thehuntiswhatdefinesus

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]

invitation

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]

Still alive and working on the rewrite, but here's an anniversary update!

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]

Enemies to lovers "who did this to you?" about scars? Great, of course. However, I raise you this: "I did this to you."

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]

Progress Update August 2024

I got new comments on the fanfiction these past few days, so I figured I should give another update on the writing.

As I mentioned in the last Progress Update, I'm having problems with writer's block. Well, more so, I think I might be having some form of executive function block. Because I can think about the fanfiction all day and I can even feel an itch to write it, but the second I sit down to do it, my brain feels like it's shutting down and is suddenly in a wall of fog. It has gotten a little bit better, I suppose, but progress is still a lot slower than I expected and than I'm used to.

I've finished the rewrite for the Prologue, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2 (sans one scene I'll have to look at again later which I skipped because I got stuck on it for too long). I'm 10 pages into Chapter 3 as of yesterday (Sunday) evening, 11pm.

As far as new chapter content goes, I have collected a lot of notes and ideas, so my guideline Google doc keeps expanding, even if I'm not actively writing those chapters.

At the moment I'm experimenting with ways to get around the block and create a few hours of writing flow every week because I want to get the rewrite done. I want the early chapters to be more in line with the later ones in so many ways. I want to finally move on to new content.

I wish I could give an estimate on when I'll be done, but I don't want to disappoint anyone by missing the deadline and postponing over and over again.

All that said though, I am still working on the fanfic. I haven't given up on it.

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]

Are you still writing this?

Working on it, on and off, yes.

But I've been very busy with work and on top of that not being as healthy as I would like to be. Long story short: I can't focus on writing (and I hate it). But I have not abandoned the fanfic. It's just a slow process, currently.

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]

Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena // Alain de Botton, Essays in Love // Eden Robinson, "Writing Prompts for the Broken-Hearted" // Chloe Liese, Always Only You // Anne Carson and Euripides, An Oresteia // Two—Sleeping At Last // Studio Bones, SK8 the Infinity // Trista Mateer, "is it okay to say this?" // @moodylilac // D. H. Lawrence, "The Rainbow"

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]

Preview: Chapter 1 Rewrite

A/N: This has not been proofread yet. The werewolf meets Daniela for the first time.

The world spun around her when a new wave of nausea hit her and she swayed, struggling to keep sitting, until finally, her eyes managed to focus again…

… only for her to spot a pair of glowing golden orbs hovering above her.

She craned her neck, peering up into the darkness before her cell and as her vision slowly adjusted to the lack of light, she found herself face to face with a woman. Pale faced and with wide eyes, eagerly clutching the metal bars of the cage as she watched.

It wasn’t Cassandra.

She was dressed similarly, though, with black boots and black pants peeking out from underneath a black hooded winter cloak.

“Uh… hi?” the werewolf said, rather awkwardly.

“You must be the mutt,” her visitor spluttered, sheer uncontainable excitement bleeding into her voice and following her words with a bright giggle that seemed so misplaced in a place as dark and dreary as a dungeon.

The name didn’t come as a surprise to her, since the castle’s other inhabitants seemed to have settled on calling her ‘mutt’ – much to her dismay. Still, it was probably for the best to play along and not get onto her new visitor’s bad side, considering she didn’t know who she was dealing with, but the woman very much had golden eyes similar to Cassandra.

“I- yeah? I guess I am?”

“Cassandra told me about you,” the woman continued, clutching the bars just a little harder and shifting her weight from one foot to the other, “and about the lovely mess you made in the hall… just had to see you for myself…”

She trailed off, her eyes darting over the werewolf’s seated form, drinking her in. Unashamed and wild and hungry and a shudder trickled down the werewolf’s back, hot and cold.

“Ah- well- I hope I don’t disappoint?”

Fear should seize her heart. Terror should make her want to shut up and retreat and protect herself – but all she could do was move and reach for those metal bars and pull herself onto her feet and step towards the woman, staring deep into those golden depths.

Up close like this, the werewolf could tell they were actually slightly mismatched, one eye more of a yellow gold compared to the other’s warmer orange tone and all she could think was ‘pretty.’ Something about them was absolutely mesmerizing, in the way the pupils had dilated with excitement and how the irises was glowing brightly in the dim light of the dungeon.

The werewolf couldn’t help but lean in closer, eyes half-lidded as she was overcome by this pull that lured her in close, drowning in those golden depths– then movement caught her attention, just at the edge of her vision.

She turned her head-

Flies.

Around her, dozens of shimmering wings in the flickering light of the torches.

A multitude crawling up and down the metal bars of the cage, over her torn shirt and bare skin and onto the woman’s gloved hands and along her arms and over her shoulders, only to sneak their way under the hood and disappear beyond the collar of a white shirt beneath.

Hackles instinctively raised, the werewolf clutched the metal bars hard, recalling the way Cassandra had coalesced from a swarm of flies before her very eyes.

What was it with the castle inhabitants and flies?

“Oh, not at all… You’re kind of cute, actually,” the woman giggled, pulling the werewolf right out of her thoughts and back into the here and now, where the words slowly sept into her mind-

Cute?!

Her face fell.

That was the last word she expected to hear while imprisoned in a cell, drenched in blood and grime.

“Cute?”

