On Writing Fic: Canon Expansions, Character Writing, and Some Updates - Mostly a Ramble
It’s interesting to me how much I’ve played Roland and Cedric in parallel to each other.
I just went back to re-read “Someone to Fall Back On” because I’m finishing up the last 2-ish (maybe 3? depending on how much Cordelia I want) chapters of a fic that will connect into that one.
And, I just realized that there are so many ways in which the way I write Cedric and the way I write Roland are in near perfect parallel.
What I mean by this is that, in many ways, both of them are secretive. They’re just secretive in different ways, and the way they mask the things they’re trying to hide are different.
I also find it very interesting that the only people who really ever see through *both* of their facades, to varying degrees, and in multiple different ways depending upon the situation, are Miranda, Baileywick, Tilly, Sofia, and Winifred.
Miranda, Baileywick, and Tilly through some combination of their powers of wisdom and observational skills, and Sofia and Winifred through those things plus a boon from magical abilities.
But, Miranda has really intrigued me because I think it was in writing her perspective that I actually saw the depth of the parallel for the first time.
Like, what’s interesting is a lot of the other characters, outside of the ones listed, only have the facts of what did happen in the historical past, what has been and is happening in the present, as well as their own lived experiences to draw from when making conclusions.
The conclusions they draw can be rather interesting based on what people have said/done out of manipulation and anger. Sometimes, even the characters listed can take things way off base when what they hear is taken out of context or upsets them deeply enough.
Some of the things that are said that seem out of pocket foreshadow some magical world building I’m doing in relation to primordial beings like Vor. It’s also meant to reconcile the way Roland gives Cedric his job back and appears to have forgiven him and the animosity we see has grown deeper instead of less by “In Cedric We Trust.”
Even in “Through the Looking Back Glass” there doesn’t seem to be near that much animosity- not that there shouldn’t be - but the pendulum swings between tentative forgiveness and outright hostility to me seemed an interesting thing to explore and give more explicit origin to. So, I went and played with some magic.
That being said, the above characters mentioned, generally, have more lived experiences, a more nuanced look at the situation at hand, an innate sense of people and wisdom in human communication, and/ or some enhanced magical abilities that allow them to be able to see things from a different and more nuanced perspective.
Again, however, these characters are also human and capable of incidental bias when they feel something is unfair, they get confused, and/ or other forces in the world are working.
Miranda seems to be my one exception/ the one person who is immune to that rule. She’s almost always level with both Cedric and Roland, and 99.9% of the time able to see through both Cedric and Roland.
However, James’ anger and sort of “siding with” Cedric in the flashback part of “Someone to Fall Back On” felt natural to me.
This is a hear me out moment.
Yes. Cedric froze him with the Medusa Stone.
Yes. That would have been totally scary.
However, you know what else happened a few hours later?
Another even freakier sorcerer dude shows up, because instead of attacking with manic-panic energy and then being really desperate, he’s just like totally cool and calm about the whole thing.
Because, yeah. He didn’t really mean it.
It was like he said. He was just sad and angry. We learn about that in school all the time.
Beast’s broken curse thing …
Aladdin and the genie with the freedom wish …
Wasn’t there the bell ringer dude in the tower with the creepy guy Popov once talked about during the random dance history lesson?
We’ve watched Amber try to thwart James multiple times. We’ve watched her bash on him. We’ve watched James totally put his foot in it multiple times. And, we’ve also seen Cedric and James have a handful of positive interactions.
Besides that, as you can see from the way I write “James logic,” he’s pretty simple. However, he’s simple while erring on the side of seeing good in others.
I notice James is one of only a handful of people to consistently thank Cedric for things.
And, it sort of made me wonder if some of the words Cedric said on DotS might not have hit James in a place?
Because, there was a part of me that wondered if James doesn’t feel “overshadowed by a powerful father” and “only able to fail when his sisters were perfect?”
So, in the face of two people “hiding from/ avoiding/ refusing to see” each other, what conclusions is James left to draw but where he sees himself in the story that’s unfolding?
The fact is that, to my mind-James, Cedric not being accepted back into the natural flow of life feels unreasonable given that Cedric, in the end, saved them.
This is played in contrast to Amber who comes around more slowly. However, the thing that I felt would strike her is the *why* Cedric and Roland stopped being friends when she learns about that bit of history.
She thinks whatever her father decides is completely reasonable given that Cedric tried to take them over. She has no reason to question that.
