#an acknowledgement of how traumatic gang gets whacked was for him???????

[dennisboobs]

charlie bringing up a traumatic event involving older women only for dennis to brush it off as something milder than it was

(x)

[liesonthefloordramatically]

18, 20, and 22 :eyes:

(the ask meme in question)

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

I don’t think I’ve ever abandoned a whole plotline, but there are a couple of fics where I’ve written multiple drafts of a particular scene or moment.  A couple examples: 

There’s a whole section of the last scene with Holly in “linear time is fake” which I whacked right before posting; I liked bits of it (and might return to it at a later date), but it didn’t fit super well with the vibe and momentum of the rest of the chapter.

The ending of “maybe I can talk to you” went through like...five discrete drafts.  Only the one that made it into the published fic was any good.

Every! single! scene! with Giorno! in “disjoint”! wound up going through a million drafts!  One of the big things that shifted between drafts was when Bruno had the “wait, hold on, Giorno is a traumatized kid” realization--in the very first draft, he knew more or less from their first meeting, which didn’t work super well.

Generally, the big difference between drafts is just...I write more.  More scenes!  More moments!  More character arcs for non-POV characters!

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

A couple of little ones!

From “the seventh day of the seventh month”:

“Obon’s like that too,” Jotaro says, his memory moving faster than his brain-to-mouth filter.  “Fifteenth day of the seventh month but we celebrate it in August.”  

“Wow,” Josuke says.  “I didn’t know you studied this stuff too?”

“I don’t.  Someone just told me that once.”

“Who?” Okuyasu asks, curiously.

“It doesn’t matter.”

It was Kakyoin!  Who is a non-entity in this fic!  Because what’s more emblematic of Jotaro’s excellent handling of his own grief than absolutely refusing to acknowledge people he’s lost!  Which adds an extra level of irony to Jotaro commenting on how little Josuke seems to acknowledge his grandfather’s death--you do this too, Jotaro!  There’s so much similarity between you but you refuse to see it because you’re desperately hoping convinced that Josuke will have made it out unscarred!

From “disjoint”:

“Saint Bruno,” Abbacchio says, with a mocking lilt in his voice.  It’s meant to be a joke, but Bruno can taste a kernel of truth hidden under layers of sarcasm and hyperbole.  He isn’t sure he likes the sound of his first name in Abbacchio’s mouth.  It makes him uneasy in some undefinable way.  It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Abbacchio only calls Bruno by his first name three times, each with the “Saint Bruno” epithet.  Here’s the one at the end of the fic:

“You’ll make it,” Abbacchio says bitterly.  “Of course you will."  He sneers.  “Who could expect anything else from kind, self-sacrificing Saint Bruno?”

A big chunk of this fic is about power dynamics, obviously, and what name you use for someone can be an expression of both your relationship and your closeness.  As usual, Abbacchio’s only willing to step over that line when he has plausible deniability--he was making fun of Bruno, of course, nothing more.  But Bruno can sense at least some of the subtext.  (Abbacchio’s also the only member of Bruno’s gang who refers to him by first name at any point.)

22.  Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them?

I do, actually!  (And sometimes find typos years after the fact. >.>)  Generally the amount I reread is linked to how much I like them, so my older stuff gets reread a lot less these days...  I am reasonably fond of most of the stuff I’ve written from “linear time is fake” onward.