#*wars

First off, please note that this post is not tagged with anything fandom for a reason and I have made this post unreblog-able. This is meant for CTB people only, as you guys have the full context of the story and understand what my vision is (even if my execution is questionable).

Got it?

Ok, good.

Back in the chapter's commentary, I said I was going to talk at length about the neck thing and some of my decisions surrounding that plot point. Now is the time to do it, so let's go.

The idea behind this plot point is that I wanted Link to ruin the brotherhood in his pursuit to exert control over the engineer. I had the idea for this scene since the conception of this fic (and I will dig more into that in a moment), but I obviously did not want to risk being misinterpreted.

I tried to think of another way to destroy the brotherhood, but two significant character details severely restricted my options: a) Link could not stop "caring" about the engineer, and b) the engineer's limits for being able to call Link his brother have to be something that somehow surpasses extreme violence.

Having Link toss out the platonic relationship for a failed attempt at something more was the only way I could maintain both character details. Link gets to continue "caring" about the engineer while violating the engineer's clearly defined boundaries.

This also plays a lot into how both of them treat relationships, with Link looking to exert control over others (and himself) while the engineer is searching for relief. This conflict as been building up for many chapters now, so here was the time for it to clash, with the engineer being the decided victor.

Which takes us to why the neck? Well, I wanted some way for Link to express a non-platonic feeling without him needed to touch the bathing suit area. Touching the thigh was too sultry, but the neck was the right mixture of innocuous and creepy.

It's important to note that this is in part influence by my perspective. A while back, a friend of mine started to touch the back of my neck when he developed feelings for me, which is in part of why I view neck-touching as strangely intimate. The neck in general is just a very vulnerable spot that, when you think about it, a lot of people do not like to be touched at. I also just think vampires are hot, ergo neck-touching is kinda sexy.

I was hoping that even if people are not informed by the same experiences as I am, Link's inner musings accompanying the neck touching would help clue the reader into how they should feel about it. In retrospect, I can definitely see how readers can be kinda confused by what's so significant about it.

So, yeah. I played it a little bit dangerously here and really tempted fate in order to achieve this one plot point, especially when I really wanted to make sure that nothing happened in it that could be considered shipping.

To make it explicitly clear:

I am not shipping Warriors and Spirit

The narrative is not shipping Warriors and Spirit

Do not yell at me

"But Frankie, what did you mean that you had this idea since the beginning of this fic?"

Well, okay. Let's talk about deleted content. This is a plotline that never made it to the final product, so please do not consider this canon material the way other deleted ideas have been treated.

I talked a while ago about how even when I decided to commit to the toxic relationship angle for Link and the engineer, I had to pull back on a lot of my ideas in order to make it palatable. One of those ideas was a version of Link and the engineer's relationship that toed that no-shipping line by a lot.

Here's the basics: at the start of the story, the engineer was not going to know that he was bisexual. But after meeting Link, an objectively handsome guy around his age who seemed to care about him a lot, he had his bi-awakening. However, he really struggled with this awakening as he was already in a relationship and felt like he was betraying his Zelda. His goal was to not let anyone know about his crush and to get over it as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Link realized early on why the engineer was both clingy and distant with him and started teasing him for it. The teasing was fairly mean as he just liked to see the engineer get flustered and frustrated without realizing that he was being toyed with. Link was going to be an expert at appearing innocuous whenever he teased the engineer to make the engineer think that it was all in his head.

But as the engineer got more comfortable in his role in the war, his crush went away and he affirmed his appreciation for Link's emotional support and the family unit he built with him by calling him his brother, which Link accepts.

That is, until Link starts cheating on Lana.

Remember that scene where Link got drunk and had to be hauled back to camp by the engineer? Originally, Link pissed the engineer off not only by telling him to cheat on Zelda, but by taking his teasing way too far by propositioning him (as a drunken joke). That's when the engineer realized that he had been toyed with for almost a year now. That would spark a fight between them.

However, the engineer would come to forgive Link, in part because Link convinced him he was actually sorry, and because the engineer did not want to disrupt the family dynamic he had built with Link.

From there, the relationship would continue as it has been in the final story. But with the added context and relationship history, Link's neck touching scene would be an even bigger "fuck you" to the engineer.

This entire subplot was based on the idea of the homoerotic nature of a soldier's bond. I wrote a thesis part about this in college, but basically wars can offer a way for men to develop close bonds with other men that could not exist in a heteronormative society.

This subplot took a very literal interpretation of it, but even then, it's obvious by the summary that even with a confirmed crush involved, this was not meant to be shipping content. This was meant to offer another look at Link's paradoxical cruelty and love.

But even I can admit that it skirts way too close to the idea of shipping. That's why I took it out of the final story. I just did not have the energy back then to argue with people about what counted as shipping.

Actually, I still do not have this energy, which begs the question as to why I would go include any form of this plot.