#carlita coded content

[epersonae]

Director's cut of "For The Benefit of All the Broken Hearts", please! (p.s. - is it annoying if I send more than one of these? I have Curiosity)

I saw that it was for the whole fic and I just [stares into space] - because not only is it 62,158 words, which is a lot of words, for me anyway, but it also is one of those stories that occupied my entire brain for months on end, and is still kind of a core part of my personality. I could probably do a whole Taika-commentary-track-of-Boy thing with it, and be equally weird and revealing. 😅

But in trying to pick out a single aspect to write commentary, I realized I've never written the post I've been threatening to write for a year (WHAT), which is what I learned about writing an unnamed protagonist. (Or at least I can't find anything in the #carlita coded content tag.) It's now been a year, so it's likely I will miss something important, but it was such a striking learning experience that I think I can do pretty well with it.

This got long, so more under the cut:

Because aside from being obsessed by the subject matter and vibes and all that, writing for the benefit of all the broken hearts was an incredible boost in my writing craft. (the other big boost was around dramatic pacing and narrative tension and foreshadowing, btw.)

She didn't have a name in the original, and deliberately so, and I was committed to that in my work. See also: Rebecca; this post's tags has some thoughts about Rebecca as a narrative influence in addition to the technical aspects. And unlike Rebecca, I was writing in close third person. (One of the reasons that when I'm feeling particularly cocky I will say SUCK IT DAPHNE DU MAURIER.)

And that's not that hard to do when there's only two characters in a scene and they use different pronouns, but so much of the story is her and Mary. (this post made me laugh A LOT) Which means I can't use pronouns to do the lifting, instead I had to think about other ways to handle it structurally.

Using Mary's name probably more than I would normally, to be quite honest. Her name is in many more dialogue tags and starting actions than I think it would be otherwise, because if Mary's doing one action, she's doing the other action; if Mary is saying one bit of dialogue, she's saying the other.

Using line breaks strategically, clearly separating character actions; and I think over time this actually made a difference in distinguishing how they act (and speak) differently from one another, that carried over to her interactions with Ed and Stede as well. And that carries over to how Mary also becomes a more distinct character.

In some cases, this went as far as actually rearranging the physical action. I don't remember the precise details, but there's something about when they first go into the kitchen in Ch 15, when Stede is making drinks, where you have all four characters directly interacting: I reworked who was doing what where to disambiguate which "she" I'm talking about.

There's also a lot of very fiddly sentence rewording, rethinking every individual sentence, and does every clause need to be there, and what is every single sentence doing. Because there's a lot of ways of writing that are "natural" (aka I have been writing fiction off and on since I was probably nine years old, and even with a wholeass English degree and a lot of supplemental reading about craft, I'm still kind of intuitive about my writing) that lead to structures where clearly her name would go here, but I can't do that, so: is the sentence working? Should it get flipped the other direction? Do I need a paragraph break? Is it okay if it's a little ambiguous -- there's a line in one of the coffeeshop scenes where it's kind of unclear which one of them does some gesture or another, and I decided that the ambiguity worked, actually.

And then probably my favorite craft becomes theme trick, particularly where there's sort of a repetition of sentence structure, or where Mary has been doing something and her actions are in reaction to that: sometimes it makes it work to just remove the subject of the sentence. Walks across the room. Picks up her coffee. It both somehow makes things clearer despite offering less detail AND reinforces this thematic thing of her being both absent and present.

Bonus difficulty level, btw: even if epithets had made sense for the tone (which they did occasionally, iirc), I deliberately chose to have very limited physical description of both her and Mary, on account of them both being amalgams not of actor and character (like Ed, Stede, Jim, Roach, etc), but of either two real people and real person and character played by a different real person respectively. They are both entirely secret third thing, and giving them things like hair color/style (beyond a vague reference to length) or eye color takes that away. (Instead they have some details of their overall physicality - age, respective heights - and clothing, both of which also tie into the themes of the thing.)

