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[FIC] RPF: cartographies of silence [1/9]
So in the midst of essays, upcoming exams, huge amount of readings... I get hit by a gigantic plotbunny.
This is officially a series. It's not a single story, because the parts don't behave like chapters. Each of them are basically self-contained stories within themselves, all of them inspired by the poems of Adrienne Rich in general and this list in particular.
I would also like to say that I'm an immensely uncreative writer. That is my way of saying that I'm an utter research freak, and please tell me if I've gotten any of the details wrong.
There are nine parts. I'll be posting a part a week. Dedicated, as always, to the gorgeous and wondrous![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
regasssa.
cartographies of silence
- PART 1/9 (PROLOGUE): December 2011
Characters/Pairing: Sean Bean/Viggo Mortensen
Rating: G
Words: 2049
Disclaimer: None of this happened. Product of my imagination!
Summary:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
31_days, 7 April: you read on because even the alphabet is precious. There is one secret that Sean keeps from Viggo, and one secret that Viggo keeps from Sean. One day both will be blown open, and they both can't wait for that day.
There was a cardboard box in his bedroom, the length of it from his wall to the door, its height coming up to his knees. It was the newest one, usually closed and taped over. There was too much paper on the underside of the tape, and it didn't stick very well anymore, but that was alright. It just made it easier for Sean to open it at the end of each day, and there were so many creases on the edges of the box from how he opened it so often.
The first time he picked out an empty box from the trash was twelve years ago, and he had been filling it up ever since. The box had grown longer and longer throughout the years. Sometimes Sean thought that he should get a plastic box with wheels underneath, or a wooden one. He had to change boxes sometimes because he tore the top flap when picking them up. But he didn't want to. Besides, wooden boxes were difficult to lug towards his car to bring to locations with him. Plastic didn't suit its contents. Somehow- it just didn't
Sean had been waiting for someone to ask about it for a very long time. But when he first started the collection, Abby had already moved out of the house, and there hadn't been anyone in it except himself for a long time. Then there was Georgina, and she only looked at it and wanted it out of the bedroom, but Sean insisted, and afterwards she just ignored it. She never tried to open the flap; not even when he did. Not even when he added to it. It probably meant something about them, about their relationship, but Sean didn't like to think about that. They didn’t really fit each other, and- maybe she was just a way of stemming off his greatest fear. A way of making sure he didn't die alone, in that big house of his.
(Fucking huge failure, it was. All he got from it was a loss of half a million quid, an even emptier house, and another set of divorce letters to go into his collection.)
He didn't know why he started having that box. It all started, he thought, when he asked his agent to get a credit card under an assumed name. He didn't know why he wanted it, and his agent didn't ask, so he didn't tell. The first thing he bought anything with it was in a small, quaint little shop in America. It took forever, because he only wanted that one thing, and it was hard to find. He could have asked- but he didn't want to. It was the first thing that went into the box- well. He found the box for this.
Recent Forgeries, by Viggo Mortensen.
He had sat on his bed that night, with only the nightlight on, tracing the words on the page. Sean read every single poem three times that night, tasting every word on his tongue, and he memorised them faster and sharper than any of his lines for work. They were good poems; not the classics that he had read in his youth, but he didn't expect that anyway. These were bits and pieces of Viggo's heart, and that was important enough.
Ten Last Night cost him over a hundred quid, in a second-hand shop in the middle of L.A. It was overpriced, the cover a little bent, but Sean had bought it and signed for it with that credit card with a faked name. There wasn't any reason for that; it wasn't like Viggo would find out. But- somehow, if it wasn't his name on the bill that had Viggo's name on it, then maybe it wasn't exactly real. It was like the flaps on his cardboard box: it separated him and... well, something that wasn't exactly him.
It would be ridiculously odd for Sean Bean to collect Viggo Mortensen's works so illicitly, as if it was something... secret, wouldn't it? It was ridiculous for him to buy the books (eventually) from the Perceval Press website under a false name when he could have just asked Viggo for them.
(But it was. He would never admit it, or even think it consciously, but this box of his, with all of Viggo's works that he brought everywhere with him- it was his personal little secret. Sean had taken to locking his bedroom door whenever he had visitors, simply because he didn't want them to see the box. It was his.)
