The Badb, the author's notes
Title: Badb, Author’s Notes
Characters/Pairing: Cassie and Rob
Disclaimer: I don’t own these characters. They came from the mind of Tana French. And I thank her for them.
Spoilers: In the Woods with illusions to The Likeness (but I’ve only just started it)
A/N: This is possibly the most self-indulgent thing I have ever posted and I LOVE IT!!!
If you haven’t read the fic yet here are the links…
part 1
part 2
part 3
coda
First off, writing The Badb has been one of the most gratifying writing experiences I’ve had in a long while. Totally different, rejuvenating, and fulfilling. Thank you all for sharing it. :)
first ideas and part 1
First off this, I still haven’t finished The Likeness because for some reason I really wanted to write a response to just In the Woods from Cassie’s POV. Since I wanted ItW to be the focus, I stalled The Likeness. Just so you know.
So, when I started writing, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to write, some sort of resolution for Rob and Cassie or a genuine fix-it. If I wanted to write what I wanted to have happen in the future for Cassie and Rob or what I thought should happen for Cassie and Rob. In the end, I split down the middle on both accounts actually, at least from my point of view. And I’m good with that. Although in the beginning, I was leaning much more fix-it, which is why I killed Sam…
Actually that’s not the reason I killed Sam, who I really don’t have anything against accept for his lack of marvels. I killed Sam because my first thought for a reunion between Cassie and Rob was that they would meet up more like ten years later at Rob’s mother’s funeral. Both of them having gone through a fair more life and having more distance from each other and their time on the Murder Squad. It was super moody and foggy and I decided that I wanted something a little sappier and happier so I abandoned that idea for something that also might give me the opportunity to work on plot a more.
But I really liked the idea that someone else’s death would bring Cassie and Rob together, and Sam seemed like the person who’s death would most likely make them talk to each other. Sam also fit in a “murder case” sort of way, something complicated and corruption based. Not that I think Sam would have anything to do with anything underhanded, but his family had been tied to such things during Operation Vestal so it gave me a jumping off point.
And speaking of Sam’s case, Operation Dartboard is named for the Dublin Rapid Transit System (DART) and the idea that the case that gets Sam killed was so random it was like ‘throwing darts at a dartboard’. I am crazy proud of this name so I had to share.
I decided that Cassie and Sam had broken up some time prior to the events of the story. I loved (and I would totally use this in another story) the idea of Cassie playing the part of the widow because she couldn’t announce after Sam’s death that they had been broken up for months. (In my head they broke up between Christmas and News Years and the story takes place in March.) So Cassie sits uncomfortably being Sam’s widow even though she really isn’t. I also hedged whether or not Cassie and Sam were married, but in my mind they’re not.
When I was writing the first part, it was actually my intension to have Cassie and Rob kiss, but they got shot at instead. Oops. Says something about the amount of healing I think they need before getting to that, I guess.
And I love, love, love the moment at the end, Rob protecting Cassie not just from bullets but from the room full of cops. It just makes me happy. :)
part two
The dream - I should let (make?) everyone guess whose name is one the gravestone before I reveal it. hehehee. No, I’ll tell you. When I first composed the dream, I was think it was Rob's name on the gravestone, but I knew that it was very ambiguous and that there were more hints that it might be Cassie’s own name. I’m glad I left it open because, while I think it works both ways as the Coda turned out, it being Cassie’s name is kind of more fitting.
This is the apartment, which I realized while writing Part 3, I was calling an apartment instead of a flat. Oops. I spent way too much time looking at holiday rentals in Dublin, and average weather data (before deciding the weather would pretty much be like Seattle), before settling on the first one I found. If you click through the pictures, it was the bedrooms that really sold this one. Something about the rooms that hardly fit a bed was just what I was looking for, in part because it really wasn’t really big enough for Cassie and the laddies.
The laddies are one of favorite things about the second part. You never really see them. I pictured Cassie spending much of her time trying to avoid them. If for no other reason than it gave her something to do. I do see them as being exactly like over eager puppies, young police officers who otherwise had no chance of being so close to such a big case.
Dr Sarah… I created Dr Sarah because I didn’t feel like I knew any of the other characters well enough to include them. My intention was to really focus on Cassie and Rob anyway, but I figured that having just lost her fiancé and having just been shot at Cassie would be in the fast lane to counseling, and the only thing worse for Cassie than counseling would be having to go through it with someone who was totally unlike her. Thus, Dr Sarah - prim and British and patient.
Her reward for meeting with Dr Sarah, though, was Rob and access to the case. Now, I set this up because I wanted Cassie and Rob to work together, but a bit like having Cassie and Sam be broken up without anyone really knowing at the time of Sam’s death, having Rob be Cassie’s point man on the case was just deliciously awkward and tense and sad.