Honestly, overall it was an interesting creative puzzle, and I learned a ton -- Through the Storm, which is a very very very different story, owes a lot to it, and I've managed to commit to the bit through all the missing scenes fic (altho since a lot of that is alternate POV, there's a lot of "Ed's wife" construction, which is not my favorite) and the alternate bad endings fic.

tagging the beta team in case anybody has anything to add; this was very much a group project, esp in identifying places where it was clear to me but not to other people: @emi--rose @veeagainsttheday @gaypiratebrainrot

also, going to leave this here - when I went to ECCC in 2023 the original artist of this meme was selling versions with a blank word balloon and you could have her write in something, and I got it left blank with the idea that I would write other things on the plastic or if ever get a glass frame, but uh, it's been Carlita? since March of 2023.

there's so many other things I could have written about at this length about this story (both specific details and the thematic stuff), I'm serious.

and to answer your ps: NOT ANNOYING AT ALL. clearly I enjoy talking about my writing. :D

[director's commentary asks]

[epersonae]

@frommybookbook

postcards say IM HERE. IM HERE AND I LOVE YOU. IN THIS SPACE AND TIME AND WHEREVER AND WHENEVER YOU ARE. THERE IS A SPACE BETWEEN THOSE SPACES THAT CONNECTS US AND ITS FULL OF LOVE. I’LL MEET YOU THERE.

[epersonae]

For the ask game: no. 5 for "for the benefit of all the broken hearts"

5: What part was hardest to write?

Chapter 13, almost certainly: the Ed and Mary stuff. Because I had made this artistic choice to stick very closely with the unnamed wife's point of view, the reader was never going to see what happened with them behind closed door. And I hand-waved that for a LONG time, but I realized that I did need to know the details, the whole question of how do you get from them arguing backstage to being found in the green room or whatever. I think I was stuck in revision and it felt like something important was missing, and so I took a break and just wrote out what ended up being the first chapter of end up several worlds away. I needed to understand the physical blocking, the potential dialogue that the characters might refer back to later, and their mental states.

And then before I even got to that level of editing, after the first draft I had to go back and lay a bunch of additional groundwork to make that encounter feel not just plausible but sort of inevitable. It was much more abrupt in the first draft, and needed all of this foreshadowing in the conversations between Ed and the wife and Mary and the wife, lots of little things. (In the same way that chapter 9 did, the middle Berlin chapter; something something Chekov's dildo.) I had some very intense conversations about it with all my betas but especially Tor about taking something that made sense in kind of an abstract way and making it concrete and visible in the text. It was incredibly hard work and I remain very proud of how it came together

[give me a fic title and a number]

[epersonae]

for all my carlita girlies (gn) please join me in being killed dead by some rando on twitter

[epersonae]

Taika’s “Ed and Stede together again!!” and fake kiss with Rhys’ “Careful, they’ll like that” is giving me feelings about For The Benefit Of All The Broken Hearts this afternoon…

YOU AND ME BOTH, ANON

(somewhere, in the back of my head, is rattling a very weird little sequel written in a documentary film style, that opens with Pete saying something to the effect of "I didn't even know [whatever] was happening!" followed by Roach, who absolutely did know, and whatever the fuck happened there goes in that file)

also I maintain this weird superposition of feelings and beliefs that sort of floats between

omfgwtfbbq

that's none of my fucking business

girl don't be weird

what can anyone ever actually know about anything anyway (that last bit being explicitly a theme of the piece)

[frommybookbook]

@epersonae that Lee Krasner quote tho

Lee Krasner // Franz Kafka

[epersonae]

for the music asks -- 6:A song that makes you want to dance

ok NOW we're gonna get some Carly Rae Jepsen :D

this was, btw, "the forbidden CRJ" until weekend before last - it was on the first playlist Ryn made me after we started dating and it was on our wedding playlist (which Ryn was in charge of), and I didn't go see CRJ in October 2022 (yeah, right before I started writing Carlita) with a friend because I was afraid I would have a minor breakdown if I heard her play it live, and then I went to a wedding two weekends ago, and the DJ played it, and it was a genuinely healing experience. A+++ would dance again.

[music asks]

[epersonae]

a funny thing happened while I was writing the last chapter of Hungry for love, ready to drown -- which is that as I was working on the scene where Stede first sees Mary's paintings, I kept thinking about the Stede of for the benefit of all the broken hearts and his possible reactions to that Mary's art.

which of course is very different, because as I think it was @veeagainsttheday noted, the critical difference between that fic and canon is that that Stede and Mary actually love each other.

and somebody, at some point, somewhere, had said after reading chapter 14 that they really wanted to see Stede take Carlita's suggestion and go look at Mary's art.

so when the idea started percolating while I was writing canon Stede, I decided to go for it. and that is the new chapter of the missing scenes fic end up several worlds away.

