#starting to see the throughline for all the characters i am obsessed with lmao

[holyunholy]

messy post going to bed but the selfish and also tragic side of adora which i really love and i think people tend to miss is like. this idea she gets where she's like okay well if im the best at this one thing and im willing to die for it then im above reproach. nobody can criticize me or want more from me, or want something i cannot give, because i've already decided what they want from me and the thing they want is so huge that they could not possibly ask more of me. like you cannot ask her to introspect or to acknowledge how anyone else feels because isnt she already doing enough?? what more do you want?? and if she can actually die for this thing then all the better because then all of that becomes literally true

like people talk about how she's pushed into the role of hero/martyr but i really think she puts herself there. and yea u can acknowledge how she's been conditioned into doing that but its sooo much more interesting if you acknowledge her agency in it. we emphasise (because the show emphasises) how she only values herself for what she can give other people but. there's a lot people want from her that she just refuses to even acknowledge too. she wants to be on the pedestal, she wants to be out of reach. she's decided she's willing to die not bc she's brave but bc the alternative is scarier. she's afraid of everything she cant or doesnt know how to give so she fixates on the one thing she can and in the process just kind of decides what everyone else wants and what is best for them, while ignoring anything to the contrary. that sounds AWFUL to be around lmao. i want to kiss her about it.

catra's actions are so fucking understandable when u view them in that light lol. what would she have gotten if she'd gone with adora in season 1? nothing at all lmao. but as her enemy? she's the centre of her world

[septemberlikeastorm]

hi! love your acolyte fic on ao3 <3! i was wondering how you manage to pace your story so well and if you have any advice for new fic weiters on pacing out longer fics? i'm working on my first ever fic but i'm really struggling with keeping my chapters from being all over the place or certain scenes not progressing as far as i'd like them to.

ahhh hello my friend, thank you for being so kind & i am so glad you are looking to start writing fic!!!!

the really ugly & unsatisfying answer is experience, you can't tell from my ao3 profile but i am a battle-hardened fic veteran come from the trenches of FFN.net, riparoni to a real one

hopefully the more helpful & immediately applicable answer for a new fic writer is, i personally never think about pacing, only about throughlines, by which i mean, i never really am trying to go TO somewhere, but rather come FROM somewhere in the story

which looks like: i CONSTANTLY reread earlier chapters (or, if i've not begun the work yet, religiously pore over the canon) & go okay, what's been left open-ended? which character is pushing themselves too hard & bound to collapse soon? when they collapse, how does the other character react? what does Character B's reaction to the collapse reveal to Character A? etc

a concrete example is: i never ever conceived of the scene at the end of chapter 3 of cascade ocean wave blues come, where osha's interrogating qimir over his intentions toward her. i'd planned to end that chapter with them having Brat Summer but it was getting way too long (because when you write like this, all scenes progress WAY further than you ever intended, it's why my chapter count keeps rising lmao) & i needed to come up with something else meaningful to end the chapter on

so i reread what i'd written so far & said okay, osha's been having a really overwhelming day where she's discovering she really gets along well with this guy who Murdered Her Friends & she's kind of starting to understand why he did it & see that potential for violence in herself which is pretty upsetting, on top of which she's just found out he also kills for pay, which like, what the fuck but in the same breath he assures her, very seriously but also very casually, that if anyone hurt even a hair on her head he'd raze an entire planet. & they've known each other for like two weeks

& like. how's a girl meant to respond to all that at once??? so i thought an impactful way to end the chapter might be to have her try to take stock of the situation by asking what he really wants from her, a scene i'd never planned on but turned out to be one of my favorites & be really well-received by readers!

so hopefully this approach might help push scenes to progress fully/really allow you to mine each one for all its potential? as for chapters being all over the place, i think what could help is applying this method of unspooling threads from canon/past chapters not just to plot beats but to themes & metaphors

so for example, i never started cascade intending to liken qimir's most intimate feelings to shattering & to red birds, those were just throwaway lines from the first chapter that, upon obsessive rereads, i thought i could beat the horse dead about extend further to explore how his perceptions of himself & of his capacity for love & joy evolve throughout the story

& even if you've got a chapter that doesn't feel, in terms of action, like a cohesive whole, if you can touch on those themes/metaphors/that emotional through-line in most of the scenes, it can really tie everything together & show how a character's emotional journey carries a story through chapters & to the end - not necessarily to where you'd started the fic intending to go

i hope that is even A Little Bit helpful!!!!!