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n7punk · 11 months ago

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“By the Sea (Drown Me Already)” Fic Notes

By the Sea is done! It took a longer than I was expecting with everything that happened in my life, but it’s also longer than I was originally intending so that's to be expected lol.

Playlist:

This AU was purely vibes for a while, and thus the playlist was mostly vibe-based at first, but a few of these are very good fits.

GOOD GIRL ERA (SIDE A) — UPSAHL. FBL (SIDE B) — UPSAHL. WEEKEND — Betty Who. Silk Chiffon — MUNA (feat. Phoebe Bridgers) Bed — Niko Rubio. Love Seasons — Nina Nesbitt. Yellow — XANA. bad idea right? — Olivia Rodrigo. Casual — Chappell Roan. HOT TO GO! — Chappell Roan. Shy — K.Flay. Naked In Manhatten — Chappell Roan. Borderline — Sigrid. Minute — Kim Petras.

Epilogue Life:

I did more of a traditional epilogue than I usually do, so there’s not too much to say here, but they date working through their issues for six months before Catra officially moves in with Adora and not long after Scorpia, Entrapta, and Perfuma move in together. Catra does stay at the marina for a lot longer than she ever thought she would before eventually getting too fed up with the waves and getting an opportunity to work for one of the resorts instead.

Chapter 1:

⦁ This AU is heavily based on an area I used to visit as a kid, which sucked so much you can bet there was not a single resort there, but it was the basis of my beach experiences, so it inspired certain parts of this set up. I wanted to do a resort-type AU, but there are also some moral issues when it comes to resorts so I focused on the general vacation town angle.

⦁ I made a lot of jokes about not knowing jackshit about what I was writing, which is partially true, but I actually have Some experience related to the water parts of this fic, it’s just rather removed, and I don’t know the first thing about diving. I haven’t even been to a beach in seven years, but I dated a girl with a boat once and I leaned heavily on that experience lmao.

⦁ “Hot surfer chicks coming to the marina might make it a bit more bearable.” Catra, honey, you have Got to stop jinxing yourself.

⦁ Entrapta was right about Perfuma being anxious. She has so much experience trying to decipher emotions that are easily evident to others and picked up on the body language.

⦁ My POV for fics is always somewhat reactionary. If I do a fic that is primarily from one perspective (Adora POV in Roses & Thorns) it’s almost inevitable that the next fic (Catra POV in By The Sea) will swing the other way to balance it out. That’s not planned at all, it just happens a lot. My brain misses whatever girl it got to spend less time with lol.

Chapter 2:

⦁ Mermista’s dad owned the marina for several decades before he sold it to Netossa when he retired because Mermista wasn’t interested in running it and also in middle school. They get a free boat spot for life.

⦁ I mentioned this in a comment but couldn’t expand on it at the time: Adora and Catra’s relationship is very inspired by the setting. It’s a surprise reunion in an unexpected place, which works well with the vacation town vibes, but they’re both also worried about losing it, which matches with the transience of such a place.

Chapter 3:

⦁ Adora’s small talk was actually really important stuff for diving, that just didn’t have any relevance to the rest of the office, nor did Frosta care, and to Catra it just sounded like weather small talk.

Chapter 4:

⦁ Catra kept up most of their photos from high school. There’s one or two she had said something too glowing about Adora in the caption and thus deleted in a fit of spitefulness, but for the most part she couldn’t stand to lose them. Except that one. That one hurt so much every time she read it because it just seemed like lies, and when she was feeling generous enough to not view it was that, it was the ramblings of a best friend who only felt friendly. It was either lies, a goodbye, or a consolation prize to being “friendzoned.” She wiped it from her account and then quickly regretted it.

⦁ On Adora’s part, you can guess, but she wiped her social media in a low fit after her shoulder. The last thing she had posted was a photo taken by the training pool, gushing about how excited she was for the scouting. It hurt too much. Every photo from college did, and every photo from high school had for a while, but those were at least good memories. Now everything from college was tinged with regret and failure. She saved a lot of the old photos — mostly from high school — and even screenshotted some captions or comments — Catra-related, or even left by Catra herself — and then stuck all of that on her harddrive and pretended none of it existed. After she found a life again, she found herself occasionally going back to look at those high school photos, but she rarely revisited the few she saved from college. It took her months to feel like she could post again. It wasn’t until the next summer, when she hoped enough of her college friends had moved on or forgotten either her or what happened, that she felt comfortable doing it, and when she did she went public on her account, trying to open back up her life. Being public also felt like it gave her a layer of separation from those old high school/college followers even if all it really did was add more strangers to the pool.

