#discussion of mental health and depression on natia's part which is highly important!

[wexhappyxfew]

Hey! I know you are currently not doing any ask game so I hope you don’t mind me dropping by! Anyways, my question: what is something you wish someone would ask you about your story? (Whichever one).

Hope you are having a wonderful day🧡

KATYA! HELLO MY FrIEND!! :D omg AWE!!! It’s always okay to stop on by the ask box, i woke up and saw this and AH GOSH i smiled so wide seeing it truly, it meant the world to me and all day i’ve been playing around with how i want to answer it and OMG IM SO HYPE FOR THIS TRULY YOU HAVE NO IDEA!! i hope you’re having a wonderful day yourself katya - you deserve it ah!!! :) Landslide has many, many little things that I’ve put in for me, along with dynamics and plot points...and just SO MANY FUN THINGS THAT I ENJOYED!!! just so many that i really love - so let’s get into it!!

I’ll put it under the cut, just because this got longer than I thought it would be! LOL!!

I have discussed this previously, through a variety of ways, but this is my 3rd Band of Brothers fic, 4th published book in the fandom! And I really wanted to let it be different and really just step way outside of the box, really just see what I can work with, what I can actually make work - all that sort of stuff. 

I really enjoyed a SOE Agent’s dynamic with Easy Company, like entirely LOVE THAT, but I wanted to elevate it a bit more to see where I could really sort of wiggle an OC in - and it came to me. I always felt the Warsaw Uprising was extremely important in terms of the war, especially as the Polish Resistance was dubbed the most organized and effective resistance group under German power. AND SO - Landslide was born!! 

Something about this story is - we don’t focus inherently on Natia and Easy right away - there’s 19 chapters of intense and deep context of her time BEFORE Easy. It’s all things I really tried to strategically plan out in many senses. Everything that occurs in those 19 chapters are backstory and context for actions and words and interior dialogue later. Things she might end up referencing later - so that whens he arrives with Easy, it’s almost like you’re meeting Easy Company for the first time too in sort of a new light. 

I also wanted to explore some sides of characters in Easy Company that you might not normally see - specifically Captain Richard Winters (and to say a few people didn’t seem pleased about it, was fine by me to be quite honest AHAHAH!!!). This was all strictly off depiction throughout the series, not the real Winters, and so I really tried to pull smaller scenes of his leadership side, his firm side, his side that I feel can maybe sometimes be overlooked if that’s the way to put it(?). SO - Captain Winters in Landslide has quite the rocky start with Natia and vice versa - but I feel what I really love about that is, both Natia and Winters are leaders, but leaders in different ways. 

I tend to compare it with the Alpha and the Lone Wolf. 

From the beginning, Natia was whom I referred to many times as a lone wolf and many ideas that encompass her is this idea of a lone wolf, and I knew it many ways when she first met Easy, she’d be an outsider to them. Trust would be hard, especially with the war, and tension would be quite thick and impulsiveness and emotions were bound to follow after. So, having Natia and Winters have this sort of tension growing between them with two very different forms of leadership was something I wanted to play with. Winters grew and trained with these men who turned into brothers. Natia lost everyone she ever loved whenever she was in charge and the trauma keeps her from wanting to ever really have to lead anyone but herself. Clearly, teamwork is not her best expertise and she is not a crowd favorite in any sense. But really, she has no choice but to stay with them for her safety, for her country and for the people of her country (quite a constant thought!). 

Episode 5 really gave me a lot of freedom to be able to create at least a chunk of chapters that are focused in between the end of Episode 4 and the beginning of Episode 5 and that allowed me to really just explore dynamics between characters and approaches to certain situations not presented in the actual episodes of the show. I did research on what occurred after Operation Market-Garden specifically for this portion of the story and if I’m being honest it has to be my exact favorite part of the story.

I have entitled Part 2, Portrait of a Spy and we really dig deep into Natia and her connection with Easy Company. 

And one of the most important things about Natia is she has depression and at times it rages pretty severely more than anything. I always felt mental health was important especially because one article I read for research talked about how severe the mental health issues were after World War 2 especially and I felt that was just so important to discuss and depicting Natia with depression (and some cases severe) was the route to go! Elizabeth Elliot in TSOS and AAPA has ADHD (defined as a hyper kinetic disorder during WW2) and so I really wanted to represent depression here, which is very relevant to Natia at the moment in this story!

So portions of this part really dig into Natia and her mental health and her log of interior thoughts and dialogue that really become a huge part of her life and effect her GREATLY. I reference it sort of as a warping because the war, is ultimately problem #1 and super important, but where we are now, Natia just wants to get home. Yet she has to combat her mental health which arguably is crippling more than anything. Part 2 is really a focus on the importance of mental health and how it affected people, especially in war and especially someone like Natia. The list of things that really sort of built up around her that caused this (I would name them, but SPOILERS LOL!!!) and it really were things that that I had to flesh out and get the details just right.

One of the most prominent things on this list is her parents’ death - I feel that remains more than anything the #1 instigated for who she is today. Of course, Agent Mortem and his training, which did nothing but bad things, is a close second, but her parents’ death is #1. She was 18, she was only just arriving into early adulthood, she still had a life ahead of her and then war was what stopped it all. She states how 4 days after the Germans invaded, her parents were killed because they were Cultural Elitists for Warsaw, Poland and (I have a full explanation in a historical note on a few chapters) but there was a list 2 years prior to war by the Germans of all the Cultural Elitists. Her parents were on that list. And to say it’s a moment she references quite often is an understatement. And this is just one of MANY, MANY things from the early days of war. 

Ok, this turned into a big ramble fest of overlapping things, so I’m sorry about that LOL!! I got into it and the question is very enabling so thank you for that Katya aha!!! I don’t want to get to long-winded and I can always answer specific questions again in asks or DMs as well!! :D Thank you so much for this, getting this yesterday was a joy to wake up to and I finally got it down to what I wanted to talk about! So truly thank you!! <3