#fic: strings

[rainwaterapothecary]

s ame sAME same

[rainwaterapothecary]

nuuuuuuu thats gaaaay *buries blushing face in hands*

[kenjiandcompany]

Good evening! Do you think you could tell us about Strings!Jean and Marco's upbringings? Maybe how they were as people, and/or some of their favorite or least favorite things growing up?

Ooo excellent question!

Jean’s upbringing...wasn’t always easy.  His parent’s marriage was rocky pretty much right from the get-go (he was born 8 months after the wedding, and they married in the 90s, a time when landing a rich husband and getting the fuck out of France would sound MIGHTY appealing to a young Romani woman.)  That said, he’s SUPER tight with his mother, Mirielle, and always has been.  Jean coming out when he was 15 or so threw her for a loop, but it didn’t take long for Mirielle to get her head on straight and boot his dad the hell out of the house.  After that, Jean’s life rebounded a LOT, and was much happier and healthier with just him and his mom.  He’ll happily name her as the best part of his early life.  he also got to spend a lot of time in Southeastern France (and before that, Switzerland) where his grandparents live. 

Both Marco’s parents worked at the American embassy in Brussels, Belgium, and Marco lived in the embassy until he was 13.  He absolutely loved it, even if he got in trouble a fair bit for trying to follow Secret Service officers around watching them do their jobs.  Fun fact: his mother gave birth in the infirmary at the embassy, which is legally American soil, making him a fully naturalized American citizen even though he was born in Brussels.  Marco was a SUPER friendly, outgoing, gregarious kid, which meant he could get away with murder (and being caught in restricted areas of a very secure government building.)  His disastrous first assignment as a CIA agent really took the edge off his personality,and it took him a long time to find his way back to it.  

[kenjiandcompany]

Hello! Sorry for bothering you but I read your fic strings last week and I have to say it is by far one if the best fics I've read lately, tbh I couldn't stop thinking about it days after I finished reading. i stalked your strings tag for a bit and I saw you mention that you're planning on writing a sequel or spin off from annie and armins point of view and I wanted to ask wether or not your still planning on writing it? I really hope I didn't bother you! Have a nice day!

Hi! I'm so glad you enjoyed it! Unfortunately the sequel is on the backburner for the forseable future.  I'm in grad school and life has gotten crazy busy, and I wanted to try out some new stylistic techniques in the sequel, but I just haven't had the time or the energy I need to do something experimental like that justice.  It's still bouncing around in the back of my head, but don't hold your breath for anything soon...I might write some oneshots one day.

Thanks so much for reading, I'm really glad you enjoyed it!!

[kenjiandcompany]

Strings!Marco meets LL!Marco. What do they talk about?

"Wait, so your Eren is...is straight?"

"Well I'm not sure I'd call him my  Eren, but yeah. Near as I can tell."

"Like straight.  As in not into guys straight."

"I think I heard him say he'd go for David Tennant once"

"Huh.  Huh."

"You uh...you okay there?"

"Huh."

"Did you see where Jean got to?"

"Not after he tried to brain me with a pre-law textbook, no..."

[kenjiandcompany]

Strings, 1 and 12 ^^

[Fic-questions meme, Strings Edition]

1. What was my inspiration for this fic? How did it come to me?

Strings actually had a very specific inspiration: this piece of fanart by an extremely talented artist, yildraws

Beyond just how stupid-sexy Marco looks in a dark suit, there were a couple things about this that really grabbed me -Marco with his arm around Jean, cradling his head, and the oh no I fell in love with my bodyguard. And then Yil's comments on the original post:

modern AU in which Jean is a cocky socialite/heir to some big-name company and falls in love with Marco who is his bodyguard ＼(・ω・)／ －！

or maybe Marco is actually a secret agent/spy assigned with a mission to dig up the company’s dirty secrets but somehow ended up falling for Jean instead

either way it still plays out like a bad/cliche action movie yehA

Bodyguard? Spy? WHY NOT BOTH?  I'm an avowed fan of pulp action a la James Bond and The Raid, so right from the get-go I started out with a goal in mind of checking off every pulp-action cliche I could think of.  This eventually influenced those goofy-ass "tune in next week" teasers I was forever retconning as I split chapters, and some of the broader pulp elements of the plot (the villain keeping severed fingers in a jar as a trophy, the sexy bodyguard with the bullet wound, 'did he let go or did he fall', etc.)  The summer I started writing Strings I was doing fieldwork monitoring a bunch of beehives spread over four goddamn counties in Horrifyingly Rural Iowa, and about once a week I was out by myself driving 10 hour loops through cornfields checking hives blasting Poets of the Fall, so I had a lot of time to sit around dreaming up the more convoluted plot elements

12. Did any thing about this fic’s reception surprise me?

Well we could start with the fact it had a reception...I've never really been involved in a fandom before snk, and my two previous fics (likewise written late that summer) were ReinerxConnie - a tiny tiny little ship and oddball otp of my heart.  So 300 hits seemed like a ton, to say nothing of the 35000 Strings is currently sitting on.  To this day I can only burble in confused gratitude.

More specifically...after The Train chapter, I was surprised and kind of happy to see the main reaction was not 'poor Marco' (although there was plenty of that), but poor  Armin.  Granted, I had the expectations of canon to play on, but it's a good feeling to see that kind of sympathy for your villain.  Granted, he was a screamingly insane borderline psychopathic manipulator with extremely murderous intent, but under that he was also very much a sensitive genius perpetually arrested in the mental state of a furious, grieving teenager, and I'm glad that came across.  

[remayor]

1)Read Strings, by Kenjiandco

2) Fall in love with Bodyguard AU Marco

[rebels-scum]

Well, I'm on chapter six And all them feels are already here Fantastic