peeling back the sausage casing, or "come back home special DVD bonus features"
WHOA DUDES, I FINISHED A FIC. Insanity!!! Many many thanks to everyone who read it, commented on it (here or FFN or AO3 or wherever), or even just looked it sideways.
(Also there's like a whole host of deleted scenes and other drabbles set in this continuity so...that might be a thing later. ~Yeah~)
So I wanted to ramble a bit about my fic and my ~*~interpretations~*~ of the characters because I'm too lazy to write actual meta. And I've seen some memes on Tumblr asking questions about fic, and if there is one thing I love, it's babbling about my favorite characters and how I interpret them and how other people interpret them and the plots I want to write for them and why I write the plots I write, and so on till infinity. Of course, I have a grand total of about ten Tumblr followers who I actually interact with, and of those ten, only like...three are into Anne of Green Gables. So I decided to fill them out here instead of waiting for numbers in my askbox because I want to answer all of the questions. So! Special DVD bonus features re: that stupid Walter/Una fic I just finished.
What part was most difficult?
Probably? Squashing everything I wanted to into one fic? I basically had a lot of things I wanted to see in fic/things I wanted to talk about (I have an ~agenda~ apparently) and??? Not all of them could be mashed into a fanfic. Also, characterization, in that I wanted to have a little more ~bitterness~ re: WWI (because I love LMM, but Rilla of Ingleside's age really shows, imo), but also, y'know, wanted to keep them in character.
Also-also, some of the middle chapters were really rough writing -- I knew basically the exact content of the first and last few chapters, as well as some that I deemed Really Important (Una telling Walter about her mother, the one where they go picking mayflowers) and then I had to link them all together and lo, how I agonized. Because this fic was originally only going to be about 10-12 chapters, maybe? And then I realized I wanted to go into more detail (more detail!!!) and so. 22 chapters. Yup.
What are you most proud of?
Lol this is the first multichapter fic I've worked on since 2004, and the only multichapter fic I've ever finished. So I'm pretty proud of that! I’m also glad I managed to work in Mary and Una’s friendship, because a) I love their Odd Couple-type friendship and b) I like to think that Mary has at least one friend who doesn’t constantly rag on her.
Also-also, I’m not a huge Susan fan, so literally every time I managed to write a line that sounded even remotely like her, I was like
What's a reference you made no one has picked up on yet?
Nothing, really! I didn’t reference/quote anything (to my knowledge) without noting it, so nothing ~slipped by~, I don’t think. The exception being a tiny reference to The Blue Castle, which pretty much everyone noticed right away, haha.
What's a bit that sums up your take on a character?
I!!! Don’t know!!! I guess for Una: She is so close to some sort of edge, close to falling off - close to having what she wants. Because I think Una…on the one hand, she wants to be good and dutiful, and doesn’t want to impose on anyone. But deep down, she really wants things (for example, her desire for a mother figure in RV, and her desire to be ~respectable~ -- and her envy of both the Blythes for having Anne, and Mary for going from rags to riches), and is sort of constantly at odds with wanting these things but feeling that asking for them would be selfish. And I think one of the things I wanted to do was have her sort of grow into that strength she shows in RV (and in RoI/TBaQ, being able to ~keep faith~ even though she’s 5ever alone) and use it to make herself happy. Yeah!!!!
Favorite line(s) of dialogue?
I think the whole disagreement-almost-argument between Walter and Una. I ship them really hard (obvs) but they actually…never interact at all in canon (literally! He mentions her letters, but at no point in either RV or RoI do they speak to each other, or are even implied to be hanging out together). And I feel like they’re both rather reserved -- Una is quiet and shy and serious, while Walter is all dreamy or w/e. I kind of felt that it would be weird, though, if they were in ~love~ but couldn’t laugh together, and of course everyone has disagreements. So I wanted to try and write them being a little lighthearted together, as well as disagreeing on something. I do have the idea that they’re a little less reserved around each other, because they ~*~get~*~ each other. So yeah, I was happy with that exchange because it was something sort of wholesale made-up and ~extrapolated~ from canon, and people seemed to think it still felt in-character. So yeah, favorite!
