Hey, thought I might as well do a proper introduction.
I'm Carina, I write and draw to keep myself sane and my hands busy when I'm not working (ok, sometimes when I should be working) or taking care of my home and pets and family.
You can find an overview over all my fics here.
When I'm not doing either of those things, I occasionally do LARP (more often TTRPGs), sew (both for comfort and for costumes), read, play videogames or get my hands dirty in the garden.
Image selection likely to feature my ongoing hyperfixation(s). I don't do commissions (because who's got the time?), but I do take suggestions :)
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New Chapter up! In which we set sail for Quarinus.
Snippet:
"Already missing home?" a voice he knew all too well spoke up just past his left shoulder, making him flinch.
"Maker's balls, we need to put a bell on you," Illario cursed, turning towards his king and brother.
Lucanis stood just out of arm's reach, further than he would have before everything fell apart, but his smug little smirk was achingly familiar; a remnant of a simpler life. The distance between that Lucanis and this one could only be measured in time, years and years of it stretched by duty, indifference and grief.
It took Illario several long blinks until he remembered Lucanis' initial question.
"Is it still my home? Or is this journey just the precursor to finding some quiet corner where I can be tucked away and forgotten?"Because that was, historically speaking, something kings loved to do with uncomfortable members of their court and family. To be fair, it was a fate most often reserved for lovers and strictly political spouses, but there was no reason why the concept couldn't be dusted off for estranged adopted brothers.
The smirk dropped from Lucanis face, expression turning opaque as he stepped forward to lean on the railing alongside Illario.
"That depends largely on you, I suppose."
Illario snorted. "Still undecided, your Majesty?"
"It feels like a decision that shouldn't be rushed," Lucanis shrugged.
No, it probably shouldn't — no matter how much Illario longed for clarity.
For a full minute, they stared out at the waves in silence, watching their home — still, after everything — disappear into the distance like sea-spray cresting on a wave.
"Do you remember that time we stole a boat and tried to sail all the way up to Treviso?" Illario asked to break the quiet.
"Maker, don't remind me," Lucanis groaned, a startled laugh sneaking past his guard before he could stop himself. "Caterina didn't let us past the walls without an escort for an entire year! We were what, 14?"
"At most. Still can't believe that was your idea," Illario teased, "your one act of teenage rebellion, ending with that poor boat at the bottom of the ocean not five miles from the harbour."
"I don't remember you offering even a hint of protest though — and it was technically crown property."
"Oh no, I thought it was a fabulous idea! Well, right until we dragged our soggy asses back ashore."
"Not when the hull began to take water?"
"Ah, no, because at that point, there was still a chance that we might have salvaged it somehow. Maybe not to Treviso, but, you know. A little water isn't that uncommon with skiffs that size, is it?"
Lucanis snorted. "Not when you have no idea what you're doing, I suppose."
"It's probably a good thing we're not in charge of this one then."
It's been a while, but here we go! Gently tagging @epiphany-jones @sorrygoldfish @dags-over-caravans @blightwashed @gloaminghagette @khayr @chaosherald @vixenofcadmea @frotees-corner @skogrr and anyone else who wants to play.
Pick a scene/chapter/whatever from one of your fics (or I'll suggest one!) and add any commentary you feel like. Why that line? How come this plot twist? What does the eyebrow waggle MEAN?!?! I want the dirt and I can only smash my face up against the glass of your stories so hard before I start to leave smudges.
Birdwatching is almost over, so I decided to talk about one of my absolute favorite parts of it to write, which I mentally refer to as the “doesn’t count bullshit ladder.” Lots of blabbing on that below the cut, covering chapters 6-15, so if anyone hasn't read but might and cares about being surprised, give this one a skip.
Like with most of Birdwatching, I wanted their relationship trajectory to feel recognizable to canon without hitting it beat for beat, so rather than the more classic Rookanis slow burn I decided to go for “let’s watch these idiots fight tooth and nail to unring a bell they keep swinging at.” Getting the shared understanding of mutual attraction/interest out in the open early moved the dynamic from wondering about the other’s feelings and/or trying to hide or deny their own to both of them desperately try to maintain some sort of control over something rapidly spinning away from them. Obviously, there is no point in the story where I’m trying to convince readers that this working very well, but slowly moving the two of them through the little boundary nudges and loopholes they keep inventing until even they’re barely pretending to believe it anymore was something I found so fun.
Out loud, this collaborative bullshit starts in chapter 11, but reaaaally it starts in 7 in direct response to the moment at the end of 6 where Lucanis briefly loses his cool, kisses Rook, and then freaks out and runs away (look, some elements of canon are too classic to cut).
