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yandere-monoma · 1 year ago

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good evening it is 4am and i have writer's block so imma reread one of my fave recent fics and reminisce about having the ability to write lmfao

so WHOO, eat your young: director's commentary:

the fuckin song gets stuck in my head every time i read the title HJGKFGS originally i was stuck between this one or another title from aNOTHER song but i forgot what that song was so note to self: edit this post when i remember LOL

lines like these are ones that potentially make me dissociate to reread HAHAHA. i don't even know if it quite portrays the atmosphere i'm usually referencing with lines like these (there's something about the lighting that accompanies irl traumatic memories for me that i always end up focusing on and trying to allude to in writing even when i'm not necessarily trying to project... being drenched in darkness with only one point of light to focus on... @_@) but idk its tasty and i love how i opened this fic teehee

this opening scene is very much a love letter (and quick summary of) all the FUCKIN stridercest fics i've read throughout the years, like one of the many things i love about any darkfic niche part of fandom is that there tends to be these few locations that everyone settles on and obsesses over for their ships. for todocest it's the dojo, for goyuu its the basement, for a lot of stridercest fics it's bro's couch/futon. i wanted something that was quickly recognizable for anyone who also has been reading their way through the tag like i have HJSKFG

one of those teeny tiny lil motifs that i had fun sprinkling in ghsdjfkg very fun to play with homestuck's use of color motifs and what it could provide for dave in this new context. it's also a reference to the epilogues, which i'm more obvious about when i bring the motif back later:

in the epilogues, there's a few moments where john waxes poetic about the slightly unsettling environment of earth c

and the thought of that drove me crazy. earth c and the way it's supposed to represent this unfitting paradise that's just a little bit wrong and a little too perfect and the way that perfection grates at you when you start to notice it. i love the metaphor of paradise being uncomfortable because of all the trauma and grief and fighting that preceded it. rly reminds me of how hard it is irl to adjust to happiness and love and comfort after being abused and hurt for so long 😩😩😩

don't even ask me where the bro drinks hibiki hc came from but it's something i carried over from the brorose pornverse because ~consistency~

nothing to say besides being proud of this LOL

...

man i have such a love/hate relationship with writing dave dialogue and by that i mean i hate it cuz i never think it's enough LMFAO. i envy anyone who can adopt homestuckian humor and wit easily because i can Not. like i try my best but just know every second i gotta write this idiot talking i'm screaming in agony and bleeding out my ass about it internally JHKFGS

wonder if i'd feel differently if his dialogue was in the pesterchum fonts tho...

CRAZY how much i like that better HAHAHFGKSDFG

one day i'll do a fic where the dialogue is done like the epilogues but until then i suffer and die every time i have to use proper grammar for dave's speech, anyway,

ANYWAY john being a terrible parent is one of the sexiest things that has ever been done with his character i'm so thankful for it godjskfgsdfg and i love thinking about dave's misplaced guilt on the matter. "You want to be on your best friend's side for this, sure, bristling with the instinct to defend him, but you can't commit to it. The sad kid in front of you, put out and missing his father's love, that's who has all your sympathy right now." dave being unable to keep from projecting onto harry from the start, unable to keep from instantly empathizing with the child's point of view in this scenario (partially because he can't unsee himself as anything but an abused child even despite his growing age) and immediately feeling himself distancing emotionally from john at the thought that he could be anything like bro as a guardian.

it's actually a shame i didn't rly get a chance to elaborate on this further because i think there's a lot of fun to be had with thinking about dave's reactions to john's parenting from this point on, like... GOD. when john tried to kidnap tavvy as a kid???????????? feel like that's a fucking GOLD mine of possibly triggering ammo against dave's psyche goddamnit

if harry didn't change the subject here, he would have started bashing john for his drinking habits and canon tendency to traumadump on him while drunk HJSKFG he's made harry incredibly uncomfortable more than a few times doing this and i think it's definitely made an impression on him, but harry decides not to because he doesn't want to do the same thing to dave. he also doesn't want to remind dave that they're doing anything 'bad' here

writing shit like this into a story rly is just for the purpose of practicing interiority in characterization hehe. i feel like it's also a side effect from writing for theatre, trying to mimic as many naturalistic structures of dialogue as possible. fun to fit in tangents that just never really get answered or directly referred to

THE WAY THERE WAS NO ROOM TO TALK ABOUT DAVEJADE FAILED MARRIAGE BUT GOD I WANTED TO TALK ABOUT DAVEJADE FAILED MARRIAGE SO BAAAAAAAD tfw you spend all your free time hanging out with teenagers to avoid having sex with your loving wife