However, to me, what would bother her/ what she would struggle with understanding is the separation between them in their youth.
I don’t think she would be able to understand a deep friendship like that being forced apart without the context that I doubt either Cedric or Roland would be willing give her at this stage.
So, she just goes on bewildered as to what possessed her father to just drop that friendship, and as her thoughts progress, why Cedric wouldn’t have fought harder for it after The Incident.
Amber and James have these questions/ come to these conclusions because they don’t have *context.* Cedric and Roland haven’t given it/ can’t give it to them.
The way I’ve chosen to write Cedric’s story is that there is a lot that has happened that no one knows because he was pushed out following The Incident. Therefore, he’s tentative to give his perspective because it’s so contrary to what people know and believe both about him and about history. And, after The Incident, he’s not used to having his “contrary perspective,” heard or believed about anything.
The way I’ve chosen to write Roland’s relationship with his father is not all that different from Rapunzel and Gothel. He spent a lot of his youth being taught what things were and weren’t following The Incident, and Roland I cut him off from contact with Baileywick, Tilly, and Cedric, leaving him in his own form of isolation. This has left Roland II to struggle with duty to his father’s legacy/ what he’s been taught is good and proper while also knowing what he wants for himself in his heart.
Hence, the pendulum swings between tentative acceptance of Cedric, as well as giving him back his job, and what we see in the episode “In Cedric We Trust.” It’s illogical, but it comes from a logical place.
Therefore, Roland II doesn’t really know *how* to explain much to anyone, besides Miranda who can read him like a book, because he’s caught in that war between what he knows and believes in his heart and what he’s been taught to believe in his youth.
Yet, even that takes a lot of time.
(In part, because there is an additional magical/ supernatural component that I’ve added to it for the sake of plot and metaphor and other storytelling stuff. But, also, because it just does take time to explain that you feel split down the middle sometimes between two conflicting voices in your head that don’t make sense. No matter how close you and your spouse unit happen to be.)
Going back to the characters that can read Cedric and Roland, there are some nuanced reasons as to why.
Winifred, being naturally gifted in prophecy, and having been close to both of them as boys, sees through them both easily. However, obviously, being Cedric’s mother, she’s going to be able to read him, and will side with him, more readily despite being able to see through and understand them both.
On the flip side, Baileywick is naturally gifted at reading people, and he also helped raise both Roland and Cedric. Though, things happened, and it was Roland who sort of ordered him back as his advisor when he became king. So, there’s sort of a debt owed there. But, regardless, he was close to both of them when they were young and, through that history, can read them both well.
Sofia just reads people well, and she has the benefit of being a kid which makes people let their guard down a little. I’ve seen it with my siblings towards my kid - people are way more honest with kids because kids are honest with them. So, she gets some of the softer and more open sides of both Cedric and Roland as well as having some of the same “folksy wisdom” her mother has, having grown up in the village.
Tilly has the benefit of almost having been both of Roland and Cedric’s confessor for a time. And, it’s through pure experience that she can read both of them. It’s why I like writing her a lot.
However, the reason Miranda gets to play as nuanced as she does is both because of, as I wrote in my notes once, her “common born common sense” as well as her ability to be diplomatic.
Roland is a great King in the sense that he knows what needs done, and he’s good at seeing it through (even if he’s prone to procrastination.) Roland is good at building his team. He knows who to surround himself with to get things finished, but he fawns in stress. Sometimes, you can hear a little edge of sarcasm in his voice when Magnus has hit his last nerve, and he’s trying harder and harder to keep playing it cool. Roland also doesn’t always seem to know how to get the best out of complex folks without a little nudge- like Andre, Gwen, and even Cedric at times.
However, Miranda brings out the side of him that is softer and less edgy. She enhances the side of him that isn’t trying to keep up appearances, and she sort of nudges him towards what he wants instead of what’s “perfectly proper.” I think of the way she has perfect comfortability with calling Baileywick part of the family - something Roland clearly feels based on action even if he can’t voice it in words. I specifically think of this in the Baileywhoops episode where they both tack onto each other’s arguments for Baileywick staying. It’s clear she knows that’s what Roland wants, and she’s willing to make the more obvious argument in stronger words to convince Baileywick to stay.
So, when I began to think about Miranda in the context of post-DotS, I realized that she would likely end up becoming the diplomat between Cedric and Roland, in certain ways. Having been ruled over, and growing to understand Cedric, Miranda begins to understand some of what Cedric was experiencing. However, she also understands Roland’s valid anger surrounding the situation because, you know, she was there and saw him go bat-shit.
