#benditlikerackham

Jo!!!!!!! I miss you! Thank you for this ask and I basically vomited a bunch of words at you so I’m sorry lol!

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?I can’t really pick one I think I have to say it’s whenever I can add canon dialog to a modern AU and make it flow and be believable that is my ultimate fav thing. It’s a point of pride for me.

5: What part was hardest to write?The smut. I said this in another ask but I always wait until the story is written then go back to add in the smut. It’s so hard to be original, and to make it an organic part of the overall story and not feel like sex added in just to get hits/kudos/comments. This whole fic was hard for me to write- it just took forever to get it all out and is the fic that has taken me the longest to write of any I’ve done. I thought I might never finish it. But I’ll always love it and be proud of it. I’ll be honest there is often a piece of “me” in my writing even if it’s not a direct reflection of how I feel or act, there is something I want to say or get out into the world (I guess it’s cheaper than therapy lol!). This one felt “personal”- the most personal will always be my first Jaime x brienne fic, The Monster.

Thank you.

He was just a really good dude. Apparently he wasn’t that good a dad when his kids were little (he was really into going car racing), but he changed a lot as a person over the years and was wonderful all my life. Very funny.

He did our taxes for free every year. He let me borrow his Army Drum and Bugle Corps trumpet when I was in elementary and middle school so I could be in band.

He told good stories and had a really great laugh.

He had a terrible blood phobia and would get faint at the sight of it. Which sucked for him because he was diabetic. He always had to psych himself up to do his blood sugar and/or insulin every evening.

He was very involved with his Vietnam Veterans group.

He was my favorite uncle and he always told me I was his favorite niece. No matter that I was his only niece, I was still his favorite.

I’m going to miss him a lot.

Last thing I learned that brought me joy was actually something I already knew at one point but had forgotten (thanks, Facebook Memories, for reminding me!):

Thank you. <3 

a) It’s quite a while since I last read orange verse, honestly. I’m not much of a fic re-reader. But the very beginning is always seared into my brain. Specifically, I’m absolutely in love with this part:

He padded silently down the hallway, walked pass the bloody, unconscious pirate snoring on his reading chair, and entered his sunny yet sparse kitchen. He started a small fire in the stove to get the tea going, and stared absently out the window at his grove for a moment.

He returned to his living room and looked down at the pirate bleeding onto his favorite chair. A pair of crutches had fallen to the floor beside the pirate’s one remaining foot. Old bruises were covered with new cuts. The pirate had helped himself to Santiago’s rum at some point during the night, and had drank most of the bottle.

For a brief, shining moment, Santiago considered walking out the door and never coming back. Just up and out, not even taking the time to put on shoes because those were precious seconds he couldn’t afford to lose.

But then the larger, angrier, indignant side of him overcame, and Santiago nudged the pirate hard in his arm.

JUST! GOD! It’s so perfect. It’s so, so good! And so fucking funny. What a set up to that whole glorious AU. <3

Thanks for the ask @benditlikerackham! I hope this is OK, it’s really the best I could do but I had some trouble recording it and I hope the way I read Madi sounds OK/not offensive. *gulp*

Ahhh that’s so difficult! D: I’ve written 50+ things for several different pairings...picking just one is like picking a favorite child, I love them all. 

She half expected never to see them again. More than half, really. Both of them carried themselves on the wind. They walk deliberately, like each step must be measured and considered. Like seeds been carried on a breeze, not yet willing to disappear altogether, but not ready to fully take root.

If she weren’t a good Christian, Lua would think they’re no good bums. But she was a good Christian, and she employed one of them. And she didn’t make a habit of employing bums.

But still, she expected them to run off in the night. She never considered Santiago much at all until Juan walked into their lives. She might have even believed them to be who they said they were – but no one just says they’re the kind of people who would happily toss drunken bastards out of windows.

And that’s exactly the kind of people Santiago and Juan were, apparently.

When they left the night before, fleeing out the back from any repercussions, Lua had been convinced that if she did see them again, she’d tell them to get lost. They were trouble. Everyone who frequented the taberna suspected that before, but now everyone knew.

But then Lily had started crying, saying one of the men – she thought the one whose arm Santiago had snapped in half – had grabbed at her, and they’d both been saying the most filthy, awful things to her the moment they sat down – and Lua decided, if Santiago and Juan hadn’t left town in the middle of the night, she’d go so far as to pretend the incident last night never happened. That was a far as her Christian nature would allow, and she’d just have to pray no one from her Church heard about it.

