Classic Who, Series 1: Episode 1- An Unearthly Child
Perc'ahlia my beloved
enchantedmerry asked:
👀?
blorbologist answered:
I have GOT to finish the second chapter of Get your hands dirty, someone please get me to finish that good god.
This half of the fic would be a lot less about sexy tattoos and vengeance and more with healing and dealing with the implications of this. Vex is gonna do henna on Percy’s back to test out coverup ideas, and eventually be the one he trusts the most with actually doing the coverup! Consider the sexy intimacy!
I want to have a whole focus on his physical therapy following shooting his hand open - TLOVM just gives him Diplomacy as a prosthetic, which I? Might end up going with here? But first he’s got to heal and work on his hand, and will accordingly need more help than usual with tinkering and some day to day tasks. Which gives more shipping opportunities, sure, but more time with the rest of VM too.
There’s also the fact he shot out his own hand, potentially making it impossible to tinker as he used to, for his sister. Just how much that’d mean to Cass if she realizes it, that her nerd brother nearly gave up his passion without a second thought because she’s more important than that.
And, of course, Glintshore. Ripley absolutely scrawled in designs, visible all over because she’s a bitch and relishes in it being visible - maybe even on her face, letting her petty theft be synonymous with herself? The tattoos from Orthax vanishing from Percy’s skin as Vex holds his dead body. How it makes him look even more cold and alien and dead.
(Maybe he has new ones done, after. The arrows over his heart again, for her, for her, for her.)
ATM the reason it’s so hard to finish this is just. Living up to that first chapter, yknow? This would be so much less hot Percy with tats, the darkness inside him, the mounting horror of what he’s been made into. It’s healing, and a different sort of pain, and frustration, and it’s very daunting to consider.
“My friend told me a story he hadn’t told anyone for years. When he used to tell it years ago people would laugh and say, ‘Who’d believe that? How can that be true? That’s daft.’ So he didn’t tell it again for ages. But for some reason, last night, he knew it would be just the kind of story I would love. When he was a kid, he said, they didn’t use the word autism, they just said ‘shy’, or ‘isn’t very good at being around strangers or lots of people.’ But that’s what he was, and is, and he doesn’t mind telling anyone. It’s just a matter of fact with him, and sometimes it makes him sound a little and act different, but that’s okay. Anyway, when he was a kid it was the middle of the 1980s and they were still saying ‘shy’ or ‘withdrawn’ rather than ‘autistic’. He went to London with his mother to see a special screening of a new film he really loved. He must have won a competition or something, I think. Some of the details he can’t quite remember, but he thinks it must have been London they went to, and the film…! Well, the film is one of my all-time favourites, too. It’s a dark, mysterious fantasy movie. Every single frame is crammed with puppets and goblins. There are silly songs and a goblin king who wears clingy silver tights and who kidnaps a baby and this is what kickstarts the whole adventure. It was ‘Labyrinth’, of course, and the star was David Bowie, and he was there to meet the children who had come to see this special screening. ‘I met David Bowie once,’ was the thing that my friend said, that caught my attention. ‘You did? When was this?’ I was amazed, and surprised, too, at the casual way he brought this revelation out. Almost anyone else I know would have told the tale a million times already. He seemed surprised I would want to know, and he told me the whole thing, all out of order, and I eked the details out of him. He told the story as if it was he’d been on an adventure back then, and he wasn’t quite allowed to tell the story. Like there was a pact, or a magic spell surrounding it. As if something profound and peculiar would occur if he broke the confidence. It was thirty years ago and all us kids who’d loved Labyrinth then, and who still love it now, are all middle-aged. Saddest of all, the Goblin King is dead. Does the magic still exist? I asked him what happened on his adventure. ‘I was withdrawn, more withdrawn than the other kids. We all got a signed poster. Because I was so shy, they put me in a separate room, to one side, and so I got to meet him alone. He’d heard I was shy and it was his idea. He spent thirty minutes with me. ‘He gave me this mask. This one. Look. ‘He said: ‘This is an invisible mask, you see? ‘He took it off his own face and looked around like he was scared and uncomfortable all of a sudden. He passed me his invisible mask. ‘Put it on,’ he told me. ‘It’s magic.’ ‘And so I did. ‘Then he told me, ‘I always feel afraid, just the same as you. But I wear this mask every single day. And it doesn’t take the fear away, but it makes it feel a bit better. I feel brave enough then to face the whole world and all the people. And now you will, too. ‘I sat there in his magic mask, looking through the eyes at David Bowie and it was true, I did feel better. ‘Then I watched as he made another magic mask. He spun it out of thin air, out of nothing at all. He finished it and smiled and then he put it on. And he looked so relieved and pleased. He smiled at me. ‘'Now we’ve both got invisible masks. We can both see through them perfectly well and no one would know we’re even wearing them,’ he said. ‘So, I felt incredibly comfortable. It was the first time I felt safe in my whole life. ‘It was magic. He was a wizard. He was a goblin king, grinning at me. ‘I still keep the mask, of course. This is it, now. Look.’ I kept asking my friend questions, amazed by his story. I loved it and wanted all the details. How many other kids? Did they have puppets from the film there, as well? What was David Bowie wearing? I imagined him in his lilac suit from Live Aid. Or maybe he was dressed as the Goblin King in lacy ruffles and cobwebs and glitter. What was the last thing he said to you, when you had to say goodbye? ‘David Bowie said, ‘I’m always afraid as well. But this is how you can feel brave in the world.’ And then it was over. I’ve never forgotten it. And years later I cried when I heard he had passed.’ My friend was surprised I was delighted by this tale. ‘The normal reaction is: that’s just a stupid story. Fancy believing in an invisible mask.’ But I do. I really believe in it. And it’s the best story I’ve heard all year.”
