scraping

it's what i'm doing, so away we go, updates, about the author

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I spent yesterday doing a scorched-earth rewrite of a scene that hadn’t quite worked, as written. Thanks to bittylildragon https://tmblr.co/mFZ-dyX2gnK2QUR8N-lH5pA‘s useful feedback, I could see it wasn’t saying what I meant it to. So I did the hard version of editing, where you open a new window and have the original on one screen and the new in another and you copy-paste absolutely nothing, you just type it all over by hand. That’s the only way I can make myself really fix things.

So I did that, for the one scene– 3k words– and then the scene after it stood better on its own, another 1500 words, but to round out the chapter I have to wrap it up in another like 1-2k scene and literally nothing in that scene works either, so I have to scorched-earth rewrite it with new reconceptualizations of the logistics.

This is what I get, for trying to sum up a whole complicated backstory in flashbacks. This is exhausting!

It doesn’t help that this is for the Iorveth/Saskia thing https://archiveofourown.org/works/34514956, which as a rarepair is getting approximately half the attention of the Roche/Iorveth prequel. (I hope the Roche/Iorveth sequel regains some of the traffic of the prequel despite this interruption, I hadn’t realized how much that was bolstering me. It has been, though, even though I’ve been shit about replying, I love the things people say in their comments and I treasure them and shit has been Bad this summer/fall so it’s been real necessary.) I can’t blame people for not being so interested in rarepair stuff, but to be honest I’d vainly assumed Roche/Iorveth was a rarepair, LOL. And I’ve been spoiled by a lot of people willing to follow where I went, and thought more people would be excited about a threesome with a dragon. But Roche isn’t in it, and I guess people are holding out for that character tag! Well anyway, for those who’ve followed me down that rabbit hole, thanks, the next chapter is going to be an exquisitely-crafted doozy, if not porny, alas (I tried), and then the sequel after that is going to have the Roche/Iorveth dynamic everyone likes. (I’ve written a lot of it ahead while I’ve been stuck. There’s a snowball fight. I promise it’s good too.)

OH but Chapter 2 has a beloved video game character cameo. More than cameo! Buckle up for Eibhear Hattori https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/%C3%89ibhear_Hattori feeding dumplings to Iorveth, W3 fans!

What about Ciri? y’all might ask, and thank you if you do ask. I’ve been stuck on the chapter after Morvran’s lil breakdown, in which it’s Geralt’s POV and he’s trying to figure out why Voorhis is having such a bad time at this boring dinner party. It’s going slowly but it is going. Once I get over that hump I think I can start to integrate the timeline of Trust– but the Roche/Iorveth stuff is behind in the timeline so I’ve been doing more updates on that side to try to square them up.

(Pearls is set in like, February, and Peace-Tied was November, so. To get back to Trust, Very Dark Magic is set in like, March. It’s gotten rather complicated.)

Anyhoo that’s the state of the state there.

{oh. I could rewrite it one more time and punch up the complexity between Eibhear and Iorveth though. Iorveth has been a partisan and Eibhear a collaborator, and while each could respect the other as a survivor, surely each is going to resent the other– Iorveth resenting Eibhear for never fighting, Eibhear resenting Iorveth for raising the level of violence in the conflict. It would be behind them, now, but that underlying tension… listen IDK if I can squeeze any more shit into this story.}

{Shit… now I’m plotbunnied…} (Your picture was not posted)

woop

writing, WIP snippet, snippet post

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I wasn’t observing the dropoff in interest from the Roche/Iorveth to the Saskia/Iorveth story as like, a complaint, just that it’s a thing– but I bet that did sound paggro-complainy, and I did not intend that at all, I was just– should not have been quite as surprised as I was. Even if it weren’t for the no-longer-two-hot-dudes pairing (but COME ON how can you resist DRAGON WIFE ahem cough) it’s also a new story and not a chapter update, so people subscribed to that other story, which ran with steady updates for months, aren’t going to get this new one in their inboxes. That’s another factor! I wasn’t really meaning to complain and I hope nobody thinks I was. Many of you will read whatever I write and I love y’all for it, I would never discount y’all for that.

