fic talk: nostalgia and motivation

[sword_logic]

things converge in really funny ways sometimes. the announcement of MCC coming to PC this year plus thinking about S11 au a lot in general a) had me writing S11 au regularly this week and b) about to do an rvb6 rewatch upon finishing up this post. wild. insert something deep about nostalgia here, i guess.

i've also had weeding on the brain thanks to work; not sure how common a term this is, but weeding is the fancy Library Word for getting rid of items that are in poor condition and/or aren't circulating well (which is very ymmv). some things circ well at Location A but are functionally DOA at Location B; some things look trashed after 5 circs, some things are pristine after 20 circs, so on and so forth.

metaphor!

i keep going through my doc of fragments for S11 au and hacking away at it pretty mercilessly. i've said it a million times, but making a "kill your darlings" doc changed the hell out of my life. no more guilt for deleting segments that i thought were great when i wrote them at ass o'clock at night and now no longer fit well.

it's also really incredible/weird to see how much doesn't fit well anymore — either stylistically or in terms of how i think about these characters or just in terms of the way the plot's decided to run itself. e.g., there's a small scene i've had written for ages, a conversation where maine briefly mentions his parents. i loved the scene when i wrote it – i still really like it – and when i got to the point i'd allotted to use that scene, it just... didn't fit. something else equally character-build-y and relationship-build-y fit, but not this. and i dunno if i'll use this scene, in the end, because now that a different conversation has been had in that spot, it just doesn't feel necessary anymore.

so at this point, i'm curious to see what else isn't gonna feel necessary anymore. i already feel very different about how i want to portray their relationship and how they get to a point where x/y/z becomes normal — funnily enough, i feel like the plot is moving faster than they are, and in my old plans i'd always just kind of handwaved The Middle Part. now that i'm writing it, it seems so much more vitally important to the plot, and to them, than before. this bit in particular is something i planned ages ago as a kind of handwavey "oh, it happens because it has to, i guess" thing but... it's pretty pivotal to everyone involved, and i want to make sure i do that justice, because it sets things in motion further down the line. plus i just want to do [redacted] justice, because justice is sorely deserved. cryptic notes are cryptic, but wcyd. (you'll see soon enough.......... hopefully. i do want to post this Middle Part and then the End Part. looks like it'll be in 3 chunks.)

but yeah, it's been wild to think about. in how many other ways has this work changed over time? fucking, a lot of ways, obviously. but going back to writing this fic has, as ever, felt absolutely fantastic and i'm going to ride this as long as i can. time to rewatch rvb6 and get my heart squeezed out of my chest by the nostalgia.