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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Bloodborne  Relationships: Gehrman/Laurence  Additional Tags: mentions of the usual suspects, some Ludwig/Laurence hints, ambiguously homoerotic pining, a reluctant Gehrman imagines a future with an ambitious Laurence in a ruined old church, and Yharnam will suffer for it.

They’d quarrelled that evening, but only in their comfortably familiar way. Laurence had called Willem’s entourage of young scholars fools applauding fools. “You ranked among them,” Gehrman countered - flatly, without pause. There was a half-bottle of gin on the table between them. Laurence had answered, “But it’s they who are warm by Willem’s hearth, and you alone with me in the wilderness.” 

Night fell, and he’d raised his glass.

“To fools.”

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I'm not the first to say it I'll bet, but I just wanted to tell you that your Laurence is the most captivating interpretation of his character I have ever seen! Both with your words and your art, you bring your vision of him to life with such convincing beauty and I am always hooked by the way his character is explored and portrayed in your works. In general, your work for Bloodborne (and ER) is some of the absolute best and I keep coming back to it time and again (many sleepless nights spent on your AO3 lmao) So, thank you very much for all the hours of joy your work provides! ✨�� Always looking forward to seeing what you cook up next!

Ty so much anon 💖 I adore writing Laurence, so much that in between the stress of moving to another city and solving a million tiny problems and already elbows-deep writing another multi-chapter work, I coughed out a little Bloodborne one-shot, now in the hands of my beta. a snippet for you:

Presently he finds Laurence in conversation with clerics of the diocese. For now the only blue is the modest knot at his neck, and there isn’t a single fleck of gold on him, so that he seems to merge with the softness of dusk in a blur of amaranthine. The former magister is carefully, plainly dressed - black, brown, wool in earthy tones, and his coat, thrown over the back of a dusty pew, has not been brushed in some time. His waistcoat is unbuttoned and his sleeves rolled up. His russet hair is pulled back loosely; a few strands escape to hover around his shoulders, as though he’s been exerting himself, rebuilding this chapel with his own hands, stone by stone. It’s a neat trick, Gehrman knows: to look as if one has performed work, stir sympathy with nothing more than the illusion of honest labour. It is little shabbier than Laurence likes to present, and it is easier to think about that, about the stains on his cuffs and his hair uncombed and the threads unfurling from the embroidered trim of his waistcoat than it is to think about the narrow slope of his cheek, the dull copper glint at his crown, the glow of recognition when he sees Gehrman - is there anything better, Gehrman wonders, than to be recognised? And Gehrman is sure he knows which one of them is the lighthouse and which is the ship but sometimes he wonders if Laurence isn’t just water in the black of night, and he a poor judge of depth. 

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not actually part of my personal headcanon but i like to rotisserie the concept in my brain from time to time

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O mother who bore us, we are going below.

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If I may ask, who is your favorite author? You mentioned it in a tag. Thank you! Happy 10 years bloodborniversary

Tbh I don't remember who I mentioned - I don't have a favourite so much as I have a roster of authors I'm dedicated to, from whom I can learn vastly different things. But if I must choose I think it's the GOAT herself, Joyce Carol Oates. There is no one else I'd describe as utterly unforgiving.

Ty anon and happy 10 years Bloodborne (sorry this reply is quite late lmao) from my one and only Hunter trying his best and doing it poorly, Egg.

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My question is about struggles: do you find it harder to write a genuinely good and kind character, or a deeply flawed, morally questionable one?

Hi anon, thanks and sorry for the delayed reply. It’s a long one to make up for it. 

To be clear, it’s not an either/or answer for me. Like most things, it depends: on the character in question, on the context, on the POV, ec. I would argue that all believable characters have flaws and grey areas, and the question is more about how those are revealed (or not) and/or justified (or not), and from whose perspective. 

(Note that I am referring here to characters who are MCs, or almost, rather than supporting/sides who can afford to be less developed, or simply serve as set dressing). 

Good & Kind Who is deciding this character is good, and kind? The reader? Other characters? Based on what evidence given, and by whom? 