And he brought her cookies, and no he didn’t really know they were her favorites. He just always thinks of her when he sees those chocolate biscuits. Also, I really want to make chocolate cookies that are what I think of as being proper British, chocolate biscuits. And have beans on toast for dinner. But I’m like that. :P
part three and the coda
Most of you don’t know this, but when I write I have a very nasty habit of writing the same type of scene over and over and over. Since I wrote this without my usual beta, I had to be in charge of controlling this impulse. I wrote another meeting with Cassie and Dr Sarah, followed by Rob bringing her updates on Sam’s case anyway. I was kind of annoyed with myself but the most logical way to break up Cassie sitting with someone in the safe house flat was to have her leave the safe house flat. And for some reason this led to her immediate death…
Part of my issue was that Cassie slowly going a bit crazy was not my original idea. Originally this was going to be kind of straight murder mystery with Cassie and Rob trying to solve the case without being directly in the loop and using the case as a way to work out their issues. I had this whole structure set up where Rob would bring something to Cassie each visit, first the cookies, then the makings for the murder board, after that a beat up copy of Wuthering Heights and finally sauce and pasta. The idea being that he was staying longer and longer each time and they were really reconnecting. Eventually they would end up going out to a pub and reliving their time as partners, but as I mentioned above it was too dangerous for Cassie to leave the safe house so I took a couple of days to think about what should happen next.
During this ‘thinking’ hiatus, two things occurred to me…
The first was horrible... I realized that as much as I wanted to write a murder mystery, I had absolutely no idea how. I had created this super complicated murder plot and had no idea what to do with it. Then I stumbled upon this line that I’d already written for Part 3: I couldn’t remember a damned detail about Sam’s case of any real importance. and started thinking a lot about a comment that ninety6tears left about Cassie being so isolated and not quite lucid.
Which lead to the second thing. I truly love the supernatural quality in ItW. Cassie’s dream was part of that, but once again I had no idea what to do with it. And then I had this crazy idea…
What if it were all in her head? What if Cassie had been shot in the alley and everything in the safe house was in her head?
And then my mind started whirling, kind of out of control. First off, would it even work? What would make it work? What was the thing that Cassie needed to resolve that she could only work out in her head? What was it?
It was the ‘death bed’ confession.
I stopped working on Part 3 and tried writing Cassie’s confession that she loved Rob. And as I was writing, I thought how great it would be if Cassie confessed her love to Rob because she was dying and then she didn’t die. That was the bit I needed, the horrible awkward moment when Rob comes back in and Cassie can’t even look at him because she told him her one great secret. And I loved it! Because what could be worse that realizing you didn’t die and you can’t take the words back, except maybe not wanting to take it back.
I spent quite while debating when Cassie got shot. In the first draft, I resurrected Sam for the coda and Rob’s POV. Basically it was the same set-up that I went with for the Coda, only Sam wasn’t killed. But, honestly that left so many ends to tie up and that just didn’t seem like a whole lot of fun. Then I thought about having Cassie get shot in the alley with Rob during Sam’s wake so that Part 1 would have been real and Parts 2 and 3 all dream, but I didn’t like having two ‘real’ POVs. I ended up kind of combining the two ideas so that Cassie relives getting shot with Sam in her dream as being shot at with Rob. I really liked that as the mix up point in her mind.
It should be noted though that there is a huge, sort of, gap in the Coda vaguely in the shape of Sam. I hope that I made it clear that he was dead, but Cassie never mentions him outside of her own dream POV. No mention of his real funeral or Cassie mourning him. I do have a bit of Coda Epilogue that covers Sam, his death and the break-up mapped out in my head. ;)
About the dream girl… Her name is Nora. She and the beach actually came from my Cassie and Rob meet up after Rob’s mother’s funeral. She was Rob’s daughter from an ill-fated relationship with a lovely blonde who was more messed up than Rob and left him with their daughter when the girl was about two. Instead of aging, she stayed two in this story existing in fantasy or future whichever makes you happy.
I wrote Nora first in Cassie’s POV and oddly more attached to Sam than Rob as Cassie think about why Sam wanted to apologize to her. I thought about making the dream exactly the same, but Rob wouldn’t play that way. Although the text of the dream from Cassie’s POV was highlighted and pasted into the Coda for a long time.
