So there were two reviews in the reblogs for The Boy Who Found Fear At Last that I wanted to respond to, but I didn't want to spoil for anyone that didn't read the last chapter, and worked killed me over the weekend, so I'm doing them now. Spoilers for the last chapter behind the cut!
ohgeeogie said: i take it back.
yes.
also the voice is rashena and she is like the mad voice of reason and seriously she needs to get out of that locket and beat the shit out of pitch it needs to happen
if it isn’t for real I will be crying but also jesus christ NORTH
and also JACK, but there isn’t a capslock or boldface or italicization of his name that can properly express the many, many, many, emotions I have for him at this point in the story and seriously—even with what’s happened at this point, I’m still wondering what will happen for the last few chapters if this fic runs as long as KoCM.
There’s honestly so much I want to say, and I think I’m gonna have to hold it out for a proper review in the future, but I mean this sincerely, guys—You three who run GoSU like some three-headed author Cerberus thing that drinks from a shot glass of eyeball-produced saltwater—this has been one hell of a ride.
---
Haha, not talking about the voice yet. You will see. In the last chapter, all will be made clear. As for Jack, well, he's not okay right now and getting okay is more a journey than a destination you can teleport yourself to. You're going to see a struggle just as difficult - and just as brave - as him surviving the maze.
We've got the shotglasses ready. The ones we fill with eyeball water.
Also, North still owes Baba Yaga a challenge...
--
pkpixel said: That was AMAZING!!! OhMyGosh! AUGH! I just-I can’t even-I’m still reeling from the emotional backlash of it. I wish I was as good of a writer as you all so I could properly put into words just how horrifically terrific this chapter (and entire story) is. I was actually cringing and almost squirming at parts and at one point even closed my browser, haha. But that ending! Oh man! You were right when you said this was a different take on Dark!Jack. It completely caught me off guard (seriously, I gasped and everything ;-P). I want to gush over this some more but I don’t want to spoiler other readers. Fantastic work you guys. Thanks so much for sharing this! :-D
--
You have no idea how psyched we are that we surprised people with that. No idea. We were kind of making use of the fact that other stories that go in other directions exist though, but hey, sometimes that's what makes a good story. Reacting to other stories out there and putting a new twist on something.
We really see two of Jack's strongest qualities being resilience and compassion - because without those, he wouldn't have survived those three hundred years alone intact. And he was more than intact - he was kind to kids, he took joy in their joy, he tried to bring happiness and wasn't bitter towards anyone, just bitter at his situation (and Manny). If he could go three hundred years alone and still love the kids, we figured that he was the type that might be strong enough to go more time alone, in darker circumstances, and still hold onto that. We tested that in this chapter and while he's not okay, we figured that Jack just isn't the kind of person that could be happy causing misery to innocents - and in the end, that's what makes him a Guardian. The fact that the only thing he wants to give them is joy and the safety that allows them to have it.
In the end, his compassion and the ability to be resilient enough to hold on to it when he was hurting was what saved him. The part that took the most daring, that was hardest for him to muster up, was actually more believing he deserved better. That was the part he'd been damaged enough to wonder about. But he was never going to hurt those kids and that's actually where Pitch lost him. The moment he started talking about that eternal dark and how Jack would be the ONLY happiness they had? That was where Jack got his groove back.
Because ain't nobody going to take away all the joy they deserve to have.
This is a long and wonderful review so I'm going to give it a nice, meaty response.
Under the cut because I don't want to torture my followers. SPOILERS for those that haven't read the chapter yet but may want to.
As far as the funny bits, I'm glad you got some funny out of it, and I'm really glad you enjoyed Lal's stubbornness. We wanted to have her just give hints of herself in the background and then show surprising strength and badassery at the end. Initially we considered having Jem save the day but we figured that would be kind of predictable, and we also wanted to play with some ideas floating around in the fandom.
A lot of this fic really tackles our feelings on villains like Pitch and how we disagree with a subset of the fandom about him. We have a lot of sympathy for him and even more for who he was, so we wanted to have this character who basically loves him have to be the one that takes him down. She's one of his best friends and really loves him and she's just floating there quietly in the background, and when he turns, she has these complicated feelings for him. We figured with Pitch, if the fearlings were working on his psyche, it was unlikely they tricked him just once and he fell for it, especially if he was this seasoned general, so that meant he had to have been dealing with their messing with him for a while. And that also meant that he must not have gotten help for it or told anyone it was wearing on him.
So she's angry that he didn't reach out for help and despises what he is now, but still loves who he was and wishes she could save it.
