#the more little details you know about Adél the more will she have to think about outside of her main traits

[writerfae]

Hi!

Just imagine the day Callan and Henry officially started dating, Henry comes home smiling like a fool, with a skip in his step, red in the face, and Aiden's like: Are ok? Do you have a fever? Get to bed right now!

Henry: Aiden, I do not have a fever

Aiden: Then why are you red like a rose?

Henry: Ammm... allergies?

Aiden: Bed! Now!

(I love Henry and Callan so much (both as individuals and as a couple)😭❤️)

-

Petition to give Aiden a notebook to keep track of all the crazy things that get revealed about his family:

Cameron opens his mouth

Aiden: Hold it! Who's he?

Cameron:...

Henry: ...My birth dad.

Aiden, scribbling: ...birth dad. Got it! Do we like him?

Henry: No

Aiden, scribbling: ...we don't like him. Ok! I'm done! WHAT THE ACTUAL-

-

When Aiden and Henry reunite

Aiden: Henry?

Henry: Yes, Aiden, it's me- WAIT! Sorry, wrong person! There's no way he grew taller than me!

Aiden: I'm even angrier now!

-

You know how baby Aiden used to pull on Henry's ears?

What if when they reunite Aiden sees his ears for (to his knowledge) the first time, and he tries to pull on them to see if they're real or something?XD

Also, guess who's noticed another writing problem with their mc again? :D

It's fine, I'm working on fixing it, I'm just not sure how to yet (good thing I found the problem, though! I'm happy about that)

It's that I was writing some pre story fluff thing and I realized that when she's not thinking about taking care of Ákos, or freaking out about something, Adél's pretty "no thoughts, head empty", which isn't good!

The reason I'm worried is because for the others these things came maybe a bit more naturally, and I'm afraid of how it'll turn out if i try to "force it" with Adél, but I'll figure it out! (Tell me, I got this, please, I'm scared) (sometimes I'm sitting here, like: should I just erase Adél and start from scratch, and that makes me really sad! Please tell me not to do that! Who will give Ákos magical hugs then?)

Sorry for the complaining, i hope you don't mind

Yes to all of these!

After the story is done, Aiden could probably write a whole family chronicle and it would most likely be titled like What the Fuck Fae - a story of wild shit I learned about my family in the past few weeks

Your problem with Adél is really valid, though if I’m being honest, it sounds to me like it is pretty much the same problem we talked about before: you haven’t figured out enough of Adél’s personality yet.

Which is completely fine and normal and not meant as criticism. I just think that this is the core issue that leads to the “no thoughts head empty-mc” problem.

When her main traits are worrying about everything and caring for Ákos and these main traits are as dominant as they are, then of course that’s what she will do all the time when you write her. That’s why she needs more traits.

I mean I don’t know if she has developed more since you asked me about writing her the first time, so I don’t want to make assumptions. But maybe you really should equip her personality a bit. I think that’s the first step to improve writing her and “giving her thoughts” (for the lack of better words).

Of course there’s characters that come more naturally. And then there’s ones that are a bit harder to figure out. Those need time and care and yes, sometimes a little bit of force. Otherwise you’ll get stuck. Remember, developing an mc is a progress! There’s no progress if you don’t try!

So just keep writing her! If it turns out sounding too forced or you won’t like what you came up with, you can always cross it out. And even that will take you a step further to figuring Adél out, because then you’ll know what you don’t want her to be like/to think about.

Don’t give up! I know you can figure it out! And please, don’t erase Adél. We love Adél! And she’s already a solid framework for a good character!

You just need some more practice and time with her! Sometimes you have to lock yourself in a room with your oc and try to get them to talk to you.

#the more little details you know about Adél the more will she have to think about outside of her main traits #even if it’s just stuff like her favorite food #cause then she can think about if she’ll have her fave food for dinner or crave it or miss it or be reminded of it when away from home #and there you go! an Ákos and anxiety unrelated thought #it’s the small things #you know how I struggled with Aiden #there was a time I couldn’t even name a single flaw of him #now I know his hobbies and favorite things and how he likes to sleep #and that he thinks that it’s stupid that a so called dangerous item like the alder sword is stored in a tree stump #which reminds me making characters comment on stuff and voice their opinions in their heads is important too!! #if I sounded mean here I’m sorry I swear it’s not my intention #writer speaks #writeblr

[bailey41]

Picture credits variously to Madame Figaro & Francois Boucher (detail from The Nymph Callisto with Jupiter in the Guise of Diana,1759)

Soyez sérieuse / The Anniversary

on AO3 (X)

AU. The principal actors from Portrait de la jeune fille en feu / Portrait of a Lady on Fire, in a relationship. Paris, a summer night or two in Adèle Haenel's apartment in the 10ème. They are celebrating an unspecified anniversary, one that allows for breathy declarations, lots of looking back (!) and stuff. Lots of baise-tois too as these are *mad normal* modern French women. There's a lot of the Adèle attitude from the 120 BPM era.

Summary:

“The sublime grants pure feeling.”

—Goethe, on describing the sight of the alps, in a 1778 letter to Charlotte von Stein.

A short tale of transitions, told in fragments: Between object and subject. Between regarding and being observed. Between thinking and feeling. Between listening and being heard.

“vous avez rêvé de moi?,” ou “vous avais rêvé de moi?” Between the present indicative and the imperfect indicative.

Or if you like, the change from minor to major key in Vivaldi’s “Summer: III. Presto,” that plucky violin solo in the middle that has Héloïse smiling triumphantly through her tears.