I wrote the opening with O’Kelly after Cassie’s confession. I really like that bit, Rob bedraggled and kind of stuck but not unhappily. I love that O’Kelly sends Rob to the hospital. More on why is in the unwritten Epilogue. Nothing about Rob going to Cassie’s hospital bed is official though. Rob isn’t really her next of kin, but he’s the closest O’Kelly has, and Cassie was calling for him.
Also, Dr Sarah has a real version too, but nothing like the proper British lady in Cassie’s dream. The real Dr Sarah Shaw is frumpy, kind of beige and very Irish. The only she has in common with Cassie’s dream version is that she’s not to regular department psychologist and Cassie didn’t want to see her.
Back to Part 3, I wrote the ending, Rob coming back to the safe house after writing most of the Coda so that point I knew Cassie was in a fantasy. At the same time, I knew that I wanted the end of that fantasy to be sweet but not sexual. Although I had tried a couple of more overtly romantic ending previously…
an ending idea from the writing of part 1. Ignore the wrong tense.
But that night… that was real, right?
The words form perfect and strong in my head, but none of it comes out. I stare out the window watching the lights of Dublin flicker and shine as silence engulfs me and Rob. I feel him behind me wavering back and forth. If I could only get the words out, he would know. And nothing has ever scared me more… Rob knowing.
and and ending from later in the writing of part 1 that I really thought I was going to use when I was writing part 2
We didn’t have sex that night or for many after. We didn’t even kiss until I pecked his cheek on the way out the door.
and the ending from the writing of part 2 that more or less became the ending of part 3.
It takes place in Rob’s apartment.
I woke up in the dark, tight against the wall of Rob’s chest. It was warmer and more comforting that I care to admit even now, but them I felt down right silly for a moment. Swimming in one of his t-shirt like child and desperate for the touch of his skin. I didn’t dare move for fear it was all a dream induced by stress and grief. I had forgotten how solid he was, how he filled in my gaps.
The next morning I pecked his cheek on the way out the door and swore silently that I wouldn’t fall into anything with him, my ex-partner. It was unseemly and too soon. Even as I stepped into my cab, I knew that fate was going to deliver Rob back to me in a nearer future than I could imagine…
I have no idea what was going to happen next in that last one. But I really, really love it. Maybe I should write something else around it. hmm…
*** *** ***
I can’t think of anything else, but since I am not recorded onto a DVD, I’m available for questions. And by all means if you have any, I am more than willing to answer because I know there are a million little details I’ve not told you about and I’m sure I know why I wrote them. hee. <3
Characters/Pairing: Cassie and Rob
Disclaimer: I don’t own these characters. They came from the mind of Tana French. And I thank her for them.
Spoilers: In the Woods with illusions to The Likeness (but I’ve only just started it)
A/N: This is possibly the most self-indulgent thing I have ever posted and I LOVE IT!!!
If you haven’t read the fic yet here are the links…
part 1
part 2
part 3
coda
First off, writing The Badb has been one of the most gratifying writing experiences I’ve had in a long while. Totally different, rejuvenating, and fulfilling. Thank you all for sharing it. :)
first ideas and part 1
First off this, I still haven’t finished The Likeness because for some reason I really wanted to write a response to just In the Woods from Cassie’s POV. Since I wanted ItW to be the focus, I stalled The Likeness. Just so you know.
So, when I started writing, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to write, some sort of resolution for Rob and Cassie or a genuine fix-it. If I wanted to write what I wanted to have happen in the future for Cassie and Rob or what I thought should happen for Cassie and Rob. In the end, I split down the middle on both accounts actually, at least from my point of view. And I’m good with that. Although in the beginning, I was leaning much more fix-it, which is why I killed Sam…
Actually that’s not the reason I killed Sam, who I really don’t have anything against accept for his lack of marvels. I killed Sam because my first thought for a reunion between Cassie and Rob was that they would meet up more like ten years later at Rob’s mother’s funeral. Both of them having gone through a fair more life and having more distance from each other and their time on the Murder Squad. It was super moody and foggy and I decided that I wanted something a little sappier and happier so I abandoned that idea for something that also might give me the opportunity to work on plot a more.
But I really liked the idea that someone else’s death would bring Cassie and Rob together, and Sam seemed like the person who’s death would most likely make them talk to each other. Sam also fit in a “murder case” sort of way, something complicated and corruption based. Not that I think Sam would have anything to do with anything underhanded, but his family had been tied to such things during Operation Vestal so it gave me a jumping off point.
And speaking of Sam’s case, Operation Dartboard is named for the Dublin Rapid Transit System (DART) and the idea that the case that gets Sam killed was so random it was like ‘throwing darts at a dartboard’. I am crazy proud of this name so I had to share.