— Paul Magrs (via yourfluffiestnightmare)
Literally cannot emphasize enough that my #1 writing advice is to stop being afraid. Stop being afraid of sounding too cringe, or too stupid, or too horrifying, or too horny, or too weird, or too much, or too little, or too you. You need to put your entire pussy into your art. Sure, it won't be to everyone's tastes, but if you keep yourself to the blandest tamest safest roads possible you will be of no one's tastes, not even yours.
“I’m lending her a book on the French Revolution.”
“What’s she going to do? Re-write it?”
blorbologist asked:
👀
This is an idea I had ages ago but recently I’ve been thinking a lot about a Perc'ahlia marriage of convience au.
So partial credit for this must go to a fic I read that I am unfortunately unable to remember the name of (obviously I’d go digging through the archive to find and link to it if I did ever write this) that had a set up of Vex and Percy deciding to get married for political reasons, it was unfinished but there was the implication that they’d end up falling for each other. It got me thinking about why I was really on board with this, but am very adverse to arranged marriages plotlines (nothing on anyone who reads/writes them, this isn’t even a fanfic thing-I read a lot of historical fiction in my teens) and as I was coming up with an answer plot ideas started forming, as did the feeling that these two are really well suited to exploring these themes.
Cause the thing with marriage is that it’s an act of trust, you’re choosing this person to be your next of kin, to make medical decisions for you if you’re too ill to do so, to share your finances, to love and care for your children even if you break up or die and they get with someone else. That’s really interesting to explore just in general, especially with the characters marrying each other before they’re in love, so there isn’t also a romance going on to justify the union. It also sets up a fun slow-burn of that mutual trust and ability to compromise and work together developing and allowing a closeness they wouldn’t otherwise allow for themselves, which is just Perc'ahlia anyway.
Neither Vex nor Percy trusts easily, very understandably, but they do trust each other, long before they get together. There’s a lot of trust in reaching out to take the hand of someone in the middle of a battle while they’re slowly succumbing to demonic influence, there’s a great deal of trust in listening to your friend as they gently order you to lower your ony defence against your pain. They work together well, appreciate each other’s strengths, and, honestly, they can just get on with each other (two hours in a crow’s nest) in a way that’s really important for a marriage. It’s entirely reasonable for them to assess those things and think the other is a good candiate for a spouse.
Crucially, they’re also both the sort of people who would entre a marriage of convience, in a way I can’t see anyone else in VM doing. Both of them have a cynicism around a lot of things early on, love and romance included, or maybe especially, so if they needed/ wanted a marriage it wouldn’t make sense for them to wait to fall in love, particularly when you think about the fact that neither of them were able to believe the other was in love with them until they got explicit confirmation. They’re both quite pragmatic/practically minded, at least enough for them to think about the stuff I was saying earlier about the sort of power you’re entrusting someone with when you marry them. So it makes sense for each of them individually to think this would be a good idea, and for them to pick each other.
Then there’s a lot of fun to be had, obviously with bed-sharing and pining, but also with how marrying someone means choosing to publically associate yourself with them, to tell the world that this person matters to you and you want them by your side, and that they feel the same about you, which for Vex and Percy in particular will mean a lot.
This has mainly been about the general concept so far and it’s already ridiculously long, so I’ll just close out with some specific things I’m thinking of, even while a lot of it’s still in the air:
- Vex would primarily be the one needing the marriage, I think I’ve found a way which would allow for her to be in a position of needing one while remaining close-ish to the canon plotline, which wasn’t always the plan but does have possibilties that intrigue me
- I haven’t forgotten that these two are, fundamentally, ridiculous, so the current plan involves them having their break up and reconciliation after they’re married but before they’re actually together
- Certain key events (like everything in the feywild) would end up being very different so the slow burn legit might end up slower than canon
- I already know what I’d write for one of the chapter descriptions, might get me yelled at but woulld be very funny
Send me a "👀" and I'll ramble about an au I have but don't know if I'll ever get to writing it.