And then at the end, she does what she needs to do. That's what we wanted to put a lot of emphasis on because we've seen a lot of people in fandom criticize the Guardians for coming down on Pitch because they feel Pitch brought something kids need in the form of caution but that's not really the character we're presented with in the movie. He wants fear to the point of detriment and it's rooted in selfishness. He did have to be stopped and he did hurt people enough for them to be angry to the point of hurting him back (i.e, Tooth punching him), but at least stopped before they caused real harm.
So we wanted to show how even someone that loved him had to do what she had to and she's not so different from the Guardians - she had a duty just like they do.
And sorry I got off on a tangent there, but I'm really glad you enjoyed that bit with her kind of going "lolnope" and not letting him have power over her, because it wasn't as if she wasn't afraid or hurt by that but she was fighting past it, and fighting past her own feelings of not wanting to hurt him to do the right thing. She was willing to fight past her fear to save others, willing to damage her own heart to save whole worlds, and that is the very heart of courage and heroism to us. So I'm super glad you enjoyed that.
Now as for how engaged we've gotten you, I am really thrilled about that. When people say we've made them think or cry or fall right off their seats or that they have so many feelings they need to take time to process them after each chapter, it blows our minds. It's so heartening to hear because we really want to do that with all our writing. We're really hoping our original writing engages people that way as well, especially since we have so many important ideas we want to imbue our writing with about love, compassion, courage, and doing the right thing. To hear that we have you invested means that someday maybe we can get people invested in stories about being kind, maybe we can get them invested in stories about finding their strength and loving themselves as people, so we're always so glad to hear that. This fic series is kind of our practice run at entertaining people over a long period and keeping them engaged in a story and it's does our hearts glad to hear it's doing just that.
In regards to the speculation, keep speculating. A lot of loose ends will tie up at the end and have meaning. Just like the sword and the music box meant something later in the story, some of the things planted in these chapters will lead up to something further along in the story.
And Zastruga and "Broken Glass" are definitely big inspirations behind this story. This is sort of our response to some of the ideas that show up in a lot of Dark!Jack fics, because we're the kind of storytellers that see ideas and always have the urge to try doing them our own way and seeing if we can come up with something new. I haven't been able to read all of Zastruga because of personal reasons and it hitting too close to home on some things. In fact, those same reasons are making writing the next chapter in TBWFFAL very difficult for me even though I have more control in that situation. But what I did read of it was very painful and powerful and wonderfully written and so was Broken Glass.
We wanted to strike similar notes but also have things resolve a very different way because we love taking something and putting our own spin on it, so be prepared to get even more dark star stuff flung from that black hole. Our resolution to this is going to be very different from anything I've seen in Dark!Jack fics so far. Mind, I may have missed a fic that went the direction we're going, but to my knowledge, the resolution we're giving this situation hasn't popped up anywhere else yet.
And there will be a resolution and while you can't see how how things will be okay in the end, that's pretty much the point of the story. Sometimes, when people are lost in the dark, they can't see that light at the end of the tunnel, but it's there. I was telling Kate the other day, that part of why I love writing stories that dip this dark, that have someone tearing someone else's mind apart is to show that sometimes it is possible to put it back together again.
I'm endlessly fascinated with how sometimes when someone's mind is thrown into chaos, there's still some calm center in their middle of their psyche that quietly lives and pulls all the shattered parts of themselves in as if it has a gravitation pull. That little ball of dust just pulls all the little broken bits in, all that empty matter, and it turns into a star, like when the sun formed at the beginning of the solar system. It turns into something powerful and bright and beautiful and life-giving.
That's what stories like this are to me, ones about little life-giving stars inside people's minds being born despite the efforts of other people to reduce everything to entropy. Sometimes, some people are able to turn all that nothing into one of the most beautiful things in existence, with little planets dancing around it that are the other amazing parts of themselves or the beautiful things they put out into the world.
As someone who dealt with things like abuse, mental illness, bullying, etc. etc. and was lost in the dark for quite some time, it's important to me to tell that story because I think it can help some people believe in it long enough to pull everything together and make those little suns in themselves. Sometimes it helps people hold on long enough that they can shine. Not all of them can and the ones that can't deserve to be grieved for and considered brave for holding out as long as they could and trying as hard as they did to save themselves but for some, just knowing there can be a light at the end of the tunnel can help.
So it's an important narrative to me, which is why it's shown up here. This is our practice at it for creating original stories with it.
So I'm glad you're wondering if it can get better, because we need people to wonder, we need it feel like all hope is lost, because that's the best way to show that sometimes when all hope seems lost, it's still there.