...

this part of the fic is fun because originally this idea came from a discord convo

and it is SO FUCKING FUN to write prose around someone else's dialogue and thoughts 10/10 will recommend

it's especially fun too because all of dave's thoughts and dialogue from around this point on is mostly outlined by my friend, so it was so fun getting to work their insights and characterization into my own interpretation of his character

...

the build-up where dave and harry start snuggling drives me fucking crazy every time like every time i reread this bit i'm always biting on my knuckles and screaming goddamnit goddamnit dirty wrong awful intimacy that suddenly overwhelms you and crushes you and you don't even notice the way you're dissociating from your every action but you aRE

originally this paragraph was also supposed to have a davejade mention but i just couldn't figure out how to make the thought flow well with everything else. originally there was supposed to be something about the way he always shrinks away from jade's touches, how they always make him feel worse and feel colder than he did before she'd tried, but yeah... didnt fit... and ultimately i think the fic is stronger as is. jade being an afterthought that only vaguely gets talked around feels very ic for candy dave anyway HJGFK and rly everything that he feels towards her is more just a side effect of everything he's suffered by bro's hands. no need to focus on his discomfort about jade when his discomfort about harry is more than enough

that being said every time i remember everything i had to omit i WAAAAAAIL

"Syrup clogs your throat. Your throat burns dully, your tongue feeling heavy with that leftover numbing weight of sugar and liquor." lines i cant reread without rly badly craving booze

literally the biggest challenge of this fic was the fact that its secretly a johndave/daveroxy/daverose fic HAHAHGFJG like trying to balance the fact that one of dave's biggest driving forces when it comes to his attraction to harry is that he's just been hosting a million and one ultimately unrequited crushes all his life that he's now projecting forward and trying to showcase that without drawing tOOOOOOOO much attention away from the other main driving force (brodirk and the incest fetish he'd instilled in him)... so sooo hard to balance but i like to think i did a decent job

'let him escape this feeling like he might still be a good person' is such a fucking good line/thought/sentiment that i'm so upset i had no room for cuz it's so good HJGKFSGS who knows maybe one day i'll be able to figure out a way to squeeeeeeze it into an edit cuz god knows i still tweak this and all my fics every now and then

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 i love this part... go off past ricky... do find it funny tho that i was ~vibing~ so hard with the prose that i forgot dave's canon ages just a tad HAHA shhhh

these are some of my favorite kisses i've ever written goddamnit

literally the funniest and most inspiring words my writing partner has ever said like LEGEND... it was this phrase specifically that made me drop everything and start writing this fic cuz i KNEW i needed to slap that onto the summary pls JGKLFSG

(Did you ever have a chance? Did he?)

i feel obligated to speak on this line because it's like. one of the huge major themes of the fic HJSKDFGSFG the inevitability of dave continuing a cycle that he's been trying to avoid. really, what can i say, though. this fic follows a timeline that's alluded to but still has yet to be written out (and who knows if i ever actually will write it out, i'm kinda just updating this fic series based on impulses) where dave moves on to project all his trauma with bro onto dirk after they win the game. i love the thought of them trying their best to keep up the brother routine before dave's need to retraumatize himself and dirk's own fucked up inclinations results in them becoming sexually involved. like, honestly, i could go on forever about dirkdave and the ways they make each other better and worse but yeah. the second dave gave into that self destructive urge, he was done. and it's something that bled into his marriage, that bled into his inability to rly engage with karkat, that fed on his ability to be his own person and work on his own recovery. dirk died and the universe went stagnant and with it, dave's ability to grow out of the mold he was forced into by bro

so yeah. he's already at this huge disadvantage. and while this fic focuses on dave's perspective, there's a lot to be said about harry's mindset as well. the way he's egging this on, the way he's encouraging it, the way he's trying to poke into any sort of vulnerability that dave may or may not have. the way he wouldnt quite have the words to pinpoint and identify shit like emotional incest or grooming but he can see that there's something wrong and exciting about what they're doing that he wants to take part in. being set up to failure because of john's neglect, already thinking he's more mature than he is because of it, perhaps knowing just a bit too much about romance and sex because of whatever weirdass confessions about his own relationships john had unwittingly given him. not to mention his feelings for dave and the way he makes him feel like they're equals and the way he gets attention and affection freely from him without really having to fuss and fight for it like he does with vrissy.

so yeah. these two were doomed from the start 😌💙

'That saccharine sear of shame that washes over you then only makes it worse. You can’t fucking believe you’re popping a boner ten seconds into a make-out session.'