A character who is genuinely only good and kind, from a 1st or deep 3rd POV, is going to bore you to death. It’s paint by numbers, and it’s too flat to be realistic, unless you are working with a barely-there, anecdotal character or a brief archetype. Good & Kind MCs exist, but I’d argue the compelling ways of presenting them are limited and nuanced.

Good & Kind is seen from another MC’s POV: Your main POV loves them, adores them, looks up to them, respects them, puts them on a pedestal, etc, so we only get that facet of them (alternatively, they are a good foil for a nasty character). In both these cases, our view of Good & Kind is limited: either shaped by contrast or seen as a rose-tinted object rather than subject (for example, if you’ve read my work, see Caryll in She Passed Away Alone at Sea).

Good & Kind is the MC POV: Then you must work to humanise them. Consider their age/stage in life, their past/upbringing, their motivations. What has led them to be Good & Kind - but more importantly, what are they still struggling with? How do they wrestle with themselves, judge their actions, even as they are trying their best? What keeps them from taking the easy or morally dubious way out of something, or from being selfish? Their existence cannot be predicated on being Good & Kind for the sake of another character alone. For example, if you’ve read my Elden Ring fics, you’ll have seen Godwyn from two different points of view: from Tricia and Morgott’s POV, coloured by their affections for him, by the kindness he shows them and the sway he holds over their fates (and the fact that, once dead, he is much easier to idolise). But from Godwyn’s own POV (even if he “tries his best” in the way someone already favoured might lazily try), to be believable he must still wrestle with his own childish impulses, his selfishness weighed against the greater good, the consequences of being raised a prince, of not knowing how to negotiate his independence from his mother’s legacy, and so on. 

Wild Card (you need to be really, really good to pull this off) MC POV is Good & Kind at first, and second, and even third glance - but they are not entirely reliable, either, and in the end you may be left with more questions than answers. See Atwood’s Alias Grace or JCO’s Blonde, off the top of my head. 

Deeply Flawed & Morally Dubious Supremely compelling, obviously, as long as you don’t fall into the trap of cartoonish villainy (or make them too Byronic, which tends to happen in amateur writing, wherein the Hardened Antihero is really flawlessly Good & Kind under all that brooding and as such could not possibly be more dull and uninteresting). 

In my experience, the morally ambiguous/flawed MC should be the easier one to write. If you’re self-reflexive enough, start there: sit down and examine your own flaws. What are they, what do they stem from; how and why do you indulge them, and if you don’t, under what circumstances would you? These don’t have to be grand villainous traits, but simple stuff - when are you compelled by cowardice, or jealousy, or motivated by selfishness or spite to fuck someone over, for example? 

From there, if you’re in 1st or deep 3rd, you can wrestle with the question of how aware your MC is of these flaws, and how they judge and/or justify themselves. This counts across the board: a young character can demonstrate flaws via naivety, while an older, more jaded character will consciously make morally questionable decisions perhaps because they are cynical, and so expect the worst. You can have characters who are deeply flawed but are trying their best: that’s how I write Gehrman, who is obsessively aware of his faults, spends frankly too much time ruminating on them, and sometimes even tries to use them to justify his own questionable actions and permissiveness. It’s also how I write pre-crusade Messmer, who is compelled to do everything right by Marika but uses that as blind justification to hurt others around him in an increasingly escalatory fashion (a sort of development, if you will, from attempting Good & Kind but without the self-reflection that prevents a slide into Morally Questionable, Willfully Justified). 

I would add here that sometimes the Deeply Flawed character is almost as interesting if you don’t know their motivations, necessarily, or why they do what they do. For Bloodborne, readers tend to appreciate the way I write Laurence as deeply, morally questionable - but I also never write from his POV. I write him from many other POVs: from characters who admire him, or resent him, or resent admiring him and so find themselves justifying him in order to excuse themselves. Throughout all this, I do not tell the reader how Laurence himself feels about his actions, or what it is exactly that drives his ambitions (he can lie, dissemble), or why he is willing to go as far as he is (and a character might ask, how far is that, really?). The reader must do that work alongside other poor, enthralled POV characters, to answer the question of Laurence - and that’s why the fic is worth reading. 