Thanks for your wonderful review. We mostly write for ourselves out of a love for writing, but it's important that our stories resonate with people, especially since we're using some of them as practice for original ones. The feedback from you guys is really helping us figure out what works and what doesn't, so that later on, hopefully we can drag people kicking and screaming (and possibly occasionally crying) into good stories that make them think and feel.
Sorry--I know that it's got to be annoying to get asks like this--but how goes chapter four?
It’s, uh, it’s gettin’ there. Though, since we’re at like 43 pages we miiight be dividing it into two chapters and keep one on reserve for a month so we have a buffer. We’re pretty close to done so we’re going to aim for posting on October 1st if we can, though no guarantees.
Don't mind me, I've just been through 30 pages of your blog and am now addicted. But I've seen some of your fanfic and I've been wondering: do you have any general writing tips in regards to motivation/characterization/higher word count?
Eehehe, I’m glad you’re enjoying my blog!
I’m also flattered that you’d ask me for advice, but I don’t know if I could really help, but here are my thoughts on the things you mentioned:Motivation: If you have an idea, write it down. If you don’t have an idea, find one. Finding ideas can be hard, and sometimes not all ideas work as well on paper as you might hope. A lot (most of) my ideas come from music. It’s a bit of a game of mine, to listen to a song (usually but not always instrumental) with a few characters in mind and think: if I were watching a movie about these characters and this song was in the soundtrack, what would they be doing/thinking while this song was playing? A lot of times, I can link one song to another, and another, and a single scene or idea can domino into a huge story in my head. It’s kinda fun, because you don’t have to start writing and rely on words at first. You can imagine it all in your head, which is a lot of fun and infinitely less work.Characterization: Relates to the above. If you’re going to write a character correctly, you have to make sure that what they’re doing/saying is actually them. A useful to for me to is to imagine, really picture this character doing/saying this thing. Like, put it into a movie, and have ‘other people’ (imagined, of course) who know this character watch it in your head. Could they believe it? Does the character look right? Sound right? Using the right vocabulary? Also, reading dialog aloud is really helpful, especially if the character has an accent. Use the accent as you read - does it work well? Is there a word choice you could change to more fit something they would actually say?
One other thing that I find helpful but may actually be harmful if taken the wrong way: Throw a dash of yourself into every character. And I don’t mean actually give them your vocabulary, your thoughts, etc, because they all have their own motivations/emotions/personalities, etc. What I mean is, remember that your characters are human. They have to act human. Even the baddest of baddies has human characteristics. Your job is to find them and work them into your story. Your most immediate and intimate conception of what a human being is is yourself, so imagine yourself in the position of a character, and you’ll have at least a better idea of how they might act - no matter if you’re working with a hero or a villain. Unfortunately, I find characterization largely intuitive, not objective, so there’s not too much I can tell you.
Higher word count: Okay, imma have to stop you right there. Higher word count is not, should never be the goal in writing. Unless you’re turning in an essay for a class that you don’t really care about, you should never be preoccupied with how many words are on the page. If anything, the fewer words, the better. There is such a thing as too few words, but there is definitely such a thing as too many. The latter mistake is easier to make, I think, and I fall prey to it all the time.
In the end, how many words you have in your chapter/story/page/whatever does not matter so much as this: where you able to get the idea, the picture across as precisely and concisely as possible?Precise and concise: As many details as you care to make in as few words as you can manage. It’s a challenge, but if you succeed, the results are both growing and freeing.I should add at this point, some of the best, most compelling, and memorable stories I’ve read are also the shortest. Short books can be some of the very best books.So I’m sorry that I can’t give you advice on how to write more words, because I think really anyone can do that, but if you want to havemore valuable words, just remember, precise and concise.
Still, I cannot pretend to adhere to most of this advice because I’m just an amateur who does this for fun. I may sound like I know what I’m talking about, (or maybe I don’t, I dunno) but I’m giving as much advice to myself as I am to you, because I’m still trying to grow as a writer, too.
Thanks for sending me a message! It was great hearing from you, and very fun to respond to! (in all honesty, I hadn’t given any of these topics a whole lot of thought before you asked - answering was very enlightening for me)
Do you guys ever review/critique/comment on fics sent to you if asked?
Hello! Thanks for the ask!
So after discussing this some, we've decided that if anyone wants to send us fics to offer our opinion on, we will gladly look over them. However, we will respond back privately, as we'd like to keep those answers between us and the author. If we enjoy the fic enough, we will add it to the blog!