But, again, being of the village, Miranda has a different understanding of like … how to handle that? In a certain way, she finds it easier once she realizes it wasn’t villainy and instead truly was a break in mind and heart and a sort of cry for community.
One of the things I’ve been getting into in the two fics I’ve been working on in tandem (one that’s almost done and takes place immediately following DotS and one that’s takes place in the hours/days following The Finale but is not as close to done) is this idea about what all the aftermath of The Incident actually wrought.
I wrote that Tilly knew Roland and Cedric were “good for each other” but no one, besides the two of them, and probably their mothers, really knew how close they actually were.
No one really knew how much they relied on each other.
Except, someone must have had some inclination because they split them up.
I just can’t imagine that being a choice either one of them actually made, at least initally.
I think they were split by force.
More on the deets of that as I write.
Cordelia drew closer to Goodwyn because he offered protection, but it came at the cost of who she was before.
She was no longer gentle, soft, or affectionate.
She became hard and gruff like Goodwyn is now.
Winifred mourns the loss of that “who Cordelia was.”
Prior to “In Cedric We Trust,” the question was more about “can we even have the awkwardness that existed before everything got screwed up?”
After “In Cedric We Trust,” I feel like there’s this crawl towards the “what was even before things were awkward.” There’s this movement towards a future in which there’s hope for gaining a new form of the old depth of trust, as opposed to the idea of there being any trust being in question.
Some of characters, namely Roland and Tilly, are learning faster/ have learned faster than others because they have had more stable supports on which to lean and learn how to overcome what they faced in their childhoods. (The shadow of their father, for Roland, and the struggle to fit in to the set expectations, for Tilly.)
Purely looking at Roland and Cedric, and where I think they are at the end of that episode, I think they’re in slightly different places.
For Roland, that instantaneous moment of realizing the fear of losing Cedric, Sofia or both, loss being a core fear for him, that puts everything into a wider perspective. Perspective that, I think, was likely already there at his core. (His struggle being primarily between what he felt was his duty and what he wanted in his heart.) Therefore, for Roland’s part, I think he’s ready for things to go back to normal, the way it was when they were seven. He’s just trying to convince Cedric, and show Cedric, that he is in the place to receive him.
But, for Cedric, I see this more as the beginning of a journey towards complete trust.
Cedric is still asking himself: How much can I say? How much can I let people in? How much of me do they really want?
In part, I think that’s because Cedric is afraid of himself. He’s afraid of losing control or hurting people. So, he’d rather keep himself at a distance even if the offer for more is there.
But, are there probably lingering fears and hurts on both sides even if Roland is more ready to be open?
I mean neither one of them has probably had a serious conversation with the other for 12, maybe even 17, or perhaps even 32, or more years. No matter how much they both may have wanted to at one point or another.
Are there probably more than a few secrets still kept between them?
But, are things moving towards who they were before?
Have I built in a decent bit of speculation about who Roland I was based on how many secrets Grandmum keeps from her children, how the kids view Grandmum vs how she actually is, how Tilly feels about herself in romantic relationships, and how Goodwyn was allowed to treat his children?
Do I think I’m wrong based on how attached Roland II is to his own children, his wife, and how close he keeps Baileywick as almost a second father (even and especially because he can’t say that out loud)?
People who are trying to break the cycle treat their kids like the world. Their love for their kids is f-ing primal. In a way, they are giving themselves all the things they wished they had but, like, in the good way.
In the, “I wish I had someone who listened to me and gave me stability and then let me be an adult who made my own choices without micromanaging me” way.
But, the happiest people also hide the most, and I think that’s kind of Roland’s mask.
He doesn’t let on because he just like grins through it.
Cedric doesn’t let on by eloping away from it.
(It’s so telling how he just poofs away into smoke during the pilot and first few episodes.)
Roland fawns. Cedric flees. (If we want to be technical.)
In many ways, maybe I picked up on/ played up on that because that’s how my brother and I deal with our problems?
He either fawns at them, and failing that, fights it.
I flee from it, and if I can’t flee, I try to fawn at it, and failing that I fight it. But, fighting it is usually me at a meltdown kicking and screaming because it’s my absolute last resort.
And, Roland’s fawning can sometimes look like dodging things. He’ll sort of skirt responsibility at times when he’s overwhelmed. He procrastinates.