[frommybookbook]

ahem, @epersonae

[epersonae]

freshly posted: chapter 7 of for the benefit of all the broken hearts (the not-rpf but not NOT rpf that consumed my brain for more than six months: my fix-it fic of Water Flowing Underground)

[epersonae]

I promised a couple of people in the comments that I would write up my thoughts on the relationship between for the benefit of all the broken hearts and the Carly Rae Jepsen album The Loneliest Time, and as a way of dealing with some wicked writer's block, here it is. (below the cut, because long, and I know only a few followers/mutuals are likely to be interested. also: spoilers for my fic, if you are interested in it but haven't read/finished.)

fwiw, even if you have no interest in this particular fic, I highly recommend the album, it's great!

So I wrote most of this fic while listening to this album: I was looking for some good background music, I wanted some pop music, and I had listened to it once and thought it was pretty good, so I put it on. And THEN it turns out most of the album hits the Themes and Motifs I was playing with, and I became obsessed. (Tidal continues to let me know, month after month, just how obsessed.) And CRJ became an ingredient in the character I was writing, which turned into a great feedback loop of the music and the aesthetic and getting sent interviews, which fed back into the character, etc etc etc.

As I was writing, I ended up with the headcanon that this album is sort of/mostly/not entirely/in a parallel dimension the album that the unnamed protagonist is working on throughout the story. Which in the story, she's written about half an album, quite a bit of which is about her relationship with Ed, and then she's inspired to write new songs by the events of the story itself. In my head, that works with the songs in the real album in the real world, because I think of them as three categories.

I will say that sometimes songs move around in categories in my head, or I've thought about their relationship to the story in different ways over time, which is part of the experience of mostly listening to a single album for seven months. (Apologies to my neighbors, I guess? Or anyone who has ridden in my car.)

Songs that have nothing to do with the story

If this is the album in the story, these are songs she wrote before the story that are not related to her relationships, they're just songs.

Beach House - although a song like this is directly referenced, I think a couple of times? She redirects the interview in the final scene by talking about something like it, a song inspired by terrible online dating experiences, which I think is something I heard in a CRJ interview about Beach House.

Bends (which is apparently a song CRJ wrote about grief from losing a family member) - the chorus is very vibes but it doesn't hit anything in particular

Western Wind - likewise vibes but not story

Shooting Star - I do love this song, but yeah, not part of the story

Pre-WFU (or at least pre-story) songs about Ed

These are also songs she came into the studio with, but they are specific to her relationship with Ed, and a particular conception of them that she has in her head. I am agnostic about whether she wrote them entirely before WFU, or in the gap during/after when she didn't know about those events.

So Nice - this is the song re: Ed; it's the song she can't quite get in the studio after meeting Mary, the song she remembers writing while watching him, the song she can finally record properly after things are more resolved. (Yeah there is a direct reference, I happened to be writing a particular bit of chapter 9 while it was playing, and decided to do something silly.) This song inspired a lot of how I thought about her feelings about Ed, too.

Surrender My Heart (this is the song that gave me the title) - altho this one I can sometimes see either way, as something she came in with or as something she wrote as it happened?

Sideways

No Thinking Over The Weekend

Songs from the story

These are the songs that she writes over the course of the story, and that as I listened to them, had extra resonance for writing the story. Some of them I associate strongly with particular chapters or sections, or I have strong visuals in my head for them. I tend to imagine her writing them as if thinking from the perspectives of the other characters, too.

Bad Thing Twice - if listening to "So Nice" is the "oh this is her and Ed's song" breakthrough moment in my writing process, this is the "HEY IT'S A WFU SONG" that cemented this album as going with this story. It works so well it's a little spooky tbh. Sometimes I think of it as Ed to Stede or vice versa, but it's also tasty to think of it with her and Mary too.

Talking to Yourself - late in the draft process I solidified that this is the first of the songs that she writes over the course of the story, the couplet that comes to her while taking a break from recording. I tend to think of it also as Ed to Stede, and something of the vibes that she's absorbed from that first chapter with Ed and then from talking to Mary and briefly encountering Stede.