So first, Lucanis kisses Rook and then clearly has some conflicted feelings about it, but it’s okay! It doesn’t count! They were just keyed up.
“Rook,” Lucanis says, when he catches up. She’s already three or four steps up towards the top floor, but stops, turns halfway to face him again at the sound of his voice. There is, for a moment, a flicker of true surprise that greets him. “Saturday. The rest of it…”
The surprise washes away, a wry little grin taking its place. “Don’t worry about it.”
“No, I—I should explain. It wasn’t you, I just—”
“It was a weird night.” She shrugs, easy and unbothered. “We were both keyed up. It really is okay. It doesn’t need to be a big, weird thing.”
Another thing he hadn’t expected, in what has turned out to be quite a series of them today. “It doesn’t,” he repeats, skeptical.
Rook’s grin grows wider, takes on the teasing little lift he’s more accustomed to. “Unless you want it to be a big, weird thing. Do you want it to be a big, weird thing? Because—”
“No.”
“—I can make it a big, weird thing, if you’re really—”
And they’re back. “No ‘big weird thing’.”
“Okay, then. See? No harm, no foul. That was easy.”
And they do mean it, at this point. Yes, there’s mutual attraction, and no, there’s really no maintaining plausible deniability about that–but they’re not going to do anything about it. Even if it does mean that interactions between them start to feel a little more charged, and physical contact becomes a lot risker as evidenced by the escape training which goes very well until it very abruptly doesn’t:
When his hand comes back, it’s not to her neck. The back of his fingers brushing along the exposed skin of her arm is a weakness, more dangerous than the hold. Rook draws a quick, shallow breath.
Lucanis clears his throat. “We covered a lot today. Let’s take a break. Review another time.”
“You're the boss,” Rook murmurs. Her hair’s shifted with the forward tilt of her head and left the back of her neck exposed—the faint line of her spine dipping below the collar of her shirt, a small brown birthmark just beneath the curve out to her shoulder. “How’d I do?”
A hands-breadth of space between her skin and his nose, looking down like this. Not as much as there should be, but he stays there anyway, close enough to smell her perfume, knuckles still light over skin that’s gone to goosebumps beneath his.
But it’s fine. They’ve got this, even if both of their internal narration starts much more overtly identifying the pull and they both start acknowledging to themselves that they’re toeing a line they (allegedly) don’t want to cross. Rook starts redirecting herself away from riskier trains of thoughts a lot more often, Lucanis flat out admits to himself he knows what he’s doing bringing Rook back to his place for a late night dinner, they’re both constantly flirting, but it’s fine. Sure, they kiss again, sure there’s an open discussion about how they both think it’d be good between them, but they reach a very reasonable mutual agreement to just table that for the time being to focus on the problem at hand and that’s that.
Lucanis shifts a little further down into his pillow, watching the thin strips of light cast on the ceiling through the blinds. “So you speak Orlesian?”
“Ça te plairait si c’était le cas?”
He set his own trap there, really, and then walked right in. He closes his eyes. “I like a lot of things about you.”
“Oh, that’s not fair,” Rook says. It sounds like a sigh. Her voice has gone soft and low. “You already have Antivan. Leave something for me.”
Ok, that’s that.
His left hand’s not… quite angled the way it was before, either. It’s a tiny overlap—his index finger over her pinky. Barely counts, really.
“This is you being good?” he asks, a quiet rumble in her ear that curls low in her stomach and sends a rush of heat blooming across her skin, and that, on the other hand… that counts.
That’s that, they said! And they’re sticking to it! The end!
Then the Orbis mess hits, and the aftermath, and that pretense about how fine they both are starts getting a little strained. From that point their respective narrations aren’t doing any pretending about the feelings anymore–but they do both start scrambling to make it containable, and what I enjoyed writing the most and really hope was legible to readers is that they both know they’re both doing it. These are two people who are avoidant in very different directions, fully participating in a mutual fiction that just gets more and more ridiculous the more they push arbitrary limits they set.
Every step up the ladder breaks the fiction a little more. In 11, Rook introduces the ‘exception’ language they use to justify a series of escalations outside of friendship/professional behavior, but it’s okay because it’s super quick and they don’t talk about it. A blip!
“Yeah, just, before we… the thing where we pretend we’re just two good friends on a job and that’s it?”
“Yes,” Lucanis says, slowly.
“Can I just get like a… a real quick exception on that? Super fast. Won’t even register, probably.”