But, bigger problems (see: Magnus, other dignitaries, and even Cedric’s situation at first) he usually tries to just pacify them. And, he lives a lot of his personal life by just sort of grinning through a lot of it.
It’s only when he’s really backed into a corner that he actively fights things and faces problems head on without just trying to dodge them with a diplomatic solution and/ or flattery.
And, that comes from somewhere. All of that is learned behavior.
In the same way Cedric’s flinching at sudden movements and noise is learned, in the same way Cedric’s need to flee is learned, so is Roland’s turning on a dime to try to pacify everyone in a room.
I created a place for that response to come from that made sense to me.
It also helped me make sense of why Cedric would be scapegoated/ black sheeped.
If you do that, Roland I and Goodwyn didn’t have to worry about their sons getting any bright ideas from each other.
Therefore, Cedric takes punishment and becomes the scapegoat for everyone’s problems and failures.
Roland is forced to shoulder all the responsibility of learning how to pacify two powerful adult men whose moods change like the weather.
If they collaborate, they’re both punished and they both fail.
Where do I get this idea from?
It says volumes that Cordelia won’t let anyone see how she really looks. Her 5-7(ish) year old daughter has never, in her working memory, seen her mother without a wig. Think about that.
It says volumes that Tilly’s first thought was that Bartleby and the knights were joking about being in love with her instead of struggling to express their feelings due to their own insecurities. Those thoughts come from somewhere.
Also, the way Roland looks at Bartleby as he confesses his love to Tilly says so much. Court rumors likely could have been vile and, even with his status as prince, without support, what could he really do? So, to finally see it refuted? God, that must have felt great.
It says volumes that Roland was told a completely different law than what was actually written, and believed in what he was told enough that he never thought to look up or check for the original law.
It says volumes how much Cedric flinches physically when people come near him and that he, often, won’t accept touch or return it. It also says a lot that even the simplest appreciation and praise touches him so deeply. He almost doesn’t believe he’s someone people could ever be proud of even if he plays it off as though people “should” recognize him.
All four of those kids, now adults, were lied to, and they are still learning how to undo the knots of those lies.
There’s a lot Miranda does that leads to her subtly entering that “diplomat” state in the fic I’m almost done with. Things come up, and she chooses to just do what needs done because she knows if she doesn’t do what she chooses to do Roland will feel guilty. And for reasons that are not entirely inside the realms of the natural, as in non-magical, Roland is incapable of performing the tasks that Miranda chooses to do for him himself.
And, to me, it speaks not only to the security in their relationship should she have read him wrong, but it also speaks to how well she knows him. Because, later on, when they finally have a free minute to put their heads together about the pieces of the timeline of Cedric’s life they’ve collected over the course of the fics in progress and “Someone to Fall Back On,” she ends up being exactly right about saving Roland from a lot of guilt by her choices.
Miranda is the best thing to happen to Roland, in general as well as in my sort of canon-based expansions. I will die on that hill.
I’ve spent so much time. SO MUCH TIME. Developing distinct cultural differences between Village life and Royal life.
It’s the nuance in perspective that makes them good for each other, and it’s Miranda’s “folksy wisdom” and practicality that ends up bringing out the best in a lot of characters she encounters in canon and what I’ve extrapolated upon from canon.
(Especially with the staff. Some of my favorite bits have been writing the conversations with Violet and Miranda, and Mme Colette telling Miranda about her childhood.)
But, yeah, this is part character analysis, part a couple of episode analysis, but mostly an insight into my notebook.
I’ve been super busy and haven’t been writing much lately. And, yet, I also feel like I haven’t been doing much of anything?
But, I’ll end on this thought to bring it back to my thought on how I got to some of the conclusions I did in “Someone to Fall Back On” -
In a certain way, to me, the healing of the rift in the ground in “In Cedric We Trust” is far deeper than just the relationship between Cedric and Roland.
That rift is about the destruction of all the relationships that were torn apart by the adults in the lives of Roland and Cedric’s generation who chose justice over mercy, who chose looks over love, and who chose propriety over family.
The healing is about choosing complete and total forgiveness where none was modeled in their youth.
It’s about Roland choosing to enter on his own path completely outside of his father’s legacy in choosing to be merciful instead of “strict,” and Cedric to step into the open arms of love freely offered instead of living in the fear of failure his father set in him.
It’s about the future the two of them will build for their charges as well as the Kingdom in their care - side by side - having healed a rift that was not necessarily created by their pride, but that they have to repair all the same.