“Yes~” the woman purred, peering at her from behind half-lidded eyes. “And your blood… hmmm tastes so good…” she trailed off with a barely sustained groan, a visible shudder overtaking her body, and she clutched the bars harder, pressing her forehead into the space between them. “Makes me want to have another taste…”

“Another…?”

When and how-

“Yes, I hope you don’t mind that I had a little taste while you were asleep…” Her visitor smiled – innocently as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

She raised her arm and from below the sleeve, new flies came crawling forward and she eyed them with something akin to mild interest while she held out her palm for them to sit in. “Could pick out your scent even underneath all that disgusting Lycan stink… so interesting…”

The werewolf frowned. Well, at least they agreed that the Lycans smelled repulsive…?

She pulled herself a little closer to the metal bars, watching on when the woman turned her hand and the flies seemed to obediently follow the movement, crawling to settle back down on top.

“They like you, you know?” she whispered, attention shifting back to the werewolf and meeting her gaze, her eyes warm and gentle and so strangely… alluring.

“They… do?”

The werewolf slowly raised her eyebrow, immediately looking down at them.

Could the woman… communicate with the flies? Control them? Did they have a will and opinions of their own or were they an extension of her? They were part of her body, right? Like with Cassandra?

They looked like ordinary flies – well, massive, ordinary flies.

She struggled to suppress a shudder, worried it might offend her visitor.

“Oh yes! If I’d let them, they’d be all over you, right now!” the woman giggled, mirth making her eyes erupt into a warm and strangely attractive glow, “and who can blame them? You’re just so special.”

“Special? What do you mean?”

“Well, why else would my flies be so interested in you?” she mused out loud, slipping both her arms through the space between the bars and the flies seemed to protest the sudden movement, buzzing around the two of them until they settled on the werewolf’s arms and shoulders, making her freeze in place, fighting the instinct to swat them away.

The woman’s fingers brushed over her plaid shirt, teasingly walking upwards to the collar and slowly drawing her in. “And you can feel it too, can’t you?”

“F-feel it?”

Movement against her neck, legs skittering over her skin.

“The pull.”

The woman’s voice was but a mumble, a spell and the werewolf’s eyes snapped to hers – those irises the colour of glowing embers, warm and soothing.

Fingers followed the flies and traced her neck, upwards through the stubble on the back of her neck and the werewolf’s eyelids fluttered heavily as a rush of hot and cold ran down her neck.

She should withdraw.

She should pull away and retreat and swat away the flies-

And yet she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the woman’s and couldn’t remove herself from that touch that seemed to set her body on fire either. A touch that she should hate and reject, petted like a puppy and yet all she could think about was how-

- good it felt.

So good.

Fuck.

(1,173 words, compared to the original version sitting at roughly 718.)

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]

Progress Update

It's about time for a proper Tumblr post instead of the quick updates on Twitter, I suppose.

As you might have noticed, I haven't posted an update since last year, despite originally stating I was going to work on both the rewrite and the new chapters at the same time.

The gist of it is that my creativity has been consistently dwindling for about 1 1/2 years now, due to events in and around my personal life and my work situation, and I have to fight really hard against my writer's block just to add a few paragraphs to the rewrite every few days. I'm still at it, it's just a painfully slow process and I'm trying to recover and bounce back into my original creative flow, back to the times where I easily knocked out ten chapters in 3 months.

As far as the rewrite is concerned, I have actually completed the rewrite for the prologue and chapter 1 and I'm 3 pages into chapter 2, but I haven't written any new content since... I think last year's summer. The rewrites are not online yet because some of my adjustments would cause plot holes or scene repetitions, where events are adjusted in the timeline.

My plan for the rewrite at this point is still:

continue to rewrite up to, and including, chapter 6

no massive changes, no removal of old content, though it might be moved around in the order of events, some new stuff

when the majority of the rewrite is done, momentarily private the fanfic for about an hour so I can update all the rewritten parts in one go

make the fanfic available again

minor adjustments to chapter 7-onwards as needed to fit with the new details/changes from the rewrite

But while we're at it, I'll post a little preview text of the rework of Chapter 1 in a few minutes.

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]

another amazing commission i did for @thehuntiswhatdefinesus !!

slow dance with cassandra...

AO3 link here

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]

Pig, Sam Sax

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]

(But then they will both refuse to admit that they've slept peacefully for the first time in years.)

another great ship dynamic is "characters who are deeply traumatized and haunted by nightmares are finally able to get a peaceful night of sleep in each other's arms"

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]

CROPPED n//s//f//w commission for @thatzeta for her AMAZING fanfiction The Hunt Is What Defines Us !! full pic on my twitter

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]

CASSANDRA DIMITRESCU resident evil village, 2021

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]

I'm asking because you seem friends with Lyris when she recommended your fic on her Tumblr some times, I don't mean to annoy you. Do you know is she ok because she hasn't posted in so long? I'm looking to enjoy to start your fic in my winter break. It looks very good :) Thank you.

Don't worry, Anon.

Lyris is doing fine! Was chatting with her earlier today.

She's still on an extended break but she's alive and kicking!

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]

— Frank Bidart, from “Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016; ‘The Third Hour of the Night’", published c. 2017.

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]

RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE scenery 7/??

[thehuntiswhatdefinesus]