I decided that Cassie and Sam had broken up some time prior to the events of the story. I loved (and I would totally use this in another story) the idea of Cassie playing the part of the widow because she couldn’t announce after Sam’s death that they had been broken up for months. (In my head they broke up between Christmas and News Years and the story takes place in March.) So Cassie sits uncomfortably being Sam’s widow even though she really isn’t. I also hedged whether or not Cassie and Sam were married, but in my mind they’re not.
When I was writing the first part, it was actually my intension to have Cassie and Rob kiss, but they got shot at instead. Oops. Says something about the amount of healing I think they need before getting to that, I guess.
And I love, love, love the moment at the end, Rob protecting Cassie not just from bullets but from the room full of cops. It just makes me happy. :)
part two
The dream - I should let (make?) everyone guess whose name is one the gravestone before I reveal it. hehehee. No, I’ll tell you. When I first composed the dream, I was think it was Rob's name on the gravestone, but I knew that it was very ambiguous and that there were more hints that it might be Cassie’s own name. I’m glad I left it open because, while I think it works both ways as the Coda turned out, it being Cassie’s name is kind of more fitting.
This is the apartment, which I realized while writing Part 3, I was calling an apartment instead of a flat. Oops. I spent way too much time looking at holiday rentals in Dublin, and average weather data (before deciding the weather would pretty much be like Seattle), before settling on the first one I found. If you click through the pictures, it was the bedrooms that really sold this one. Something about the rooms that hardly fit a bed was just what I was looking for, in part because it really wasn’t really big enough for Cassie and the laddies.
The laddies are one of favorite things about the second part. You never really see them. I pictured Cassie spending much of her time trying to avoid them. If for no other reason than it gave her something to do. I do see them as being exactly like over eager puppies, young police officers who otherwise had no chance of being so close to such a big case.
Dr Sarah… I created Dr Sarah because I didn’t feel like I knew any of the other characters well enough to include them. My intention was to really focus on Cassie and Rob anyway, but I figured that having just lost her fiancé and having just been shot at Cassie would be in the fast lane to counseling, and the only thing worse for Cassie than counseling would be having to go through it with someone who was totally unlike her. Thus, Dr Sarah - prim and British and patient.
Her reward for meeting with Dr Sarah, though, was Rob and access to the case. Now, I set this up because I wanted Cassie and Rob to work together, but a bit like having Cassie and Sam be broken up without anyone really knowing at the time of Sam’s death, having Rob be Cassie’s point man on the case was just deliciously awkward and tense and sad.
And he brought her cookies, and no he didn’t really know they were her favorites. He just always thinks of her when he sees those chocolate biscuits. Also, I really want to make chocolate cookies that are what I think of as being proper British, chocolate biscuits. And have beans on toast for dinner. But I’m like that. :P
part three and the coda
Most of you don’t know this, but when I write I have a very nasty habit of writing the same type of scene over and over and over. Since I wrote this without my usual beta, I had to be in charge of controlling this impulse. I wrote another meeting with Cassie and Dr Sarah, followed by Rob bringing her updates on Sam’s case anyway. I was kind of annoyed with myself but the most logical way to break up Cassie sitting with someone in the safe house flat was to have her leave the safe house flat. And for some reason this led to her immediate death…
Part of my issue was that Cassie slowly going a bit crazy was not my original idea. Originally this was going to be kind of straight murder mystery with Cassie and Rob trying to solve the case without being directly in the loop and using the case as a way to work out their issues. I had this whole structure set up where Rob would bring something to Cassie each visit, first the cookies, then the makings for the murder board, after that a beat up copy of Wuthering Heights and finally sauce and pasta. The idea being that he was staying longer and longer each time and they were really reconnecting. Eventually they would end up going out to a pub and reliving their time as partners, but as I mentioned above it was too dangerous for Cassie to leave the safe house so I took a couple of days to think about what should happen next.
During this ‘thinking’ hiatus, two things occurred to me…
The first was horrible... I realized that as much as I wanted to write a murder mystery, I had absolutely no idea how. I had created this super complicated murder plot and had no idea what to do with it. Then I stumbled upon this line that I’d already written for Part 3: I couldn’t remember a damned detail about Sam’s case of any real importance. and started thinking a lot about a comment that ninety6tears left about Cassie being so isolated and not quite lucid.
Which lead to the second thing. I truly love the supernatural quality in ItW. Cassie’s dream was part of that, but once again I had no idea what to do with it. And then I had this crazy idea…
What if it were all in her head? What if Cassie had been shot in the alley and everything in the safe house was in her head?
And then my mind started whirling, kind of out of control. First off, would it even work? What would make it work? What was the thing that Cassie needed to resolve that she could only work out in her head? What was it?
