(no subject)
More DVD commentary for @agarlandoffreshlycuttears! This time from the closing scene of Wild Above Rule or Art. I feel slightly like I should have had more to say here? Because I have ALL SORTS OF DAEMON FEELS, but I hope this suffices
~~~~~~~~~
‘We’re sorry, we’re sorry, we didn’t mean it, we didn’t think, don’t leave us, don’t leave us, please.’
(The formatting of this fic was a weird thing, bouncing all over the place both temporally and between universes. The POV had also switched around between Vince and Howard and the narrator-I don’t know who the narrator is, incidentally, but they definitely have a voice and are a character in and of themselves, because I wanted the fic to have that fairytale quality. Almost JM Barrie, the way he’ll pause to wryly address the audience in Peter Pan. ANYWAY. So there wasn’t really any pattern there as far as that formatting, but I knew that I wanted to take the opening scene and play it back, but this time from Howard’s perspective, as bookends. The way the fic opens, it teases at TV canon and then goes, wait, no, here’s a different take on that. I wanted the symmetry of ending on that same scene because now, after reading the rest of the fic, you understand *why* those changes are significant. You get the full emotional context of them)
A few automatic steps back, like some strange impulse to give them space or privacy, and Howard is… frozen. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t that. Don’t leave us? Why would Vince be worried about Howard leaving? Vince is the one with a million friends, a hundred shinier and newer and more exciting things than Howard pulling him forever away from their shared little life. And Slightly- well, they haven’t been mute, precisely, lately, but they haven’t spoken, like this, independent of Vince, the way they used to. And it is independent of Vince; he’s vaguely aware, out of the corner of his eye, of Vince shrinking against the grimy brick of the wall, huddling into his magnificent cape like he could possibly hide in it. But only vaguely; his attention is transfixed by the two dæmons on the ground.
(The classic, tragic S3 misunderstanding here; they both think the other one is growing away from them, and they react in precisely the wrong ways, only reinforcing the other one’s belief. But here, too, in this universe, you get this moment of Howard noticing that Slightly’s behavior *is* independent of Vince, and the weirdness of that. I love the daemon!verse because they are both terrible with their emotions, but in different ways? Vince tries to just completely shut himself off from his negative emotions, pretend they don’t exist, they don’t matter, but with a daemon, that ends up manifesting as a… disconnect. And there shouldn’t *be* a disconnect there, that’s fundamentally wrong)
Mathilde twitches herself around, a tiny movement that brings her over and on top of Slightly, one paw very delicately pressing down on their tailfeathers, pinning them to the ground, and Slightly doesn’t even try to resist. They’re breathing hard, little breast rising and falling with panicked rapidity, and the elbow joints of their wings flick and flex in a way that isn’t even a little about trying to escape or fly away. Mathilde looks down at them with her eyes- dark gold, something amber and warm in the depths of the brown- as narrowed as a rabbit’s can be, and Howard swallows hard.
(AND THEN THIS. That move of Mathilde’s, just a tiny little movement, but it’s so significant, and… really what it is is Howard putting a move on Vince. Just like he’d always blustered about back at the zoo. And isn’t that just ironic. Howard is always going to be a little bit more emotionally daring than Vince, just a little, and that comes out here, with Mathilde daring to make that move, very delicately pin Slightly down, demand an explanation, because they don’t *get it*, and it’s hurting all of them. She gets quite authoritative, too, as this scene goes on, which I love- “’Why do you need our attention?’ Mathilde’s voice comes quiet and intense”-because that is the kind of thing Howard aspires to. Despite his disappointment in her being a rabbit, she still has that in her. AND THEN SLIGHTLY, poor Slightly who is just-absolutely sharing in the panic attack Vince is having right now)
Because that’s the thing; Vince isn’t just Vince, just like Howard isn’t just Howard. And Mathilde feels, has felt, Howard’s sorrow and confusion and anger and bitterness at Vince, but looking down at his tiny bright soul pinned under her paw, she feels something else, and that’s something Howard hasn’t lately felt towards Vince nearly as often as he used to. It’s intimate, sheltering; a tender, warm urge to wrap herself around Slightly and stubbornly protect them from the world. From themself. From Vince. It dawns on Howard, hazy as sodium-lamps in a thick London night, that he might not be the only one, lately, who gets in his own way.