(It’s also like how when I complain I can’t update regularly, lovely people rush to reassure me it’s okay if I keep my own schedule– but, babes, if I don’t update I don’t get the comment serotonins, that’s just how it is, and I have it much better than many writers because I’m at like year ten under this pseud and I have a huge backlog of published shit and a collection of lovely people who comment on rereads and apparently rec my stuff because new people do find it. But even with that, I am happier when I can post chapters weekly or twice-weekly and get the serotonins, that’s how it works. So I don’t mean to complain at y’all, I’m whining at myself for not having remembered, yet again, how reality works. This is a consistent problem I have in life, and that’s where the fault lies. i’m not great at reality.)

Anyway– as a reward for listening to all that, have a snippet of this bit I really didn’t intend to write and which I will likely only publish as a deleted scene or extra somewhere, somehow, someday: Eibhear Hattori making the formal acquaintance of the legendary Woodland Fox, in a slum in Novigrad sometime over the summer of 1272 after Geralt has helped him re-establish his forge.

“What do you want,” a voice said, and then, as the light fell on his face, “Ah! What do you want,” in a milder tone and wildly different accent.

It took Eibhear a moment to recognize that the second sentence had been in Hen Llinge, and he only figured it out when his tongue stumbled over his answer. He hadn’t spoken his native tongue in– a long time. “I’ve– I’ve come with, with food,” he said.

“Ha,” said the Hen Llinge speaker in the doorway, “I can smell your credentials, and regret that I am too hungry to be more picky. Surely this is a security risk.” And the door swung open. “But, please, come in.”

Eibhear stepped nervously through the door. No one else was visible. The combination of the Scoia’tael trail sign on the wall and this person being a Hen Llinge speaker was unnerving; Eibhear had never particularly aided the Scoia’tael, certainly never directly, and knew they bore him and his kind no love. Aen Seidhe who’d stayed peacefully in human settlements and had done whatever they had to in order not to attract attention or buck the order of things? Stood to reason their fellows who’d thrown it all over to live wild in the woods and fight their doomed fight would resent them, and it wasn’t that Eibhear blamed them, but he also was no fighter and had never been able to contribute anything to their struggle. He was sympathetic, but he had never shown those sympathies. And so they bore him no love, nor should they particularly.

He wouldn’t have taken this order had he known it was Scoia’tael.

The person who’d let him in closed the door and leaned against it, holding up the lantern to look at him. “I can’t say how much I appreciate you coming here,” he said, still in Hen Llinge. His accent was soft and lilting– he was coastal, perhaps even local to this region, but beyond that he had the traces of an old household, the old nobility, perhaps even sacred temple guardian heritage in his accent. The light in his right hand caught a beautiful face, fine-boned and sharp, of high breeding– a green eye, a generous mouth, high cheekbones, a hawk nose; he was tall and well-built, taller and broader even than Eibhear.

But as he lowered the lamp, the light caught the other side of his face, and it was– he was heavily scarred, and had a kerchief tied in such a way that it was clear he was missing his left eye. The ends of the scars trailing out from under the kerchief showed that the missing eye had been deliberately and messily gouged out.

There was really only one person that could be, and Eibhear twitched in shock, but did not drop either of his burdens. Iorveth, he thought, but did not say– the legendary Woodland Fox himself, a nightmare that stalked the woods, an ambush predator, merciless, haughty, terrifying, and uncannily deathproof.

The green eye considered him. “You must be Hattori,” he said. “The smith and dumpling expert.”

“Yes,” Eibhear said, finding his tongue. He handed the basket to Iorveth jerkily, in reflex. “I brought bigos too. Hunter stew. The note said there were hungry people here.”

Iorveth took the basket and stared at it, strangely transfixed. “Yes,” he said almost absently, and Eibhear took in a few more details– he wasn’t wearing armor, he was wearing a filthy patched jerkin that fitted him poorly, and his face was gaunt and pinched.

“You’re one of them, aren’t you,” Eibhear said, and reached over to pull the lid off the basket.