It was the ‘death bed’ confession.
I stopped working on Part 3 and tried writing Cassie’s confession that she loved Rob. And as I was writing, I thought how great it would be if Cassie confessed her love to Rob because she was dying and then she didn’t die. That was the bit I needed, the horrible awkward moment when Rob comes back in and Cassie can’t even look at him because she told him her one great secret. And I loved it! Because what could be worse that realizing you didn’t die and you can’t take the words back, except maybe not wanting to take it back.
I spent quite while debating when Cassie got shot. In the first draft, I resurrected Sam for the coda and Rob’s POV. Basically it was the same set-up that I went with for the Coda, only Sam wasn’t killed. But, honestly that left so many ends to tie up and that just didn’t seem like a whole lot of fun. Then I thought about having Cassie get shot in the alley with Rob during Sam’s wake so that Part 1 would have been real and Parts 2 and 3 all dream, but I didn’t like having two ‘real’ POVs. I ended up kind of combining the two ideas so that Cassie relives getting shot with Sam in her dream as being shot at with Rob. I really liked that as the mix up point in her mind.
It should be noted though that there is a huge, sort of, gap in the Coda vaguely in the shape of Sam. I hope that I made it clear that he was dead, but Cassie never mentions him outside of her own dream POV. No mention of his real funeral or Cassie mourning him. I do have a bit of Coda Epilogue that covers Sam, his death and the break-up mapped out in my head. ;)
About the dream girl… Her name is Nora. She and the beach actually came from my Cassie and Rob meet up after Rob’s mother’s funeral. She was Rob’s daughter from an ill-fated relationship with a lovely blonde who was more messed up than Rob and left him with their daughter when the girl was about two. Instead of aging, she stayed two in this story existing in fantasy or future whichever makes you happy.
I wrote Nora first in Cassie’s POV and oddly more attached to Sam than Rob as Cassie think about why Sam wanted to apologize to her. I thought about making the dream exactly the same, but Rob wouldn’t play that way. Although the text of the dream from Cassie’s POV was highlighted and pasted into the Coda for a long time.
I wrote the opening with O’Kelly after Cassie’s confession. I really like that bit, Rob bedraggled and kind of stuck but not unhappily. I love that O’Kelly sends Rob to the hospital. More on why is in the unwritten Epilogue. Nothing about Rob going to Cassie’s hospital bed is official though. Rob isn’t really her next of kin, but he’s the closest O’Kelly has, and Cassie was calling for him.
Also, Dr Sarah has a real version too, but nothing like the proper British lady in Cassie’s dream. The real Dr Sarah Shaw is frumpy, kind of beige and very Irish. The only she has in common with Cassie’s dream version is that she’s not to regular department psychologist and Cassie didn’t want to see her.
Back to Part 3, I wrote the ending, Rob coming back to the safe house after writing most of the Coda so that point I knew Cassie was in a fantasy. At the same time, I knew that I wanted the end of that fantasy to be sweet but not sexual. Although I had tried a couple of more overtly romantic ending previously…
an ending idea from the writing of part 1. Ignore the wrong tense.
But that night… that was real, right?
The words form perfect and strong in my head, but none of it comes out. I stare out the window watching the lights of Dublin flicker and shine as silence engulfs me and Rob. I feel him behind me wavering back and forth. If I could only get the words out, he would know. And nothing has ever scared me more… Rob knowing.
and and ending from later in the writing of part 1 that I really thought I was going to use when I was writing part 2
We didn’t have sex that night or for many after. We didn’t even kiss until I pecked his cheek on the way out the door.
and the ending from the writing of part 2 that more or less became the ending of part 3.
It takes place in Rob’s apartment.
I woke up in the dark, tight against the wall of Rob’s chest. It was warmer and more comforting that I care to admit even now, but them I felt down right silly for a moment. Swimming in one of his t-shirt like child and desperate for the touch of his skin. I didn’t dare move for fear it was all a dream induced by stress and grief. I had forgotten how solid he was, how he filled in my gaps.
The next morning I pecked his cheek on the way out the door and swore silently that I wouldn’t fall into anything with him, my ex-partner. It was unseemly and too soon. Even as I stepped into my cab, I knew that fate was going to deliver Rob back to me in a nearer future than I could imagine…
I have no idea what was going to happen next in that last one. But I really, really love it. Maybe I should write something else around it. hmm…
*** *** ***
I can’t think of anything else, but since I am not recorded onto a DVD, I’m available for questions. And by all means if you have any, I am more than willing to answer because I know there are a million little details I’ve not told you about and I’m sure I know why I wrote them. hee. <3