No. Absolutely no. As fried as they both are, as tired, after everything over the last 24 hours, that is… not a good idea.
“Okay,” he says.
Rook lets out a breath she may have been holding; she closes the few feet between them without hesitation, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck and drop her forehead to his shoulder, and there is no thought—none—in winding his arms tight around her and hugging her close. A soft noise escapes her. She lifts her head enough to catch the frame of her glasses with a finger, tugging them off and turning to press her face into the crook of his neck.
A quick exception. Just a minute. He steadies her weight against him and angles his face down into her hair and feels the rise and fall of her breathing beneath his palm.
Just a minute. Just this once.
I really wanted to make it clear in the narration that even as it’s happening, Lucanis knows this is not safe territory and does it anyway. And it actually kind of works! They stabilize and are able to move forward from the night before. Likewise later the same day, when Rook initiates another step on the ladder and asks him to let her not push for details she operationally should like it’s a favor to her.
“...do you really want to do this right now?”
He’s exhausted. He owes her this. It’s not good enough, and Neve’s not wrong. He doesn’t know where to start. “No,” he admits. “But we should.”
“Eh. Well. We should probably do a lot of things.” Rook stands. She takes her empty mug with her and bends to collect his as well. “Maybe we put ‘should’ away on this one. Take some time, figure out what we need to know. Keep the rest till you’re ready.”
“Rook—”
“Let me not be work-first on this. Just this once.” She shrugs, a coffee mug in each hand, close enough on the tight landing that they’d brush against each other if he stood up straight. “Call it a… a real quick exception.”
And that works too! Not neutral territory but plausibly deniable and it lets him get himself together, so it’s okay! Doesn’t count.
By 12 the physical containment fully cracks but they’re now still clinging to the pretense because it’s just one night! So they can focus! That’s okay, right?!
“A one night exception,” Rook manages against his lips, barely. “We… just for tonight. Just—”
Lucanis pulls his head back enough to look at her, eyes heavy-lidded, bottomless black in the dark. “What?”
Rook swallows hard. “Tomorrow, we go back to being good,” she whispers. “Focused. But maybe, just tonight, we pretend it’s easy.”
“Just tonight,” he echoes, slowly. One hand comes up, the back of his fingers grazing along her cheek before his hand settles to cup her face, terribly gentle compared to the tight grip on her hips just a moment before.
“No weirdness,” Rook promises. “Nothing changes. Like a… a…”
“Pressure valve.”
But they immediately start telling on themselves. They’re saying this is just a ‘pressure valve’ but I tried to work in a lot of tells that this is absolutely already emotionally meaningful for both of them. Lucanis keeps slowing down and slipping into more overt tenderness, Rook slips in her narration that she’s already grieving getting “only this,” they end up face to face with their fingers laced which is about the least emotionally neutral body language I can think of. When Lucanis picks up narration in the next chapter and looks back he doesn’t actively use the L word, but it was certainly my intent to imply him consciously circling it, and he recognized it going in to all of that! He knew it before he even touched her! It’s so stupid, you guys.
And they know it’s stupid. They know immediately walking back ‘just tonight’ by nudging the definition of ‘tonight’ to mean ‘overnight' and then nudging the definition of ‘overnight' to mean ‘weeeeell it’s still dark’ is ridiculous. The biggest crack in the pretense forms here, not because of the sex, but because they both start cooperatively looking for ways around their own rules.
Staying the night after the Ossuary? Doesn’t count! Just emotional support. Holding each other in bed? Doesn’t count! Strictly physical comfort. By the time they hit the phone scene and start in on the absolutely paper-thin hoop jumping to justify it, it’s already borderline a joke.
She barely gets out, “Tell me about your book,” before she needs to press her lips shut again, and the laugh sounds nearly punched out of him.
This is where their experience climbing the rungs of absurdity splits, because at this point he’s playing along but also starting to recognize how ridiculous this whole situation is, but Rook is still clinging. She is trying so hard, and while Mr. Compartmentalization can stay within the framework here and do just fine, she really starts to struggle. She’s getting frustrated, on his end he comes back down and hears what’s starting to sound more distressed than pleasurable, and so when they hit:
“Let me hear you,” Lucanis murmurs
It’s the sudden jump out of the shared lie that gets her as much as anything else–and he does it for her, because he can hear that she needs it. Just like he does it for her the following day, implicitly dropping the pretense by making only the vaguest little wave at it:
“This doesn’t count either,” he mumbles against her lips.
“Okay.” It—sure. Okay. No problem. “Why not?”
