#btw when i was referencing the screenplay for what barkis says to victorias portrait i found:

[pieofdeath]

god. pacing. this is ROTD spiff so badly its INCREDIBLE.

so like. i DID intend ROTD spiff to be an asshole!! lord barkis is SUCH an asshole in the movie! he's visibly older than victoria by a good bit. he flirts with her in a way that just feels. sooo gross. there's a scene in the movie that I didn't adapt to the fic because I didn't want ANOTHER pov change where Lord Barkis (IIRC) talks to a portrait of Victoria and says something along the lines of how she wont have to suffer this union for very long. BRO. YOU'RE IN THEIR DAMN HOUSE STILL. I intended ROTD spiff to be similar! just rude and an asshole and unrepentant about his crimes!

and then he just. wasn't. and it's mostly my own fault jakdfjs.

My first mistake was that I made Spiff too young. I made him too close to my age, which made me keep thinking about how I would've felt- I'm turning 20 in march, and I made him 20 in Jan of 1877, which makes him 17 in 1874 when he murders Dan.

My second, and primary, mistake is that I thought about him for too long. When writing the final chapter, I went. huh. Spiff is 20 here, a few years younger than Kevin and Seán (who are 21 and 22-almost-23 in Jan 1877 respectively). and he killed a guy at 17. That's gotta fuck a guy up.

and then i couldnt stop thinking about it. ok. abstracted, we have a guy that has killed a guy and planned to kill another and is still literally only 20. age is not an excuse for Actual Premeditated Murder but you can't tell me that it didn't fuck him up, at least a little. and add that on top of the possibility that he killed the only person who genuinely, really cared about him. how long do you think he deliberated on if he was going to go through with his plan. do you think there was a span of time where he truly let himself love dan. do you think answering "yes" or "no" to those questions makes it worse?

i reblogged this post into the rotd tag back in April. i think that's a good summary of ROTD spiff. a guy who was unloved (woa what who said that) and couldn't handle being loved and made the worst mistake of his life. and proceeded to keep making it because then he could pretend he meant it. spiff can be summed up by "hubris and hates it" i think.

there's a lot of similarities between spiff and jim I think. interpret that as you will. there's actually a really rough idea for an alternative universe where everything turns out fine because jim or grim or someone finds out about spiff's plan to kill Seán before he goes through with it. jim and spiff are murder buddies and rtspiff reconcile- the trio shifts into a strange little polycule in that verse.

and while writing the finale I started toying around with the idea of writing his perspective, and then i listened to a few songs that gave me a few ideas for future events and it was all over. He hasn't left my head. I'm thinking about him ALL THE TIME. I'm only barely exaggerating.

hes a squeaky toy to me. im chewing on him. I'm making him cry. I'm making it better but I'm making him cry.

woa hold on i just rambled a LOT I'm so sorry aksjdfksa I need to go listen to his playlist maybe then ill feel better