Who wants to take one for the team and write the Rumbelle bowling smut???
Considering I just wrote three paragraphs exploring how this might work *raises hand reluctantly* I’ll add it to the list. Hopefully American bowling alleys and British ones aren’t that different. Anyone object if I make it GoldenLace?
@leni-ba replied to your post “A Little Insurance”
I LOVED IT!!!
I mean, teen!Gideon is one of my fav new things in this fandom, and him entertaining a much younger sister made me grin so much. Honestly, it reminded me of myself and my older cousin, with the ten year difference.Yes. One-sided tickling wars were a thing. /for the record, he’ll still tickle me thirty years later. lol)
Curious Rumple made me smile. I do love to think that his imprisonment was a farce, and I especially love the thought that this – your story – is a real world. with real people whose consciousness is just not in the driver’s seat.
I was happy to hear that he and Bae had reconciled at last, and I thought it made sense that Rumple (subconsciously?) had waited to have more children until he’d made peace with the first.
And awww, of course he’d wish for a world where Bae was happy. Aw.
Beautiful story!
Yay! I’m so glad you liked it 🙂 I’m relieved that you felt that Gideon and Nadia were realistic – and thank you for the anecdote – my experience with kids is limited so I’m never sure if I’m getting it right. Yeah well Rumple once promised to not love anything or anyone until he found Bae. He broke that by loving Belle but his life was still very much on hold.
Well if it isn’t a real world then there are no stakes. Fake people don’t matter, plus I liked the idea that genie magic had limitations. Heh I think I wrote both of these wish!world oneshots out of spite. I like to think of ways to twist it to make for a Rumbelle happy ending 🙂 Thank for your lovely comment!
Question – does anyone else bribe themselves to write fic, with the bribe being writing a different fic? Just wondering if that’s as weird as it sounds.
I have my list you see, because I have to do things in the order they are due whether I like it or not. Right now I’m working on my fourth (and last) Monthly Rumbelling fic for this month, and after that I have outstanding prompts for The Price We Pay, and then I should write updates for Fall All Over Again and Under My Skin. Painting Layers of Love Chapter Nine is with my beta 🙂
The reward I’m offering myself for doing these things is writing the Rushbelle fic I am desperate to write for Rumbelle Order in the Court. It is a literal bribe. I’m coaxing myself to keep on writing rather than go and relax and watch TV, by saying the sooner I finish my list, the sooner I can get to the Rushbelle fic. Please tell me I’m not the only one that does this /cringes.
whitesheepcbd replied to your post “Question – does anyone else bribe themselves to write fic, with the…”
I don’t bribe myself that way, but with other things, yes. But I say, do whatever works for you!
You see this is what I mean. Bribing yourself with something else is very normal. I used to bribe myself with TV, or video games, or sometimes the nicest icecream in the world. I didn’t do the last one that often because icecreams not a healthy thing to eat, but yeah I bribed myself with other stuff.
It just struck me earlier when I was coaxing myself to keep writing, that I’ve gone pretty far down the rabbit hole if I’m using writing to bribe myself to write.
#i was hoping that it wasn’t just me but i think it might be ooops#i would have used a gif of eliot from leverage going there’s something very wrong with you but i couldn’t find one
Well the pairing I had in my head was Tony Stark and Pepper Potts.
Tony is brilliant, the best at what he does, just like Rumple. Tony is dependant upon his tech, his suits, like Rumple depends on his magic. They are both the richest men in town. Tony struggles with the shrapnel injury and needs the arc reactor. Rumple struggles with his limp which his magic heals.
There are other similarities too like they both have trouble letting go of guilt, their responsibilities weigh heavily on them – “I have to protect the one thing I can’t live without.” and they both have self-destructive tendencies. Obviously there are many differences as well but I can see Rumple in Tony. The bitter sarcasm, the mask to keep people at a distance etc.
Pepper runs the company, she is brilliant and formidable in her own right and she’s not afraid to call Tony out on his shit. Sound familiar? When I think of Pepper trying to get Tony to eat and sleep when he’s been pulling all-nighters I think to myself “I bet Belle had to do that at the Dark Castle.” Pepper was never just an assistant, she was always Tony’s partner because she balances him – they are equals. It’s the same with Rumbelle.
So yeah if I was going to do an MCU AU I would make Rumple Iron Man heh 🙂
Rumple never taught me the sleeping curse specifically but I had helped him with various potions before, so I knew my way around his workroom and what books to look in for the instructions.
