hello! i am the writer of the match on ao3, if you're looking for a sram fic to read, here's the link. it's a kolacic wip dating app AU with html coding, and it's updated every sunday. i'd say it's pretty cool to check out :) today i am here to discuss the work i am proudest of so far: chapter 8. if you stumbled across this and you haven't seen sram, you can watch it for free on youtube.
my writing process for chapter 8 was definitely the most challening yet exciting one thus far. i wanted to make something big and creative for this one, mostly because i think this stands out as the most unusually executed episode of this season. here are some little details you might have missed.
– did nedjelja 11:15 have to be so long? yes! the neck kissing was an obvious parallel to chapter 3 and my version of the cyg scene. ivan finally kissing lovro's neck came full circle.
– i'm sure many people got this reference, but for those who didn't, j'ai tué ma mère is the iconic movie referenced in skam france's famous paint scene. the coolest detail is that i did rewatch the movie scene on youtube while writing and this is a real comment under the video i watched:
it translates to 'ivan, i have 14 views, how often do you come here?'.
when i saw that, i knew for sure this HAD to be included, so where else other than during nedjelja 11:15? so new headcanon: ivan watched this clip over and over again on youtube at some point.
another really cool reference about the paint scene from j'ai tué ma mère is the song that plays in the background: noir désir by vive la fête. all the lyrics are pretty ironic, but the most undeniably ironic one of them all has to be the chorus: c'est la manie (tr: it's the mania). oh how i love triple references for one singular scene–it's why i coded the clip itself into the chapter.
– you can pretty much see ivan's mental state deteriorate throughout the whole chapter, but it's especially interesting during nedjelja 11:15. just in this one scene, we see him making impulsive decisions (he asks lovro to be his boyfriend after just one night), the pressured speech in the scene after nedjelja 11:15 and, of course, the hypersexuality of it all. all of this was intentional. i tried to do my research so i could display the signs in a way that didn't scream like a red flag. also i am aware how evil the lines 'He was so excited it almost made Lovro's heart melt.' + 'Somewhere in the middle of it, Lovro realized that he might actually be in love with Ivan's mind more than anything else.' are. honestly, i don't know what else anyone was expecting from me.
– i went all out with the social media. if sram didn't, i will. the coding was much more difficult this time, but i had to do it. this is the main reason why i didn't want to rush and publish it last sunday. my personal favorites were the tiktoks.
– i replaced that filip locker room scene with a kolacic one. it's also a reference to og's episode 5 when even and isak meet in the changing room + episode 8 and the 5 fine frøkner scene. i sadly don't know a good croatian equivalent for gabrielle, so i went with gaga. why gaga? i felt like if ivan had to choose one mainstream pop artist to listen to, he'd choose her. i didn't pick a song so everyone could fill in with their favorite. (if i had to, i'll say it was alejandro so it's a skam españa reference)
– right before the farm date, they meet at the bus stop and lovro dabs ivan up. this is a reference to sram ep 5 četvrtak 15:10, except here they don't kiss, since they are in the middle of the street.
– the farm date was like a love letter to the iconic evak scenes. the cardamom, breaking into a pool, riding on a horse instead of a bike. throughout this chapter, i did my best to give them lots of happy moments (even if the red flags were still there). if it was just full-on depressing, it wouldn't even be fun to read.
– ok, the livestream. i decided to change the chair scene with it because 1. i don't know how to possibly code chairs on ao3, forgive me, and 2. i really wish ivan would've gone live during his manic posting in the show. i wanted it to feel scary, if that makes sense. he was feeling so untouchable that he fully saw no danger in his actions. since the show never made lovro address ivan's social media, i decided to kind of keep that too, just not entirely. it does make sense for lovro personality-wise not to corner ivan about it, but he needed some motive, at least. that's why i came up with the drugs idea. it's an obvious nod to sram s2 when lovro was doing molly (a storyline that went nowhere), so i made it have some sort of impact here.
