yo

any way you want it be upon ye

🔎 What detail(s) in the story are you particularly captivated with? Is there any behind the scenes info or backstory?

i had so much fun thinking about the difference between the roles characters play and the people they are in this, i really got to have fun with the Lady Royce/Aranessa divide that i love! i feel like you can see it here:

   Thimble watches, waits, and takes in the sight of Aranessa Royce. There’s a gauntness to her, not quite hidden by the mismatched flowers twisted in her hair. Like there’s something hungry and wounded in her that a dozen little blessings can’t mend—though there are way more than a dozen little blessings piled on her right now, way more than she can possibly even know about, flowers and well-wishes and hopes and thanks and take-heart promises—Thimble doesn’t like it. This isn’t how things are supposed to be. Even at Thaz’s trial— 

thimble has access to a kind of sight that aranessa, even as the head of house royce, does not have. aranessa doesn’t know that the fairies see her work to keep them together and appreciate it as much as they do; i think she’s in a really despairing place at the start of this story, and thimble really brings her a sense of hope that has been missing. i’m dying on the hill of ‘aranessa is actually good at a lot of the aspects of being a ruler and the tachonis just knew where her obvious weak points were’. maya davinos says something like ‘aranessa is going to spread kindness in the ruins of the orchard’ when we meet her and i said yeah the thing is everyone could use some kindness.

🧭 What was the key choice or decision you had to make for this story? If you had chosen differently, what would the story have turned into? 

hm, i feel like i keep going back to hope vs. despair stories in a real way; i had to decide if this would have an optimistic slant or be more angsty. there’s a tenser and more painful version of this story where aranessa does want the bracers back and doesn’t capitulate so easily, so we get a more manipulative thimble (she is thjazi’s heir in so many ways) because she needs those bracers. it would have gone much more ‘well you can’t have the bracers, i’m not asking permission, this is a courtesy that you do not have the power to demand from me’ which would have been more of a downer! dwelling on how much power aranessa has lost. kind of hot though.

whee the funny thing about a little is you always want more time. i’ve been circling back to this one a lot lately, i think i was really onto something 

🏴‍☠️ Were there any points in which your characters tried (or succeeded) to commit mutiny against your planned plot? Where did they most want to rebel? 

it’s interesting when you write about a character that didn’t get much screentime - i feel like i made up a lot of casimir in my mind. there was enough there for me to get a sketch of the guy but i really extrapolated. but the biggest surprise i had while writing this was actually in thjazi, since this was before i really incorporated ‘this is a man who failed’ into my understanding of him:

Thjazi stands, puts a hand on his shoulder for just a second. “You and I both know,” he says, low and intimate like they’re still on the same level, “there’s no such thing as a worthy lord.” And he walks away. 

when i started writing this fic, i meant for ‘there’s no such thing as a worthy lord’ to be a tactic, if that makes sense? it’s supposed to be the next arrow in thjazi’s quiver. but as it went on i loved it as a more genuine interaction, like he’s really setting down all his masks and revealing someone with contradictions and pain beneath the front. he believes in this, but he kept this cabin anyway, he kept seeing aranessa during the war anyway (... Thjazi came out of the tent and convinced them all to do things, whatever it took, and came back here to fuck some faceless noblewoman in a huge soft bed.), and casimir was a great pov character because he was willing to give words to every hypocrisy he saw while still being swept away. 

📖 Could the story have been a different length? What would you have included/removed? 

this is a fun question! almost all of my fics start out as a much bigger ideas that i then cut down into something manageable (i just don’t enjoy writing longer stories as much). this story doesn’t deal with any of the aftermath of the decisions made in it, which was my original thought - thimble and vaelus have teamed up in the dvalmar pass (a crazy idea at the time that would have been fun to explore), Where Is Aranessa Royce (and can she sense that thjazi has brought someone to their sex cabin), vaguely tachonis-shaped thoughts about hunting thjazi down, etc. 

🔎 What detail(s) in the story are you particularly captivated with? Is there any behind the scenes info or backstory? 

okay so this was crazy. 

   At dusk on the third day, an Arcane Marshal passes him on the street. It’s rare for one to be so far from the upper-class districts, there must be five or six tails on him right now, but Casimir’s nerves don’t go sharp because it’s just the kid. The kid, the kid has a name... he’d had a birthday during the Rebellion that Casimir scraped together a cake for, when Thjazi asked. They’d thrown a sad little party to pass the time between fights.  

like what did i mean ‘azune is known-enough by every former falconer that he can walk through dangerous parts of the city and that’s the thing that’s protecting him, not his power as an arcane marshal’. it was big ‘everyone kind of thought thjazi having a child soldier was bad but look at his big eyes, he’s way too thin, we’re not going to throw him out’ hours. so much of this fic is 'let's all be haunted by the torn banner' hours.

 The hero of the story—what? Thjazi ambles closer, and Casimir doesn’t run.