(First of all, I love the phrase ‘It dawns on Howard, hazy as sodium-lamps in a thick London night’, I am totally unabashedly pleased with the poetry of that. Second: THERE WE GO THERE’S THE MOMENT. I love the daemon!verse for lots of reasons, but *this* is the thing; when the characters have daemons, they’re forced to externalize their issues much more than they do in canon, and that means that EVEN HOWARD, wildly oblivious Howard, can have that moment and go, ohhhhhhhhh. And Slightly is quick and flashy and fabulous, yes, but also *intensely* fragile (yay for incredibly heavy-handed symbolism)).
He exhales a wobbly breath, and one of Mathilde’s long ears flicks at him in silent affirmation, and then she bends to rub her face all along the length of Slightly’s body, warm pressure for several of Howard’s heartbeats- many, many more of Slightly’s, whose racing hummingbird heart he can sense more than actually feel, through his connection with Mathilde. And then she pulls back fractionally, and sets to grooming Slightly’s breast feathers, her little tongue mussing them back against the grain, damp and warm.
From against the wall, Vince makes a strangled noise that sounds like a sob.
(MATHILDE GROOMING SLIGHTLY. This is the thing with both of them, of course, but I think especially Vince, is that he’s desperate to be cared for, but far too proud to ask. *Especially* S3!Vince. Younger versions of him would wheedle a sick day out of a hangover and plead for Howard to make him toast and orange juice, or aggressively cuddle into Howard and not give him any room to protest. By S3, as we know, Vince is proud, and terrified of rejection, and it’s better to pretend never to need care than it is to be denied it. And Howard might not be great at always seeing when it’s needed, but he has a very daddish side to him that fusses and wants to take care, and here, Mathilde’s taking that opportunity, because very plainly, Slightly needs it. And poor Vince over there trying to hide in his cape feeling that like a punch in the chest. He wants that so badly, but it’s been so long, and it’s *good*, but it also *hurts*, it’s so much it’s overwhelming.)
‘Mathilde…’ Howard tries, but she ignores him, her attention squarely on the hummingbird still pinned under her paw
~~~~~~~~~
‘We’re sorry, we’re sorry, we didn’t mean it, we didn’t think, don’t leave us, don’t leave us, please.’
(The formatting of this fic was a weird thing, bouncing all over the place both temporally and between universes. The POV had also switched around between Vince and Howard and the narrator-I don’t know who the narrator is, incidentally, but they definitely have a voice and are a character in and of themselves, because I wanted the fic to have that fairytale quality. Almost JM Barrie, the way he’ll pause to wryly address the audience in Peter Pan. ANYWAY. So there wasn’t really any pattern there as far as that formatting, but I knew that I wanted to take the opening scene and play it back, but this time from Howard’s perspective, as bookends. The way the fic opens, it teases at TV canon and then goes, wait, no, here’s a different take on that. I wanted the symmetry of ending on that same scene because now, after reading the rest of the fic, you understand *why* those changes are significant. You get the full emotional context of them)
A few automatic steps back, like some strange impulse to give them space or privacy, and Howard is… frozen. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t that. Don’t leave us? Why would Vince be worried about Howard leaving? Vince is the one with a million friends, a hundred shinier and newer and more exciting things than Howard pulling him forever away from their shared little life. And Slightly- well, they haven’t been mute, precisely, lately, but they haven’t spoken, like this, independent of Vince, the way they used to. And it is independent of Vince; he’s vaguely aware, out of the corner of his eye, of Vince shrinking against the grimy brick of the wall, huddling into his magnificent cape like he could possibly hide in it. But only vaguely; his attention is transfixed by the two dæmons on the ground.