His hand snakes up beneath her shirt, palm broad and cool against the overheated flush of her skin. “I don’t know,” he says, catching her lip in the pause. “One of us’ll think of something.”
And like he does for her the day after that, finally breaking it completely the moment he recognizes that the stakes have flipped and where once he saw giving in to temptation as the riskier move, they’ve hit the point where continuing to pretend is actively more dangerous than just calling things what they are:
“I’m in love with you,” Lucanis says, and Rook stops short, frozen mid-word. “I don’t get to play games with that anymore. No more… exceptions, or loopholes, or saying it doesn’t count. It counts. It—” She’s gone a little pale, and it’s the absolute last way he wants to have this conversation, but they’re out of options. “It counts for me. He knows it.”
In general, Rook’s the primary instigator of most steps of the “doesn’t count” game throughout the story, which felt right to me because one, it feels like a very “devil in the details” lawyer-ly way of thinking that she would gravitate towards anyway, but two, there is a tendency of Rook’s which (I hope) becomes more apparent over the course of the story of minimizing or deflecting what she wants and oh boy is this part of that. Meanwhile, as much as she's convinced herself that this is something she's doing to make things less serious and more palatable for him, he's consistently the one who sets it aside and eventually throws it away completely on her behalf, because that has a operational justification he can't bury under whether or not he 'deserves it'.
I went into writing it all with a really clear idea of this slowly escalating mutually complicit fiction and while I didn’t have the specifics of how it would play out pre-planned, I’m really happy with how it ended up developing. These two are so incapable of admitting or asking for what they want and so reliant on their individual coping mechanisms to deal with overwhelm; a big theme in the whole story is that they do really make good partners–and they did here, too, just merrily fumbling their way into complete emotional entanglement with their eyes wide open and telling each other it was all good. Idiots! So fun to write.
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It takes Rook a moment to fully catch up to everything Bellara said. "Wait — what do you mean, weather service?"
Bellara grins. "You know how it's always raining for superhero funerals?"Rook shakes her head. While she's spent plenty of time hiding out in movie theatres, she's never watched a lot of TV, and certainly not sad reality TV.
"Well, it does, and that's not a coincidence. They have people on payroll whose sole job it is to come in and adjust the weather for big events. It's actually really impressive."
At the edge of her vision, Rook can see Lucanis rolling his eyes, and for once, she's inclined to agree. That does feel like … well. A lot of effort, just to make things look right."Isn't that … I don't know; I always thought it was bad to mess around with the weather? That it can wreck weather patterns and cause droughts or floodings elsewhere?" And it wasn't like Minrathous didn't plenty of rainy days all on its own.
"It is, that's why they're so careful with the timing, and why there are very few people both capable of and certified to pull that crap," Neve speaks up from her perch on a nearby table.
"Why go to the trouble at all then?" Rook wants to know.
Neve shrugs. "You'd be surprised how many battles are won in the court of public opinion, and it does help set the mood. It's also a subtle reminder of the kind of power Evanuris inc. has at their disposal."
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For this pride month, I want you all to know that my 8y old kid never once thought to question that the first successful romances on my Tomodachi Life island were Neve/Bellara and Davrin/Elek, and how much he cheered when each of them eventually got married.
I wrote so many fun words the last couple of days that I feel obliged to share :D (More Superhero AU this week)
Rook shakes her head and sneezes, and everything seems to … drag, a little. Like the after-image of a bright flash. Drag, blur, tilt. No, wait — that's not just her vision, that's her body, and there's a moment of disoriented alarm before she bumps into something solid and a familiar pair of arms reach out to steady her.
"Rook? Are you alright?"
Lucanis' face appears in her field of view, flashes of purple glinting at the edges.
"You have really pretty eyes," Rook thinks, except she doesn't think, not really, not with her mind heavy and slow like honey. It's not fair how pretty they are, really, because jerks shouldn't get to have pretty eyes and gentle hands and look that good in spandex.
"You can't even see my eyes right now," he says after a short pause, and there's a spark of alarm fluttering through Rook's chest, quickly squashed by the numbness tingling in her fingertips. She can almost see them through the mask if she squints, but she doesn't really need to, because it "doesn't matter, I remember them just fine."
Wait, did she just say that out loud? A giggle bubbles up in her chest and gets stuck half-way, because that's ridiculous; she wouldn't just say that. But she must have said something, because Lucanis is frowning again, and Rook can tell, even through the mask. Always frowning, frowning, frowning — the first time she saw him without the silly costume, at the funeral, when she fell off that stupid ladder, when he put a band-aid on her finger, when he grabbed her face a couple of days ago, not when they were infiltrating that illegal fight club. He actually smiled then — not when he spaced out way too close to her face, but when he took her home after, and she likes him better when he smiles.
