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phoenixcatch7 · 2 months ago

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The problem I'm having with one of my stories is that it is compelling - but not clicking.

It's a sephiroth gets reincarnated into mdzs. Straightforward. I've got several branching paths: lwj, jc, nmj (my personal fave) and the jade twins (one mind in two bodies). All five of them have great potential, but for some reason my heart is set on sephiroth!lwj, because the aesthetic is sublime.

But! It's! Not! Working!

My main problems are a) despite similar surfaces, sephiroth has fundamentally different morals and life experiences to lwj and lwjs morals are a huge part of his and wwx's stories. B) I can't NOT have wangxian. I don't ship often at all, but when I do I'm pretty set on it lol. I don't want to deny soulmates. Unfortunately I HATE writing romance. C) I do not think sephiroth should be in any sort of romantic relationship at all nor can I see him wanting one. I've read tons of fics where he is in relationships (healthy or otherwise) and they're amazing, yes, but... Under my pen it's just not in the cards. And I do feel pairing him with wwx would just amplify wwx's worst traits, which is the opposite of what lwj does for him.

Everything's in conflict, but the lure of sephiroths second childhood in strict gusu and his complicated feelings about it, wwx being a perfect mix of all his important people with a spine of steel and righteousness that they all lost as everything fell apart, the relationship between sephiroth and his new mother, and how he'd inexplicably lose her too, the white on white aesthetic, the older identical brother, the cruel angels aesthetic with the benevolent demon, the angst of wwx's defection and death, his relationship with qi as a planet's overflowing life force, the tragedy of the mourning angel, monster x monster.... It calls to me.

But there's also the way wwx becoming a demonic cultivator was so vital to winning the war, and the way that affected things, gave him a legitimacy. Involve the silver soldier, and well. Everything else becomes a little extraneous lol. And sephiroth himself is such a big mover and shaker, I don't know what I could do to manage that without wiping out 80% of the remaining jianghu after the burial mounds siege with sephiroth appointing himself king lmao. He's not the kind of person to make small ripples, you know?

And I'd love a twin jades au to sort of turn the chaos inwards a bit (nmj and jgy would be Excellent foils) but again, I can't separate wangxian and imagining scenes feels a bit too close to incest for my tastes, even when it's ONE PERSON in identical bodies!

It's frustrating, wanting to write a non romance fic set in a love story lol. I just. I hate writing romance. But wangxian just don't want to be parted.

But the image of lwj in the xuanwu cave secretly covering a feverish wwx with his wing, only to notice a handful of white feathers pushing through the black as he unknowingly becomes a better person through showing care for other people, shaking his own deep belief that he is a horrible irredeemable creature incapable of love. Caught in an act of love. Hnggh.

Any ideas?!

#It's so frustrating because the block is on my end it's less so an issue with the actual plot #I know people love crossover character reincarnations even in canon soulmates (my other fics have shown me that lol) but wangxian feels lik #Too much? Idk I don't. Want to try and create a relationship #If you don't know in ff7 wing colour is determined by their morality. As a kid sephiroth was symbolised with white feathers #But as he grew older and later snapped he got the iconic black wing. I see it more as a 'what do they perceive themselves as' which #Gets extra angst points for unreliable narration and blindly righteous vs self loathing vs healing vs denial #The wing probably shouldn't be in the fic it's from the j cells and a symptom of insanity but ehhh it's too cool and symbolic #Like there's so much you can do with seph!lwj. Burning nibelheim vs cr burning. Prodigy on a lonely pedestal. Strict gusu vs sterile shinra #Having a mother but being restricted from her and losing her anyway and nobody telling him anything because he's a little kid #Angel x demon aesthetic on the battlefield. Safer mode HAS to make an appearance I don't make the rules (it's way too underrated ToT)#Wwx would get horns and fangs and stuff to balance it out lol. Noncon bodmod from the energy coursing through you #I feel he'd relate. Lwj being utterly terrified of wwx mentally degrading from the resentment and being forced to watch him ruin himself #Lwj seeing the best of all the people he loved in wwx and seeing him be so genuinely relentlessly GOOD where they fell apart.#Him being terrified of his own overwhelming feelings hurting wwx like cloud. The possessiveness and simultaneous avoidance #Him being even less easily flustered XD. Wwx has a high bar to top some fans from his last life.#Bb lwj getting really stubborn over wanting a stupid big sword and then growing huge enough to use it lol #Sephiroth getting a 'proper' childhood and being so unused to it he can't tell it's still not a very good one. Being doted on by his big br #mdzs #mxtx mdzs #mdzs fanfiction #mdzs fic #mo dao zu shi #lan wangji #ff7 #final fantasy vii #cloud strife #final fantasy 7 #sephiroth #This is working on the idea sephiroth got controlled by jenova btw the other version is beyond hope #mdzs au