⦁ I went back and forth on how to describe the age of the account and the timing of the incident, because they’re kind of halfway. Adora’s shoulder got injured at the end of sophomore year, and her social media existence started many months later, after healing time, so her account got remade roughly two-two and a half years ago and she got injured around three.

⦁ The post of Adora getting fancy dinner after the surfboard post was because her friends saw her anxiety and her overworking herself to get the money to get it fixed and knew she would never let them just pay for the repairs, so they took her to dinner instead and didn’t let her pay for the check. She needed a good time with her friends, and the free meal couldn’t hurt.

⦁ The line about crutches in Adora’s caption is actually something I said to my friend once when they were feeling ashamed of their aid. When you need them, you need them, and something being a “crutch” doesn’t mean it’s bad or unnecessary.

⦁ Adora’s injury was her “breaking the sword” moment in this universe.

⦁ It got cut because it was awkwardly shoehorned in the dinner conversation, but Adora’s Serenia bio says she has four years of experience because she actually tried diving while at college, but it was basically just some fun lessons she did that she never expected to go beyond that. It’s part of why Mara took her under her wing so hard, though. She recognized Adora’s trauma with water, but also how it was so tied to her identity and left her feeling like a shell after “failing” at swimming, so she found new ways for Adora to use those talents and find fun in them. And honestly she needed another hand with the town’s growth.

⦁ I’ll be honest: my knowledge of torn ligaments comes not from sports, but from my dog tearing her knee. I remember the vet told us some wild statistic like half of all dogs will have torn their other leg within a year of the first injury but we made all the lifestyle changes recommended while healing from surgery to mitigate risk factors and she never had any more problems! That was like six years ago now and she’s still super peppy. You’d have no idea she’s a senior dog with a knee surgery under her belt. Oh anyway that’s why I mention the injury lingering because yeah it can affect dogs at least so bad they fuck up their other leg the same way from compensation within months.

⦁ Adora talking about being happy in Bright Moon making her realize how much she missed Catra actually was a pretty big revelation for her. College was just hard the whole way through and Adora was distracting herself from her pain (emotional and physical when she overworked herself) by… overworking herself more. Taking a full load, spending too much energy at practice, working a part-time job after school, she had absolutely no room to breathe and honestly the only surprising thing is that it took her that long to get injured. She never had room to look up and see what was missing because she was explicitly avoiding doing that and pretty much everything was a pain point. Once she was healed and happy, the loss of Catra reared its head again and refused to be pushed aside, even if she was more prepared to process it. It was a lot less painful, but still present.

Chapter 5:

⦁ I think Bow 100% is the kind of guy who would enjoy being made into a sand castle but sand is so unpleasant in a lot of places and to get it out of your binder you’d have to take it off and then put it back on, which is kind of difficult on the go.

Chapter 6:

⦁ Okay so the “armor” from the title is Catra’s bravado combined with the emotional armor of making her wants and Adora’s lingering eyes all about desire instead of acknowledging the enormity of her feelings. Adora is doing a similar thing in her head, but she’s also trying to deny her desire too, so her head is a full on shitshow.

⦁ Originally the grocery store scene was going to be later in the fic when they were “Maybes” because I love the casual intimacy of grocery shopping together (romantically or platonically! It’s just fun), but I needed an Adora scene in this chapter to give a little more of a read on where she was at (denial) and the chapter was really short without it, so I decided to write it now.

⦁ I have actually seen a guy “rescue” a grocery store lobster and keep it as a pet for years on youtube. The transformation she went through under his care is insane.

⦁ Apparently cats and dogs aren’t really suppose to have nuts because it’s a big risk to them, but for the most part it has nothing to do with toxins and is just because they’re a choking hazard or at risk of being a blockage since cats and dogs don’t usually chew things up a lot. Anyway there are a few that are actual problems and that’s specifically raw cashews.