Joshua Tree - speaking of Mary, this is THE song for her and Mary, which is partially the painting references, partially the California driving vibes, partially the lines "California dreaming's never what it seems/But here it comes, I know what I must do now".

Go Find Yourself or Whatever - so I have this scene in my head that I will probably never write, of the foursome sometime after the story going out to karaoke, and ofc some of her songs are there, and Ed and Mary sing this as a duet while staring directly at Stede, who is attempting to disappear under a table.

Keep Away - conversely, this is very much Stede's song, all the way through, and I'm always [bites fist] about "I'm keeping company [...] with all the friends I got from you" in the context of Roach being part of the comedy show scene.

Far Away - not a strong association, but it makes me think of her realizing that she hasn't really known Ed, and in some ways wanting to start over. So a little bit chapter 1, even, and a little bit chapter 10, I think.

Anxious - I think I rotated this through lots of different feelings, and eventually settled on the whole chapter 13 situation, and Ed and Mary, and it's something about the energy of it and also "ooh, boy, you've got a reputation"

Special category: The Loneliest Time

There's two aspects to this: in the story, she's writing it in chapter 11 specifically, so between Berlin and Los Angeles, and it's a duet, and I got to bring in some ambiguous famous male singer (theories and headcanons welcome) that is a bit of a foil and context for her in that and in the following chapters in the recording studio.

But also, at some point very early on, it struck me that if I did this thing successfully -- that is to say, if I fixed it in a way that I personally would recognize as fixed, it would feel like the way The Loneliest Time sounds.

By which I mean: something about the interweaving of the vocals and the depth of the sound and the chord progressions (I think? it has been 1000 years since I did anything with music) and the lyrics and the whole vibe of it. Something about it feels like a resolution, even if it's not perfect or final, it's settled into a new place, one that's hopeful, and that's what I wanted to get to.

(For a while, I thought that if I was able to land it, I would title the fic "The Loneliest Time", but it didn't quite fit - when I made the series for it and A secret third thing and the missing scenes fic I'm working/posting/block on, I decided it works for the set as a whole.)

As a final thought, one of the things I appreciate about this album in relationship to this story is that the songs don't appear to be in a story order. There's no particular story arc or narrative or even necessarily direct relationship between any of the songs. And that worked with the idea that comes up in the final chapter: "It’s not one to one. The story you’re telling isn’t always your story exactly as it is." And before that, when she thinks about putting the music out into the world and it become part of other people's stories.

There's something about that, and about how this story relates to a lot of personal things in a similarly non-linear way, that makes this album feel even more connected to this story.

[epersonae]

Ao3 wrapped multiples of 3~

3. What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?

for the benefit of all the broken hearts (hereafter ftboatbh, I hate this acronym but there it is) is one of the pieces of writing I'm most proud of in any genre or medium in my entire life. it was my obsession most of the year and I worked so hard on it, both in the writing and in the editing.

6. Favorite title you used

[answered (and it's BIGFOOT STOLE MY HUSBAND)]

9. Favorite pairing you wrote for this year?

I looked at this question, and I stared into space for like three minutes, because, like the whole complicated tangle of carlitaverse (goddamn I loved writing that Mary/Carlita missing scene) but also canon/regular modern AU, and Ed/Stede is such a good fun thing to write (the final installment of devil's threeway! Commit to the Bit! BIGFOOT STOLE MY HUSBAND!)

12. How many WIP’s do you have in your docs for next year?

Like, active WIPs? I have two that actually have some meat to them, three that are mostly just notes, one outline of plot ideas that I may be gifting to @frommybookbook, and a vaguely cursed idea that I threw down a couple of paragraphs of last night.

15. What WIP are you taking into next year with you?

As far as "I have posted part of it to AO3 and I'm planning to finish it", just the one, end up several worlds away, which should just have one chapter left, and that chapter is in progress, sort of. (as you know!)

18. The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year?

Another "I looked at this and stared into space for a while" question, and as soon as I said it out loud I knew it was Ed specifically in ftboatbh (which is one of the reasons that the first chapter of end up several worlds away even exists tbh)

21. How many kudos in total did you get this year?

855

24. Did you write any gifts this year?

Nope! (I wrote some "related works", but no gifts)

27. What do you listen to while writing?

THE LONELIEST TIME BY CARLY RAE JEPSEN (ok, not just that, but in that vein, any writing of any length is generally associated with a particular album or playlist, so Hungry for love, ready to drown was mostly written to the S1 playlist, and can't cross the same river twice was written to a combination of Goths by The Mountain Goats and Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? by the Cranberries, etc, etc.