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coffeeandcalligraphy · 2 years ago

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Immaculate Mary | BODY BACK Update #2

Harrison's back, and he's only getting worse! <3

Let's talk chapter 2 of my novella BODY BACK. We're all about villain eras, unexpected developments, Mother Mary, Jesus thirst traps (yes...) & more. Check out update #1 if you missed it!

Post starts under the cut!

Unexpected developments

I'd already planned that Suzanna, Harrison's mother, wasn't going to be a major character in BB as she is in Feeding Habits. I didn't think we'd see her "on-screen" in BB, but when you get caught breaking into a stranger's pool & need your mother to bail you out...

Suzanna & Harrison

CW: child neglect, addiction

Suz and Harrison have SUCH a complicated relationship. They were once extremely close, but are now near-strangers. Having abandoned Harrison when he was a child amidst her own substance-abuse problems, Suz also never reconnected with her son after she got sober. She is only part of his life now out of fluke (the fluke is Lonan, who runs into her by chance in Moth Work--you can read that chapter update HERE though it's old!).

Harrison isn't sure what to make of their relationship. On one hand, it's a relief to have his mother back in his life because he's missed her (amongst other feelings) and also has a safety net when he makes bad decisions (chapter 1 lmao). But on the other hand, he's *extremely* resentful of Suzanna (and rightly so). At this point, they've only been reconnected for 2 weeks, and while Suz is trying to transition their lives together as seamlessly as possible, the last time they meaningfully knew each other was ~15 years prior (1990-ish), which makes this task, especially on Harrison's end, impossible.

This relationship is probably one of the most complex things I've ever written. It's hard to verbalize/describe it because at times it's irrational, frustrating, lovely, horrifying, hilarious, and comforting (and sometimes all at once). This culminates to a volatile emotional climax for Harrison that serves as the inciting incident for BB.

Immaculate Mary

We open "Immaculate Mary" with Harrison and Suz in the Bakers' bathroom (the couple whose house Harrison broke into). This chapter is about motherhood, yes, but also sonhood, and how Harrison believes his sonhood intersects with Suz's motherhood (and conversely, how Jesus' sonhood intersects with Mary's motherhood).

The title was just an inclination I had that addressed the chapter's holy and maternal themes. I was also aware this was a hymn, HOWEVER, upon writing this update (as in RIGHT NOW), I've realized this is a Catholic hymn I used to sing all the time in choir. So I guess I blocked that out?? LMAO

Scene A:

Suz attempts to blow-dry Harrison's hair which is soaked with pool water. This goes badly.

Scene B:

Desperate and unsure how to help her reckless son (lol), Suz drives Harrison to Eliza's apartment--where his ex, Lonan, now lives--in hopes he will talk to him. This also goes badly.

Scene B is *critical* here. Harrison isn't ready to face Lonan, even if that means merely facing the potential of seeing him. Suz rushing him into a conversation he isn't ready to have flips a switch inside of him. This is how we get to Chaotic Party Harrison, whose primary concern is A) forgetting and B) having a good time so he can forget some more.