I firmly believe developing interesting characters (morally grey or not) is, more than anything, the result of empathy. You need to want to understand how other people tick (assuming you understand yourself, too) and if you DON’T, that’s where the real juicy part begins. Imagine what you are willing to give up for the good of others, and what you're not, and then learn about those who would give more or less than yourself. Inhabit someone else's circumstances. Can’t imagine justifying an atrocity, but you want to write a tyrant? You’re gonna have to do it anyway. You’re going to have to read about tyrants, about wanton cruelty, about justifying Machiavellian pragmatism. This is why you can’t write fiction if you don’t read fiction - widely, in a varied way - because reading is an exercise in empathy. 

A last little note - Good & Kind or Deeply Flawed, it is my honest belief all MC characters should have something about them that’s a little pathetic/distasteful (in the vibe of Russian modernism pathetic, if you will). For example: Gehrman comes at Laurence’s whistle like a dog; but it's a pretty one-sided devotion, and he’s well aware of it. Messmer is deeply self-conscious about his monstrosity, yet still tries stubbornly to contort himself in every manner to mimic his mother rather than accept what he is: it’s not so much sad or tortured as it is, frankly, for a demigod, a little cringe. There is nothing more humanising/realistic about a character than seeing a flash of familiar shortcomings to them, whether they themselves are conscious of it or not. Anyway, hope this non-answer answers your question, or is helpful somehow.  

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I almost had it this time :\

that’s it. this is my favourite typo. 

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another bebe Messmer that will hopefully make it out of the wip folder some day.

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thrilled to have been part of @gracedbygold alongside so many wildly talented artists.

here he is, servant of the Moon and pathetic wet cat scholar babygirl in PRINT(!!)

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I was so perfectly content with my English vocabulary of a sixth grader I hadn't updated in decades… was, until I came across your fic. And today I’ve spent the evening cutting paper into flashcards and groaning like an old man. It takes me longer to remember new words now, but learning them in the context of the usual Greek tragedy family dynamics definitely helps 🐍 So thank you for the kick!

Glad my word salad could help, and honestly would love to know which of the (new) words stuck with you.

For those waiting on part two of A History of Iniquity, I have had no real time or capacity to sit down with it properly until recently - but know that the bones of it exist...

...to the point where I just need the time (and peace and quiet) to stitch the rest of it together.

Here's an early draft snippet.

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I think your fics permanently altered my brain chemistry and I mean that in the best way possible because oh my goddd? Your writing is absolutely phenomenal, no fics have ever impacted me as hard as wormwood and variation on the word sleep did. I constantly come crawling back to reread them despite the fact that they make me very very sad :'-) You have such a wonderful vision with all of the characters you write and knock it out of the park each time. Thank you for writing!

Thank you so much anon, it means a lot to hear it. As a chronic re-reader of things I like, I am thrilled you find them worth revisiting ❤(◍•ᴗ•◍)

Because I can't resist the siren song of Bloodborne, I have a little Wormwood-adjacent draft sitting in my wip folder that I have been coming back to recently (in between too many other works and too much irl stress) - but the intent is to have it up soon.

a fresh wip as thanks for the kind words

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What do you think about GRRM hinting that an Elden Ring movie or TV show is in the works? Do you want it (if you do, then in what form, and what parts of the lore do you look forward to seeing adapted the most)? Do you dread it (like I do because I have no hope that the modern film or animation industry will do it right)?

So

I don’t actually think it’s going to happen, for various reasons;

I don’t long for it. Personally I don’t think it’s necessary (even in the “art for art’s sake” definition of necessary; I am not Adolf Loos, I am ok with things being made for their own sake, but this feels potentially gratuitous.)

If it does happen, tbd I guess. I’ve only watched snippets of people playing TLoU but am looking forward to watching the series because the reviews overwhelmingly point to it being done right (for clarification I tend not to care what casual fandom/fans think and so I generally trust a diverse group of real media critics who actually, you know, think through the cultural relevance of art-making and have various expertises). At the same time, I have watched full playthroughs and been a semi-fan of Resident Evil since those first dumbfuck movies came out in the early 2000s, and despite a roster of decent actors and all the freedom of a proper series, Netflix still blew that one entirely. So 50/50 it’ll be great or mediocre as fuck.  