Truthfully I was more afraid not to do it. Something had obviously gone dreadfully wrong and I had no idea how long I would be trapped in the Dark Castle alone. Rumple blames himself for that but it wasn’t his fault, we both agreed to the stronger wards. I was afraid of the isolation, I was afraid if I didn’t find a way to “stop time” then I wouldn’t be around when Rumple returned.
The one thing I wasn’t afraid of was never waking up. I knew that one day Rumple would return, and I knew that he would wake me. It could have been a thousand years but I knew it would happen because Rumple can only be killed by the dagger. He was always going to return one day.
*laughs* or were you really asking whether I doubted our true love? No I never doubted that, I could never doubt that.
leni-ba replied to your post “Another Second Chance”
Aw, this is perfect! I love the bit of identity crisis wish!Rumple has, but he’s right. Just because other people say he isn’t real, doesn’t mean anything at all.
Now this is a scenario where I can believe Belle would choose a sleeping potion. Whee! Thanks for that. 🙂
Wonderful, wonderful, can’t wait to see what these two make of themselves in this world. 🙂
I read a fic once, it was actually a Harry Potter fic in which Harry had crossed realities and one line stuck with me. it’s from a Stranger in the Promised Land, which was never finished, a real shame because it was really good.
“The world is what you make of it. I could argue that you aren’t real and aren’t worth my time and help, or I could decide that you are a good person in very harsh circumstances who might need help.”
In this particular wish!world AU I kinda looked at it like that. From Regina and Emma’s perspective, nobody is real, so whether they are or not is immaterial to us because we see things through the lens of the main characters. They aren’t real to Emma and Regina so they aren’t real. However, to the actual wish!world inhabitants they have all the memories and thoughts and feelings of a real person. They are real, even if as I said in the fic “If
it was the blink of an eye of a wish, didn’t make their lives any less.”
I don’t know if that makes sense. It’s all about point of view I guess. Yup I liked the symmetry of Belle choosing a sleeping curse but for very different reasons. I’m so glad you enjoyed the fic! Thank you so much for such a wonderful comment 🙂
Well dearie it’s our kiss, our true love and it’s not a decision either of us would make alone. It’s not about letting Belle break my curse, why that makes me sound like the beast that needs to be vanquished! True love means true acceptance dearie, and there would be no possibility of true loves kiss if Belle didn’t love all of me, just as I love every part of her.
Our true loves kiss doesn’t break the curse because neither of us wish it. At first I needed my powers to find Bae, and then after he was found Belle and I discussed it. We’d been together for over ten years at that point, we were happy – we still are, and so there seemed little point. I have many enemies, and they wouldn’t stop just because I was rendered powerless.
I have had a number of desperate souls beg me for immortality, I wonder whether they have any idea of what a curse it would become.
My curse will break one day because I have no wish to live without Belle, and neither of us have any wish to outlive our children. Belle will age naturally and when the time comes, our true love will break the curse of the Dark One.
Two months.
Rumple had gone away for deals before but the longest had been three weeks, and it was only that long because something had gone wrong. He came home then half-naked, soaking wet and very grumpy. This time, after a week I had a bad feeling, after two weeks it turned into a sinking feeling. By the time it had been three weeks I knew, I knew but there was nothing I could do.
I waited two months, spending far too much time staring out of the castle windows, hoping against hope to see him appear in a cloud of magic. It was obvious that whatever was keeping him was blocking his powers, he would never have left me otherwise, not for that long. It was also obvious that there was no easy way out for him, it had been two months which meant it could wind up being forever. The sleeping curse was the only choice I had.
Tough question. I feel like a fraud as a writer for a lot of reasons. One of them is that I never had a ‘lightbulb’ moment, where I was inspired by another writer and I just knew I wanted to write. I’ve enjoyed reading hundreds of books, and there are some authors I like more than others, but I can’t point to any author specifically as an influence. I’ve never wanted to emulate any authors style, or had a “books I wish I wrote” moment. Like I said I feel a bit like a fraud because of it.
However, and there is a however to this answer. There is one author who I would say has influenced me but not really because they were an author. Holly Lisle is an author, and has lived my dream and made a living from her writing, but it wasn’t her books that influenced me, it was her courses. She’s offered a number of online writing courses and ‘How to Revise your Novel’ is the single most useful writing ‘lesson’ I’ve ever taken.
