Here's a hub for all of my current and future writing endeavors moving forward for Lucien and Cassio. I am bit of a slow writer, so updates are sporatic. The notes section is my own stream of consciousness about my works.
UPDATE: I've taken down my writing from AO3. I just wasn't feeling very confident in myself, and started getting really paranoid about people hating it, trashing it, calling me out for something stupid and arbitrary. So for my own sanity, I privated them all. If you're genuinely interested in learning about my OCs and want to read my content, you can email me and I'll be happy to provide. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.
All of my works are listed on AO3 for ease of access, but are restricted to only account owners. I'm sorry in advance if this is troublesome, but I don't want my work to be public to anyone who can search my username. Any potential triggers are listed before each 'chapter', but an overall content warning is imagery of smoking, alcohol use, past references to childhood abuse, and instances of violence. In the future there will probably be examples of toxic codependency and insecurities, but for now the above list is the major things to be cautious of.
NOTE: Even though their ages in their character bios say 27 and 25, their story starts with them being slightly younger, with Lucien being around 24/25 and Cassio being 22. Canonically based on their birthdays they're just under three years apart. Think of these stories as "flashbacks", unless I state in the chapter notes differently.
Breathing Underwater
RATING: Mature.
WORD COUNT: 10k+.
STATUS: Complete.
CONTENT WARNING: Depictions of anxiety, drowning metaphors, non-explicit emetophobia, unwanted sexual advances, background drug and alcohol use, minor threats of violence.
It's nothing new: Amara invites me out to yet another weekend party, I'll sit with her vapid friends and pretend to have fun while drinking water (always the designated driver), and we'll go back to my place so I can hold her hair back over the toilet.
Except, of course, when she decides to change it up tonight — leaving me to fend for myself for once.
Not Available
Breathing Underwater Notes
- Oh man, I loved writing this one. I had written so many different ways for Cassio and Lucien to meet, but this is the one that stuck with me. Another scenario I had was back when I had Lucien being a mechanic, not a line cook, and her car breaking down and going to Nate's garage (he owns a repair shop). I ended up scrapping that when A) I decided Lucien fits better in a kitchen and B) I wanted something that delves more into the idea of being out of your comfort zone.
- Cassio has been living with her grandma for a couple years now, maybe 2? The seizure didn't happen immediately when she was in college. She had been enrolled for three or four semesters before it happened — an amalgamation of all the previous grievances plus the weird social hierarchies of being at an Ivy League is what pushed her over the edge.
- I'm always doubting myself when writing character voices for my OCs, but I think (and hope) I did a good job in displaying the type of person Cassio is. A lot of people who've read her bio tend to tell me that she reads as autistic-coded, and that was actually a bit of a coincidence when I made her! I never try and make a character one way or another, because I'm always afraid that it leads to unrealistic stereotyping or something forced. Regardless, I'm happy to know that I managed to make an autistic-coded character who feels more genuine.
- I'll delve more on this in the notes for TMAYP, but I really love first person perspectives. There is something more enjoyable about narration directly from the source, rather than formatting it to be limited third person and potentially being too omniscient or objective. What Cassio sees in Lucien — cool, mysterious, an enigma — is so different from who he really is when I write him in the first person, and vice versa. And I love that, even if I worry that sometimes it sounds OOC. But these two characters are written to be secretive and reserved, to be guarded in who they let into their lives, and I like to think that I do a good job of making them difficult to understand depending on the POV.
Take Me As You Please
RATING: Teen.
WORD COUNT: 12k+.
STATUS: Complete.
CONTENT WARNING: Mentioning of past child abuse (not explicit), brief physical violence (not explicit).
Yes, I'm an asshole. Yes, I'm a coward. No, I was not expecting a date with Cassio to make me feel this nervous.
Not Available
Take Me As You Please Notes
- I struggled a lot writing this one. I don't know why it was so difficult for me to finish but it just...was. I changed so many parts of this in the process of making it; I actually have about 3k words I completely deleted because I just didn't like how it was turning out.
- Originally, I had Lucien meeting Cassio at the music store she worked at. It was really, really cute actually: he sees her first, helping a young boy string his violin bow, and he had all of this flustered little internal dialogue about it. She notices him, they have an awkward little talk, she watches him fiddling with a piano next to him and it's this whole thing of her offering to teach him. I cut it out because I felt it was a bit too cheesy, I guess. Even if it was entirely self indulgent for me.
- I also made sure to amp up the "asshole" factor for Lucien, in the beginning at least—at first I had him follow up with Cassio after a few days, but I had to remind myself that Lucien is cagey. I actually had a lot of rediscovery when it came to writing Lucien, because I've written him in so many different ways that I pretty much forgot who he was originally. I'm still not entirely happy with how this turned out because it took me so, so, so long to finish that I have reread this over and over again, to the point that I second guess myself and feel he's out of character.
- When it comes down to it though, I intentionally wanted Lucien to be flustered, and a little enamoured. There's a couple things to remember:
- Lucien is normally very level headed. He's a little dead on the inside, if I'm being honest, and as I've sprinkled throughout this work he has a reputation for violence and angst. Lucien does have a handful of people he speaks to, but he's not popular at all.
