#I affectionately refer to 'Pretenders' as 'Pretentious' in my head & this chapter is a huge part of why lol. It's also one of my favs :D

[nebulouscoffee]

I can't do the little emoji but for the ask game, what do you do when you get stuck writing?

Thanks so much! :)

Depends on why I'm stuck, I think - usually if a chapter just isn't inspiring me enough to write it, I assume it's probably going to be boring to read, too (I don't actually know whether this is true, but it's definitely a feeling I can't shake!) So what I usually do is mess with the format and/or framing a little lol. For example, I knew the climax of 'Pretenders' was going to be the secret agent holoprogram but with Garak playing Agent Bashir and Julian playing the villain, and all those messy emotions coming out the more and more they got into the roles- but apart from the entertainment value of some of the "lol look how cheesy this program is" jokes, I remember feeling like my outline for this chapter's events just wasn't interesting enough. I also wanted to convey that outside of the "play", Garak was trying to slip back into his old familiar role as an interrogator to escape feeling vulnerable, to try and regain control over this massive dissociation of the self while slowly heading for a mental breakdown- but I didn't want to use words like "dissociation" or "breakdown", I just thought that felt too basic for him! Given his weird, twisted brand of self-awareness from canon. He's too good at lying to himself! It's too normal, Garak would find some way to spin this whole situation into a safely "unreal" story instead! - But once I decided to convey this stuff by alternating between a script format whenever he was in Interrogator Mode and regular prose whenever he's the one to crack and/or accidentally lose himself in the experience- which flips around by the end when he's caged himself in his own narrative (and more and more thoughts in brackets as he dissociates), the chapter just suddenly became sooo much fun to write. Like I had such a blast it turned out maybe six thousand words too long haha!

Conversely, if I get stuck while writing because I suddenly discovered a plot hole, well... 'The Trill with the Golden Gun' hasn't updated since last September, so what do I know really😂