30. Biggest surprise while writing this year?

That ftboabh was such an obsession, that it ended up being so goddamn long, and to some extent that I was able to make it work at all. (And also the whole chapter 17 situation in particular.

[ao3 wrapped writers edition]

[epersonae]

I've had this up in a tab for a while and finally watched today, and oddly it was exactly what I needed.

[epersonae]

I just threw on ofmd 1x4 and remembered the moment I realized that the Mary in my head in for the benefit of all the broken hearts actually kinda looks like the actress who plays canon Mary's mother in this episode

[epersonae]

fic etc (new version!)

[update March 21, 2024]

These days I'm writing fic for Our Flag Means Death.

Longfic

I have three finished long pieces, in order of connectedness to canon:

Hungry for love, ready to drown (T, 33K) - a Stede POV retelling of season one starting with episode four, lots of missing scenes (so much with clothing but also wound care! dream sequence!). My love letter to canon; I watched those episodes so many times in little bursts to really absorb the writing and acting, and I'm very proud of the results. Goes well with S2 prep, if I may say so. Will probably definitely most likely get a sequel, but it's taking me a while to figure out how to approach it.

the devil's threeway (E, 30K) - Ed POV, starts with a pre-canon encounter with Jack and (non-canonical) Anne Bonney, follows up with a post-S1 meet-up with Anne and (also non-canonical) Mark Read, and then a somewhat unusual reunion with Stede. Includes the fic where Ed would not. Stop. Crying. There is a reasonably likelihood that I will write something similar or equivalent with the canon versions of Anne and Mary, but it's still marinating.

for the benefit of all the broken hearts (E, 62K) - the not RPF but not not RPF that is maybe the best thing I've ever written in any medium for any reason: a fix-it fic for the gorgeous and weird Water Flowing Underground, told from the perspective of the unnamed second wife. My exploration of the aftermath of tragedy, the possibility of repair, and varieties of love. Read the tags, read the author's note, read WFU first (or don't, I'm not the boss of you, and I do know someone who read them out of order and still enjoyed it), but please give it a shot. Posts tagged #carlita coded content are related to this work, sometimes very obliquely. There is also a follow-up fic of missing scenes, end up several worlds away, that still has one chapter remaining (I SWEAR I'm going to finish it), and a short sort of non-linear AU, back on my beat, that explores some alternate endings.

Some favorite shorter pieces

I have begun to long for you, a "mutiny against Izzy succeeds" canon-divergence AU

nice either way, my contribution to the Beard Discourse

Commit to the Bit, modern AU blackbonnet engagement and wedding

Season 2 and post-S2 fic

I spit on your grave - post-S2, Stede and Ed have a serious conversation, starting with how Ed didn't "happen" upon Stede being gut-stabbed, and going some tough places from there

lost and found - post-S2, featuring beach comber Stede and those cake toppers

Through the storm - the crew of the Revenge between episodes 2 and 3. slow and creepy!

in case I never make it through to where you are - bad ending AU set at the end of 3. MIND THE TAGS, it's a rough one.

Other stuff

Occasionally I post OFMD fic recommendations, which started as a weekly thing but, you know. They are still posted in sets of five on Fridays, when I do them, and tagged #five fic friday. (There's no particular system to my listings, just stuff I like that's not PWP.)

Not fic: I am doing a little project where I make/recreate recipes that I have written down but haven't made in a long time (or ever) - that can be found under the tag #food as play. Includes my rewrite of the 40 Orange Cake Recipe!

I have also written a lot of fic for The Adventure Zone, my favorite being The Reckoning Arrives, a 77k fic in which Lucretia, Taako, Merle, and Carey go looking for Kalen.

I wrote quite a bit of my TAZ fic with my late spouse Ryn (@taakovapes). Ryn died in September 2021; here's the post I wrote the week they died. I often post/tag about them and death and grief. (See tags #not all exits are made equal, #[grief dab], and #posts I wish I could send to Ryn in particular.)

[epersonae]

@emi--rose