#lothril writes

Thank you anon for the ask!!

Fenris was wary of magic, it could be used to do inexcusable things. He could understand the reasoning behind locking all magic users up, to prevent atrocities from happening, but he also saw how it meant nothing, and the atrocities happened anyway.

The day Thenasto escaped from slavery, he swore never to fall in love again. After meeting a roguishly handsome mercenary in Fort Joy, the elf is fighting a losing battle.

Ifan headed to Fort Joy in pursuit of a contract. Up until a point everything went according to plan, he even found help in the form of an unlikely trio. The moment he laid eyes upon the elf he was intrigued.

Would you look at that?! Another unfinished work from the queen of procrastination?!

I have 18k words written. I just don’t have the very beginning. But I’ll get there, so I can post the saucy part.

"I… yes." His arms trembled for a moment, as if they were deciding to let her go or not. They did not.

"Danse…" she croaked. "I would've come back."

Winter risked a glance at his face. Danse was flushed, and it looked damn good on him. His eyes, so warm as the golden sunlight reflecting in them, revealed a myriad of emotions playing catch with one another. 

Winter felt her stomach churn into a knot. She knew this gaze. Nate flashed it at her all the time.

Danse wetted his lips, a motion that drew Winter's attention to them. They were full and slightly parted. 

It would be so easy to kiss him now, Winter mused. She wanted to do just that, she wanted to throw her caution to the wind and tell him how much she liked him, but she tore her glance away, back to his eyes instead. A millisecond later she wished she didn't. The look he gave her made her knees weak and she sucked in a sharp breath.

As if he was having the same idea, Danse glanced at her lips, and Winter realized, her mouth was slightly ajar, too.

Danse tightened his hold on her, something she thought was impossible given how much he was already squeezing her and tilted his head a bit, and she did the same unthinking. 

I was tagged by @marvilus-magpie, and I’m tagging @evil-is-relative because I adore Ysmir and I don’t remember reading about her first kisses with the Twins? Silly me, you probably covered that.

Uh... What day is it?

I... uh... okay. So, Winter and Danse’s first kiss had so many iterations and had so many written versions, but it got clearer and clearer to me how it happened... except I didn’t exactly wrote it yet. It is not a simple ‘I love you.’//‘I know.’ moment, both of them overthink. A lot.

I shared a little teaser a little while back, and... let me see my WIP... nope, I already purged the last version. 

It happens on a sunny late spring afternoon, when the weather is the best kind of clear, not too far from Taffington Boathouse. I always felt this romantic vibe about the settlement. Also, this kiss was preceded by a kiss on the cheek, utilizing the oh-so-convenient handles on the front of the T-60. 

Revamped Nuclear Winter is up!

Many thanks to my talented writer friends for their support;

@scorpio-skies for being an overall inspirational force and for exchanging novel-length PMs

@purple-martin111​ & @mrninjapineapple​ for beta’ing;

without you this still wouldn’t be here.

When I first designed Winter, she was planned to be an Institute play-through. I did then and I still do regard the Institute as somewhat evil, or at least very selfish, so I sought a rigid and cold look. As it was 2015, I was heavily inspired by the ongoing Game of Thrones, so I modeled the character’s look after the Others.

The silver hair, the snowflakes on her face, the blue eyes (which were the iciest blue first), and even her name, ‘Winter’ was part of it. I tried to create her husband reminiscent of Jon Snow as well (and I failed miserably, creating the most soft and golden hearted character I ever did in the process).

Then, almost five years later I downloaded a mod that came with the ‘Dragonstone’ hairstyle. I tried it on her, and heck... am I the only one seeing any similarity? (Probably.)

But it made me remember the origins of this character and how wildly different it went down than imagined.

I originally wanted her to enter the Institute at some point, and to leave the whole Wasteland behind without a second thought when she reunited with her son.  I was waiting for the right moment to backstab the Minutemen idea and join the Boogeymen.

But...

I’m a casual gamer, a scaredy-cat if you will. In Skyrim I didn’t face Alduin until level 70-80-ish, and the first play through of Winter I only went to Fort Hagen at level 41. I took my sweet time building settlements (a feature I really love!) and I gradually, forgot my original idea of her ‘cruelty’ and pending betrayal.

Also, when I heard the voice of the characters, how hurt, scared, angry or sympathetic she was and seeing her emotions in dialogue camera... it did something to me.

Winter overgrew me. She lead her own damn life. She never stole. She never murdered. Instead, she collected toys for Winter. She was around to help everyone. Like... everyone. She made friends. 

I realized she won. She was a goody two shoes and I wasn’t about to change that.

Her involvement with the Railroad was purely a gameplay effect for me first, but I realized I cared. They were right, fundamentally, even if their methods leave something to be desired.

Her involvement with the Brotherhood was for gameplay reasons too, and I only decided to support the BoS because I wanted to see Liberty Prime in action. Yes, that’s it, and because I wanted her to date Danse and didn’t know there was an option to abandon Maxson’s cause at a certain point. But by that point, she was so heavily involved, I could not erase that.

Instead... I started to write her story. It was horrible at first, and I had awful plans. It was supposed to be more of a crackfic at first, but again, the story decided to write itself. At least in my head, as there’s not much of it published sadly. (I’m doing my best to scrape the story together sentence by sentence. I’ll get there I promise)

Then I realized... This character could potentially do so much more. She has a good speech skill, a vision of the future and some personal advantages to rely on. 

My writing was crap and I still try to live up to the promise that Winter is. I’ll get you there baby, please hang on!

Which takes me back to... well, Daenerys. She was my favourite of the whole show for so long, and even though I saw the signs, I thought they will be there to build up her character, to make her realize how badly she could screw up, but I always thought she’d be the one to sit on the damned Iron Throne, or at least, she’d survived. 

There’s not too much other similarities between Therka and Dany, but I wanted to say that Daenerys was some kind of an idol I had when designing Winter and I still try to keep those good qualities.