Then it got worse. Better. He started collecting them as they came out, spending exorbitant sums when he couldn’t get them from the Perceval Press website after each one came out. Errant Vine took him six months to find, and it was only a few pages. He knew for a fact that Viggo had extra booklets left after the exhibition; the man babbled to him about it just a few months after Sean had left New Zealand, through the phone. There weren't many people who went, because Fellowship hadn't been released yet. He could have just... asked him for one.
But he didn't.
Now, more than twelve years past, he had Viggo's entire bibliography. Sixteen books, sixteen CDs. All into one box that he brought everywhere with him, and the covers of the books were hardback, but even they could be creased from how many times he had flipped through them. He had memorised every single one of his poems. His spoken words. His stories had become engraved onto Sean's flesh, as indelible as the mark of the Blades, as the Elvish nine.
He wanted bigger love,
had to have it like he
had to dream himself
to sleep. Recrossed
his legs and waited
for her tears. When
they came, he held
her hand, pretended
to be interested in
someone walking by
their table.
- Viggo Mortensen, Just Coffee
***
Viggo kept a box in his suitcase that he brought with him every single day. It had become like a lucky charm, like red underwear of footballers or green socks of businessmen. He had never let anyone see the inside of it- well, it wasn't as if he tried to hide it, but simply that they never tried. Not even Henry, with whom he shared almost everything, had ever tried to look inside the box. Viggo would like to think that his son simply understood that his father had secrets; that it was something almost sacred to Viggo; something he couldn't go anywhere without. Like his paints, like his camera, but infinitely more precious.
(But he knew it might just be that Henry was an adult now. Older than even a teenager, and he had his own life and dreams and his life no longer revolve around Viggo and Viggo's projects. Long gone was the time when Henry looked forward to coming down to Viggo's locations months in advance, or even wanted to stay with Viggo during his locations. Viggo didn't like to think about that. It was a fact of life, but it was one that made him sad.)
Whenever he reached a new location, he would sit down on the nearest table in his trailer or hotel room and open the box. There were dozens of photographs, letters, and notes that he would spread out on the table. There was never a single pattern. He never tried to put them according to chronology, even though he knew exactly which photograph was taken; when he received each letter or note.
Vig, said one, taped onto his trailer's mirror twelve years and a lifetime ago. Hiding from the hobbits and the elf tonight. You forgot your key; left it behind this note.
He placed this one above a picture of Sean, half in Boromir's clothes, half out. Jeans and tunic and chainmail, his vembraces stark black with the White Tree, striking against the greys of his blue jeans and the smoke curled around his face. Sean was frowning, leaning his shoulder against the wall, his hand lax against his hip as he looked out into the distance. There was a blurriness to his foot as he tapped it, and Viggo could see the impatience of nicotine addiction and his contained frustration in the tendons of his wrists, white against white.
There was another piece of paper, half-torn, and there was a little doodle of a man with a sword, fighting with three rather ugly, disfigured little creatures a distance away. There was shading of shadows at the feet of the little creatures, and scribbled writing on the blade of the tiny sword, and Viggo traced his finger above every single penstroke, long dried and set into the paper. The ink was starting to brown. It didn’t matter. Even if the ink had entirely faded, Viggo would still be able to recognise Anduril- helped by the scribble underneath, of stick-man-Aragorn chopping off the head of an ugly orc.
Viggo found this doodle on Sean's makeup table. Sean had left it behind, not realising the little masterpiece he had doodled while on the phone, listening to a Blades match. Viggo wished he had learned how to ask Sean to draw for him, or to ask him to model. He rarely drew people, for his paintings were mainly abstract, but he would draw Sean. Capture the line of his jaw with a pen, the brightness of his hair with paint, the curve of his ankle and lines of his legs and his hips with a sharp-tipped pen. He wanted to draw Sean against the sea, with the waves lapping at his ankles and his pressed slacks rolled upwards, his suit all clean lines stark against the sunset caught in the gold of his skin and his hair. Viggo knew that he would do better to take a photograph- but as much as he loved his camera, he didn't think it could capture Sean’s beauty.
