#and they have the silly and short vs tall and awkward dynamic

[psychidelias]

Howard Moon and the man he affectionately calls sunshine vs Dave Lister and the man he makes a speech to about how he's the moon to his sun.

[unitystationshenans]

Fun writey bits! How failsafe changed from concept to execution.

So. Firstly, it wasn't supposed to be a romance. Corvin was supposed to be entirely incapable of feeling romantically for anyone, not even Nicky. Nicky’s character arc was going to be about learning to accept this, and realizing that he'd been basically using Corvin as a fantasy boyfriend via their fwb arrangement. Corvin’s arc was about being more open about how he felt, and admitting to himself that he was likewise using Nicky for comfort without giving any of the emotional labor back. Their original dynamic was going to be a lot more terse and distant. Unless they were alone, where they'd be constantly touching or hugging, too caught up in exuding their respective images to be honest with themselves and each other. Nicky thought of Corvin as closed off and robotic, while Corvin was rather dismissive of Nicky’s own brand of intelligence. Outside of his work with guns, that is.

Then I accidentally got really high, and went on a journey to the center of myself, where I realized that no, Corvin and Nicky loved each other and were each other's ride or die. Nicky’s persona became much more awkward and silly, while Corvin really unfolded into a caring but emotionally unexpressive guy with a panic disorder. Their fwb thing stayed, but more to emphasize that these two are just idiots who needed a little therapy. And also because their casual relationship to sex was a rather important trait, and was present since the very beginning. The original dream that spawned the book had Robin actually running into their nest while they were undressing each other, and the awkward scramble to deal with the threat chasing him. (In the dream it was robots. This was changed to make more sense, because the original dream was heavily star wars influenced lol.)

Mozzie was literally just a sex worker employed by Honey that was only supposed to appear on page twice, with the second time being when he and Nicky hooked up. His appearance was also drastically different; he was very tall and gaunt, still very pretty, but in a much different way. He was always a vampire, and always albino. His height was changed when I narrowed down his backstory. A thing I hope to have gotten across with my mentioning their heights is that short = grew up poor, and tall = grew up well off. When his backstory as a human trafficking survivor was determined, I thought it would be fun to make him the shortest adult member of the cast. His role expanded because I accidentally fell in love with him as a writer, and I wanted the whole "one guy vs several, the others think he's going to get killed, only for him to be the last one still standing" scene.

Honey has changed the least, aside from toning down certain aspects. When I hadn’t planned on her being trans, she was actually a lot more creepy and pushy towards Corvin, and abused her position of power to sort of put him in compromising situations with her. When I realized she was trans, that aspect was almost entirely dropped. Now the flirting is just an inside joke that Corvin doesn't mind, because she doesn't mean it. She was also a little bit more of a Black Widow figure, but her identity as "What if Amber Sweet was also a spy?" Came to the forefront.

Robin has barely changed. At all. He's just a chill kid. Even his grown up version didn't go through many iterations. He just kind of popped up exactly as he needed to be: adorable, and autistic as hell. Sure, he got character development by way of "oh wait, that's actually a sign of trauma, I should expand on that," but that was always sort of the plan. He's just a sweet little sunshine boy who wants to avoid thinking about the deep pit of sadness and grief he has yet to process. The biggest change is that he was supposed to be aroace, but apparently he decided he wanted a boyfriend too.

Boys, stop changing sexuality mid-book, I can't keep swapping scenes out.

Speaking of. The confession scene between Nicky and Corvin was originally going to be a huge argument, where they got some catharsis by taking it out on each other. But once they were going to end up together, the things they were going to yell were no longer applicable.

Also, as far as race/ethnicity. Nicky was originally supposed to be Russian (hence why his name is Nicolai), but I liked the idea of him being Hispanic much more as I thought about the characters. People expect the sort of Latin-lover stereotype from him, but he's actually super nervous and 100% dedicated to his partner. It also let me tell my favorite language-based anecdote. Mozzie was going to get a canon race/ethnicity, but I decided it was more fun to wait and see what people do for headcanons, should this ever get a readerbase. I sort of see him in my head as being partly Japanese, but that's not official. Corvin’s family is white, or at least mostly white, because the dynamic in his childhood home was based heavily on my own experiences of white evangelical families here in the Ozarks. That pretty facade, but with something deeply rotten once you get past the first couple of layers. Honey was imagined as white, but feel free to have your own interpretation. Robin was always a little black child, and it remains an important facet of his character! A lot of non-white autistic kids get overlooked or misdiagnosed, and a lot get treated like adults way too young. Technically he's multi-racial, because Enora was black and Korean, and Karina is white, but he looks a lot like his great grandmother. He didn't get very much of DJ or Karina’s looks lol. Just got Karina’s brown-eye gene.

Dervish is Palestinian, though it's not mentioned in book 1. It is a minor plot point in book 2. Doll is ambiguous, please imagine whatever for them. They're mostly robot anyway. If a character's race is important, I'll bring it up in the narrative. If it’s not, I will leave it up to interpretation.

This is getting long. More posting in the morrow! Once I have slept!