Top 5 scenes you've written?
oh damn. I’ve written. a lot of scenes. Trying to think of a way to narrow this down and maybe I’ll do “that I wrote in the past year”?
1. The scene between Loki and Odin in “Life in Reverse.” This was...I don’t actually think that I knew this one was coming ahead of time. I knew I was going to have to deal with Thor - I don’t remember thinking about how I was going to deal with Frigga and Odin. But when I got there, it was clear I had to have some kind of reckoning there.
And when I was thinking about how it was going to go, how I wanted to resolve that messy fucked up tangle, it was suddenly very, very clear to me what I needed to do. So much of “Life in Reverse” was about Loki defining himself apart from Asgard, and apart from his family, and finding a new foundation when everything was ripped away.
And while I could have tried to bring them back together...in the context of this fic, the most powerful thing I could have Loki do was say “I don’t need you to validate me anymore” and walk away.
2. The second scene between Lymond and Gabriel in “gather frankincense.” I had so much fun writing this fic, no matter how much of a labor it was. The referntiality! The hostile banter! The tension, sexual and otherwise! And I ended up being really pleased with how it turned out, too. I am stupid proud of myself for writing this fic and how it turned out, so sue me.
3. The scene in “Will to Live” when Thor gets back from leaving the first time. This was one of those scenes that almost wrote itself. I think it was the rawness of the emotion that did it - the way it’s Loki with everything stripped away, as in so much of this fic. It’s a Loki without his walls, without his control, broken down to a very basic place of fear and loneliness and desperation, and it really...it’s part of Thor’s ongoing reckoning with just how bad the situation is, for Loki.
And also it just made me emotional, and a lot of my favorite scenes that I’ve written are the ones that make me emotional.
4. The waterfall scene in “into the light of a dark black night.” I still don’t know if I like this fic quite as much as “blackbird singing in the dead of night” but easily the last scene is my favorite part of it, and I do feel like it’s a strong ending. There are a lot of pieces to it, and I feel like...hmm. Often I think I go too explicit with things, make things too obvious, and the point of this little series in general and this bit in particular is to leave things more as suggestions than statements.
I’m not sure how it worked, but the mental image of Loki diving over the edge of the waterfall is one that is very clear in my head.
5. The scene with the Grandmaster losing his temper in “making love with his ego.” I was very proud of this ending. I talked to @led-lite while I was writing this fic debating whether I was going to go with a downer ending or try to land on something hopeful - she recommended the former, and I’m glad I did. I think this particular fic is stronger that way.
But this scene was...I really wanted to see what would happen if the Grandmaster lost control, because I wasn’t actually sure what it was going to look like almost until I started writing it. And the arc of the whole scene - Loki’s building toward his ultimate denial of the Grandmaster’s wishes, through the Grandmaster’s unleashing his rage and then switching back to acting like Loki just threw a temper tantrum...
I just feel really good about it, and while there’s a little bit after at the end that is important, this scene is really one of the core ones of that whole fic, and it was really fun to play with a new dimension of the Grandmaster that I don’t often explore.