But as this is a happy Noémie Merlant x Adèle Haenel AU, the heavy notes in G Minor that resume at the end of that piece don’t ever come back.

_______

Done.”

Adèle half-mutters the word as she finishes replacing the last of the cooking pots in the cabinet beneath the kitchen counter.

She pushes the blue dutch oven further in, gently closes the door, and with a firm grasp on the lip of the marble top with her left hand, she springs erect from her crouch, and swivels in the direction of the too-large dining table. 

Just in time to see Noémie rest her empty wine glass. With a grimace, she’s dabbing intently at the dried spatter of gravy on the front of her dress with a spit-moistened napkin.

The stain had gone through the taffeta and onto the material underneath, and while not particularly salient against the charcoal and dark green of the silk placket, it is visible, and is causing the wearer a lot of consternation.

Adèle raises her left eyebrow to the seated woman, and she dutifully scrunches her nose in acknowledgment.

The main part of the meal ended more than two hours before. The dull, rusty streak would have passed without any mention had Noèmie not noticed Adèle stare down at something on her, halfway through some menial chit-chat over revisions to a screenplay for a small film set during the Algerian War. It’s to shoot in the autumn and seemed promising for a “message-movie” when Noèmie’s agent first sent it over. But she is very bored with it now, and had begun to wonder if it wasn’t too late to bail out on without a lot of hurt feelings.

Adèle knew much of tonight’s work blather was mere preamble to what her girlfriend really wanted to talk about, but there seemed to be no urgency for much of anything lately. It’s been a week since Bastille Day, and Noémie had just flown back from a quick, two-day photoshoot on the Basque coast for Elle, but the pair had yet to made up their mind to use the little time they had between jobs to go anywhere outside of the city. An oppressively hot July, they’ve mostly stayed in with the one main air conditioner groaning just to keep things comfortable on most days.

The nights have thankfully been cooler.

“Don’t mess with it anymore, or it will just get stuck in there, and then you’ll be really upset. Leave it with me and I’ll give it to Elie, the dude at the cleaners.

“But what if he can’t remove it?”

“I mean, those dudes, at Vuitton, they’ll get you a new one, no?”

“That is so not the point.”

The recipe she got from Tatiana, the chef at Le Servan, did call for less tomato paste and red sherry, but no matter. It’s not like she was gonna change anything the next time she cooked it for them. Noé loved the stew and that pretty much settled it. She made a mental note to add a few more prunes and sultanas.

“And what was?”

“What?”

“The point?”

“You know I hate having to spell out this kind of thing, cuz you’ll give me shit later for being vain.” She cocks her head and uses both her long, bare arms to intimate the length of her not-too-short dress. “I wanted to show this off to you, to wear something brand new for you in my Biarritz tan, to look super nice for you and all, and now it’s all fucked…“ Still mid-pout, Noémie sits up from her slouch, her back now ramrod straight. “I was gonna have this nice little speech to cap off our little celebration, the lovely meal you made, and now it’s a bit fucked.”

“Oh my god. Baby, it’s ok…I’ll keep the apron on if it helps.” It’s a cheapish looking thing, a denim blue promotional one with the Pathé logo silkscreened in yellow over her chest.

“Ahhhh! This is such a stupid, stupid little thing, but It’s all about the moment, you know!” She pronounces ‘moment’ in English.

“You still look amazing in it, if it helps.”

“Oh… It helps. Much.”

“Let’s wash up and you can recite it all to me in bed? That would be a pleasant change of scene, no?”

“But I’m not really tired yet.”

“C’mon. Show me these tan lines. I know you wanna get out of that dress.”

Adèle turns her back and gestures for help with the apron.

Noémie gets up and unties the bow with one sharp tug, the sound cutting the air. Deftly, she runs all ten fingers over the broad pleats of the linen and grosgrain dress that the apron hid, smoothing them down as she cradles the small of her lover’s back. She slips her right hand in the gap she created between the coarse denim of the apron and the much softer fabric to feel the shape of Adèle’s abdomen, slightly swollen from braised lamb, couscous and way too much Coke Zero. She finds her navel and kisses her nape, drawing the first of her many rewards.

“Oh.”

“You need to wear this number more often,” Noémie purrs. “It does it for me.”

“It’s by Alber, when he was still at Lanvin. He made it for me. It’s kinda old now but it means a lot to me. I’ll only wear it for you. From now on.”

“Would you let me wear it?”

Adèle turns around. “Would you like to try it on? Right now?”

______________

It’s past 1 in the morning. They’re on the balcony, looking down the Friday-night hubbub on Boulevard Magenta five floors down. It’s not as noisy from that height.

Noémie is plucking the leaves off of a succulent on the patio table. Adéle swats at her playfully, but doesn’t stop her, instead shifting the ashtray to keep it from falling off the edge.

The leaves always grow back.

They both then turn their stools back towards the bedroom and away from the street, the aluminum feet of Adèle’s chair straddling the concrete floor of the exterior and the lumber of the room. Noémie shimmies her stool to create a little distance, well into the interior but still close enough to where Adèle was sitting. 

Noémie is anxious to take up where she left off an earlier conversation—post-prandial, post-coital, and one she needed to fully articulate, to solemnize the occasion. She composes herself, running fingers through her short-cropped hair.

Continues on AO3 (X)

#adele x noemie #marianne x heloise #noemie merlant #adele haenel #portrait de la jeune fille en feu #portrait of a lady on fire #celine sciamma #poalof