Then they surprised her, strolling in the next afternoon, like none of it ever happened. Juan was late, of course, so they didn’t surprise her too much, but at least they looked like they’d been rushing. Both were sweaty and disheveled, Santiago with a hand around Juan’s elbow to steady him.

They looked different to Lua, but she wasn’t sure if it was just last night’s violence coloring her view. There was no longer a kicked bend to Juan‘s spine. She never realized before how tall Santiago was.

“Sorry I’m late,” Juan said, heading right past her into the kitchen. “We got held up.”

Lua hummed, following him. “Picking fights with more drunk perverts, were you?” she asked, because she’d had to start prepping dinner herself, thinking she’d have to do everything herself, and she was annoyed.

Juan froze where he’d been wrapping his apron around his waist. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, looking confused, like he had no idea what she was talking about.

“Oh, yeah,” he said eventually. “That. I can explain. That.”

“What’s to explain?” Lua then, very deliberately, handed him the knife she’d been using to slice into a side of beef. “Now I know you’re strong enough to handle the dinner rush on your own. No more complaining. Get to work.”

He pursued her back out into the dining room, a complaint already half-formed in his mouth, when he stopped suddenly.

Lua followed his eyeline. Sitting in his usual table, yellow with sunlight, Santiago held a thick book open. His brow was furrowed, and he rubbed his chin with the back of his hand in concentration. Lua never noticed before, but he had a ridiculous amount of freckles on his forearms.

When she looked back at Juan, his face had smoothed out, all trace of annoyance gone, as well as any indication that Lua was next to him. He looked confused again, but in a softer, happier way. It reminded her of a song her husband used to sing. It had been based on a poem he’d read once, about a man coming home after a long journey.

“Hungry?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

Juan blinked, a flush rising on his cheeks. “Pardon?”

“I said, people are hungry.” She shoved him back to the kitchen. “Get to work.”

Juan scowled, still a little red, but heading back all the same. “I’m going to throw you out a window next.”

Lua had been right, of course. They were no good bums. But that’s exactly what her father called her husband, up to the day he died. No good bums had their uses.

Behind Santiago, she could see out the window the big oak tree her children used to climb while she worked, when they were very small. The branches were heavy with leaves, but they were still in the early afternoon. There was no breeze today.

ah, time, as a symptom! 

so i think the idea had been knocking around for a while. i was thinking a lot about space stations as a setting... i started to get into sci-fi as a genre in 2015-16 and something about space stations really appeals to me. they’re a great mix of alien and human, and they’re these big industrial structures in space, which is this terrifying/wonderful numinous thing. they also allow for a lot of solitude, and i like writing about people who are alone - especially when i’m writing remus.

they’re like. i don’t know. industrial settings for sci-fi stories which don’t have to be about the science. i knew i wanted to write about remus/sirius and thought i would try and use a sci-fi setting to get across character work.

a couple of direct inspirations were the podcast wolf 359 and alistair mcdowall’s play x. in my head, the station is very similar to the research base in x. i didn’t love x and i didn’t want to bother with the stuff about earth in the play, but i loved the set. and the sense of physical space. there was also a certain amount of the horror comic southern cross in there.

i was probably also thinking of a short story by sofia samatar about somebody who chooses to stay in space, in a non-glamorous job, isolated with only a cat for company. Request for an Extension on the Clarity.

i was very dissatisfied with the end result of the fic and considered orphaning it. it’s not so much that i had headcanons that didn’t make it in, as i didn’t give myself enough time to write the setting or remus’s state of mind properly... if i’d had more time (i wrote it very quickly) i would have turned in a much longer story. as it is, i feel like it’s little more than bare bones.

i wanted to spend more time working out how the travel there worked, as well as the travel between earth and the space station. it’s hard to make it reasonable for remus to remain there and to make it possible for both sirius and someone else on his trail to turn up at the station on their own... and i didn’t pull it off. 

if i was writing it now i’d also write more of their lives on the station, and maybe also write scenes of remus as the station’s caretaker alongside other visiting teams. 

the problem really is that i knew all the plot points i wanted to write but didn’t have time or space to earn them. stuff happens because it has to happen for the story to work - not because the story makes it clear that they should happen.

i’d also like to have written more about mundane life on the station. my favourite bits in like, the martian are when he’s eating, and growing potatoes. i wanted to write about the small pieces of life that stay the same even in an alien, industrial, enclosed space, in space - and i’m not sure i did that enough.