#i just think sometimes people get caught up in the cool cop aesthetic and may not have the same visceral reaction to cops with guns

[ghey-menace]

never seen anyone else mention this so i'm curious

anyone else feel sick when Kim goes for his gun or cuffs? like when i'm playing and that happens its like my stomach drops and i feel physically ill and afraid. and i dont mean Scared but Horny i mean afraid of him. its like i forget he's a cop until the gun comes out and it's suddenly like oh fuck, a cop. it gives me this whiplash and it's really cool as a storytelling device, but very discomfiting

[gengarfamily]

I still get reviews and messages sometimes about Don’t Take Forever, and whenever I’m sad I read through them and it makes me SO happy so I thought I’d share My Top DTF Moments and their origins.

Part One: Johto (slowburnhell)

so when I started writing this it was going to be a little cute oneshot collection of nice moments at various points in their journey (but then plot happened so) and all the plot fell together because I was obsessively listening to Lucy Rose at the time, specifically her song Little Brave (which actually gave the title, bc don’t take forever is like the chorus riff).

FAVE part of this chapter is the cafe scene in Olivine, where the foghorn jokes begin and May was crying but subtly doesn’t feel AS sad when she’s around him. The foghorn jokes that I get so much shit for now are from an irl conversation between me and a friend, when we used to give each other shit for our own bouts of seasickness, and he lived in a place where we needed boat transportation to see each other.

Other fave part is probably the hug in Blackthorn, because it makes me all squirmy and warm to think about, and it’s also my fave bit of the piano arrangement I did for this. anyway.

Big belief that Drew associates every single sunset he sees with May so obviously that’s why I kept writing her has wearing burnt orange I’m not sorry. AND OBVIOUSLY THEY KNOW EACH OTHERS BREAKFAST ORDERS THIS ISN’T EVEN A QUESTION.

Top Quote:

“Well you know, foghorns,” he shrugged, and she laughed harder. “They just call out to me.”

Part Two: Sinnoh (angst city)

I love lonely Drew. I LIVE for lonely Drew. Drew brooding and sulking and quietly repressing his emotions because he has more important things to focus on than just his girlfriend being far away; this is my aesthetic. I think my 100% top moment in this was probably catching Driftloom? I love Floroma Town and the windworks as an area in Sinnoh from way back when I first played D/P, I thought it was such a pretty place and if I lived anywhere in the Pokemon Universe it would DEFINITELY be there. 

Originally, I was going to write Drew’s mother as promising lots, and then ditching all the time. Sort of, she really wishes she could be a good mother but she’s just terrible at follow through and she can’t be counted on, so she was going to miss the final match and let him down or s o m e t h i n g, and I was going to have a bit of a stand off between Brendan and Drew, not over May, but over Marina and Drew’s dislike of her making Brendan super angry or SOMETHING. (I had a lot of vague ideas). In the end, I realized Marina was best left alone to be developed properly another time, because I always wanted to let her fall back into place with Jimmy. I also knew I wanted Karen to have some horrible bitterness to her, and some kind of “once mine, always mine,” mentality, so this idea of desperately clinging to her last chance of a good reputation seemed appealing.

Dawn and May in the coffee shop and Dawn yelling loudly about May’s feelings to embarrass her in front of Drew’s Dad is everything that matters to me. Also, I gave May an astigmatism because if you tell me that’s a girl who can see 100% you’re telling me a lie. ALSO DREW AND MAX SHOULD BE BEST FRIENDS that’s all.

Top Quote:

“Drew likes to make you think he’s cool,” Max informed them dutifully, pushing his glasses up his nose a little, “but it’s a lie. It’s a well thought out, calculated lie. This is part of the lie. Never forget, he is in fact a weenie.”

Part Three: Hoenn (1)

I live for the Christmas section here. I wanted to set them up as companions, that even though they traveled separately they were a unit and they were a partnership and what better environment than navigating a family christmas? Caroline and Drew as a friendship means EVERYTHING to me. And anyone who has spoken to me for more than three seconds knows that I have a LOT of feelings about Norman and May, but I’ll talk about that in the next section.