Chapter 7:

⦁ I actually wrote the scene with Mara talking about Adora surfing before chapter five, but it was too early in the fic for that and they needed to build more before something that important. The entire point of putting it early was Catra being surprised by how quickly Mara was willing to accept her and thus wondering what Adora had said about her in the past, but 1) it’s honestly still like that even being pushed back, and it’s more reasonable in that regard, 2) it was both too assuring and too insecure for the vibes I wanted.

⦁ Everything from chapter 8 was originally in chapter 7, but then all the swimming/hook up stuff got so long I had to separate them out, so CH7 ended up being mostly transition. I tell myself transitions are important when I just want to write angsty trash make outs lol.

Chapter 8:

⦁ The make out against the pool deck is like The Scene Lite™️ for this fic. It’s one of like two points I was building to early.

⦁ The original idea for the fic was that Adora would live in a house on Mara’s big property out of town, but when I went to write this scene Adora just said some stuff about living twenty-five minutes away and that got abandoned.

Chapter 9:

⦁ Honestly you can take your pick on whether Bow couldn’t arm wrestle Sea Hawk because it would make his arm too sore to drive or the losing penalty was taking shots. Both were ideas.

⦁ The closet scene is The Scene™️ for this fic. I think I wrote it before the first hookup scene in the first outline when things were more antagonistic (more on that later).

⦁ It’s so not relevant to the fic so I’m sticking it here, but Adora’s old swim coach was almost as bad as Weaver, but that actually worked out for her when it came to scouting. The swim coach wanted Adora to go pro for the glory to her team, and she knew Weaver wanted her to go to a local college, so when scouting started, the coach worked with Adora behind Weaver’s back to help her get seen and apply. This made it even easier to hide, and without it she probably would have needed Catra’s help to pull that off, thus assuring Catra actually knew about it and wasn’t totally blindsided. Adora’s coach actually helped her out and drove her to the airport for her flight out since Adora had a total blow-up with Weaver when she found out. It was something Adora needed, but it was still self-serving.

Chapter 10:

⦁ Their whole conversation here was supposed to be a quick joke and then it became the entire chapter somehow and that’s just the story of all my fics tbh. I really wanted it to be quick since I didn’t want people to think I was making light of IRL racial fetishes but I truly do think all of that would function very differently in any world with multiple species, especially the more diverse the species get and thus the less alike. It starts becoming increasingly harder for a human to be wired to find them attractive, and obviously the species in SPOP aren’t that different, but it’s a topic that always intrigued me in Mass Effect/sci-fi fic that there really is nothing like in our reality, so I was interested in at least brushing up against it and that’s how the joke happened. I’ve made some jokes about it before but they were always the quick jokes I meant for this one to be and obviously that didn’t end up happening here.

Chapter 11:

⦁ A lot of people clocked it but the musical song was Dead Girl Walking (not the reprise) from the Heathers musical (which is infinitely better than the movie, god, don’t watch that thing).

⦁ I went back and forth on if Catra would like the Ferris wheel, because on one hand, they have their secret place really high up and she doesn’t seem to be afraid of falling off the railing, but on the other hand, cats getting stuck in trees. Lol no but it is very different when you’re in something that feels as precarious as a dangling basket versus a solid building seemingly made from steel.

⦁ Okay so Bow’s whole thing here was actually written before I had the idea for Adora to ask Catra if she’s aromantic and I ended up turning this scene into that Seed Of Doubt instead of the single mention. It was another thing I meant to be a quick joke (well, Catra to be the joke where she managed to act unbothered so well — to Adora at least — that she screwed herself) but it ended up expanding into a full plot point. Also I should probably mention here I’m greyaro for the people who don’t follow me on Tumblr usually.

Chapter 12:

⦁ Let’s just say that Catra’s work day here is incredibly realistic.

⦁ I know I’ve mentioned this fic spiraling a few times, but the title “Surfboard at Midnight (I Just Might Swim)” was originally on… chapter 5. Okay, okay, it wasn’t that bad because I came up with the name before the chapter contents, but yeah, I was constantly kicking it back. The title belonged to chapter 5, and then 6, and then 8, and then like 10, and then 11, and 12, just constantly kicking it down the road as things leading up to the skinny dipping moment spiraled.