Not even in this one. His favourite photograph. Sean holding a cue stick in his hand, half-leaning against the table. His head was turned away at an angle Viggo had never tried and never wanted to calculate, laughing in delight, in victory. The light had caught his eyes, turning a brilliant verdant green, dancing off the lines set deep into his skin. His shoulders were loose, the heel of one foot lifted off the ground. Against the half-darkness of the bar, he looked like Bacchus descended from the heavens.
Viggo was waiting. One day, he would be able to work with Sean again. He would sit him down, then, on a small table, and show him this collection.
He hoped that it would be soon. The lines on his face were deep, and Henry was so much older now. Sean's eyes showed his age, and his tiredness shone through even with TV screens between them. Viggo could not help thinking that time was running out. He should reach out for him; to take a plane to London with his photographs in his suitcase, and find him through the address Sean had written in large, loopy handwriting and which Viggo had placed, almost reverently, in the box.
He wished he could walk into Sean's garden in bloom, the one that he always wanted to see and which Sean had always wanted to show him. He would sit down at the large wooden table and spread out the photographs, the notes, the letters, and tell Sean what each of them meant to him. He wanted to tell him that each word, each image, was ingrained into his brain.
(Viggo remembered: Sean and him, they were always the Men of the Fellowship. Within the Nine there was another Two, and when Boromir died and Sean left, Viggo could not help but mourn along with Aragorn—for instead of Two, there was now only One.)
Sean had come to him at least three times now, and Viggo had gone to him twice. Nothing ever happened, no matter how much he wanted.
He had always taken a single step back when he could have taken one forward.
… Is
Friendship cancelled
If we can't call
Each other anymore
In amnesia, invite
Ourselves to last glances
Under suspicious clocks
Telling us when we've
Had enough?
part 2: 27 July 2008
This is officially a series. It's not a single story, because the parts don't behave like chapters. Each of them are basically self-contained stories within themselves, all of them inspired by the poems of Adrienne Rich in general and this list in particular.
I would also like to say that I'm an immensely uncreative writer. That is my way of saying that I'm an utter research freak, and please tell me if I've gotten any of the details wrong.
There are nine parts. I'll be posting a part a week. Dedicated, as always, to the gorgeous and wondrous
regasssa.cartographies of silence
- PART 1/9 (PROLOGUE): December 2011
Characters/Pairing: Sean Bean/Viggo Mortensen
Rating: G
Words: 2049
Disclaimer: None of this happened. Product of my imagination!
Summary:
31_days, 7 April: you read on because even the alphabet is precious. There is one secret that Sean keeps from Viggo, and one secret that Viggo keeps from Sean. One day both will be blown open, and they both can't wait for that day.There was a cardboard box in his bedroom, the length of it from his wall to the door, its height coming up to his knees. It was the newest one, usually closed and taped over. There was too much paper on the underside of the tape, and it didn't stick very well anymore, but that was alright. It just made it easier for Sean to open it at the end of each day, and there were so many creases on the edges of the box from how he opened it so often.
The first time he picked out an empty box from the trash was twelve years ago, and he had been filling it up ever since. The box had grown longer and longer throughout the years. Sometimes Sean thought that he should get a plastic box with wheels underneath, or a wooden one. He had to change boxes sometimes because he tore the top flap when picking them up. But he didn't want to. Besides, wooden boxes were difficult to lug towards his car to bring to locations with him. Plastic didn't suit its contents. Somehow- it just didn't
Sean had been waiting for someone to ask about it for a very long time. But when he first started the collection, Abby had already moved out of the house, and there hadn't been anyone in it except himself for a long time. Then there was Georgina, and she only looked at it and wanted it out of the bedroom, but Sean insisted, and afterwards she just ignored it. She never tried to open the flap; not even when he did. Not even when he added to it. It probably meant something about them, about their relationship, but Sean didn't like to think about that. They didn’t really fit each other, and- maybe she was just a way of stemming off his greatest fear. A way of making sure he didn't die alone, in that big house of his.
(Fucking huge failure, it was. All he got from it was a loss of half a million quid, an even emptier house, and another set of divorce letters to go into his collection.)
