What I Don’t Have (is what you are made of) - On the Endments
~this note contains spoilers for Chapter 5 (kind of?)~
I think these should be mandatory viewing for every Stay. Really truly I do. I have never been cracked open like I was watching those endments for the first time.
But I’m not going to write you a novel about them.
I just want to point out that I’ve lifted the quotes word for word from the live translations of those ments. I only changed things ever so slightly just to make the grammar make more sense. I thought they were perfectly heart breaking with no help from me. (I almost cried while transcribing them)
Best,
Lover Boi
P.S. hmmmm what on earth could be in this very uninteresting google doc? Nothing related to the endments of course...
What I Don’t Have (is what you are made of) - Notes on the timeline
~this note is spoiler free until the pictures. Then its all spoilers~
Here’s a horrifying insight to my writing process: until chapter 9 I did not have a proper timeline. I’d looked at the maniac tour schedule and was using that as a rough guideline, but other than that we were working on hopes, prayers, and vibes. The even funnier truth is that I didn’t make the timeline until I had the horrifying realisation that someday people were hopefully going to read this and some of them might care if the timeline didn’t make sense.
Another fun side note is that after the interviews I had pretty much no outline and just ploughed forward with blind ambition trying to get these two idiots to kiss and trusting that they eventually would. I’ve added a picture under the cut of my ‘outline’ if you can even call it that. So yeah. No real timeline, and no real outline, just vibes.
So to make the timeline I opened up the fic doc and took a million notes of every scene I’d written so far. I also noted any time indicators I made in the fic either to a specific date (‘about two weeks later’, ‘I've been here a month now’, ect) and fixed dates (start of the tour, specific locations ect). Then, like the corporate nerd I am, I turned all that information into a spreadsheet, pulled up a calendar, pulled up the maniac tour dates, sent up some prayers to the patron gods of fic writing, and went at it.
To my relief, while it’s a bit creative, the timeline works. I had to push the Oddinary release back a bit from when it happens in real life to make sense with when Y/N started, and I had to change a few of my time indicators in the fic, but other than that I was able to keep all other big fixed dates the same (aka tour dates and maxident release). And honestly I think it makes more sense then it has any right to considering I figured it out after I wrote it.
I will say that I do play with ‘cannon’ a bit, not all events happen exactly when they did irl, and not everything is the exact same. So consider this like a split in the timeline, this is the universe where Oddinary comes out early and Y/N exists. It’s funny that I feel like I need to say that, it’s a fanfic for fucks sake. But anytime I write ‘canon compliant’ anything I worry some bastard is going to go through my fic with a fine comb and go ‘um actually, that’s not what happened!’. So this is me saying: I KNOW, I made artistic choices to make the best story possible. If you want a pure timeline of events go read a calendar.
Sorry, probably unlikely you’re one of those people if you’re reading this, I just really needed to say it.
Anyway… back on track. Really this timeline was just more for my peace of mind than anything else. While writing I felt it was mostly important the reader felt the passage of time and the development during it, not exact dates. And I think I achieved that.
But I’m vain and I did all this work so here you go. Screenshots of my insane ass notes and spreadsheet for your reference.
Final notes before the screen shots:
1. Non fixed dates are approximate. Like they can move probably a few days in either direction and be fine. Sometimes I just had to pick something.
2. SPOILERS INCOMING! If you haven’t finished the fic yet, maybe don’t keep scrolling, cus my notes def contain vague spoilers. Or I guess if angst stresses you out and you want to spoil yourself, go for it!
3. As I write this note I have not written the entire epilogue yet, and have some plans to change scenes, so don’t take this as gospel. It’s a picture of a living document. And also internal notes so sorry bout typos!
Image 1: All I had as an outline after the interviews… you’ll notice it’s very different then where we ended up!
Image 2: my illegible first notes of the scenes when I decided to figure out the timeline