Chapter 13:

⦁ I originally said the POV for this fic was whoever because I wanted to leave the door open for having a scene from Scorfumtrapta’s perspective, but that was back when the fic didn’t have plot, and as the lesbians got increasingly dramatic, the focus on their relationship fell into the background. The main scene I was thinking of was what ended up being turned into the dinner scene. At the time, I just thought it was funny for Scorpia to realize months late that she was in a three-way relationship, but in the fic it turned into this thing about Catra feeling adrift and alone even with her friends, which wouldn’t have come through if I had used Scorpia’s perspective or something.

⦁ This chapter has a Secret Theme. So sometimes — quite often — I’ll write scenes in my head for a fic that I know have no place in it. Maybe it conflicts with the overall tone (in the fic, or just that portion of it) that I’m going for, sometimes it doesn’t super make sense, etc. Some of these things end up repurposed or I do find a way to integrate them, and that’s what this entire chapter is. When I was outlining Catra turning up at Adora’s in the middle of night for sleep cuddles, I wasn’t actually planning to put it in the fic, but then it was really sweet and I realized fit with the transition of their relationship, so it became an unofficial part of the outline before being promoted to part of the story.

⦁ I did say this entire chapter was from scenes that weren’t supposed to be used, though, so what about the boat scenes? Well, the boat scenes were originally outlined… for Roses & Thorns. Yes, okay, I know. Let me explain. That fic wasn’t supposed to be nearly as horny as this one, but when I was writing the very end of it I had this vision of a scene with the two of them messing around backstage (being vague to avoid spoilers if you haven’t read it). It included some of the dialogue that ended up in the make out scene on the boat, but I knew it wouldn’t fit with the rest of the fic to suddenly have them getting hot and heavy on screen, so I just kind of saved the dialogue with the plan to implement it somewhere else down the line. As I was outlining this fic I had the idea for them to hook up in the storage room at the docks at one point, but I ended up moving it to the boat because that would have necessitated luring Netossa away first if they wanted to get away with it, which was less likely after the summer rush faded.

⦁ So I don’t know how all phones work but on iPhone you can set certain people to break through Do Not Disturb and Adora put Catra on that list because sometimes they would text past when hers activated for the night.

Chapter 14:

⦁ Kinds of chocolate according to Catra: White Dark Super Dark Baking Semi-sweet Sweet Milk Orange (wildcard)

⦁ The “there’s other ways to get these endorphins” thing really goes to show how little Adora understands what Catra is doing. Those kisses are “I love you”s and bids for assurance that Adora just isn’t getting and thus isn’t giving back because she’s so focused on not taking advantage of Catra and the such.

⦁ I’ll be honest I tried to get them together here and it didn’t work. Catra reacted too strongly, too fast. When I first outlined this scene I was thinking about another possible get together (that didn’t end up happening) and wondered how I would even get out of this scene without them getting together and then when it came time and the plan had changed I couldn’t MAKE them talk.

Chapter 15:

⦁ Samantha is dressed like a butch prince and I think that’s great. Also I pulled the name Samantha out of my ass because I didn’t feel like coming up with a reference like a week ago- psyche nevermind the song it's from literally just came on shuffle as I was posting this so it's actually from a Leah Kate song and I just forgot why I picked it.

⦁ This chapter easily could/should be split into two, but I like the flow of it all being together.

Original Outline:

So, this AU didn’t have an outline. It was pure vibes when I started it, with plot just taking vague shape in the back of my mind as I wrote. Pretty quickly I had a few big scenes — the make out at the pool, the closet scene — but I was building the rails as I drove at first. As such, I kept having ideas that pushed the few ideas I started with further out in a spiral.

When this AU was extremely nebulous, there were some different ideas for the concept where maybe Catra worked for the resort so she and Adora were closer to being coworkers, and then others where they all worked totally unrelated jobs on the pier but were hooking up in the “offices” when others weren’t looking, which is closer to what the final thing became, but these were all fleeting ideas before I really started writing. Originally the AU featured more antagonism between them at first too, with Catra denying even being her friend at first, but again, things just happened as I wrote and that didn’t materialize at all.

There was a draft with a very different final chapter/get together, but I honestly might use it in another AU where it fits a lot better (there’s a reason it was kicked) so I don’t want to say what it was lmao. Aside from that, this AU was something I wrote as the ideas came to me, which is fun to do sometimes.

Upcoming:

I’ve got a couple of one shots in the works and then we’ll see what AU takes me, but for now I’m playing around in canon universe (mostly).

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