Iorveth flinched as the stronger scent of the dumplings hit him, and his stomach growled audibly. “I,” he said.

“Here,” Eibhear said, “I’ll carry that,” and took the basket back. “Take one now, there’s plenty to go around.”

Iorveth hesitated just a moment longer, then his hand darted into the basket and came out with a dumpling in it. “Thank you,” he said, still hesitating.

“Eat in good health,” Eibhear said politely, the normal set phrase a Hen Llinge speaker would use when serving at mealtime, and Iorveth’s expression twitched into a smile.

“Here’s to yours,” he answered, the usual polite response, and then crammed the dumpling whole into his mouth like an untidy child.

Eibhear couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of it, the lack of dignity incongruous both with Iorveth’s obvious high breeding and intimidating self-presentation. “You’d better take a second one,” he said.

oh here’s an about me trivia fact, i genuinely don’t know left from right and am currently having a minor existential crisis over how i can’t figure out whether it’s iorveth’s right or left eye that’s missing. which fucking eye is that. it’s his right eye isn’t it. ISN’T IT.

Yeah he’s judging me and so is his squirrel friend. Whatever bud. I really don’t know. I think that’s his right. I… fucking… can’t rotate things. Right. WELL anyway in the above snippet just swap right and left as you read it, okay? They’re meaningless to me anyway, make the most of what you can. (Your picture was not posted)

motherfucking CASSEROLE SEASON

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It has finally begun to cool into autumn up here in the northeastern united states of whatever we are now, and in celebration I am going to start posting about CASSEROLES.

I fucking love casseroles, they are like. chef kiss the epitome of cuisine, if you ask me. You take a bunch of foods– ideally, everything you need to eat in a meal– and you do whatever you gotta do to ‘em and then you put them in a cute enamelware dish if you got one or like one of those stoneware ones with the patterns or, if you’re me, an unadorned Pyrex or a cast iron Dutch oven your mother found and literally mailed to you because why wouldn’t you mail a cast iron Dutch oven– or whatever you’ve got– and then you put them in the oven and then your whole house gets warm and steamy and then in a bit you get to eat like. Love on a plate, that’s what I think of when I get a casserole.

Some casseroles are not what you’d call haute cuisine. They are not the kind of thing that is trendy. They do not have, what you say, very much of seasonings in them. But they taste like food.

(I do not come from hot dish people and have never had hot dish, but in my heart I believe that such a thing must be wonderful. Just, every time I read a recipe I’m like uh. no. that sounds bad. But the concept of hot dish sounds great to me. So if that narrows it down– yeah no I’m from the Northeast, we don’t do hot dish. Someday I’ll experience it but I have not yet.)

So, without further ado, posting Number One: Classic Mac N Cheese.

This bears no resemblance to Kraft dinner besides the name. This is also an invaluable casserole because it is the sort of prototypical one, in my experience. From this model you can expand to include any ingredient you see fit to use.

SO, the basic recipe– this is just a sauce mornay over cooked pasta. (And sauce mornay is nothing more than a basic bechamel with cheese melted in, though purists would insist on specific cheeses. We are not purists, we merely remark on it because even quite fancy cooking can rest on these very simple bases.)

My recipe was hand-written for me by my mother, probably copied out of her late 70s edition of Fanny Farmer; I’ve made the Joy of Cooking version too, before I finally memorized it. My undiagnosed, untreated ADHD is so bad now I can’t follow a recipe anymore, but having memorized this means I can make any casserole that follows this basic technique. And so I present it to you, as a base from which to experiment.

THE VERY BASIC RECIPE:

Bring water to a boil and cook your favorite small pasta according to package directions. (Bowties, rotini, radiatore, small shells, wagon wheels, penne, ziti, elbows, etc. Long pasta like spaghetti or fettucine would structurally work but would be weird. Knock yourself out.) I think this recipe makes enough for half a pound, which would feed one person, or two without leftovers.

