#prayer circle that the anime is that second draft lol

[lokiarsene]

Your mentioning of the PTs manipulation reminded me that my first play through I also felt Shido&Goro's plan was stupid. For it to play out tonits full potential step one meant the PT NEEDED a hacker to best their fake callout. And part two required that the PT's own hacker never check the algorithm on their sight to see it was bullshit. Like the actual plot makes pancakes the big foil, but everyone's plan was stupid and hinged on things being just so.

This is another good point, and another indication that P5 desperately needed a second draft.

[bleachbleachbleach]

Another weekend, another attempt at this godforsaken fanfic. XDD It’s pretty short, too, so I’m not even sure where it’s getting all this combative energy. Usually the claws don’t come in until you at least pass the 3k mark? Or at least something brief but ambitious. This fic is neither long nor ambitious. But then, I find writing Bleach fic of any sort extremely difficult, so maybe that’s just how it all is regardless of length or ambition. I can only name one weekend where that was not the case (THOUGHT WE’D TURNED A CORNER IN OUR RELATIONSHIP, BLEACH FIC. GUESS NOT.)

— One of the things I find difficult about Bleach fic has to do with my relationship to the characters and how much privacy I think they’re due and how that shapes the writing process. I realize that sounds ridiculous lol. They are little make-believe people. They are owned no privacy. (But they areeeeeeee.) Like, I have a fandom where my relationship to the characters is basically like "you know, you’re just gonna have to deal with this. I’ll follow your lead through this scenario, but this is what we’re doing. Suck it." And for my Pixar Cars, our writing relationship is mostly determined by how much I think they can handle. Animated cars are very sensitive. Like, ah, soft bean. Can’t be overstimulating you! But for the Bleach characters I want to write, my hangup is like, the knowledge that they’d probably prefer that anything they do… not be written. XP And who am *I* to push? Even though I think a big part of fanfic is literally to be pushy, and to see what impression that leaves in the wax. Like, maybe that’s the whole point. (Which leads me to the existential question that has followed me since my first go-round with Bleach, which is whether Bleach is a fic fandom for me or not. But I’ve never actually participated in fandom without writing and I  don’t think I  know how to do that, so it’s a dilemma.)

— Anyway, in light of characters and their privacy, I’m finding that a looser third person feels more appropriate than my go-to POV, which is typically a very tight third limited that hedges stream of consciousness. Propriety aside, though, I’m not yet sure how to make a loose third interesting to me? Like, what can this POV do for me? I dunno. (My one true POV love is second person, which imho is bestest in all circumstances, but it is a drug and I need to exercise temperance.)

— Also I’m a dumdum and came up with a premise in this fic that means I now have to refer to a character by a name I don’t personally refer to him by, and every time I type it my brain shouts NO. Self-inflicted pain!! I tried a timey-wimey stylistic workaround for this but it was so convoluted I was like, nah, self, you’re just gonna have to deal. XP

— Something I keep experiencing in this fic is this desire to tie things up. For extended metaphors to come full circle and for characters to get from point A all the way to point B. For there to be a Narrative Arc. I’m not really sure why, because generally speaking I think a lot of what I write outside of Bleach tends to be pretty vignette-y at its finest and underelaborated at its worst. But apparently my line for "this is fine" is different (or thinks it needs to be different) here than it is in other fandoms. XP For this angery fic that hates me I’ve probably cut as much as I’ve written at this point, lines out of paragraphs and multiple second halves. I think it keeps trying to stretch further than the narrator is presently able to take it.

Maybe he’s the one who wants it to be neat, idk? But I think he’s also more responsible about not forcing things than I am, so maybe it’s just me.

— If I had to characterize the process thus far, I think it’d be that teeter-totter between "yo, if this is going to be a story, it needs to be more than just you talking circuitously about mushrooms" (TRAGICALLY I don’t even think there are any mushrooms left in the current draft, even if that’s where this started) and "yo, this is trying to do TOO much, the premise is meant to support less." Like, you need to do the work of finding the meaningful energy here, but you can’t just come back with the kitchen sink of everything these characters could potentially think about. They really can’t do anything with most of that in this moment.

I think cutting aggressively has definitely helped me like it more (in that I like it more right now than I have at any point in its existence to this point), and I think it’s helpful to think that the ending isn’t supposed to exist in the fic itself—it exists in the canon that succeeds it. So the task isn’t to arrive, but to honor canon enough that that connection is strong enough to work.

^ But I also keep trying to do that in really overdetermined ways lmaooo. I think part of that is not having written very much for Bleach and feeling like, gotta practice my scales! Like, the idea is new to me in that I have not written it, but also very un-new—so much so that even I am bored by it. XDD I don’t want to bore myself but I also don’t want to be like, wow, that non-existent march from Point A to Point Z^i sure is...something!

— If you clicked on this cut for some reason and are reading this, you might be thinking, "Wow, B3 is really uh,,, overthinking this,,," Please know that the first half of this writing experience involved almost no thought and mere prayers. That did not work this time; ergo, Plan B! But I like getting nerdy about POVs, too, so Plan B is also fine. Uglyyyyyyy dumpling sssssssss