hello, if you're still doing director's commentary posts, could i get one on the spirit is willing (the flesh is weak) please? thank you! 🌿
The first scene was the first thing I wrote once I gave in to the terribly compelling idea of Bill/Ginny fuck or die.
I remember noodling about the concept with @fluxweeed and saying something like "but what's the scenario? What forces them together?" Because I had the vibes, but I need Believable Motivation for my sibling incest stories, apparently. And as soon as the idea of a curse breaking misadventure and a sex spirit was proposed, my mind ran with it.
When I get excited about a story idea, it usually starts with a strong emotional inspiration. There's a moment that I can sort of see the shape of, and I want to get that feeling right. In this case, it was that moment of Bill trying to protect Ginny by giving in to the spirit's desires, and both of them thinking they need to hide what it means to them.
I have a superstition that if I write this scene before it's had a chance to marinate in my brain then I'll lose some essential, intangible element. What this means is that I start writing significantly earlier in the story, in order to help establish the baseline relationship and character arc starting points and all those other important things that will help reveal its true shape. It's a very "no dessert before your vegetables" attitude to writing. It's very frustrating!
However! Rather than feeling like a slog, starting with the opening scene energized me. It's the third time I've written a sex scene that's interrupted, and I love what it told me about Ginny in this fic—she's horny, adrift, and a bit messy. It made me want to figure out what Bill thought of her, beneath his laid back, amused outer shell.
I jumped around quite a bit after I finished that scene, working on whichever part I was interested in at any given moment. The whole plot element about the binding knives happened by accident—I was fumbling around, trying to figure out how to make the concept of "bill and ginny walk into a tomb" more interesting, when I remembered that I had made Bill toss a backpack onto Ginny in the opening scene. That made me wonder: what was in the backpack? Ginny was my proxy; I had no idea what she would find when she rooted through it.
In the bonus episode for The Bolthole, GallaPlacidia talks about how her plots emerge organically the more specific her writing becomes, because she just starts noticing patterns and connections and themes in the semi-random elements that she's introduced. That's what happened to me—I added a knife to the bag on a whim, because why not? Later, I realized that if Ginny had a knife, then Bill surely did too. Also, his knife could fail, which raised the stakes a bit. I now needed a reason that Ginny's knife wouldn't fail, which led me to the offerings and the stasis spell, and also provided a plausible motivation for Bill to get close to Ginny later when she's naked and vulnerable so he could slip her the knife (hurr hurr). All of that because I wanted something in the backpack that would take Ginny by surprise!
I do think the main setting suffers from Big Empty Room Syndrome. Like, it's this big hill they're inside, with a long tunnel entrance, and it's just... there's an altar? And offerings? And a plaque on the wall? One day I'll figure out how to actually describe environments in ways that make them sound interesting and believable.
The last thing that sticks out to me from the writing process is the scene where the spirit is torturing Ginny. My biggest difficulty there was my fear that I would undermine the mood for subsequent taboo sex. I don't find torture or pain particularly sexy (your mileage may vary), so choosing to tell a story where Bill is forced to take unthinkable action to stop Ginny from getting hurt was ambitious. I liked that she was exposing her desires to try and keep the spirit from hurting him, though; the symmetry makes my math brain happy.
I think that's it for the director's commentary! I am very fond of this fic, and it's the first one that I've recorded that I also wrote. Go ahead and give it a spin!
the spirit is willing (the flesh is weak)