- Lucien is a bit...well. He sleeps around a lot. Smoking is second nature, drinking is a coping mechanism, and casual sex is the only way to release whatever pent up resentment he has for himself. He doesn't even enjoy it, none of it, because Lucien doesn't enjoy anything. So, naturally, it would be nervewracking to try and impress someone who doesn't know you for these things, doesn't look at you like you're a wild animal, and is willing to give you a chance even after you stand them up. Lucien is just deeply misunderstood, and desperate for connection, hence why he hesitates on pulling the same stunts on Cassio — he respects her enough to not try and fuck on the first date.
- I wanted to practice my dialogue a lot more in this one too, and I had a lot of fun exploring their dynamic through that as well. Cassio is not a manic pixie dream girl, and I don't want their dynamic to be a "sunshine x grumpy" type thing. There's a lot of nuance in Cassio's body language here, and because we aren't in her anxious mind I wanted to have that reflected in how little Lucien understands what she's thinking or feeling. I hope I conveyed that well.
Parallel Lives
RATING: General.
WORD COUNT: 4k+.
STATUS: Complete.
CONTENT WARNING: N/A
A study on the parallel lives between Cassio and Lucien, written through the perspectives of bedrooms and core interests.
Not Available
Parallel Lives Notes
- I wanted to make a drabble between TMAYP and the Thanksgiving fic, just to explore their growing dynamic and discuss them as people by using the medium of their personal spaces.
- Cassio's cello is integral to her person. It's something she's always loved to play, a passion borne from it being forced upon her—making the best of her overbearing parents' insistence. You don't spent over ten years of your life perfecting something to just give it up, and when Cassio was forced to go to Harvard there was a loss in her dream of going to a music school to do it professionally. Here's a link to the song she plays, The Swan
- Lucien is very tied to nostalgia. He borderline hoards physical possessions because he didn't get to have much when growing up, and even less when put into foster care. It would've been easier to highlight a large cassette collection (which he has), but when I wrote this I was enthralled with Western films. I'm a big fan of Red Dead Redemption too, so that whole cowboy culture is very romanticized by me, and I wanted to reflect that. Lucien's relationship with his mom is complicated, and connecting them through film felt right.
- I'm still rusty when it comes to finding Lucien's character voice. With Cassio, I try to convey the sense of anxiety through her thoughts—overexplaining, hyperactive, and nonstop overthinking of every thing that happens in her life. I use a bigger vocabulary with her too, for she's a smart character. With Lucien, I learned my lesson with TMAYP and made his dialogue more straightforward, with touches of crude or blunt thought processes. Lucien is still very thoughtful and observant, but doesn't tend to stress over things unless he's nervous (like in TMAYP).
for the bullets that you fire, i'm the main supplier
RATING: Teen.
WORD COUNT: 16k+.
STATUS: Complete.
CONTENT WARNING: Toxic family dynamics, very minor violence, deadnaming, multiple instances of intense arguments.
A week before Thanksgiving, Amara decides to let me in on a little secret. And to make matters worse, it seems that my brothers want in on the drama.
Not Available
Bullets That You Fire Notes
- This was a HUGE labor of love. It took me five months to write this one, starting in October and finishing it right at the end of February. There were so many moments where I hated the process on this, continuously stuck on how to effectively make angst with purpose. This was my first time ever making something so dialogue heavy, and I'm proud to say that my friends think I did an excellent job of it.
- When I started this, the only things I wanted was this: Cassio finds out about Lucien's bad reputation, her brothers surprise her grandma for Thanksgiving, and a lot of family history is put on the table for all of us to witness. It was supposed to be a lot simpler in nature, because originally I didn't want Cassio and Lucien to have a blow up fight about what she learned, but as I got closer to that moment I realized it was just too good of an opportunity for relationship growth to pass up.
- I had a crazy amount of fun developing Cassio's twin brothers Elijah and Lucas. I really wanted to emphasize what happens when a normally forgotten about middle child finally gets the attention they think they deserve, and what that does to someone with a propensity for having a large ego.
- This entire fic is mainly a family dynamic fic, with some Cassio/Lucien moments sprinkled throughout. I'm quickly learning I love ensemble writing, and with Cassio having such a large family with varying personalities and motivations, it allows for so much growth and development of their characters. I had a friend tell me that the part that stood out to her the most was when I had Cassio, her grandma, and her two brothers speaking in the kitchen. She said it felt so fluid and alive, with the feigned polite conversation making it feel sterile and tense in such a warm environment. I can't wait to keep introducing more and more of the family as time goes on.
- Writing Lucien here was also fun for me. I really wanted to display someone so different from the rumors that Cassio heard from Amara, for when Lucien's around Cassio he wants to be better. For him, their entire time spent together is a learning curve for him too, because he's spent a long time avoiding any serious type relationships due to his own insecurities. Plus, his character, contrary to popular belief, isn't nearly as trigger-happy as he seems on paper. His problems with alcohol and violence stem from long term depression, guilt, abandonment issues, and hatred for himself. He does it to feel something, to release the anger in his heart. All those vices are chasing a high, but when he's actually happy, or at least content, he's a more soft-spoken, private person. So I knew that when Cassio went too far with him near the end, picking a fight for no good reason, he'd finally snap from being so patient all night.
- I could honestly rave about this fic for hours if you asked me about it, because there are so many elements here to talk about. I truly think it's one of my best so far.
