#woodentrain

[ghostcat3000]

redtulipslove replied to your post “Sunday Six, 10/6/19 (part two)”

Oh my. Christian 😢. Looking forward to this as always 😍

woodentrain replied to your post “Sunday Six, 10/6/19 (part two)”

😍😍😍

I need to clarify a few things... 1) Allegro takes place mostly in the past and this is ‘85. 2) PB!Elio is a deeply unreliable narrator and 3) Christian is far from a saint. 

In other words, I reeeeeeeeally hope this works out because I’m enjoying the weird turn it has taken.

[three--rings]

woodentrain replied to your post “OMG YOU GUYS.   This is what happens when you accidentally paste the...”

Oh I don't know... you could definitely work with that... (or, you know, not)

HOW ABOUT NOT.  LET’S GO WITH NOT.

[thetwoguineabook]

So, two things... today I got a message from Amazon to say that a book I have been waiting for for nearly 2 years and had preordered at the earliest possible opportunity has been released and sent to my kindle and I thought... you know what... this book can wait- I have to re-read Blackbird again. And also- I thought about Blackbird at work yesterday and cried and had to make up an excuse to my observant 6th formers as to why I went to teach their lesson looking all puffy eyed... so thank you!

Ahaha oh gosh! Thank you! I was away on holiday with my parents while writing most of chapter five and had to keep making excuses for why I was constantly distracted. One day they said they were going to hang out by the pool and I’d have the apartment to myself, and I thought, great I can finally write the sex bit without dying from embarrassment, except my mum returned to get another book while I was playing ‘You and the Night and the Music’ on repeat and decided that she should stay and talk to me about my newfound interest in jazz. Fanfic and real life do not mix well!

[neurotrophicfactors]

woodentrain replied to your post “woah! don't strain yourself.. I'm a big fan of the fic�� good luck with...”

JACK this has made my day I am SO HAPPY. I'm so excited for the rest...

platinumvictor replied to your post  “woah! don't strain yourself.. I'm a big fan of the fic�� good luck with...”

omg it sounds amazing!!!! I can’t wait :O

Thank you so much; both of you!!! Here, have some more!! :’>

The room is fragrant with the smell of flowers when he enters, and he knows the instant he surveys it that he will not be able to bring everything with him. The thought is a bitten lip. A hand hovering over a doorknob. A breath caught and held in the cage of his lungs. Conflicted.

Flowers are a sweet, but transient sentiment. They bloom and are beautiful for a short period of time, and once they reach their zenith they die, petals dropping like Icarus from the sky. The irony of it is not lost on Victor, and for that reason he despises them, wants to shred them in his hands until his fingers are streaked in a palette of pastel ichor. But the flowers in his room now are not the flowers he received nearly three weeks ago when he was first admitted, stomach still roiling with discomfort after his emergency treatment in Sochi. Those ones died long ago and have been replaced with new flowers and new associations: brown eyes and flesh made gold beneath the sun’s Midas touch. Memories he wants to cherish.

He strikes a compromise by tucking his favourites into a bag (the bouquet of blue roses, the red roses, and the yarrow) and leaving the rest to be discarded by the custodial staff. Inside the bag, the flowers, now free from their vases, meld into a single bunch. Victor is able to cram a few of the plushes into his personal travel bag, and the rest are piled into the second plastic bag he was given. The cards go into his personal bag as well, except for one. It is printed on thick, white paper painted with green ivy that curls around the words, ‘Поправляйся скорее.’ Get well soon. It’s generic, but Victor tucks it into the inner breast pocket of his coat.

With his travel bag hanging at his hip and the plastic bags bunched into one hand, he leaves the room as empty as it ever was, but for a brief moment yesterday when it was overflowing with life. Instead of heading back to the lobby, his feet lead him along a path as natural to him as the veins that twist down his forearms until he reaches a door. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting when he peeks through the small window. The bed is made tidily, leaving no creases in either the covers or the pillowcase; fresh and clean. The IV stand has been moved, tucked out of sight from his vantage point, and the bedside table is bare. The smell of disinfectant stings his nose distantly and grey light leaks through the window like water from a loose faucet. Teal linoleum and white on white on white. His heart is a ship slipping silently beneath the waves in the night. Victor doesn’t know why he expected any different.

He takes a rose petal between his thumb and forefinger and crushes it between them. The pads are stained red.

[ghostcat3000]

woodentrain replied to your post “hi, have you really given up pense-bête? I'd soooooo very much like to...”

It pains me more than you could know when you put down your writing skills. PB is the best thing in the universe and that is all.