The writing process

Writing this chapter was faster than chapter 1 because it's more action/dialogue heavy with longer scenes (it's also not as clean, lol).

I wrote a large portion of this chapter as a writing prompt for a class. The bathroom scene with Harrison & Suz was almost exclusively hand-written as a screenplay, so I had to adapt it. It was a lot of fun to have the dialogue/scene skeleton laid out, since it's not often I have a plan before going into writing sessions.

I similarly followed the circular plot structure I talked about in update 1. The "satellite" in this case was "mother/sonhood/mother Mary/Jesus." Mary x Jesus are critical to this chapter--not only does Harrison project himself onto Jesus, he also does the same to Suz, but with Mary. What does it mean to Mary to be the mother of the Messiah, and what does it mean to Suz to be the mother of Harrison? These are two questions we keep circling back to.

Excerpts

Guess who didn't share every single excerpt from this chapter so I actually have *some* new content??? :)

A plastic fantastic description of the Bakers' bathroom:

They stand in the Bakers’ bathroom. It vomits ‘under-the-sea’—a theme a child might request, but according to the living room’s unstained couch cushions and front mat’s lack of tiny shoes, no children live here. Perhaps Nash requested the décor. That might check out—a Ken doll on the outside dying to be coffined in his plasticky packaging, or in this case, plasticky bathroom. High-gloss cerulean walls. A clownfish soap dispenser. The toilet seat cover ridged into a lilac clam. A translucent blue shower curtain that flickers iridescent waves when you walk past it.

Here, we explore Harrison's psychology more overtly. Is he expecting to be yelled at--and why is that something he craves now?

In Suz’s body, Harrison expects rage. How far did she drive to get here? Honestly, he hadn’t tracked the length of the car ride when he’d hitchhiked. He analyzes her shoulders as she shuffles through the Bakers’ cabinet and emerges with a hairdryer, but she’s blanker than a blank slate—the empty air in front of God before he creates. If she’d only impale the wall socket with the dryer’s prongs. If she’d only grab his hair by the roots and hang him up to dry.

Harrison tracks the similarities of his and his mother's reflections:

Harrison stares at himself in the bathroom mirror. On his wrist: a gold herringbone bracelet Sadie hung on the key holder. In his ear: Lonan’s earring. His wet hair curls weakly around his ears, drips down his twiggy eyebrows. Last week, he caught his own reflection in the dishware cabinet and was so startled to find Suzanna’s face staring back that he dropped his cup. The crash pealed like a death knell long after the sound disappeared. Picking glass from the tile, it angered him that he looked like her. His father’s eyes, sure, but his mother’s bulbous nose, spare mouth, minky hair, stubby nail beds. The last time he’d compared their reflections, they stood in front of a funhouse mirror. They wore chromized party hats, technicolour butterflies painted on their left cheeks. He was five.

Here we have a description of Harrison wearing a (stolen) ring. This excerpt will be relevant in chapter three (also JEREMIAH BAIT):

He wears Jeremiah’s silver signet ring on his pinkie, and it clicks against the marble. Perhaps he’s been looking for it since Harrison’s been away. Hands and knees. Stuffing his head under his bedframe, a flimsy flashlight in hand, his mouth wide open.

(also... I may or may not have bought this ring... for myself)

The LINE of the century:

Harrison crosses his arms. The soaked leather of his jacket squelches, baptized by pool water just like him. His mouth is twitching again—he’d like to get high tonight, see neon, taste Jesus.

This is the unholy excerpt I vowed I wouldn't share (in other words, Jesus Thirst Trap -- take with that what you will):

How did Mary feel to mother Jesus? Listen, Harrison knows he’s no Christ. But Jesus was twenty-one once, wasn’t he? What did he do in his free time besides praise the Word of the Lord, perform miracles, etcetera, etcetera? He was a carpenter sure, nailed pleats of wood bare-backed in the tart Nazareth sun, flicked pearls of sweat off his tanned forehead. But did he ever break into a stranger’s pool? Did he ever wake up one morning, stumble out of bed, stick a frayed toothbrush into his mouth, stare at himself in the mirror and feel, with certainty, an unending urge to run?