TLDR, there is so much good potential storytelling already baked into ER. In the hands of good TV writers it could be excellent - even if there are fewer and fewer, but we know they still exist: or we wouldn’t have Severance, and Shogun, and The Terror, and Fall of the House of Usher, and Wolf Hall, and Dark, and so on - and I purposefully include writing adaptation here, from Wolf Hall’s wonderfully faithful work to Usher’s supremely creative use of source material. So who knows - it could be tight and clean and compelling. In the hands of talented animators, it could be brilliant. A studio that could bring the two together in a limited series on either a Tarnished’s journey or the history of the Shattering: absolutely, why not. 

Do I trust the industry in its current state, ruled by mediocrity and algorithmic decision-making, aggressively dismissing senior talent and draining its juniors dry, leaving them overworked and underpaid and without veteran artistic leadership, all to churn out an unlimited library of banality - do I think the industry is, right now, in a position to do ER justice? Probably not. 

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Belurat-inspired outfit for a young (two-eyed!) Messmer.

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Variation on the Word Sleep is one year and one seasonal depression old.

Chapters: 6/6 Fandom: Bloodborne  Rating: Mature (and I do mean M for this one, in Neil Gaiman’s sense of engage at your own risk, as a mature reader - for themes, not smut, to be specific.) Relationships: Gehrman/Laurence  Tags: A series of vignettes on the isolation and melancholy of the Dream; pining and a fair amount of it; unhealthy coping mechanisms in purgatory; love wins except when it doesn’t (the moon wins instead). Generally canon-compliant, as most of my work is, with a focus on storytelling without get caught up in the minutiae.   Series: Part 2 of Dim-lit Halls for Ancient Dogs (Part 1 is here).  Summary: The container doesn’t matter. He wants only to join it. For dissolution. To be the soft grey sands of an hourglass, running through Laurence’s fingers.

On death, and how to earn it, in the Hunter’s Dream.

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Belurat-inspired outfit for a young (two-eyed!) Messmer.

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Hi! Love to see Messmer’s lil snake doggos from you! There's something about the way you draw them that makes me want to either pet them or put them in my mouth lol :D I was wondering if you feel like sharing some of your headcanons about them, whether fic related or not, silly or not. Messmer will do too, I guess, since they're a package deal :D Acktually, any headcanon will do :3

Ty anon, I love them too. I have a greyhound and to me they have big greyhound energy.  Aside from (what to me seems the obvious fact) they share a single teeny tiny braincell, most of my headcanons for them have already made it into A History of Iniquity: chiefly that they represent a more instinctual part of Messmer, so they manifest a subconscious need to move - to touch and be touched, to approach things or to retreat from them, etc - and by extension act as a sort of emotional outlet. I also like the idea that he senses much of the world through them. In my personal headcanon Marika gave him two eyes rather than one, at birth, in exchange for the ones she took (and he lost one to the abyssal serpent along the way) but regardless, he’d rather use his serpents to see the world, because everything is otherwise very gold and somewhat blurred. 

I also have a particular headcanon for their little wings, but I won’t spoil that for folks who still want to read A History of Iniquity. 

Ty for the ask. Here’s a lil doodle/wip of a young (two-eyed) Messmer & the doggos. 

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In the dlc gameplay trailer, we see a boss version of Huw placed in Rellana's arena. Which of my two brain cells should I side with: the one that believes Huw used to drop by for a spar or two with Rellana because… reasons (¬‿¬ ), or the one convinced that a Black Knight character was meant to be the Sword of Messmer at some point? 🧠😂

I am on board with huw and rellana sparring. not even for legitimate combat reasons, but for the MOST petty shit - like who gets to walk the battlements with messmer or sit next to him at dinner, or other utterly inconsequential things.

I also think rellana matches messmer's freakish height, so any sparring with huw involves a comical height difference.

do you see my vision anon