a little more attention to that. LOL. No, you’re probably right, she’s about on par with Geralt’s level of Disaster.
Anyhow, we did some more gaming last night, and Dr. F sat as the game loaded and gently prodded to see how much his wife had slept through the last time, so she wouldn’t be confused once the action started up. It was quite sweet.
I’m continuing my policy of only telling him stuff if he asks or if it seems important. We’re definitely way off the order of how they did it in the walkthrough I had recommended, so I have to do a lot of scrolling and some of the things, they just don’t mention. (Understandable, there’s a lot, and they clearly can’t get to everything.)
He said he wants to try to play super in-character, so his choices are to do the things he thinks are Most Like How Geralt Would Act. (I think the flaw in this is that they only ever give you three or four choices, and all of them are plausible, so.) So when we were searching the Bloody Baron’s house, he’d press the Loot button to see what was in the highlighted things, and then we dithered for a bit.
“It seems in poor taste to steal things from a room I’ve asked to search to solve a missing persons case,” he said. The chest held a gold ring, a pearl, a candelabra, trinkets. Over by the bed, there was a chest with a doll in it.
“I think you need the doll,” I said, having read the walkthrough, which specifies that you find a voodoo/poppet-style doll by the bed. So he took the doll. Then he walked around to the other side of the bed. On the floor, there was a voodoo doll. “Whoops,” I said. “Can you put it back?”
“No,” he said, attempting to un-loot the chest. No can do. Whoops we stole the missing girl’s dollie.
...
Anyway, we moved on, having collected (I think??) all the important and relevant things. Won some horse races, and managed to find a few other doable quests. Most of what we’ve picked up is like... Suggested Level 22. Suggested Level 35. Yeahhhh we just leveled up to 4. But we DID find a blacksmith and now have a better sword so it only takes like two or three good hits to kill a wolf instead of fifteen frantic slashes.
(Oh something I never saw in any walkthroughs: as we left the Baron’s place, a man stood in the middle of the road and yelled at us to fight him for the honor of some random woman. We tried to talk our way out of it but he insisted. Upon drawing swords, Dr F yelped “He’s level nine???” And the guy dealt us a bit of damage, but then Geralt got his shit together and took a run at him and hit him a bunch of times, and he gave up. We wound up with, like, 5 XP, and told the guy that if he bothered us again we’d break all his bones. (Big talk from a level 4 Witcher.) But whomst the fuck was that and what was his fuckin deal?)
So we did the Fisstech Priest quest, burning some bodies and saving a drug dealer from ghouls. I got to warn him about exploding rotfiends and yeah, they do act pretty much exactly like they did in the fic I wrote, so, good. (Hey, I did a pretty decent job of writing video game action without ever having watched it. I dunno if I’m proud or not.)
I had warned Dr F that the whole thing was about drugs, and that it might be the case that he’d make more money killing the guy than taking the reward. “What would Geralt do, though,” Dr. F mused, as we approached the priest. Neither of the dialogue options made it clear which of them were Geralt calling the guy on his shit. It turned out they all did, so there was that. But then the guy offered to bribe Geralt, and I said, take the bribe, why not? But Dr. F frowned. “I don’t think Geralt likes that, he’s got his pride,” he said, and picked the no fuck you option.
Whereupon the priest immediately was like “then we’ll kill you” and Dr. F barely waited for the screen to load before he’d cut the guy in half, then took out the guards, and looted the corpse. 200 gold! Not bad. “He started that,” he said happily. “Geralt’s conscience is clear.”
Now, you may have noticed a distinct lack of off-color commentary through most of this, and the reason is that MM was on the couch reading fanfic on her phone. Like a month ago I sent her links to a couple of things I thought she’d like-- of course @deputychairman ‘s fic about the threesome, but also the more cracky fic with Yennefer’s sick wizard van and the unicorn cookie edibles. She liked the first one but during the second one she kept squeak-laughing, and occasionally reading the wilder things it said, and Dr F was like no there are boundaries in my life and erotic fanfiction transcends those boundaries, which was a hilarious line in the sand but I get it, he lives a very different life than we do.
Anyway we rounded out the night having leveled up to 4 and finally put some skill points into Axii, and upgraded Geralt’s trousers but still stuck in the schlubby-looking olive-green gambeson.
In regards your tags on the pillars of Scientism post, I think those prayer beads were actually the ones mentioned on the terminal for Max's quest! When you download the data for Max there's a "Confiscated Goods" entry, which says, "Detained a freelancer who was cagey about his business. Confiscated his personal belongings while he waited for questioning," and it lists out several things, including "prayer beads (OSI)." I half-speculate that it was Chaney's stuff, considering.
That’s incredible. Do you think this might be how Max learned where Cheney was? I imagine OSI has a lot of power within HHR space, including their own little gophers that can go looking for folks, but on the Groundbreaker I doubt they have the same leeway.
Was Cheney running around with just like all of this ancient philosophist swag and trying to pawn them off to collectors for bits?
dude I only barely knew like three characters from Witcher, but I have read misethere at LEAST sixteen times. probably more. it was like an instant fandom classic for me.
I put it off, and put it off, and then BINGE READ 6 OF ASTOLAT’S WITCHER FICS IN A DAY it was real gud.
for me it's not a particular fic or line, though I do remember a lot of them; it's the free-fall feeling I get in my gut every time your story gets to that trademark part where all of the banter and laughter and silliness hits the wall where the character acknowledges all of the feelings that were building up underneath. it's such a weirdly specific feeling, I've found it with other writers but never quite so strongly as with you, and it hits me even when I know it's coming.
I love that feeling! It’s crazy how sometimes you read something and it’s that physical SWOOP that hits you, right, almost like the way vertigo hits on a rollercoaster. Fantastic. Always something every writer shoots for, I think, and hope we’re dead on sometimes at least.
Just as an FYI, Reyes isn’t a “fling” like a lot of the other “off-ship” romances; if you complete it, it does lock you in. You can definitely enjoy flirting to your heart’s content, but you can’t get with him and anyone else, unfortunately.
I thought he was cool with either? Goddammit guides...I checked :(
🤡 What's a line, scene, or exchange you've written that made you laugh?
This bit from The Retrieval Job:
She presses a hand to her ear and murmurs, “Has everyone arrived?”
Inside the airport, Hardison and Nate are waiting at the baggage claim, Quinn standing by in order to catch their luggage as it comes around the conveyor belt.
“What?” Quinn asks, a little too loudly. Some of the tourists turn to look at him.
“Man, the mic can pick up on your voice without you talking so loud,” says Hardison, deliberately quiet. “Some of us also have ears and, you know, eardrums we’d like to keep."
“Sorry,” says Quinn. “How in the hell do any of you get anything done with four voices in your head?”
“You get used to it,” says Parker.
“Still weird.”
“Well, you’ll have to get over it,” Nate says. “Now, Sophie, as soon as you get everything, you take Parker back to the hotel with you. We’ll meet you there after our appointment with Moreau.”
“Our what?” Hardison says, too loudly.
“Wow,” Quinn says, shaking his head, “I get what you mean about being loud.”
I am particularly proud of this exchange because it feels the closest to Leverage-esque comedy to me.