#letpaulappreciatecontests2k17

Shout out to this section for Max, who introduces Drew as top coordinator and full time weenie when he battles Norman. This is the most frequently commented upon moment when I get messages and reviews, and it means so much to me that you seem to share my terrible sense of humor. 

the bit where May does Drew’s tie because she’s used to league functions with her family and Drew is just a sarcastic mess was completely improvised because I had just realised that I would have to cut Hoenn into two parts, and I was naive and thought I’d need padding. I thought I might take it out when I realised HOW LONG Hoenn p2 ended up being but it’s now my fave bit of fluff in the whole thing, so. you know. have at it. and it also kind of hints at the whole sexual tension part of their relationship that gets addressed in part four so here just take it you sinners

The whole phone cliffhanger at the end was originally going to go somewhere SO MUCH MORE DEEP and have this horrible plotline where Drew’s parents had a huge thing and Matthew tried to reach May to talk to Drew before Karen could but I decided it was best to Leave Drew Alone for a while.

Top Quote

“Gross,” Marina commented sagely. “You’re that couple. The ‘oh we just... you know, spent a few weeks drifting around Sinnoh, on a whim. No big deal. We’re so in love, look how gross and happy we are’.”

Part Four: Hoenn (2)

Dawn as main rival is best main rival; obviously. I wanted a differing ~main~ person for M&D to come up against as a collective in every section at first, so it would start with Marina and then Brendan and then Dawn, but all with very differing kinds of rivalries. But then when Brendan stopped being an antagonist, and Karen and Matthew became the bulk of the issue in Sinnoh, much reevaluation happened and I wanted to talk about Drew’s relationship with Harley, so once M&D were together I wanted them to have their own conflicts as individuals and seperate battles to fight, and not lose them to some unified being that lost both of their personalities. I always wanted to have conflict between May and Norman, and definitely May and Solidad as well (again, p4) but once I figured out the Anti-Ikarishipping subplot and the difficulties I wanted Drew to have in that contest season, it made sense to pit him against Paul and Harley in different ways. Harley was a very aggressive rivalry and full of a lot of hurt on both sides, but with Paul I wanted it to be very passive. He was like a figure head for everything Drew had struggled with, and Dawn’s issue with Paul was supposed to mirror what could have happened with May and Drew if it had all gone Wrong.

cookieshipping was OBVIOUSLY going to be a part of this.

I desperately wanted some kind of conflict between Soledad and May, and originally it was going to be more around Soledad’s battling lul and her blaming May for that, and then also blaming her for Drew’s lul, and then all these negative feelings just sort of consuming her and snapping her, and while that doesn’t happen there’s an undercurrent of frustration that May caught her up and makes her a little dismissive but not to the point where she won’t prioritise her and Drew being happy? I guess. I like that their conflict ends up being nothing about coordinating, and nothing about their actual friendship, because they’re two very non-confrontational people, but two very emotionally intelligent people also, so their conflict all stems from an inability to agree with how Drew should process and how much they each individually care about him. Soledad dismissing May as overreacting felt natural because I felt May DID overreact while I was writing it, and with all the grand festival pressure I wanted that. Sometimes I wish I could rewrite it and make the underlying tensions a little clearer, because a lot of that is lost in the actual writing and it doesn’t come through the way I wanted it to, and it makes them all a little petty, but it can’t be helped now. (AKA: my biggest regret.)

I got a lot of people calling me out on the fact May and Drew had sex. in general, I feel like this chapter was both the weakest and the strongest in different ways, depending on what you’re looking for. I knew from the MOMENT I knew the plot that they needed to have that part of their relationship aired, because it’s such a natural and caring part of a lot of relationships and it didn’t seem right that they were becoming so emotionally firm and absolute with each other but were completely limited to little pecks on the cheek - it felt wrong with their characters when they’ve always been - even in the canon - so drawn to one another in a way that would so easily build to that, in the most respectful and caring of ways. anyway I wanted it to parallel their communication, so the more openly they talked with each other, the more physical they would be, in both mannerisms and in eventual actions. (I kept the scene PG so it’s all fine, I guess.)

I’ve gotten a few messages I’ve never publicly responded to about May and Norman and their relationship and where it comes from so here’s my official answer. : no. you’re wrong. it’s not me and my dad. congrats sherlock. I based it off moments in the ruby/sapphire game and the way May responds to him in the anime. Now, the relationship between them in An Adventurer is quite different, and I’ll cop to a part of that being my exploring my relationship with my dad. But it’s mostly manga references and a little bit of lingering tension from an unresolved relationship in DTF.

May and Dawn’s fight was the MOST FUN to write, and when I got to the last of Dawn’s pokemon I was legitimately like “okay so how many pokemon has she got left” and I was STUNNED because there were none, so I wrote that reaction into May’s numb-post-win feel.

The Elite Four part? mmmmmmmm. can’t possibly comment. maybe i’ll explain in the sequel. (COMING THIS SUMMER) *maybe* ((((oh god let me graduate)))))