so like, i wrote this before getting deep into the show succession and thank god cuz this def would have turned into a ramble about how dave probably was completely unable to get it up during sex with jade. that absolutely was the case because i like to think that dave really is just hardwired into having rly bad sexual hang-ups where his body is just so conditioned to react to a lack of consent and boundaries and an abundance of incest but now thanks to my intimate knowledge of roman roy i also know now that dave occasionally (frequently) has rly bad erectile dysfunction in the face of anything '''healthy'''. thanks a lot succ

this isn't where the wordplay starts but it's where a good amount of it is HJGKFG i feel like 'bro' is a silly word to use in big deep serious prose sometimes HAHAH so my reluctance to use it here is part of why this wordplay started but the other reason is because i have a BIG stylistic thing(tm) about playing with pronouns and names and what omitting them can do for the narrative. blurring bro and dirk by refusing to name them but letting their actions speak for which splinter is being referred to was a very fun experiment (though, perhaps less successful than other iterations of mine where i did this same sort of pronoun play... OH WELL they cant all be perfect)

mentally dave switches from aggressor to aggressor. this possessive need to destroy harry starts to bleed in, inspired by bro and what he'd done to dave and what he'd taught him of sexuality and domination. a part of him resists that, reminding him of the terrifying impact of it all, the horror of initiating and acting on a fucked up desire, and then he switches to dirk, projecting that forward instead. dirk, who he is currently choosing to see more as a victim, who was just trying to help dave as he pushed and pushed at him. it's simultaneously a moment where he can start to blame harry just a little bit about what's happening instead of himself (because harry keeps pushing, he keeps begging to do this, he thinks it's what he wants and dave is just helping him because he doesn't feel he has a choice) and it's a moment where he finally puts himself in dirk's shoes and realizes (fears) that maybe dirk didn't want this as much as he might have acted. that dirk had likely gone through a similar internal conflict that started to kill him inside.

'Jade tries, but something about her touch disgusted you.' IT WAS SUCH A STRUGGLE TO FINALLY MENTION HER LMFAOHSDJFKG such a relief... altho the line after this one rly kicked my ass i could not figure it out for the longest time hjskdfgsg jadey i love you im so sorry

this was an interesting divulgence from the original thought:

which i couldnt rly fit in especially with how balls deep we're into dave's thoughts at the moment but i love it

this line is so stupid HAHAJFGSFG its so funny to me. its a shoutout to me realizing halfway through the initial outline that they're actually half brothers instead of JUST uncle/nephew AND it's a reference to this specific incest joke in the epilogues

(the way harry is there to witness this moment and also say the word incest right after dave... a ship made for mE)

i love this sequence so much i'm so proud of it like FUCK

some of my friends have started to use this line as a copypasta now and it cracks me the FUCK up every time they do HJSKFDGSDF

generally, whenever i write stream of consciousness fics, i'm always building up and waiting for the moment where the stream suddenly goes off track. there's always gonna be a super fun part where i get to just ramble out a bunch of run-on sentences and hopefully even format them in a fun absolutely-inspired-by-poetry way. and i can't stress enough how fucking SATISFYING it is to get there and have it come out (almost) exactly how you thought it would whee

THOUGHTS THAT GOT LOST BUT GOD HARRY CRACKS ME UP... and i love that part of john's personality... and i love the way it unknowingly grates on dave hjsdfg he definitely has a very clear image of victimhood and the way harry doesn't fit into that mold drives him fucking crazy.

one of my favorite parts of dave's unreliable narration, him projecting onto dirk because of his own guilt. it's the only way he can really bring himself to admit that, in that moment, after everything he's done, he's immediately feeling suicidal and bereft with his guilt on the whole situation.

i mention this in a comment as well but i love to think about ult dirk and dirk's internal corruption of his own character. i think it's a fun chicken or the egg scenario, trying to decide if dirk was still himself when he allowed dave to seduce him into this, if dirk's guilt helped guide him into his eventual instability, or if that instability is what lead to him acting on his incestuous urges. did his actions lead to him being labeled a villain, or did he decide to prove his villainy by lashing out?

and it is VERY fun to have this be something dave had done, knowing that in the future, he will be guided into his own metaphorical and literal suicide, abandoning a life he's more than ready to run away from =u= and the cycle continues nyehehe

final thoughts that may or may not be used in a future fic (i'm the black):

what the hell is wrong with harry in d e e d... stares at john

#fic: eat your young #fandom: homestuck #director's commentary #meta

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