I’m sorry. I really don’t know what I’m doing. But I try my best and it means a lot to me that you read my stories. 

[ghostcat3000]

I could send you about fifty different passages for this but have this one for now (because I have a huge crush on Dafna) “I’ve given up commenting on that whole situation.” She addressed the suit, her ironing done. Grabbing the lint-brush again, she attacked the sleeves, pulling them taut for each brisk pass—as if Elio was already in it, and she was about to push him out the door. “I like these new suits more than the Miyake ones. Is Armani going to give you more for your upcoming dates?”    

(part 2 of the passage) “Marzia is my oldest friend.”    

  Dafna hung the suit back in the garment bag. “Just avoid looking like the bad guy, please. She’s married. Her husband’s a public figure, you’re a public figure. I don’t need to remind you about the Hello! Magazine fiasco.”    

  “I...” Elio gestured to himself, bringing his shoulders back. “Haven’t done anything.”  

  It was an overly defensive statement, they both knew it. That didn’t stop Elio from smiling, like he had no idea what could have possibly made her think so.

  “Nothing, Didi. Not a thing.”

  She sighed, placing the suit carefully back inside its garment bag. “Any time you’re in crisis, you scurry back to Lady Wynne.”

  That stung him a bit. “It’s not like that.”

  “I know. But is nearly-chaste and certainly-co-dependent any better than an outright affair?” She pointed the lint brush at his head. “Use that brain of yours.”

  Elio wished he had a cigarette so he could put it out angrily into his ashtray, for emphasis. “Tu es pire qu'une mère parce que tu es trop jeune pour être si vieille.”

  Dafna had one foot out of the room. She stopped, turning slowly to face him.

  “That,” she breathed out, eyebrows raised. “―was a good line. I know you didn’t come up with it on your own―what novel is it from? Something French?” Dafna smiled tightly. “You should go warm up.”

from I. Allegro con molto brio

Okay. That’s a lot to cover! Umm, where to start?

I feel like I definitely need to emphasize that the versions of these characters are specific to the world of this fic. Part of my love of fanfic in general is all the variation--I love thinking that these characters can spin out into infinite directions. So when I speak of character--Elio Perlman--it’s the person he is in this particular series--which is: still-young, slightly capricious, a little wiser, and far more mature in certain aspects of his life than others. 

In this series, he and Marzia remained friends and are far closer than they were in the film because time has passed and they have been present in one another’s lives. They have seen each other through some things and since they’ve known each for so long, they have a shorthand. Part of the history I’ve constructed for them is that they have a tendency to fill in the missing gaps of their relationships with each other. Because there is safety and understanding there. They could never be straightforward lovers though. Nevertheless, it’s complicated enough that, to an outside observer, it looks shady af. Hence the Hello! Magazine situation which we won’t get into. 

Doesn’t mean that Elio won’t be a petulant little shit about it though.

Dafna is the voice of reason here and as much as Elio enjoys fucking with her and playing dumb, there’s a part of him that knows she’s not entirely wrong. She’s his family, the Perlman representative and has his best interests at heart. Unlike Elio, she grew up in the States so she has a specific New York energy that I wanted in this story. Something more than just the city--the snowy backdrop to all these shenanigans.

Thank you for the ask, @woodentrain!

from this meme

AO3

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[three--rings]

woodentrain replied to your post: How much do I fear angst?

I can’t believe you have the self discipline! I have to eat everything up the moment it comes out, even though I know it will hurt and then I’ll be left waiting for more…

Well with both TBE and OBS&BH it started with me going “oh, I’m not really in the mood right now, and putting it off.  But then TBE stretched to over a week and I realized I was totally going to wait until I was sure things had improved.  That’s a story I love, but OMG I find it so stressful.

And I did the same thing yesterday with OBS&BH where I kept looking at the email in my inbox and not clicking it.  And I just read a quote from the chapter and OMG.  No, I can’t.   

I get SO STRESSED OUT by fiction.  I will absolutely stay up all night to read if something is stressing me out. (Ok I stay up all night anyway because I’m nocturnal but whatever.) Like if there is bad stuff happening to characters I love then I HAVE TO KEEP READING UNTIL IT IS BETTER.  And if there isn’t a resolution then I might just ragequit entirely.  

So at my advanced age I’ve decided it’s better for my mental stability to read finished things.  

[thetwoguineabook]

woodentrain replied to your post “wow it is taking me a ridiculously long time to get my brain out of...”

It's quite possible that by 2021 hats and cigarettes will be all the rage again.

this is a very good point. calling it now- in four years’ time we’ll all be wearing homburgs and having meaningful coded conversations in Berlin parks.