Suz is exhausted:

Suz squeezes her nose bridge. She’s aged since August, if that’s even possible. The bags beneath her eyes are violet like the fleshy interior of a blueberry, the veins scarlet lightning bolts.

“Why are you upset?” Harrison asks, drumming his ringed finger against the counter’s lip.

This is a direct continuation of the above! This is actually sad I'm sorry:

What does Suzanna see when she looks at him? A miniature version of her wearing a jacket that once belonged to her at his age, and an earring that once belonged to another mother? Or is he a stranger? They know each other best by genetics. If she asked Harrison what he thought her favourite colour was, he’d have no idea. “This isn’t a big deal.”

“Oh, please,” Suz says, teary like the actresses on her favourite Portuguese soaps. Sure, Harrison doesn’t know his mother’s favourite colour, if in childhood she was the type of girl to make rings out of peach pits, if she was the type of girl to rip worms bare-handed, if she’d eat cottage cheese with cantaloupe, if she thought about enrolling in a life drawing class before she got pregnant, if her idols are pop icons of the 80s like his are, her favourite way to fold a paper airplane, when her birthday is. But he does know she does not cry.

When young Jesus stayed in Jerusalem unbeknownst to his mother, what did Mary do? Perhaps she stared at her hands, thought of the last time she touched him. Perhaps she wept. Or perhaps she found the closest mirror, wiped her sleeve against the glass until it glossed, and tried to find her son in her own reflection.

Emo boi dialogue (this is an ouchie lol):

Suz soothes her index finger over her thumb over and over. “Things have been so…”

“So what?” Harrison knows she could mean so many things. So raw. So indelicate. So tense. So like we’re a VHS set in reverse. “This isn’t a big deal. No one was hurt.”

“You cannot come and go as you please in other people’s houses, Harrison.” She can’t even look at him. He could call her out by name again—Suzanna, Suzanna, Suzanna. She winces every time he does, plays it off as a sudden headache or a flighty twitch.

“Isn’t that what I do at your place?” he says instead, his throat heady with the need to scream, or perhaps cry. “Parade around as your son and then crash on the couch?”

“Harrison,” Suz says. Her eyes are pellets of amber, her pupils preserved in their warmth. As a child, Harrison climbed onto the bathroom counter, pried his own eyes open between his chewed fingernails. The colour was wrong, too light, too cold, too much like his father’s—and what was a father? God is as much a father as he is a traitor to his own sacrificial son. Harrison stood there for so long his eyes stung, and when his lid eventually snapped back in place, the world stippled.

“What?” he asks now. Where the hell is God in this dim bathroom? Sucked up in the fan? Hiding in shower drain hairballs? And where is his father? Both perpetually missing like a television remote, a set of house keys. That’s right. God’s not here—not in the olive wall paint, not in the patterned hand towels, not in the piranha portrait above the toilet tank, not against Harrison’s chest like he used to be. He’s the only one here in front of his mother, all seven of Mary’s sorrows etched into a man. He almost laughs. “And my name is kind of idiotic, isn’t it? Harry’s son—but I’m nobody’s son.”

“You’re my son.”

(^^ Funnily, the Harry's son bit was in the handwritten draft and I thought it was kind of stupid, but I have been unable to delete it... there's something very real about that line, lol, yikes)

This finishes off scene A:

He kicks off the counter, pushes past his mother, walks down the hall and back into the living room. His ears ring. He’s not even sure what’s so bad about what she’s said. Change is good, isn’t it?

“Change is good,” he mutters to himself. “Change is good.”

The Bakers gape at him from the couch. This defectless couple like the blue and pink pegs screwed into a Game of Life car. Their faces scream GET MARRIED, JOB SEARCH, BUY A HOUSE.

Harrison looks at Sadie, her sad, dead eyes. “Do something with your life,” he says, then salutes and walks right out the front door.

