You should know that since reading Deep End 'Dancing in the Dark' by Bruce Springsteen has been perpetually playing in my head. He came to my city a year or two ago and I kinda just shrugged while everyone went crazy but now I get it. Now I understand
ahhh this makes me so happy!!!! :'') if you're ever in the market for springsteen recs, i very highly recommend listening to the entire born to run album (in order) and the entire born in the usa album!!! very great starting points imo. born in the usa is home to dancing in the dark 💗💗
Hi !!
I hope it's not too late for love letters pertaining to Deep End ahah. I'm super in love with your prose and your pacing and the amount of one-liners that have been saved to my notes app is honestly impressive. It's funny, I started reading to take a break from trying to plot a fic that was going nowhere, trying to find inspiration for how to write Enjolras (I don't see nearly enough of his POV in ExR fics, which breaks my heart because I love him dearly, but I'm starting to understand how it can be a struggle to characterise him well) and found exactly what I was looking for here. Also, I'm not from Paris but I commend you for doing research on the setting, I felt like a weirdo researching the public transport system so I'm glad I'm not alone lmfao. Sorry I chickened out of commenting on every chapter lol. But consider my face held ^^
Anyways, I also wanted to ask if there was ever a moment you considered not giving Enj and R their happy ending ?? For a second there, I really thought they weren't gonna get together (which, in all honesty, could've been a meaningful ending too imo, but that might just be the part of me that enjoys the heartache). God knows those two tried so hard and deserved the win but holy shit they were such a mess. On the other hand, it would've been a little evil if Cosette got her cute fluffy polycule meanwhile Enjolras and Grantaire get stuck with the 'it's never over'/'she got away' lolol
But yeah, just wanted to show my appreciation ^^ going to read the Christmas fic soon, I'm excited !!
oh my gosh hiiiiii. first of all i'm sorry it's taken me a bit of time to answer this, this message is so nice that i honestly kept looking away from my screen every time i tried to read it. let's not read into this at all <3 i'm gonna answer this beneath the cut because even now, almost a full year since i started posting it, i am still patently incapable of being brief about deep end.
it will never be 'too late' for love letters for deep end 🫶🏻 your kind words genuinely mean so much to me. and please don't apologize for not commenting on every chapter! i haven't responded to your comments yet but i have read them (multiple times) and i seriously cherish them. it makes me so happy that you read it and cared so much about it 💓
enjolras is very hard to characterize imo! i honestly have several different versions of him in my head depending on the general AU - some of the fun with him is how he can be changed in new situations. very fun for me. deep end was actually mainly an exercise in his characterization: i wanted to write a version of him that beat the marble statue allegations. i wish you good luck and lots of inspiration with your fic 🫶🏻 you're always welcome to message me about it if you wanna talk it out!!
(a sidenote on researching paris: genuinely an embarrassing amount of research went into this fic, and i used very little of it. i spent weeks using my extremely limited knowledge of the french language to read metro maps, syllabi for universities in paris, descriptions of all the arrondissements, restaurant menus, i was on parisian websites looking at apartments for rent, researching departments in the city government, train schedules, maps to other towns... just generally so much. and almost none of it appears in the fic. lmao.)
as for the ending: i always knew i intended for e&r to end up together. i love angst and psychologically torturing characters and, my personal favorite, making people say the worst possible things they can say to one another, but i also love a happy ending. i mean, i love a good tragedy, but when i'm writing, i like to write a happy ending. especially when the characters have really fought and suffered and grown. it feels like a reward, for the characters and for the readers and for me. maybe it makes me a mushy hopeless romantic, idk. a lot of writing for me is exorcising demons via fictional characters, so giving them a happy ending is a way of giving myself a happy ending. does that make sense? probably not. but it is what it is.
that said, i do have a wip (theoretically) that ends tragically. assuming that i, you know, actually write it one day. anything is possible but let's not hold our breaths on that one.
all this to say that no, there was never any moment where i considered not letting enj & r end up together. i like writing fucked-up people who are in fucked-up love and do and say fucked-up things to each other, who are flawed and are never going to be 'fixed,' and still have a chance at a happy ending so long as they choose it.
sorry for writing twelve billion words in response. unfortunately i continue to be on my victor hugo slay. thank you again for all your kind words 🫂🫂
