motivation
via https://ift.tt/FfEXTKc
last year i kept missing updates and people were so sweet like “you don’t
have to post X often! you don’t have to hit a deadline! do what suits your
schedule!” and that was lovely and I did appreciate it, but the point of
the deadlines was momentum. Now I have fallen down so thoroughly on
posting ever at all, zero routine left, no concept of it even, that I have
no momentum and my brain is like clearly no one cares about this so give
up, and that sucks, and i’m exhausted and cranky and useless and shitty
but by god i am not abandoning my like fifty WIPs that i care deeply about
i swear and so anyway i am trying to force the engine to turn over, as hard
as I can, i swear other people were excited about this and i can use that
to get myself excited about it again, i can do this
so please help me get excited about literally anything, i am in despair.
SNIPPETS of THINGS i am TRYING TO MAKE HAPPEN:
direct prequel to Fit For Pearls:
“Did he ask you to tell me about the meeting?” Ciri asked, eyeing him.
“He did not directly ask,” Voorhis said stiffly, “but he knows I intended
to ensure you had the opportunity to attend such meetings. Had he not
wanted me to tell you, he would have needed to order me not to.”
“Is that how it works?” Ciri asked.
“It’s how that works,” Voorhis said, very stiff and formal and not much
like his normal self. She wondered what he was trying to convey. Was it
displeasure, that this was his task? Was it nervousness, that it was in
fact not his actual task and he was perhaps taking advantage of some
confusion to play politics?
She hated politics.
She’d chosen politics.
“I thank you,” she said wearily.
next bit of the Peace-Tied series, a tender little Iorveth & Yennefer
moment with hair-braiding, very self-indulgent:
By the time they finished writing and elaborately illuminating the placard,
Yennefer’s hair was caught back in a series of delicate little braids that
then twined around one another, and caught her hair up off her neck. She
was also inexplicably near tears at the tenderness of all of it.
Iorveth knelt up to finish fastening the ends of her hair behind her ear,
after having twined the braids up over her head. His body was a long, warm
press along her back, his hands warm and big cradling her head.
She tipped her head back and he held her like that, gentle and reassuring.
“How’s that?” he murmured.
She took a shaky breath, and he smoothed a hand down the side of her face,
settling down on his knees to put his arms around her from behind, cradling
her back against his shoulder. “There,” he said. “Now your hair looks like
someone cares for you.”
“Is that what it means,” she murmured.
“It does,” he said, and pressed a kiss against the side of her head, above
the hairline. “Thank you for fixing my face. I wasn’t ready to die, not
like that.”
“I am glad that I could,” she said.
and finally this weird modern a/u (tw for self-directed ableist language in
dialogue) i’ve been working on slowly forever that is so close to cohering
and yet doesn’t quite, in which I think you can guess what Joe’s thusfar
unknown real name is:
A hand caught him by the arm, two hands, steadying him, and helped him sit
up. Joe was even more frightening up close; Roche had noticed the eyepatch
from a distance but his face was heavily-scarred on that side, like
somebody had gone at the eye with a knife and missed. Or, like something
had hit him very hard in the face, taken the eye, then bounced off his
cheekbone and twisted down his face.
But his hands were strong and he steadied Roche for a long moment, and
despite the frightfully leering aspect his damaged face gave him, his
expression was actually neutral. “Is anything broken?”
“I got shot,” Roche gritted out, “twice, a year ago, this is as good as it
fucking gets. I just landed badly, just now, and it takes me a minute.”
He saw Joe notice the cane. “Ah,” the man said. “I hadn’t realized.” He
looked around. “Dogs knocked you over?”
“The saluki is a fucking menace,” Roche said. He couldn’t sit like this, it
was agony on his hip. “They’re all fucking menaces.” He couldn’t get up, he
couldn’t stay down, he was shivering with the pain.
“Let’s get you to a chair,” Joe said, calm and businesslike. “Where’s the
damage? Hip and shoulder?” Roche managed to gesture, and Joe proceeded to
mostly lift him unaided, which hurt like a motherfucker, but once he’d
dumped Roche, surprisingly gently– he was very strong– into the armchair in
the corner it was easier to get his various joints at angles that didn’t
hurt. “Do you need anything else,” he said, far too neutral and calm.
“Yeah,” Roche said, savage with agonized frustration, “I need to not
be a fucking
cripple.”
Joe didn’t answer for a long moment. “While I can relate to that,” he said,
“I meant, do you have any medication or anything that would help?”
Gritting his teeth, Roche pointed to the paper bag he’d left on the
sideboard, that still had the pill bottle in it. There were still a couple
of pills in the old bottle but he wasn’t going to have Joe wander through
his house looking for them.
Joe took the bottle out of the bag. “One or two,” he said.
“I can– one,” Roche said, giving up; Joe was already opening the bottle.
“Can you dry-swallow or do you need water,” Joe said, but he was already
moving over to the dish drainer to retrieve a glass.
“Water,” Roche said, resenting it. Joe put the bottle down and filled the
glass, bringing over a pill between his thumb and forefinger, and the
filled glass in his other hand.
Roche took the pill and the glass, inwardly fuming. He could get the lid
off a fucking pill bottle, and he hadn’t asked for this.
“Would an ice pack help or is it past that?” Joe asked, and while his tone
was neutral, it grated over Roche’s last nerve.
“You know,” he said, “I didn’t ask for your fucking pity.”
Joe said nothing, just stood regarding him. After a moment, he bent down,
looming uncomfortably close. “I know we don’t know one another, Vernon,” he
said quietly, “but I want you to look me in the eye for a moment, and then
tell me that you think I don’t know what it’s like to have to adjust to a
new way of living after a bad injury.” *
Roche’s anger flattened out abruptly, staring into his neighbor’s mangled
face. The remaining eye was green, astonishingly green against the
medium-brown of the man’s complexion. “Uh,” was all he managed; he didn’t
have an answer for that.
“I understand that you’re in pain,” Joe went on quietly, straightening up
and smoothing his hand down the front of his battered jacket, “and I can
extend you a little grace based on that, but I want you to realize what
you’re doing.” He glared down at Roche. “One last time, is there anything
else you need, or are you all right on your own from here?”
Face burning, Roche managed to grit out, “I’m all right on my own from
here.”
Joe stared at him for a long moment, and then turned and left, closing the
door carefully and quietly behind himself.
The canine energy surged through the kitchen again in the wake of his
departure, but then Strega came over and put her head in Roche’s lap, and
he fondled the silky curls of her ears and said, “Awesome work, guys, we’re
doing great!”
*yes this is the Look Deep Into My Eyes Ernie meme, i could not resist
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