And having Walter say “God” and occasionally “Damn” (I think? I can’t remember if I left that in or not), because I think, after a year in the trenches, he’d be slightly more inclined to swear, and I liked that sort of realism invading the postwar Anne world.
Also, bonus-bonus character ramblings: I feel like for all Walter’s ~dreaminess~, he does have a sense of humor (he just doesn’t use it around Rilla, because he knows she’d be Very Upset -- and he is, after all, mentioned teasing Di in Anne of Ingleside). Una, I think, isn’t particularly witty -- a bit sarcastic when she’s upset (like Faith and Jerry) but otherwise not very good at telling jokes or making snarky commentary. She does have the propensity to tell sort of stupidly funny stories that she starts laughing at halfway through, but is too shy to tell them around other people. She’s more likely to tell them to Walter, because he wouldn’t make fun of her for laughing at her own jokes.
Favorite lines(s) of prose?
German hadn't always been ugly, not all the time. Sometimes they could hear the conversation from the opposing side, across no-man's land, the rhythm of jas and bittes, ist and sehr, Vater unser im Himmel, geheiligt werde dein Name… BECAUSE I LIKE LANGUAGES AND I’M A NERRRRD.
Were there any points where you were trying to do something specific with sound, vocabulary, or rhythm?
Not really? I used dashes a lot instead of ellipses or just plain periods because I wanted to convey the sort of stuttering manner of someone trying to explain something difficult, and convey how confused and mixed-up the characters’ thoughts were. YEAHHHH.
How many drafts did the work go through?
3 or 4? I have a tendency to write scenes, take them out, paste parts of them back in, etc, so…there’s no way of really counting.
Were you listening to anything while writing the fic? If so, what?
Lol oh man. The grand majority of chapter titles are from Vienna Teng songs, or songs that are generally kind of gentle or introspective or whatever, and that was the mood I was going for when writing the fic. That said, I wrote most of the chapters while listening to "I Want It All" by Queen, ”News” by Nine Muses, and Eurovision songs. ~Mood music~
(On that note, Vienna Teng’s fifth album came out in late September and had a song that was basically this fic in a nutshell, but by that point I had written most of the rest of the fic and was already pretty stuck on “so i ask you to meet me tonight” and “the last snowfall” as the last chapter titles. GRRRR.)
Imagery that is important to the fic, either while composing or in the fic itself?
Not…really???? D:
What were you most worried about during the composition?
The usual characterization, pacing, etc.
How do you want readers to react to this fic?
WITH WALTER/UNA FEELINGS, OBVS.
What did you want them to take away from it?
idk???? more walter/una emotions???
What inspired this fic?
Besides my deep desire for Walter to ~*~come back home~*~? ERM, A LOT OF THINGS. Like I love LMM and RoI to pieces but! It was published in 1921! And there were a lot of things they didn’t know! (Plus LMM’s own personal issues.) So uh. I wanted to like…read a thing where the characters had to deal more with the war not being a Grand Cause (because I don’t blame LMM or anything, but parts of the book are v. uncomfy to read now, you know???)
(wow that sounds super pretentious i mean. whether or not the story ~accomplishes~ that is another thing but. that's kind of where the story started from!)
If you used a beta, what did you agree or disagree on?
I…didn’t. Oop @ me.
Did anything surprise you during the writing?
Bruce popped up way more than I meant for him to.
Were any parts written under the influence?
Does writing with a severe lack of sleep count as being under the influence?
RANDOM TRIVIA:
This stupid fic was only supposed to be like…10 chapters. 12 at the most. And then I realized I wanted to go into more detail (more detail!!!) and so. 22 chapters. Yup.
I originally wanted to write the entire story from Walter's POV, since one of the things I've always wanted to read is -- how does Walter see Una? In fic where they do hook up, how does he figure out that he loves her? We already know how she feels about him, so I wanted to see how Walter comes to change his view of her. (This is also the reason all my other Walter/Una fic is from Walter's POV. Now u know!) I ended up switching between the two of them since there were chapters where Una has to figure out what she wants/what to do and, without her POV, those would've just been chapters of Walter flailing around at Ingleside like a confused dying fish, and that. Would've been dumb.