Her hand almost reaches out to wipe that frown away, which would be stupid on account of the mask, and because she can't complain about him grabbing her face and then turn around and do the exact same thing, though turn-around is kinda fair play, but that's not what stops her. It should be, but it's not. She looks down then, no longer at his face but at her hand, which feels like a ballon filled with butterflies but doesn't look like one, and she turns it around, trying to catch the trick.
Gentlest of tags for @adejareve and @sageadvice and @vorchagirl :)
Monthly Challenge: Thats it! No people! Yes, we all love drawing OC's and our blorbos and all that - but this is supposed to be a challenge after all so I couldn't make it toooooo much just la la fun times. So try just not drawing people. Draw a chair. Do a still life. Sketch a picture of that cup of coffee next to you. Since this one is a little different and more themed than the others the weekly prompts are going to be very loose with some extra options.
Weekly Challenges:
Week 1 - Still life. Optional Challenge: Draw your blorbos favorite object.
Week 2 - Animals (fantasy animals included!)
Week 3 - Buildings or scenery. Optional Challenge: Draw your blorbos favorite location.
Week 4 - Draw a picture of your favorite thing you can find in your house right now.
Last one still lacks the tree reflection, but I ran out of time 😅
I also had my first figure drawing course today, and can report that I still have the same issues I’ve had for a while. Will not be sharing those sketches XD
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One of my New Year’s resolutions was to work more on my art and try to actually gain some progress, so I gifted myself a watercolour weekend workshop and a one month figure painting course.
Watercolour workshop has definitely been fun today 😃 Just getting to paint without interruption for 4 hours with nice people all doing the same? Extremely soothing. (Did one more but forgot to take a pic)
Wait, am I the only one that understands the "What am I supposed to do with this idiot?" as a rhetorical question said out of anger and frustration? Lucanis doesn't look torn or uncertain in that scene. He looks pissed as hell.
I keep seeing people saying that Rook makes the decision about what to do with Illario for Lucanis and that he lacks autonomy or agency here, but I don't think that's the case.
Rook never tells Lucanis what to do in this instance. They either comment on the character of the Dellamorte cousins' relationship or they list Illario's crimes. Lucanis makes the decision to 1) let Illario live on his own and then 2) he decides whether Illario should be forgiven or imprisoned. Yes, the text of the dialogue options themselves on the wheel is misleading and the interface tells you what will happen depending on the dialogue option you select for clarity, and yes, Lucanis's decision is inspired by Rook's words, but Rook never states what Lucanis should do.
Rook only says this: "He tried to kill you and got you imprisoned. And kidnapped the First Talon. And made a deal with the Venatori."
Or this: "Didn't you tell me he was basically your brother and your closest childhood friend?"
Nothing else.
So, what happens when you choose, e.g., imprisonment on the dialogue wheel is that Rook says, "He sucks!" and Lucanis is like, "Right, let's lock him up." If forgiveness is chosen, Rook goes, "You care about him, though," and Lucanis sighs the sigh of the century and is like, "Yeah, he's still family, so we'll keep an eye on him." In both cases, he also immediately commands Viago what to do with him.
Sometimes I feel like people look too much at the interface and not at what the characters actually say, as in, what words actually leave their mouths. But I also understand that the text on the dialogue wheel is what it is, so I guess I can't blame anyone for it. Maybe I'm wrong to assume that if those words aren't actually spoken, they don't count?
The writing of Lucanis as the First Talon certainly leaves something to be desired. As other people have mentioned, he doesn't seem to give input on things he probably should after becoming the First Talon, even though "the Crows rule Antiva" and Lucanis is on the very top of that food chain now. However, I don't think that the decision about Illario's fate is one of those problems. It works with the themes the game sets up for him and Rook doesn't decide here any more than with any of the other companions.
Or maybe I'm dumb, idk. As I said, that's just the impression I've got.
[I also find Caterina's choice to make him the First Talon then and there infuriating in a very immersive way (positive) and in character for her, and Lucanis's "Eh, Caterina is still in charge," afterwards quite in character for him, as well, especially at first. Yeah, I'd have loved it if the game had eventually worked its way to Lucanis making a decision for himself whether he wanted to keep the title but would stand up to Caterina more or whether he'd just say fuck it and leave. From the datamined content, it seems that they might've wanted to do that, but alas, due to the development hell we've got what we've got. But that's a whole another can. In this post, I wanted to focus on Illario, specifically.]
