#i'm too sleepy to check for any spelling mistakes lamo

[sunlitmcgee]

Somewhat Belated HWHBH Chapter 85 Behind the Scenes!

Hello, hello! This was meant to come out very soon after this chapter was posted, but as you all know, stuff happened with dear Mister Technoblade, and I was too upset over it to write it, especially about such personally touchy themes that this chapter involved. But hey! Better late than never.

This post will have discussions of all the triggers this chapter had, mainly those around themes of neglect, abandonment, and references to spousal abuse/mistreatment. Please be mindful! And be safe :)

with that all said...

this chapter was a very heavy one for me personally. Heavy in a way much like chapter 81, but different in that while that chapter was about the overall effects of lifelong trauma, this one was about a very SPECIFIC kind of trauma. that of course being trauma caused by failure/negligence/abandonment by a parental figure...specifically one you never properly met.

Tommy never knew Willow before the events of this chapter happened.

Tommy never knew that Willow even EXISTED until she was talked about to him by XD when Jordan and Lani came to Snowchester. 

Tommy only knew 2 things before he went into that diner: That Willow was his birth mother, and that she left him.

Willow, on both a story and a meta level, is meant to be a stranger. She is an OC. A character spawned purely from my brain that I made to fill the role of HWHBH!Philza’s ex-wife instead of Mumza, because as you all know HWHBH!Phil is an abusive bigoted piece of shit, and because of that I didn’t want to subject Mumza to him, so I simply made an OC to act as her narrative meat-shield.

Willow is not from the canon DSMP story. And because of this, you as readers don’t have anything to draw from when it comes to her behavior or personality like you do with other characters. You all know c!Tommy will always be a loud yet kind-hearted young boy. You know c!Tubbo will always be calculated but very warm underneath. You know c!Ranboo will be a shy anxious yet very sweet young teen, and that c!Wilbur will always be a well meaning dick while c!Sam is a loveable yet pitiful wet rag of a man. You have your references and predispositions. That’s how the DSMP and fandom is in general on the fanfic side of things.

 But you guys didn’t get that with Willowinnit.

She’s a stranger to all of you as much as she is to Tommy.

That was important to keep in mind for me when I wrote her. I wanted her to feel like she didn’t belong. A puzzle piece that can’t fit into the picture Tommy’s made of his happy, idyllic. A one off(but not completely) character that you’re not intended to get attached to, but are rather meant to sit and stare at in a sort of silent, unabashed, slightly disturbed wonder.

You’re meant to go “Wow. This lady up and abandoned her two kids to live with a man who abused her and never came back to get them for all of 16 whole years. that’s really quite fucked up.”

then that thought is hopefully followed up with-

“but, well. she was also abused by her former husband. so that certainly played a role in it.”

Originally, I had plans to describe the kind of abuse Willow went through. I was either gonna have them mentioned by XD in passing or shown in a few choice flashbacks. I still want to have those scenes at some point in the fic, but I decided to hold off on them this chapter, because this chapter wasn’t about Willow’s abuse and trauma, but was instead centered on Tommy’s pain from her abandonment.

This chapter wasn’t about her.

It was about Tommy’s pain from her.

This was just an introduction.

If that makes any since.

This chapter really, really deeply hurt me. It hurt much like the first chapter centered on HWHBH!Phil is. I’m with a few of y’all when you say he’s uncomfortable. He is. And there’s a reason for it that I think I’ve been able to guesstimate thanks to reading a handful of comments and reflecting on my feelings about it.

I think that the reason HWHBH!Phil and anything related to him causes so much discomfort is this: HWHBH!Phil is an everyday kind of monster.

He isn’t a cunning mastermind.

He isn’t a spiraling and pitiful poet.

He isn’t a powerful hog with the strength of a god.

HWHBH!Phil is just an old man. An old. bitter, nasty, bigoted, snarky, smarmy piece of fuck that’s stuck in his ways and is too stupid to even think to try to change. Maybe once there was hope for him to get help in overcoming his own inner demons. But now it’s too late, and even an Angel of Death looking into his soul can see that he’s just as rotten as the man who beat this awfulness into him.

As I once said, HWHBH!Phill will be getting his own backstory-type fic. 

 This is why this chapter was so painful for me. It hurts to look into HWHBH!Phil and the themes that are connected to him. It hurts, because it’s personal for me in a way that the rest of this already deeply personal fic just quite isn’t. In a way that hits a bit deeper. Bit closer to home, if that makes much sense.

Willowinnit is a parent who left her children for dead. Maybe not intentionally, but she knew better than anyone what Phil was really like. She knew that he was going to hurt them. But still, she left.

And now one of her sons is dead.

And her ex-husband did murder him.

And now one of her sons is alone.

And now he fucking hates her.

And now she has to live with that. She has to live with that.

I’m proud of this chapter. It’s gonna be a long long time before I write another one like it.

I hope you all enjoyed it! I hope you all enjoyed this and seeing my thought process. It’s always hard to put all these thoughts and feelings that I have about these characters into words, but I love to do it, and I love when these posts get reblogs or comments where people add on or share additional thoughts that they didn’t comment on the fic.

That’s one of the reasons I made this blog in the first place :) lol

anyway! that’s all I had to say! hope you all have a nice day or night or whatever! I’m gonna try to go to bed so I can get up early and work on the rest of the new chapter. hope to have it posted soon! maybe before sunday :”)

byeeee!