– i initially didn't plan a pov switch, but come on... it was the twist this chapter needed and i am sure most people didn't see it coming. i will gladly explain what was going on, in case there are still people who didn't fully catch it. i kept it vague enough so i wouldn't have ivan outright say it. i took his hallucinations from the original social media week 8 run, in which he was replying to people's comments indirectly, and doubled down. his whole deal in this chapter was that he was hallucinating being in sram, basically. the pills were the censorship and the directors were the doctors: The pills are the censorship. These directors in white coats are putting me on them. yes, i made ivan mad and aware of being censored. yes, it's a double meaning: he's being 'censored' by the network for being queer, but he's also being 'censored' by his pills.
– i had to 'lurk' on twitter for the making of this chapter. i really wanted to include the leaker in a creative way. if you're like me and weren't or sramtwt, there was this account (probably from the crew) who was giving hints and riddles about clip times. how could i not include something like this when it was the perfect final twist of chapter 8? ivan was so upset at the 'directors' and he felt like they were ruining the show, so he took it upon himself to fix it by going on twitter to talk to the 'audience'. She doesn't get it. I had to keep the viewers engaged. he was worried people weren't going to 'watch' anymore if he didn't. in the story ivan posts in this chapter, he says 'welcome to hell week', which is a direct tweet i found on the leaker's account. i tried to foreshadow that ending veery briefly, because i felt like if i used even one more of his tweets, people would catch on it instantly. i hope that twist also felt satisfying.
– i guess the josipa record might have been somewhat predictable, but it's still a good old chekov's gun to me. i made them go to lovro's place as a reference to the reunion in og ep 7 too.
– i've been reading the comments, so i know most of you were suspecting ivan knew lovro was isak. you were right, kind of. he did suspect it for a long time, but in my mind, somewhere around chapter 5 he stopped suspecting it. he gave him one last chance to admit it during chapter 7, just in case, when he asked 'what do you think about dating apps, lovro?', but since he didn't, ivan just let go of that idea. that whole conversation was just ivan testing the waters.
– also, no idea if anyone noticed, but both chapter 7 and 8 technically took place during 2 weeks each. so since the start of ch 7 and the ending of ch 8, it's been a month. we are going to ignore the obvious plot hole that is lovro's upcoming birthday. we'll pretend he's born in april or something. it felt more appropriate to stretch this storyline a bit more than just 2 weeks, a month felt right.
– ivan fully breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the readers was a last moment decision, but i am SO glad i went with it. it turned out perfect. it gave me chills while writing it. i need to know everyone's reactions to this particular part! i was kind of sleep deprived when i made that, but i think it adds to the energy.
– ivan's frantic commentary during the pov switch tied together some of his social media posts from the show that i didn't code in. I still don't believe in heaven. God, I hate chocolate. I wish I had a cappucino. is one of my favorites. the sentence ending in heaven followed by the next one starting with god was intentional. he talks about tibet and brad pitt and baby tigers and persian carpets and lebron–all from his social media posts. also, the oslo reference :)
– yeah, ivan loves lovro. he wasn't leaving sonja because he couldn't, and he was chasing isak because it was the one escape he had from his real self. but the one he'd always loved was lovro. he was the only one who treated him like a 'normal human'. even throughout this chapter, lovro didn't act weirded out by ivan's strange comments, even if he was thinking they're weird. in fact, he played along. to ivan, that meant someone finally understood him and didn't want to control him. was he greedy as fuck? ABSOLUTELY, but he also had this reasons and i hope i managed to describe it well enough in the chapter.
this was all for today! thank you so so much for reading this. i've never felt more excitement and frustration at the same time while writing a chapter. i am very proud of it, and i think i wrapped this up satisfyingly enough, for now. obviously, we still have 2 more chapters to go. i've included some of you in the social media content of this chapter, i hope that's cool! i feel like i still have more to say but i'll stop now or else i never will.
take care and thank you for reading my 20k words this sunday. see you next week, same place and all. <3
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