They’re into nearly a month of co-habitation when Newt finally brings it up. They’re together on the sofa, Newt shoveling take-out pizza down his throat and Hermann flipping through TV channels, and suddenly Hermann reaches out and curls his pinkie finger delicately over Newt’s. Newt swallows his mouthful of pizza. Hermann’s eyes are fixed straight ahead. Newt knows this signal, of course–Hermann wants Newt to take his hand, maybe kiss it (Hermann likes that a lot) or rub his thumb in little circles over Hermann’s knuckles. “If you want to hold hands with me, dude,” Newt says, with a grin, “you could always just hold my hand.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Hermann says, but he looks pleased when Newt threads their fingers together anyway. Later, when the lights have dimmed and his head migrates to Newt’s shoulder, he clears his throat until Newt takes the hint and loops his arm around Hermann instead. Newt squeezes Hermann’s cotton-clad bicep, and Hermann hums happily and nuzzles the side of Newt’s neck. “Thank you, Newton.”
Oooh, man, I feel like that one would HAVE to be a Modern Bagginshield AU? Like a spin-off story to the never-written Wall Street AU I wanted to do where Thorin’s getting his family’s mining conglomerate back from a hostile takeover.
Hmm, it would either have to be a prequel story about Thorin’s expectations in life growing up, or a sequel spin-off about Bilbo realizing what actually entails when you marry into like… serious industrialist old money. Like, not just the flashy stuff like yachts and whatnot (something I think Thorin as a fairly private person frankly abhors, and Thror’s infatuation with such displays was an early sign of his growing dementia back in the day before they were bankrupted) but also just like… the sheer generational wealth that sprouts up when you have more money than you can spend in a lifetime, stuff like philanthropy efforts, trust funds, how to balance those so you don’t turn all your descendants into little monsters who never have to work for anything in their life. It’s a whole balancing act that constitutes what modern industrialist royalty looks like behind the scenes.
Bilbo, who also lives off inherited money and comes from a comfortably upper class background is at first flippant that he can completely grasp everything Thorin is talking about and it’s nothing new to him, he was one of the most eligible financial prospects of his town, after all, until he sees the spreadsheet of what Thorin’s currently mulling over and realizes no, oh no, he had no fucking clue the number of inputs, outputs, and just the sheer number of zeroes involved with Thorin’s daily personal and professional concerns after they’ve reclaimed Erebor Industries.
2:23 AM in the secrecy of a lab he technically had no authorization to enter, using a scrapped-together Pons System to mind-meld with a war criminal. Not one facet of the situation set Hermann at ease, or was flattering, or was even particularly justifiable.
Hermann had zero compunctions laying the blame on the part of his mind Newt had leaked into during their brief Drift all those years ago. The part that gave him familiarity with metabolic pathways, an ungodly love of caffeine, and the harebrained audacity required to kidnap his former labmate and take the matter of curing him into his own hands.
—
In which Hermann embarks on a quest through Newt’s mind, and love is rarely rational.
Tags: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb, Fortune Favors The Brave, Slow Burn, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Precursors, Mutual Pining, Unsexy Tentacles, Life Forcing Hermann to Confront the Fact He’s Something of a Hero, Quality Life Advice from Uncle Illia, Diner Dates, Strange Weather, Love Confessions, Kissing, Fighting Monsters with the Man You’ve Been Pining Over for Half Your Life, Brief Appearances by Jake Pentecost and Mako Mori, In This Fic We Flagrantly Disregard Mako’s Death
~
Chapter eleven: Sutures, a duck pond, and a dinner party. We’ve finally reached the end! Thank you to everyone who’s been reading along the past few months, and I hope you all enjoy this final installment of TLOR ❤
I think the best piece of character design advice I ever received was actually from a band leadership camp I attended in june of 2017.
the speaker there gave lots of advice for leaders—obviously, it was a leadership camp—but his saying about personality flaws struck me as useful for writers too.
he said to us all “your curses are your blessings and your blessings are your curses” and went on to explain how because he was such a great speaker, it made him a terrible listener. he could give speeches for hours on end and inspire thousands of people, but as soon as someone wanted to talk to him one on one or vent to him, he struggled with it.
he had us write down our greatest weakness and relate it to our biggest strength (mine being that I am far too emotional, but I’m gentle with others because I can understand their emotions), and the whole time people are sharing theirs, my mind was running wild with all my characters and their flaws.
previously, I had added flaws as an after thought, as in “this character seems too perfect. how can I make them not-like-that?” but that’s not how people or personalities work. for every human alive, their flaws and their strengths are directly related to each other. you can’t have one without the other.
is your character strong-willed? that can easily turn into stubbornness. is your character compassionate? maybe they give too many chances. are they loyal? then they’ll destroy the world for the people they love.
it works the other way around too: maybe your villain only hates the protagonist’s people because they love their own and just have a twisted sense of how to protect them. maybe your antagonist is arrogant, but they’ll be confident in everything they do.
tl;dr “your curses are your blessings, and your blessings are your curses” there is no such thing as a character flaw, just a strength that has been stretched too far.
This is such a fabulous flip side of what I’ve always known about villians. That their biggest weakness is that they always assume their own motivations are the motives of others.
Avelera 