Belle French - Tumblr Posts
Hey! I believe there’s something you posted on dreamwidth some time ago listing different fics you had written previously and were putting up on ao3. A couple of these were ouat fics that as far as I can tell are not accessible. I went back to that blog post and the titles are Kisses Speak and In Sickness and in Health. I was wondering if these were fics you are willing and able to share? Obviously no worries if you wish not to or it would be arduous to find/upload them. I just enjoy your writing haha
I hope you’re doing alright right now! Best wishes!
Hi! I was actually reworking those two pieces last year, right before I got too ill to do.... well, anything... *headdesks repeatedly*
Kisses Speak and In Sickness and in Health are both short stories set at the start of OUaT season 2 when Belle's living at Gold's house.
I still plan to put them back up in edited form, but you're welcome to read the original versions in the meantime, if you promise not to share copies with anyone else. Just e-mail me at the addy on my AO3 profile. :) Tell me if you want .txt, .doc, or .pdf files.
On your AO3 you wrote The pieces I'm proudest of are the Broken Wheel series (Once Upon a Time) and Madness for Two (Doctor Who).
What made those two series stand out above others for you if it's ok to ask?
It's completely okay to ask!
Those stories are the ones that turned out on the page looking something like the vision in my head. They were relatively quick and painless to write, probably because they're so contained compared to my long fanfics, but also because I threw away some of the self-imposed constraints that make writing harder (if ultimately more likely to be attractive to a wider audience). They're more self-indulgent and removed from canon than I normally go for as either writer or reader.
Broken Wheel explores a Dark Castle-based romance for Belle and Rumple without really digging into the pitfalls of their relationship. They desire each other and they go for it. As a canon-divergent AU it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but as a fairytale take on OUaT's twist on a fairytale, it's kinda fun. It's quirky because Belle and Rumple are both quirky characters capable of becoming lost in each other to the exclusion of everything else. They spend the story exploring what's possible on their terms and - to deploy a phrase I didn't yet know when I wrote those pieces - matching each other's freak. I think it was the first time I wrote Rumple's POV, which I don't find easy or comfortable compared to Belle, so I'm proud of how that turned out.
Madness for Two is similar in a way - short, contained, smutty with feels, showing POV's I usually avoid because I find them hard. Self-indulgent, quirky, prioritising the Doctor/Master 'ship and smut over the more complex realities of their canon relationship. I wrote it for the 50th anniversary of the Master's debut on DW so I wanted to avoid really diving into the morality of it all and just celebrate my love for the characters. As with Broken Wheel's Belle and Rumple, I wrote Thirteen and the Master (and the subplot with Twelve and Missy) in an obsessive, claustrophobic, and quirky collision of personalities. Nobody matches freaks like those two!
In this case I added a MacGuffin to stop 'em actively fighting for five minutes so the story could work, not so much to enable the smut (though it was nice to do that for the Master's birthday - they've been jonesing for some quality Doctor-time in my head since the 1980's!) but to force their POV's to deal with the antagonism and intensity of their bond in words. I wanted them to describe each other as intimates and, in doing so, throw a light on themselves.
I intended both Broken Wheel and Madness for Two to be character studies first, smut second, love story third. The DW piece throws in angst and hurt comfort too, because that's my fave playground. I played with tone and voice and imagery more than I usually would and - on the whole - was happy with the results. I enjoy reading these stories back, actually seeing the story instead of the flaws in my writing/things I'd do differently now I've learned that bit more.
Lastly, they're actually finished pieces and not WIPs that keep me awake at night listening to the unfulfilled character voices in my head! I've always hoped to add a third piece to make Broken Wheel a trilogy, but it doesn't need it if I never can. I've never quite found the right narrative voice for it, maybe because it wants to be told from Belle's POV while the first two are Rumple's. It's a cute enough story from her POV, but I'd like the set to match and haven't yet figured out how to do that.
I feel like the ouat universe is so messed up age gaps barely even matter in relationships except dear god don't you dare ship adult henry with any of the townspeople
