#drumk q time

[nagdabbit]

please tell me about some of the women in ataoab. who is there and what roles do they play? (also fuckin' tumblr don't put the ask next to the follow button challenge)

so, to my great shame, theres not a lot

partially, i just. i have one of those brains that doesn't picture people well, so when i lose grasp of a person's image in my brain it replaces them with either people i know or like faceless mannequins. or, in the case of women, my own face cuz i have to see that shit every day so i know if really well, and that just immediately skeeves my brain out and flushes all my fic thoughts out the window. it's a weird thing, but i don't actually want to be a character in my fics, so it just sends me right out regardless

the other half is that i really like midwest gothic. i like things that are made claustrophobic by the sheer expanse of them. the claustrophobic feeling of being the only living thing for miles. and that was kinda helped a long by having as few characters as possible, and even fewer narrators. both danny and yuta arrive by the time that only bryan, mox and claudio are left, and i think only two chapters really happen away from the mountain. so it's just a very contained story that didn't work the more characters i added to it. and also because of some of the fates of characters outside the story, it felt like a step too far to add more characters only to give them grizzly ends. i can handle body horror, but i draw the line at inserting a character just to kill them horribly

however, anna IS there—at least in one flashback/vignette chapter. and she's just as mean and unhinged as we all love her being! i hate the idea of having to write jericho, but the idea of danny running away to the city and getting adopted by matt and ang and getting an unhinged adopted sister anna was too good to leave out!

i was originally going to include a lot of little vignettes of characters that wouldve come to the mountain long before danny and yuta, but, aside from just adding a lot more work, would've made it so much harder for me to perform the narrative sleight of hand I'm trying to achieve. i just do well with small casts and stolen moments, i think

this was a lot and not a good answer probably. but also ive been thinking about how i need to write more women lately and it's been bothering me that i just have that stupid mental block that fucks me up

[nagdabbit]

Yesssssss Tale as Old as Balls questions: Tell me about Danny and if he makes any particularly dumb mistakes.

literally the only person in the whole fic who makes more dumb mistakes than bryan himself is danny!

danny and yoots grew up together in the same village ravaged by time and the consequences of this horrible curse, and they both have entirely different feelings about what to do with it. where yoots runs toward that mountain, thinking he can find some way to fix all the damage done, danny runs the opposite direction and finds himself in the city, and the clutches of a street gang with big aspirations (yeah i can't believe im gonna fucking write jericho either)

but more than just being some assholes golden goose, he's a whole idiot who clings way too tightly to his past, and by the time the present hits him in the face, it's far too late to do anything but weather the consequences—much like bryan, his incredibly dumb self. he returns to his hometown and climbs the mountain, years after he left yuta and everything else behind, with someone else's ideas and plans and thinks he'll manage to pull it off without letting his own prejudices and hatred get in the way. after all, he grew up watching everything and everyone he knew and loved succumb to the poison of the curse, he certainly wouldn't climb that mountain with an hope. and when the time came to leave, yoots turned away and went toward it instead of following him to the city, his one and only friend quite literally turned his back on danny. he's carrying the biggest goddamn chip on his shoulder now that he has to actually follow in yuta's footprints.

he's fueled by spite the way fires are fueled by gasoline