It gave me the tools to be able to analyze my own work, so that I could (hopefully) work out what was wrong with it. I can’t tell you how much confidence that gave me. I guess I felt more in control of the process which was something I sorely needed. I still wouldn’t call myself a good writer but I can see how much I improved from this. I wrote this book, it’ll probably never see the light of day, but I must have redrafted it, and then ripped it to pieces, half a dozen times or more. That taught me so much and I would never have been able to do it without Holly Lisle giving me the starting point.
I did this once before, nearly six months ago. Back then I only had 6 published fics, and I wound up cheating a little and choosing some I hadn’t posted yet. This time I have 31 published fics, so no need for cheating 🙂
1) Painting Layers of Love – Belle French lives alone and she likes it that way. She’s lived alone ever since the terrible car accident which killed her mother and claimed her eyesight. Belle spends her days painting, in complete solitude, until one day she wakes up and hears movement outside. Somebody has moved into the cottage next door. She had grown comfortable in her solitary existence until Mr Gold crashes into her life. Now her future is uncertain, like a blank canvas, waiting for her to apply the paint and decide what kind of story she is creating. [Tumblr, AO3] – This was on the list last time and it means a lot to me personally. I would probably bill it as a slow-burn romance but really the romance is secondary to the journey the characters are taking. They are learning a lot about themselves and attempting to do something incredibly scary – make a change. That takes time and it’s an ongoing process; very much one step forward, two steps back.
2) Between Two Fires – Captain Julian Gold, a decorated hero of the Frontlands Defense Force was once married to Lacey Beaumont. They had been happy but then she had died. Shortly after her death Gold discovered the truth. She wasn’t really Lacey Beaumont, she was Belle French and she was from Avonlea. Five years later there is a twitch on the border line. Gold follows the trail, stunned to find himself face to face with his supposedly dead wife – Belle. [Tumblr, AO3] – I love this fic so much. It’s a sci-fi/espionage mashup which combines a lot of my favorite things. I really enjoyed writing it and there’s so much more that I could explore with this verse. Honestly if I didn’t have so many more ideas to write, I would totally do that. I’d love to write prequels, sequels (remix sequels). This is a verse I could do a lot with if I had you know a way to freeze time.
3) The Beauty and the Tragedy – When Mr. Gold calls in Lord French’s marker, bankrupting his estate, it leaves Lady Belle with nowhere to go until Mr. Gold offers her a deal. She enters his service as a maid and true love blossoms between them. Belle dreams of forever but there is a room, which is permanently locked, that stands in the way. [NSFW] [Tumblr, AO3] – I wrote this in a day as an emergency writer for Rumbelle Revelry and I just love it. The way the fic came out, the imagery and how it flows, I just feel it works really well and I don’t often say that about anything I’ve written.
4) Conspiracy Afloat – When Mr. Gold buys Storybrooke marina, one of the marina’s few permanent residents, Belle French, swears he won’t get away with it. She sets sail and anchors in a remote cove and that night Belle witnesses a murder. At first light she returns to the marina to report it … but nobody believes her. Gold’s purchase of the marina now takes on even more sinister implications, and her growing attraction towards him only complicates matters. Vowing to investigate herself, if the sheriffs won’t, Belle soon starts to unravel a town-wide conspiracy. [Tumblr, AO3] – I wrote this for RSS and it’s quite long, the verse came to just over 30k in the end, but it could well have been novel length if I’d let it. I have a ridiculous amount of headcanon. It starts off quite slow but then it’s gets full of the usual fun tropes like bedsharing.
5) In Your Arms – Retired soldier and single father Gold works at a coffee shop library. Plagued by nightmares of the war he’s quiet, only interacting with customers when necessary. His favorite customer is Belle, who comes in a couple of times a week. Her smile is as bright as the sun. One day she comes in upset and for a moment he is brave enough to ask her what is wrong. [Tumblr, AO3] – This was on the list last time as well. I love this verse. The Gold in this is more like an AU version of spinner!Rumple and there’s a kind of a blanket fort going on. Gold is really sweet and this is another verse I could write so much more with. I might be adding a oneshot in April if I have time as it works for one of the Monthly Rumbelling prompts. I hope so because I would love to revisit these characters!
Picking the last one was hard because I would have loved to put The War Within on the list. I know it’s cheating to mention it at the end but I worked really hard on that, the verse is over 100k. It’s an alternate season six that has a Rumbelle true loves kiss and a happy ending. Anyway thank you so much for the tag! and for letting me ramble 🙂