He didn't know why he started having that box. It all started, he thought, when he asked his agent to get a credit card under an assumed name. He didn't know why he wanted it, and his agent didn't ask, so he didn't tell. The first thing he bought anything with it was in a small, quaint little shop in America. It took forever, because he only wanted that one thing, and it was hard to find. He could have asked- but he didn't want to. It was the first thing that went into the box- well. He found the box for this.
Recent Forgeries, by Viggo Mortensen.
He had sat on his bed that night, with only the nightlight on, tracing the words on the page. Sean read every single poem three times that night, tasting every word on his tongue, and he memorised them faster and sharper than any of his lines for work. They were good poems; not the classics that he had read in his youth, but he didn't expect that anyway. These were bits and pieces of Viggo's heart, and that was important enough.
Ten Last Night cost him over a hundred quid, in a second-hand shop in the middle of L.A. It was overpriced, the cover a little bent, but Sean had bought it and signed for it with that credit card with a faked name. There wasn't any reason for that; it wasn't like Viggo would find out. But- somehow, if it wasn't his name on the bill that had Viggo's name on it, then maybe it wasn't exactly real. It was like the flaps on his cardboard box: it separated him and... well, something that wasn't exactly him.
It would be ridiculously odd for Sean Bean to collect Viggo Mortensen's works so illicitly, as if it was something... secret, wouldn't it? It was ridiculous for him to buy the books (eventually) from the Perceval Press website under a false name when he could have just asked Viggo for them.
(But it was. He would never admit it, or even think it consciously, but this box of his, with all of Viggo's works that he brought everywhere with him- it was his personal little secret. Sean had taken to locking his bedroom door whenever he had visitors, simply because he didn't want them to see the box. It was his.)
Then it got worse. Better. He started collecting them as they came out, spending exorbitant sums when he couldn’t get them from the Perceval Press website after each one came out. Errant Vine took him six months to find, and it was only a few pages. He knew for a fact that Viggo had extra booklets left after the exhibition; the man babbled to him about it just a few months after Sean had left New Zealand, through the phone. There weren't many people who went, because Fellowship hadn't been released yet. He could have just... asked him for one.
But he didn't.
Now, more than twelve years past, he had Viggo's entire bibliography. Sixteen books, sixteen CDs. All into one box that he brought everywhere with him, and the covers of the books were hardback, but even they could be creased from how many times he had flipped through them. He had memorised every single one of his poems. His spoken words. His stories had become engraved onto Sean's flesh, as indelible as the mark of the Blades, as the Elvish nine.
had to have it like he
had to dream himself
to sleep. Recrossed
his legs and waited
for her tears. When
they came, he held
her hand, pretended
to be interested in
someone walking by
their table.
- Viggo Mortensen, Just Coffee
***
Viggo kept a box in his suitcase that he brought with him every single day. It had become like a lucky charm, like red underwear of footballers or green socks of businessmen. He had never let anyone see the inside of it- well, it wasn't as if he tried to hide it, but simply that they never tried. Not even Henry, with whom he shared almost everything, had ever tried to look inside the box. Viggo would like to think that his son simply understood that his father had secrets; that it was something almost sacred to Viggo; something he couldn't go anywhere without. Like his paints, like his camera, but infinitely more precious.
(But he knew it might just be that Henry was an adult now. Older than even a teenager, and he had his own life and dreams and his life no longer revolve around Viggo and Viggo's projects. Long gone was the time when Henry looked forward to coming down to Viggo's locations months in advance, or even wanted to stay with Viggo during his locations. Viggo didn't like to think about that. It was a fact of life, but it was one that made him sad.)
Whenever he reached a new location, he would sit down on the nearest table in his trailer or hotel room and open the box. There were dozens of photographs, letters, and notes that he would spread out on the table. There was never a single pattern. He never tried to put them according to chronology, even though he knew exactly which photograph was taken; when he received each letter or note.
Vig, said one, taped onto his trailer's mirror twelve years and a lifetime ago. Hiding from the hobbits and the elf tonight. You forgot your key; left it behind this note.
