#it feels v. weird not to have 'huh i could work on and finish hctj' hanging over my head the way it's been for 10 years lol

[freyafrida]

how certain the journey special DVD bonus features

LOL this is a thing i did on my old blog when i first finished come back home ages ago, and I thought it would be fun to do again :> kind of, different format this time around. more notes and fun facts!

General inspo for this fic: besides, obviously, the desire to write something happy and shippy after reading Rilla of Ingleside, I always go back and forth on Walter's death. There are times when I think it's a little too easy, you know? On the one hand, I get why it had to happen, symbolically, why Walter is the one who has to die: he's the only one who grasps the full scope and horror of the war, who knows what he'd be sacrificing, he's the kindest and most sensitive character, he has the potential to be great and famous, he's the protagonist's favorite brother, etc. Of course he has to die.

ON THE OTHER HAND. Walter's last letter sometimes feels a little too neat to me, too -- life will never be beautiful for him again, so it's better that he dies anyway; he goes out in that "white flame of sacrifice", thinking that at least he has made the world better, that it's worthwhile. And, well. Those of us in the future know that's not really how it worked out.

Even all that aside -- Walter is romantic, otherworldly; the books repeatedly remark that he's not meant for this world or to grow up and do mundane things like get an office job and pay taxes and live to see, idk, space flight and rock music. So...sometimes I think it would be more interesting for Walter to live, to have to adjust to the postwar world, to have to cope with preparing himself to die and thinking at least he doesn't have to live with all he's seen...only to find out that, surprise, he does.

What always interests me about Walter and Una -- about the Blythes and Merediths in general, really -- is that the Meredith kids have a much harsher upbringing than the Blythes, even if the books rarely (if ever?) acknowledge it. Walter talks to Rilla of being happy before the war, with their home and parents; the Blythes' adventures in Rainbow Valley and Anne of Ingleside are all fairly harmless and twee. On the other hand, the Merediths' story in Rainbow Valley is sprinkled with death and hunger and neglect (even if it all gets wrapped up with And Then Rosemary Marries Rev. Meredith and Everything is Fine). Una in particular is very sensitive to the loss of her mother, and moreover she knows things in her house aren't right, that people talk about the Merediths for having a chaotic house and the children never being dressed properly.

So Walter and Una's dynamic interests me on that level! For survived-the-war!Walter/Una, I don't think it's as simple as Una healing Walter through being gentle or whatever. Rather, I think they're simply able to find common ground in knowing the world can be ugly and painful and randomly cruel. Walter doesn't have to hide that from Una the way he might with his sisters and other friends; they can be honest with each other, and that's where their relationship grows from.

This fic owes a lot -- a lot a lot -- to "Keeping Faith" by m_shell and "The Piper" by Una-Blythe! (I'll do a proper fic rec post one day, haha.) "Keeping Faith" is really the Walter/Una fic for me, it's tonally so perfect and gentle and aching. (Fully borrowed Walter's injury from this fic because I couldn't improve on it! I did toy with having him be blind, or having a face injury, but felt I wasn't writing about it convincingly.) I also really liked how Walter in "The Piper" is actually quite bitter, and how he and Una don't end up with ten kids and a perfect family at the end. Big inspiration there. (Also fully borrowed incorporating LMM's other characters into the fic from "The Piper" -- the Blue Castle reference in ch. 19 of Come Back Home came from there!)

Other big influence was weirdly George Mallory?? I read a couple of biographies about him and other 1900s dudes for ~research~ but ended up being particularly interested in Mallory's life (coincidentally, they found the boot of his climbing partner, Sandy Irvine, just this year). That also got me thinking about Walter's legacy, how "The Piper" (the poem) and his fame might impact his life later on. The epilogue was also inspired by interviews with Mallory and Irvine's descendants and how they try to remember their famous great-grandparents/great-uncles later on. (This interview with Mallory's daughter was one of the things I read and found really interesting.)

I think, realistically...if Walter had lived, his fame would probably wane. I don't imagine he would ever write anything quite as timely as "The Piper" ever again. I also think his creative output would probably be sharpest when writing about the war, and he'd end up in a struggle between selling his work to an audience who was generally sick of war poetry, but not being able to write as powerfully about anything else. I think, too, that people would be more enamored of a young soldier who wrote one powerful poem before dying in the war -- someone who lives, writes many other works that are overshadowed by that one poem, and spends the rest of his life being bitter about said war is less romantic. I can imagine Walter also unintentionally suppressing "The Piper"'s fame by refusing to let it be used for things or refusing to recite it. (I did end up referring to "In Flanders Fields" as though it exists in the universe alongside "The Piper" -- if "The Piper" replaces IFF as the big poem of the war, I can imagine IFF's fame overtaking it later in life due to McCrae's death.)

I think, too, that Walter, if he lived, would sort of hold himself back in life. I don't mean for it to come across as disappointment or a negative thing, necessarily, in the fic -- I wanted it to be bittersweet; that yes, he doesn't get all that he wants or dreams of, but he sees giving it up as a way to atone and live with himself. (I think it's totally possible, in another life, that he lives in Jazz Age Paris and is a famous poet and has a bunch of messy, destructive relationships that interest biographers just as much as his work, and he's maybe a better artist for never making peace with himself, but he's also not happy.) He knows what he's capable of, the things he's done. I definitely think he...I don't want to say "committed war crimes" haha, but did some things he wasn't proud of, at the front, not really caring about consequences because he was fully expecting to die. I think he'd sort of -- slightly self-centeredly, because Walter can be selfish -- see his own capacity for violence as symbolic of what led to the war and work to suppress it in himself, in his life. I think having a quiet life, giving love to the people around him, would be again a way of atoning and proving to himself that he's capable of kindness instead of destruction. Postwar Walter fully believes he's the worst person ever like THIS IS THE SKIN OF A KILLER, UNA

Um. What else? Some other fun facts:

Was kicking around the idea of finishing this in 2022-2023 because it was nearly fully 10 years since Come Back Home was finished but I was also like "lol probably won't happen" but then got a v. nice ask from @batrachised and was like "Oh man people are still out here!! I could actually finish it!!" so big thanks there and to everyone who kept reminding me to finish <333333

Really meant to write more Jem in here but he just kept...not being relevant, SORRY JEM.

I got a couple of comments back in the day asking if the fic would save Stripey from being drowned by Bruce and I meant to get to it but couldn't really find room for it. One day, another fic, etc. (I was coming down on the side of still killing Stripey, SORRY STRIPEY, because I think it's such a perfect and tragic encapsulation of the book's certainty that sacrifice is worthwhile, because it has to be, and then you're reading it 100 years later like "oof.")

Walter having a school in Saskatoon named after him actually came out of researching Midnighters fic for the character of Jessica, and seeing that a good chunk of schools in Chicago were named after people with zero connection to the city whatsoever.

Came up with most of the first story in the bath and am wondering if this was harder to write simply because I don't have a bathtub anymore 🤔

i meant to take a photo showing my drafts of come back home and how certain the journey side by side, but can u believe, I LEFT MY WRITING NOTEBOOK AT WORK LOL. Fortunately there's nothing too crazy in there, apart from the reveal that I write fanfic and also some original fiction that probably reveals far more of my psyche than I want it to 😅 so i only have my old-ass notebook from 2012 on hand, NOTEBOOK RETRIEVED! here's how it started (my handwriting was v. v. jank 12 years ago) and the last few things i wrote:

anyway thank you again everyone for entertaining me and this fic all the way until the end i love you all <3333333