fic update: growing out ch 7

sitting, peace-tied

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i am so tired y’all, this has been A Time lately. i have gotten very little writing done this week. but a bunch of this, i wrote ages ago, and am delighted to finally get to use.

I was like ah this chapter’s the punchline but no as i proofread it, it’s really all just more setup. man like really most of what i write is setup. i guess there’s occasional punchlines. who knows. i feel like y’all think there’s gonna be more punchlines than there are. it can be fun to get comments that are like “oh X is gonna happen!” that are correct, sometimes it’s fun when they are incorrect, but a lot of times I’m just sort of like “oh yeah i did set up X to happen and I just… am not going to write that, didn’t even think of seeing it through…” well. listen sometimes a story is larger than you can actually tell.

it is extremely obvious what we are setting up for, though, and i am delighted in that case.

But also there’s a bunch of stuff I decided it was more expedient not to directly tell, so there’s allusions to there having been a whole lot of shit going on that the POV character does not know about, and all shall be revealed but possibly not all shall be revealed directly. so bear with me. it’s not even that i’m trying to be clever and indirect and whatever, it’s that i wrote the long thing and was like this is too fucking long and don’t know how else to work it in.

Sometimes a story is larger than you can actually directly tell!

anyway chapter 7 of growing out is here on AO3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/38098480/chapters/99389826

and it definitely passes the bechdel test, for whatever that’s worth

Well, there wasn’t a casual way to approach. Ves thought it over for a moment, and then thought about how she really only had one style of handling things, so if she wanted to attempt to handle this, it would have to be in that style. She walked boldly up to the alcove, leaned her hip against it, and said gruffly, “Are you all right?”

Breniriel had a bit of dry hardtack in a napkin, and a little bottle of water, and had been staring grimly at the hardtack when Ves walked up. She glanced up in startlement, wary, but then relaxed slightly. She looked— she still looked pretty but she looked a bit rumpled, close up, her face blotchy and a little swollen like she really had been crying. She looked miserable.

“I’m fine,” she said sullenly, and then put her hand over her mouth and sat with her eyes closed for a long moment as if she were trying not to be sick.

“Shit,” Ves said, “no you’re not. Who is it? What did they say? I can break another face. Nobody here can say shit to me if I do.”

Breniriel didn’t answer for a moment, and then looked up at her and laughed mournfully. “No,” she said, “no, it isn’t— nobody said anything to me. I just don’t feel well.”

“Oh,” Ves said awkwardly. “Sorry.” That sounded stupid. “I mean, sorry to hear it. It’s not the flu, is it? Either way, can I go get you anything?”

“No,” Breniriel said, “no, it’s— it’s fine. I’ll be all right in a moment. And it’s not the flu, you needn’t worry.”

Ves thought hard for a moment, about the kind of thing that would make a woman be intermittently nauseous and tearful while being so clearly not the flu that Brenieriel wasn’t concerned about it despite a recent epidemic, and then narrowed her eyes. “Who did this to you,” Ves demanded, gesturing at her belly.

Breniriel blinked, and then laughed. “No,” she said, “no, I— I wanted this. I want this.” And she put her hand on her belly. She wasn’t far enough along for anything to show, but— Ves eyed her tits, judging that they were bigger than they’d been. Yeah, she was pregnant. (Your picture was not posted)

(no subject)

descriptions, accessibility, really read that linked article

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it’s been about a month since post date, lol, i do have the link! the article is against access https://href.li/?https://audio.mcsweeneys.net/transcripts/against_access.html on mcsweeneys by john lee clark.

essentially i was thinking about how frustrated i am by image descriptions that serve to Literally Describe an image piece by piece rather than actually make it comprehensible - strict objectivity is bad accessibility; it’s better to put a little bit of yourself and your interpretation into the description and risk getting something wrong, than it is to focus solely on Objectively What The Facts Are and in the process misrepresent the image.

for example, someone described the ad reinhardt image in my post by saying “a man is pointing at an abstract painting and smiling”; this is objectively true (it’s happening in the illustration!) but AS A DESCRIPTION it is misleading, because it makes it sound like he approves of the image or enjoys it (he’s smiling, isn’t he?). it’s obvious to any viewer of the image that this isn’t actually what’s happening. a better description would just be to say the man is mocking the painting, without the details of exactly how he is standing or his facial expression, even if those are “more objective” descriptors (Your picture was not posted)