Scene B starts very normally, right? Here's Harrison wondering what'd be like if he was... a shirt:

The city isn’t as interesting when it’s just cars, in fact, it’s not much different to Boston, to New York. Everything is brilliant and irrelevant and bleary and transparent, like a raw brain spinning around a washing machine. Harrison might like to walk to the laundromat ten minutes from Suz’s apartment, hop into someone else’s load and just let himself swivel until he’s unsure if he’s a man or a chemise blouse. The dreaminess of it all, the way silk knows it’s as defenseless as it is coveted. Harrison could be both, couldn’t he?

Harrison starts getting an inclination of where Suz is driving him:

“Suzanna,” Harrison says, wincing when the wild cherry air freshener noosed around her rear-view flails in his direction.

She takes the next exit, the car even faster now—seventy-five, eighty.

“Suz.”

“I want better for you.” Suz slows, now weaving through a residential neighbourhood. Men sit on unruly lawns, grimy hands fisted around beer bottles. At the next turn, a teenage girl hurries a sheltie down a crosswalk. A mother squints at a bus schedule while she nudges a stroller back and forth with her heel. Boardgame people just waiting for their next play.

Would you rather have a single conversation with your ex or jump out of a moving vehicle? We know Harrison's answer:

When she doesn’t answer, he wants to ask the question again, but something changes. Perhaps it’s the texture of the wheels beneath him, the way he remembers the grit of asphalt under the rubber like someone remembers the sound of their loved one’s footsteps. Perhaps it’s the way the sidewalk shimmers with rain that’s so familiar, the way the streetlamps seem to flash as they appear like a signal lamp, or perhaps Harrison’s not a fucking idiot. “Mom,” he says, already unclicking his seatbelt. She’s not going as fast now—maybe forty miles an hour, perhaps less. He watched a documentary the other day about jumping from moving cars, the best techniques.

'My heart is fine' and other lies this man tells himself (AKA em-dash wars):

“What’s heartbreak to you? A little boohoo? My heart is fine. Let me out of the car.”

“I know you think so—”

“Let me out of the—”

“But you can’t fight a battle and run from it at the same—”

“Suzanna—”

“You loved him—”

“And what the fuck would you know?” Harrison slams his fist so hard against the dashboard the plastic fractures, the break like the entire Pacific sloshing against an eardrum. Harrison doesn’t care. He does it again, again, until shards clatter, until his hand’s bloody, until Suz is horrified because he can be horrifying—and not just horrifying, but the entire fucking horror.

(also this horror line is... fantastic lol)

Aaaand final paragraph. He is not in denial. No way!

Perhaps Jesus would enter that apartment like it were his father’s temple. But Harrison is tired of gods, of ghosts, of men. He repeats this to himself as he hustles through the rain. No gods, no ghosts, no men. His teeth chatter. His hands shake. He’s not wise. He never wants to be again. No gods, no ghosts, no men. It’s easier this way, no need to contemplate the open window overlooking the parking lot, no need to contemplate who lives there now, who makes a bed there every morning, who drinks his coffee with half a cream no sugar at the breakfast table, who grinds an inkstick to practice his new interest in calligraphy, who reads poetry on the balcony every Wednesday, who finishes a one-thousand piece puzzle in an afternoon, who wears Suzanna’s angel pendant and says he bought it vintage, who takes up pottery, herb gardening, darts whenever he feels like it, who sleeps with both eyes closed at last. No need to contemplate what might happen if he spared one glance. Who he might see if he just looked back.

Harrison from now on:

Yes you will bb!

That's it! :) Chapter 3 is writing itself. I'll be back soon lol.

Rachel

#writeblr #writing #amwriting #writerblr #the way this sets us up for 24-karat harrison lol #like he said 'i will absolutely ruin my own life thank you mother'#anyway the catholic allusions hit different here #the mary x jesus relationship genuinely does intrigue me #happy to explore it (sort of LOL) here!#writingupdates #bodyback

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