(The classic, tragic S3 misunderstanding here; they both think the other one is growing away from them, and they react in precisely the wrong ways, only reinforcing the other one’s belief. But here, too, in this universe, you get this moment of Howard noticing that Slightly’s behavior *is* independent of Vince, and the weirdness of that. I love the daemon!verse because they are both terrible with their emotions, but in different ways? Vince tries to just completely shut himself off from his negative emotions, pretend they don’t exist, they don’t matter, but with a daemon, that ends up manifesting as a… disconnect. And there shouldn’t *be* a disconnect there, that’s fundamentally wrong)
Mathilde twitches herself around, a tiny movement that brings her over and on top of Slightly, one paw very delicately pressing down on their tailfeathers, pinning them to the ground, and Slightly doesn’t even try to resist. They’re breathing hard, little breast rising and falling with panicked rapidity, and the elbow joints of their wings flick and flex in a way that isn’t even a little about trying to escape or fly away. Mathilde looks down at them with her eyes- dark gold, something amber and warm in the depths of the brown- as narrowed as a rabbit’s can be, and Howard swallows hard.
(AND THEN THIS. That move of Mathilde’s, just a tiny little movement, but it’s so significant, and… really what it is is Howard putting a move on Vince. Just like he’d always blustered about back at the zoo. And isn’t that just ironic. Howard is always going to be a little bit more emotionally daring than Vince, just a little, and that comes out here, with Mathilde daring to make that move, very delicately pin Slightly down, demand an explanation, because they don’t *get it*, and it’s hurting all of them. She gets quite authoritative, too, as this scene goes on, which I love- “’Why do you need our attention?’ Mathilde’s voice comes quiet and intense”-because that is the kind of thing Howard aspires to. Despite his disappointment in her being a rabbit, she still has that in her. AND THEN SLIGHTLY, poor Slightly who is just-absolutely sharing in the panic attack Vince is having right now)
Because that’s the thing; Vince isn’t just Vince, just like Howard isn’t just Howard. And Mathilde feels, has felt, Howard’s sorrow and confusion and anger and bitterness at Vince, but looking down at his tiny bright soul pinned under her paw, she feels something else, and that’s something Howard hasn’t lately felt towards Vince nearly as often as he used to. It’s intimate, sheltering; a tender, warm urge to wrap herself around Slightly and stubbornly protect them from the world. From themself. From Vince. It dawns on Howard, hazy as sodium-lamps in a thick London night, that he might not be the only one, lately, who gets in his own way.
(First of all, I love the phrase ‘It dawns on Howard, hazy as sodium-lamps in a thick London night’, I am totally unabashedly pleased with the poetry of that. Second: THERE WE GO THERE’S THE MOMENT. I love the daemon!verse for lots of reasons, but *this* is the thing; when the characters have daemons, they’re forced to externalize their issues much more than they do in canon, and that means that EVEN HOWARD, wildly oblivious Howard, can have that moment and go, ohhhhhhhhh. And Slightly is quick and flashy and fabulous, yes, but also *intensely* fragile (yay for incredibly heavy-handed symbolism)).
He exhales a wobbly breath, and one of Mathilde’s long ears flicks at him in silent affirmation, and then she bends to rub her face all along the length of Slightly’s body, warm pressure for several of Howard’s heartbeats- many, many more of Slightly’s, whose racing hummingbird heart he can sense more than actually feel, through his connection with Mathilde. And then she pulls back fractionally, and sets to grooming Slightly’s breast feathers, her little tongue mussing them back against the grain, damp and warm.
From against the wall, Vince makes a strangled noise that sounds like a sob.
(MATHILDE GROOMING SLIGHTLY. This is the thing with both of them, of course, but I think especially Vince, is that he’s desperate to be cared for, but far too proud to ask. *Especially* S3!Vince. Younger versions of him would wheedle a sick day out of a hangover and plead for Howard to make him toast and orange juice, or aggressively cuddle into Howard and not give him any room to protest. By S3, as we know, Vince is proud, and terrified of rejection, and it’s better to pretend never to need care than it is to be denied it. And Howard might not be great at always seeing when it’s needed, but he has a very daddish side to him that fusses and wants to take care, and here, Mathilde’s taking that opportunity, because very plainly, Slightly needs it. And poor Vince over there trying to hide in his cape feeling that like a punch in the chest. He wants that so badly, but it’s been so long, and it’s *good*, but it also *hurts*, it’s so much it’s overwhelming.)
‘Mathilde…’ Howard tries, but she ignores him, her attention squarely on the hummingbird still pinned under her paw