permission to go publicly go crazy about your novel until you're tired of typing
hiiiii anon idk how much you actually know about my novel so i think ill start at the beginning and just keep going from there :)
sooooo tbh this started with a really simple. whats the 2020 word for drabble. about a guy getting put in a cage as a punishment for something like days at a time before anyone came down to check on him. and in doing so i created a character in the cage named nathan, and his captor, who has no name in the actual novel itself other than the father (because he's a religious leader/leader of a cult) (he does have a Human Name in my head that i not a joke. stole off a credit card. but i dont think ill never say it in the novel because AGAIN. i stole. it off a credit card.
so nathan started as this kind of meek, maybe too young character but over a draft ended up as a super spunky kid who wants to do his absolute best and isnt super great at figuring out what that is (hes a lot like me in that his luck his just fuckin terrible and hell try to do something nice and end up screwing the pooch about it). he plays soccer which is funny bc i know fucking. nothing. about soccer. im realizing through this draft (arguably third draft, could be considered the second or fourth though) that his parents are not??? trying very hard?? theyre very insistent on giving him his space but its at the detriment of them not knowing anything hes fucking going through at any moment. which! is great sometimes! but not when hes getting literally abused :) so thats a fun thing i realized recently.
anyway the father in 2023 got his own longass nano draft about bits from his life where he did shit like. killing his sister. and murdering neighborhood cats. and kidnapping boys and shit. and it really doesnt translate into the story that is actually being told (that im telling, i should say), except for the fact that its really clear in my mind that hes a dangerous??? person?? and will stop at literally nothing for control. so he gets this entire following because. i dont know i didnt settle that, i think he just found that people could follow him if he said the right words and then bam he had control over a number of people and the ability to siphon money off them and control the way they think about the world and all of a sudden. doors started opening for him? so he bought a fucking island and started to take all these people off of (lets be real. the united states even though thats not explicitly stated) because he *checks notes* knows about all the people hes killed (or raped :/) and the shady shit that hes done in the past even if no one else has figured out about that (yet) so he was like. get them into international waters. and honestly if given enough time he would have gotten this island to militarize and it would have been a BAD scene. because this guy is charismatic as fuck and will say things in such a way that make you think yeah!! hes right!! even when hes. not.
so theres a LOT of abuse as father basically gaslights this kid into making him think his parents dont want him or care about him (untrue), and does a lot of "i can do this to you but no one else can/you cant either" sexual shit to him because. hi. the three worst things he does to nathan are in order (according to nathan) 3. coercing him into sex, 2. carving one of the seven deadly sins onto his body, and 1. locking him in a cage for the better part of 24 hours with a strict command to not make any noise or hell be left in longer (so we see the og drabble now)
so uhhh that was where we left off when i was writing the first draft in 2020, and then they get off the island and! nathan met adam :)
so in whump stories, theres the whumpee (gets beat up) (nathan), the whumper (does the beating up) (father) and the caretaker. and adam started out as a caretaker but! hes lowkey my favorite now?? i have two different headcanons that hes transmasc & transfem but i legitimately for the life of me cant decide i just know that hes trans in some way and uses he/him for the book <3
so adam in the original draft was kind of a loser (hes still a loser). he worked at an overnight gas station and lived in a house with a bunch of other guys barely scraping together to make rent, and nathan ends up meeting him because turns out when a late teen gets abused they sneak out of their house at night sometimes. so adam ends up giving him a space to be himself and nathan gets somewhat of a crush on him (this is fine bc adam is a HOPELESS romantic and already is head over heels for this dumb shit <3)
but! in the most recent rewrite (arguably the second draft) i wanted to do something of a fix-it fic for the three of them, and i threw adam onto the island with them. and honestly everything clicked SO fucking well. adam tells us about life on the island and nathan tells us about the father. so nathan and adam end up meeting WAY earlier. its a really delicate balance of letting them be friends and father not wanting that (and actively trying to convince nathan that hes a burden) but it ends up working so well and i had to kill my darlings of nathan and adam hanging out at this fuckass gas station at 3am but ! its worth it! there are other darlings i have created in the process
SO ANYWAY nathan is lowkey obsessed w the father (because of/despite of all the abuse & charisma) so when shit breaks bad on the island (father gets arrested) (who fucking knew) (counts of kidnapping and suspected murder) and they are all forced to leave, nathan and his family (he still has real parents) and also adam (long story involving father trying to kill adam and nathan almost getting arrested as a suspect) are all trying to find their way back in the Real World. and nathan is NOOOT having it. hes like. why did they arrest the love of my life (lol) he cant live without me (bro) and other. yknow. shit that was put into his head from a year of being gaslight.
so nathan runs away. and goes to find the father. and father is like oh fuck yes the one guy who could absolutely tell everyone in a court of law about what i did to him just. shows back up at my door. and thus begins captivity part 2: nathan isnt allowed to leave fathers apartment (hes out on bail fuck dude idk) until the very moment that father decides to. kill him. :)
so father quite literally slits his throat (my favorite paragraph in the original draft, might end up posting that in its entirety at some point) but through the magic of hollywood and because i wanted a happy ending for this fucker, he ends up getting away and his family finds him and. yeah.
he is very much my baby? i have imprinted on this oc like a son and his fucking loser bf is ALSO my son and <3 i just think theyre neat your honor.
i think i could talk more but thats probably enough for now. i have some more reblogs, picrews, trigger warnings, babbles, etc etc etc on ANOTHER tumblr blog @aplacewheregodcantfollow (title of the book), just to really bury the lead here <3 (i also have some shit in the tag #nathan insp on my blog here) (and more on my gore blog) (im a little obsessed)
whoever read all of this uhhhh. hi <3 i love you. i guess let me know so i can come into your dms and send you smooch gifs or whatever? thanks <333