Semi-related to the above point, I also wanted have Una do something? Idk we don't learn much about what she's up to in the books, and I wanted to write her POV and have her grow a bit into herself without having her focus center entirely around Walter, because I am nhft.
In the part where Walter is at Redmond, it was originally Dr. Milne who he meets in the English corridor, not Alice Parker. I basically wanted to have them have an awkward confrontation and possibly have Dr. Milne feel bad for shaming Walter into going to war. I changed it because I felt it was too heavy-handed and also, I brought in Alice and Shirley to sort of deal with the fact that, in-universe, nobody expects Walter and Una to get together -- Walter in particular has an ideal that he thinks he wants that Una doesn't match, and then he sees Alice again and realizes ~*~it's not what he wanted after all~*~ -- but then, I didn't want to drop Alice after one chapter. I also wanted to have more interaction between that generation who came of age during/shortly before the war. So yeah!!! (Plus I thought it would be nice if the Blythes and Merediths had friends who weren't each other, u know.)
I came up with most of the story in the bath. Yup.
(Also there's like a whole host of deleted scenes and other drabbles set in this continuity so...that might be a thing later. ~Yeah~)
So I wanted to ramble a bit about my fic and my ~*~interpretations~*~ of the characters because I'm too lazy to write actual meta. And I've seen some memes on Tumblr asking questions about fic, and if there is one thing I love, it's babbling about my favorite characters and how I interpret them and how other people interpret them and the plots I want to write for them and why I write the plots I write, and so on till infinity. Of course, I have a grand total of about ten Tumblr followers who I actually interact with, and of those ten, only like...three are into Anne of Green Gables. So I decided to fill them out here instead of waiting for numbers in my askbox because I want to answer all of the questions. So! Special DVD bonus features re: that stupid Walter/Una fic I just finished.
What part was most difficult?
Probably? Squashing everything I wanted to into one fic? I basically had a lot of things I wanted to see in fic/things I wanted to talk about (I have an ~agenda~ apparently) and??? Not all of them could be mashed into a fanfic. Also, characterization, in that I wanted to have a little more ~bitterness~ re: WWI (because I love LMM, but Rilla of Ingleside's age really shows, imo), but also, y'know, wanted to keep them in character.
Also-also, some of the middle chapters were really rough writing -- I knew basically the exact content of the first and last few chapters, as well as some that I deemed Really Important (Una telling Walter about her mother, the one where they go picking mayflowers) and then I had to link them all together and lo, how I agonized. Because this fic was originally only going to be about 10-12 chapters, maybe? And then I realized I wanted to go into more detail (more detail!!!) and so. 22 chapters. Yup.
What are you most proud of?
Lol this is the first multichapter fic I've worked on since 2004, and the only multichapter fic I've ever finished. So I'm pretty proud of that! I’m also glad I managed to work in Mary and Una’s friendship, because a) I love their Odd Couple-type friendship and b) I like to think that Mary has at least one friend who doesn’t constantly rag on her.
Also-also, I’m not a huge Susan fan, so literally every time I managed to write a line that sounded even remotely like her, I was like
What's a reference you made no one has picked up on yet?
Nothing, really! I didn’t reference/quote anything (to my knowledge) without noting it, so nothing ~slipped by~, I don’t think. The exception being a tiny reference to The Blue Castle, which pretty much everyone noticed right away, haha.
What's a bit that sums up your take on a character?
I!!! Don’t know!!! I guess for Una: She is so close to some sort of edge, close to falling off - close to having what she wants. Because I think Una…on the one hand, she wants to be good and dutiful, and doesn’t want to impose on anyone. But deep down, she really wants things (for example, her desire for a mother figure in RV, and her desire to be ~respectable~ -- and her envy of both the Blythes for having Anne, and Mary for going from rags to riches), and is sort of constantly at odds with wanting these things but feeling that asking for them would be selfish. And I think one of the things I wanted to do was have her sort of grow into that strength she shows in RV (and in RoI/TBaQ, being able to ~keep faith~ even though she’s 5ever alone) and use it to make herself happy. Yeah!!!!
Favorite line(s) of dialogue?