MEANWHILE. Make bechamel sauce:

2 Tbsp fat– butter, bacon grease, lard, vegetable oil– heated in a saucepan. Once melted, stir in 2 Tbsp flour. (White, whole wheat, gluten free, whatever.) (If your fat is unsalted you’re gonna wanna put salt somewhere in here. I don’t think it matters where. You can also put in cool things like nutmeg and bay leaves and whatever, either now or when you add the liquid.)

Whisk or stir together into a paste, heating over medium-low heat. Watch carefully. As soon as it begins to brown, add 1 c of milk or broth or a combination thereof. Whisk or stir briskly– a whisk or fork will help you break up lumps– until it is smooth. Cook, stirring, until it begins to thicken. This is the hardest part of this whole thing but practice makes perfect, just don’t walk away or burn it, it’ll boil over if you leave.

Once this has begun to thicken (pick up your stirring spoon and draw your finger through the sauce on the back of it; if it’s thick enough to cling so that your finger leaves a defined trail, it’s thick enough. If it’s so thin you can’t see the difference, you’re not there yet) dump in cheese. (If you had a bay leaf you can take it out now. Or not, and have it be a surprise for someone later.) I use about a cup of shredded cheddar. Munster works well, or colby or colbyjack or pepperjack or gouda. A square of fake American cheese food cheese melted in there makes it a creamier sauce less likely to break on reheating.

Melt the cheese into the sauce. (Optional, melt half into the sauce, reserve the other half.) Then decant half the pasta into the dish, scatter half the reserved cheese over it, then put the rest of the pasta in, and pour the sauce over the top. Spread the last of the reserved shredded cheese over the top of the casserole.

Optional crumb topping: Microwave 2-3 Tbsp butter and 2-3 Tbsp breadcrumbs, mix together into a uniform glop, spread over top of casserole in thin layer.

Bake casserole in a preheated 375-degree oven for like half an hour until bubbling and browned slightly on top. Eat.

VARIATIONS:

This is where it gets good. The thing I now do every time is that I’ll chop and brown an onion in the fat before I add the flour. Sometimes I’ll branch out and cook more aromatics– onion, then add a carrot or two, and put in some garlic just before I add the flour. And then along with the cooked pasta, I’ll add kale, or swiss chard, or beet greens. You can put as many vegetables in as you want, just sort of categorizing them by ones that will need quite a bit of cooking (aromatics, hard things like beets or turnips) and thus should be sauteed in the fat before the sauce is made, or ones that don’t need much cooking (braising greens, spinach, leaves, things like broccoli) and can just be thrown in with the noodles and cooked just as the casserole is heated through.

Meat too– I often cook bacon to render the fat, and then make the sauce atop that. Or I use ham, or bacon ends or pork jowls; those are the classics, and the sweetness of cured pork goes exceptionally well with the cheese. But you could branch out and try other meats– shredded cooked leftover poultry could be added at any point, for example.

EXPERT SECRET TIP AS A GIFT TO FUTURE YOU:

Something I’ve learned as well is that many casseroles can be made way way ahead, and frozen whole. This is an old meal-train-for-bereaved-family trick, but I use it for my lazy self. If I’m going to the hassle of making myself a whole casserole, now, I’ve got several recipes like this one where I’ll just make double, and then put half in my Pyrex straight into the oven, and then the other half either in my other Pyrex and saran-wrap the crap out of it, or if it’s not super layered, I’ll throw it in a tupperware thing and put that into the freezer.

You need several days to defrost something like that, though the microwave will help you speed that up, but there is no greater feeling of empowerment than facing down a busy week, looking at your schedule, and then pulling out a casserole from the freezer and sticking it in the fridge and saying “in three days, I will be able to come home, throw this in the oven, lie around for 45 minutes, and then feast.”

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t going to save your ass last-minute, casseroles aren’t good for that, but if you’ve got time for Sunday night existential dread about the coming week, that’s when you pull this out and stick it in the fridge as a gift for Wednesay you, who will have had a hard week.

(And I’m just saying, if you’re the type who works, say, retail, in a place where Christmas is a particular kind of hell– now is the time for you to put some of these into the freezer, as a sweet little future-gift. One now, for cold sad October you, and one to save the ass of exhausted December you.) (Your picture was not posted)