He placed this one above a picture of Sean, half in Boromir's clothes, half out. Jeans and tunic and chainmail, his vembraces stark black with the White Tree, striking against the greys of his blue jeans and the smoke curled around his face. Sean was frowning, leaning his shoulder against the wall, his hand lax against his hip as he looked out into the distance. There was a blurriness to his foot as he tapped it, and Viggo could see the impatience of nicotine addiction and his contained frustration in the tendons of his wrists, white against white.
There was another piece of paper, half-torn, and there was a little doodle of a man with a sword, fighting with three rather ugly, disfigured little creatures a distance away. There was shading of shadows at the feet of the little creatures, and scribbled writing on the blade of the tiny sword, and Viggo traced his finger above every single penstroke, long dried and set into the paper. The ink was starting to brown. It didn’t matter. Even if the ink had entirely faded, Viggo would still be able to recognise Anduril- helped by the scribble underneath, of stick-man-Aragorn chopping off the head of an ugly orc.
Viggo found this doodle on Sean's makeup table. Sean had left it behind, not realising the little masterpiece he had doodled while on the phone, listening to a Blades match. Viggo wished he had learned how to ask Sean to draw for him, or to ask him to model. He rarely drew people, for his paintings were mainly abstract, but he would draw Sean. Capture the line of his jaw with a pen, the brightness of his hair with paint, the curve of his ankle and lines of his legs and his hips with a sharp-tipped pen. He wanted to draw Sean against the sea, with the waves lapping at his ankles and his pressed slacks rolled upwards, his suit all clean lines stark against the sunset caught in the gold of his skin and his hair. Viggo knew that he would do better to take a photograph- but as much as he loved his camera, he didn't think it could capture Sean’s beauty.
Not even in this one. His favourite photograph. Sean holding a cue stick in his hand, half-leaning against the table. His head was turned away at an angle Viggo had never tried and never wanted to calculate, laughing in delight, in victory. The light had caught his eyes, turning a brilliant verdant green, dancing off the lines set deep into his skin. His shoulders were loose, the heel of one foot lifted off the ground. Against the half-darkness of the bar, he looked like Bacchus descended from the heavens.
Viggo was waiting. One day, he would be able to work with Sean again. He would sit him down, then, on a small table, and show him this collection.
He hoped that it would be soon. The lines on his face were deep, and Henry was so much older now. Sean's eyes showed his age, and his tiredness shone through even with TV screens between them. Viggo could not help thinking that time was running out. He should reach out for him; to take a plane to London with his photographs in his suitcase, and find him through the address Sean had written in large, loopy handwriting and which Viggo had placed, almost reverently, in the box.
He wished he could walk into Sean's garden in bloom, the one that he always wanted to see and which Sean had always wanted to show him. He would sit down at the large wooden table and spread out the photographs, the notes, the letters, and tell Sean what each of them meant to him. He wanted to tell him that each word, each image, was ingrained into his brain.
(Viggo remembered: Sean and him, they were always the Men of the Fellowship. Within the Nine there was another Two, and when Boromir died and Sean left, Viggo could not help but mourn along with Aragorn—for instead of Two, there was now only One.)
Sean had come to him at least three times now, and Viggo had gone to him twice. Nothing ever happened, no matter how much he wanted.
He had always taken a single step back when he could have taken one forward.
Friendship cancelled
If we can't call
Each other anymore
In amnesia, invite
Ourselves to last glances
Under suspicious clocks
Telling us when we've
Had enough?
part 2: 27 July 2008
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Glad that you plan for more to come. Looking forward to.
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I added you back. Thank you for commenting! ♥
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Thank you for this new look - there are so many 'looks' to be made and received from this man, these men.
I don't think we will ever be free of them.
I have added you as my Friend, I so want to read more of your writing - it comes to me in a shard of light.
Blue.
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I have literally been combing everywhere for Viggo's writing. I can't afford his actual books just yet - I live out in the middle of nowhere so shipping always murders me - so I'm using the bits and pieces I can find on the Internet.
I'll probably be posting every Wednesday. I'm really glad you enjoy this one, and thank you for commenting!
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Thank you!
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Thank you for commenting!
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"He wanted to draw Sean against the sea, with the waves lapping at his ankles and his pressed slacks rolled upwards, his suit all clean lines stark against the sunset caught in the gold of his skin and his hair."
That's a wonderful piece of imagery which is so tangible I can almost smell the salt spray.
This was a beautiful piece of writing; very much looking forward to the rest of the story.
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Thank you for reading! ♥
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It's good to see that you plan to write more.
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Thank you!
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...There's Viggo and holy shit. Dealing out his photos and stolen note like tarot cards.
What you said/Viggo said about hoping it's soon, that they're getting older and so on. Well. Viggo's not the only one who Thinks about that. And... Seeing Sean is the line's of Vig's poems? That's so many of us too. So is Sean searching for evidence of himself? Why doesn't he see it?
It resonated deeply. Thank you.
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And well. When searching for evidence, sometimes you blind yourself because you think it's not possible. Something like that?
Thank you for the comment! It made me grin a lot, and I'm really glad you like it.
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Apart from that, I am so glad that we have a new, very good writer in our little fandom, such an assuring thought, knowing it's not over yet and VigBean is very much alive.
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I really do know that you're not waiting with bated breath for a comment from me; I'm not that self-involved. :-) But when new people join the Rings fandom I always want them to know that they and they're writing (or graphics or comments, whatever it is that they want to contribute) are appreciated. Too often people skip fic from new writers in their fandom and I'm really not one of those people. I just wanted you to know that sometime down the road I am going to read this and you will get a super late comment from me. So silliness over. :-)
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And really, don't worry about it. It's just going to be here until you have the time to read it, whenever that might be. I do hope that you enjoy it when you do, though ♥!
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Sean had been waiting for someone to ask about it for a very long time.
I love this sentence. Because the paragraphs before were just that little bit cryptic that makes you want to ask but makes you shy away short of it at the same time. Also, this kind of patience – or is it resignation? – this kind of reclusiveness is something I find all too fitting for Sean.
(Fucking huge failure, it was. All he got from it was a loss of half a million quid, an even emptier house, and another set of divorce letters to go into his collection.)
I love the use of () here; they make it easier to be honest, and how do I love that honesty, in all its brutality comes with curse words in Sean’s head. I love this straight to the point sharpness of these two sentences)
These were bits and pieces of Viggo's heart, and that was important enough.
God, I love the imagery of this entire bit. Sean as a lover of poetry always has a spot in my heart, and that in addition to the secretiveness, to the reverence with which he treats Viggo’s words makes this such a delicate thing. Add to that the understatement of Sean’s wording – was important enough – and how careful he is to not admit to himself how important it is, while at the same time knowing it exactly? So perfect.
It was ridiculous for him to buy the books (eventually) from the Perceval Press website under a false name when he could have just asked Viggo for them.
Love the self-deprecation in this, yet another sign of this Sean’s carefulness (and how much do I love that this Sean has a distinctly other feel to him than all your others? I love that about your writing). – And followed again by honesty in (). Love that.
the man babbled to him about it just a few months after Sean had left New Zealand
Love this little detail. How Viggo is ‘the man’ here, and not the eloquent poet, but someone who ‘babbles’. Lovely bit of self-distancing, and at the same time it makes sense, how art and the idealized artist behind it never really is identical with reality (in which Viggo is just a man, after all).
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I think I bug you to read my stuff so much because you always come up with gorgeous, wonderful insights like these that makes me gasp and curl up and roll around in sheer joy. Seriously, how do you do that? I didn't even realise that's what I was doing with the brackets (I actually thought I was using them excessively but I couldn't bring myself to delete them). Nawww, you!
this Sean has a distinctly other feel to him than all your others? I love that about your writing
I would say this is pretty much the Sean I kind of settled, the Sean that I actually started feeling comfortable writing about instead of feeling guilty like I was stealing someone else's character (I RPed Viggo to someone else's Sean before writing the fic). I'm just really so happy you like the character, that you like this series as a whole really, because I'm super super nervous about it. It's basically the first thing I've done properly for the fandom. /clings to tightly and swings around.
how art and the idealized artist behind it never really is identical with reality (in which Viggo is just a man, after all).
... You know, I've never really thought of it this way, but now that you mentioned it, I think there's something that I like myself about how Sean sees both Viggo the artist and Viggo the man here and it's making me grin really hard like an idiot. Because awww, that is the best thing ever, isn't it?
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I love how you phrased that! I absolutely know that feeling, I still regularly have it when writing Harry (who to me basically always feels like I try to carbon copy him from Brenda's fics...) and strangely enough, Dave (though strangely, because I have NO CLUE whose Dave it is I am writing, but he isn't mine :)). In fact, after I was done with writing Paint, I felt like I was stealing from MYSELF for a really, really (dreadfully long) time, because I just couldn't bring myself to come up with a properly different characterisation of Orlando and Sean...
Anyway, back to this Sean: I love him, absolutely, but I find it absolutely FASCINATING that you went from this character to the so much more broken ones, like the one in Half-Life (that was the title, right? I have a shit memory and am too lazy to look it up :D). I usually go the other way round - start with fragmented characters and end up with these slightly too polished versions (that end up boring me more often than not). I totally envy you that :).
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HAHAHA omg I didn't even notice that until you told me! I don't know either; I honestly do start with writing slightly more idealised versions of characters that become more and more broken and fucked up as I keep writing them in different fics. I swear it's an issue about confidence - it's easier to write characters who are not entirely fucked up, or who are fucked up in rather acceptable-to-represent ways. The more I write someone, the more confident I get about my understanding of them, and I become far more willing to just screw with preconceived notions of the characters, I think. /chews on your head. How do you start with fragmented characters, man.
Let's envy each other 8D.
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I think I start with the fragments because that's all I have at that moment. And from there I'm starting to puzzle together an image of these characters, try out what works and what doesn't, sort of like what the muses nod to and where they cringe. It's why it sometimes takes me ages to finish even the shortest of stories (the Actor AU ones were a constant struggle for example) because it's like wandering about in the woods in complete darkness :).
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I love the parallelism of this. And I love the simplicity of your storytelling here. It’s more painting portraits than giving the inside scope into your characters’ feelings this time; a more careful, neater, seemingly simpler way of writing, of storytelling that so perfectly reflects both Sean’s and Viggo’s need to keep in control, to keep everything – literally – boxed up.
that it was something almost sacred to Viggo; something he couldn't go anywhere without. Like his paints, like his camera, but infinitely more precious.
Ah, I love the difference in the syntax here, compared to Sean. Viggo searching for words, for adequate words and comparisons and somehow never _really_ hitting it on the head. And then right after, the parallelism regarding the () insertion, though in Viggo’s case they are used for seemingly random straying thoughts (those much safer than the original topic maybe).
He placed this one above a picture of Sean, half in Boromir's clothes, half out. Jeans and tunic and chainmail, his vembraces stark black with the White Tree, striking against the greys of his blue jeans and the smoke curled around his face. Sean was frowning, leaning his shoulder against the wall, his hand lax against his hip as he looked out into the distance. There was a blurriness to his foot as he tapped it, and Viggo could see the impatience of nicotine addiction and his contained frustration in the tendons of his wrists, white against white.
I _love_ that with Viggo it’s things he can see that fascinate him. That at the same time, he _tries_ to capture what he is seeing in words (and somehow fails, however apt his descriptions are, because what the moment meant to him is yet unsaid), whereas Sean takes Viggo’s words and somehow lets himself be captured by them. Lovely bit of difference.
Viggo could not help thinking that time was running out. He should reach out for him; to take a plane to London with his photographs in his suitcase, and find him through the address Sean had written in large, loopy handwriting and which Viggo had placed, almost reverently, in the box.
God, love this entire paragraph. Maybe because Viggo is so hm lavish with words here – such rich descriptions, esp. compared to Sean’s carefulness, even in his thoughts.
Man, I love your writing.
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I need to learn to write like this again. I mean it, seriously.
I _love_ that with Viggo it’s things he can see that fascinate him. That at the same time, he _tries_ to capture what he is seeing in words (and somehow fails, however apt his descriptions are, because what the moment meant to him is yet unsaid), whereas Sean takes Viggo’s words and somehow lets himself be captured by them. Lovely bit of difference.
... How do you take something I write and make it sound so much better than it really is? /SHAKES SO HARD
If you keep lavishing praise on me like that, I will never stop writing stuff and making you read the stuff I write and commenting on them. X( X( X( See how you like that then!!!