I think the whole disagreement-almost-argument between Walter and Una. I ship them really hard (obvs) but they actually…never interact at all in canon (literally! He mentions her letters, but at no point in either RV or RoI do they speak to each other, or are even implied to be hanging out together). And I feel like they’re both rather reserved -- Una is quiet and shy and serious, while Walter is all dreamy or w/e. I kind of felt that it would be weird, though, if they were in ~love~ but couldn’t laugh together, and of course everyone has disagreements. So I wanted to try and write them being a little lighthearted together, as well as disagreeing on something. I do have the idea that they’re a little less reserved around each other, because they ~*~get~*~ each other. So yeah, I was happy with that exchange because it was something sort of wholesale made-up and ~extrapolated~ from canon, and people seemed to think it still felt in-character. So yeah, favorite!
And having Walter say “God” and occasionally “Damn” (I think? I can’t remember if I left that in or not), because I think, after a year in the trenches, he’d be slightly more inclined to swear, and I liked that sort of realism invading the postwar Anne world.
Also, bonus-bonus character ramblings: I feel like for all Walter’s ~dreaminess~, he does have a sense of humor (he just doesn’t use it around Rilla, because he knows she’d be Very Upset -- and he is, after all, mentioned teasing Di in Anne of Ingleside). Una, I think, isn’t particularly witty -- a bit sarcastic when she’s upset (like Faith and Jerry) but otherwise not very good at telling jokes or making snarky commentary. She does have the propensity to tell sort of stupidly funny stories that she starts laughing at halfway through, but is too shy to tell them around other people. She’s more likely to tell them to Walter, because he wouldn’t make fun of her for laughing at her own jokes.
Favorite lines(s) of prose?
German hadn't always been ugly, not all the time. Sometimes they could hear the conversation from the opposing side, across no-man's land, the rhythm of jas and bittes, ist and sehr, Vater unser im Himmel, geheiligt werde dein Name… BECAUSE I LIKE LANGUAGES AND I’M A NERRRRD.
Were there any points where you were trying to do something specific with sound, vocabulary, or rhythm?
Not really? I used dashes a lot instead of ellipses or just plain periods because I wanted to convey the sort of stuttering manner of someone trying to explain something difficult, and convey how confused and mixed-up the characters’ thoughts were. YEAHHHH.
How many drafts did the work go through?
3 or 4? I have a tendency to write scenes, take them out, paste parts of them back in, etc, so…there’s no way of really counting.
Were you listening to anything while writing the fic? If so, what?
Lol oh man. The grand majority of chapter titles are from Vienna Teng songs, or songs that are generally kind of gentle or introspective or whatever, and that was the mood I was going for when writing the fic. That said, I wrote most of the chapters while listening to "I Want It All" by Queen, ”News” by Nine Muses, and Eurovision songs. ~Mood music~
(On that note, Vienna Teng’s fifth album came out in late September and had a song that was basically this fic in a nutshell, but by that point I had written most of the rest of the fic and was already pretty stuck on “so i ask you to meet me tonight” and “the last snowfall” as the last chapter titles. GRRRR.)
Imagery that is important to the fic, either while composing or in the fic itself?
Not…really???? D:
What were you most worried about during the composition?
The usual characterization, pacing, etc.
How do you want readers to react to this fic?
WITH WALTER/UNA FEELINGS, OBVS.
What did you want them to take away from it?
idk???? more walter/una emotions???
What inspired this fic?
Besides my deep desire for Walter to ~*~come back home~*~? ERM, A LOT OF THINGS. Like I love LMM and RoI to pieces but! It was published in 1921! And there were a lot of things they didn’t know! (Plus LMM’s own personal issues.) So uh. I wanted to like…read a thing where the characters had to deal more with the war not being a Grand Cause (because I don’t blame LMM or anything, but parts of the book are v. uncomfy to read now, you know???)
(wow that sounds super pretentious i mean. whether or not the story ~accomplishes~ that is another thing but. that's kind of where the story started from!)
If you used a beta, what did you agree or disagree on?
I…didn’t. Oop @ me.
Did anything surprise you during the writing?
Bruce popped up way more than I meant for him to.
Were any parts written under the influence?
Does writing with a severe lack of sleep count as being under the influence?
RANDOM TRIVIA: