(From Phantasmagoria, since I love this story, especially the limited perspective we saw of the Paladins reacting to Pidge's fear :D ) "Her legs are shaking and she’s tired and her heart is thudding painfully and the stench of decay is foul in her nose and tastes awful on her tongue and her vision is blurred with terror but she runs. “Pidge, wait—no, Pidge, don’t—PIDGE! STOP NOW!” "
(posting the full paragraph for context)The things keep coming, and there’s no way out. They swarm, but Pidge can’t go back. It’s back there. Waiting. Hungry. She doesn’t know what she’s doing any more. She just runs because she’s terrified, and she doesn’t know what else to do, and stopping means death. Her legs are shaking and she’s tired and her heart is thudding painfully and the stench of decay is foul in her nose and tastes awful on her tongue and her vision is blurred with terror but she runs. “Pidge, wait—no, Pidge, don’t—PIDGE! STOP NOW!”Man, so this was a FUN one to write. The whole thing, really, but this is a great sample of terror thinking. Basically the more panicked somebody is, the less concise their thoughts are. They don’t speak (or think) in perfect sentences anymore; they’re either short, choppy, and repetitive, or long and rambling and stream of consciousness. At the same time, senses are heightened due to that fight or flight response, and people notice a lot of little things they never would in a normal situation. Pidge is at the absolute height of terror here, and at this point the spores are doing their work. So she’s not even capable of thinking clearly anymore, everything is just primal fear, primal fear, and more primal fear, built up worse due to the input from her five senses that are lying to her. And that was super fun to show, especially in a character like Pidge, where thinking clearly is one of the things she does best, even in panic scenarios. Shiro’s call at the end there was fun, because it was real interesting to weave in an entire side story going on that Pidge isn’t ever aware of. You as the reader know all those italicized conversations are the others speaking in her helmet, and you as the reader know they can hear every panicked scream and plead for help she makes, but Pidge herself isn’t aware of that at all. So it was real interesting to show everyone else’s reactions in what they say, so you can pick up juuuust enough to know what’s going on externally but not enough to know for sure. Especially when the characters are trying to speak to her and she doesn’t hear them. There’s quite a few situations when Shiro’s trying to comfort or call to Pidge in this fic, especially when she calls for Shiro specifically, but it doesn’t work. But this call here was the most interesting. Because this is what Shiro sees, from his point of view: this palace is old and rotting and falling apart. He’s jetpack-climbed up to the top of the palace because Coran suggested Pidge is up higher than him. He gets to a massive balcony overlooking the main entrance foyer, probably a place where the old royalty would go to be visible but apart. He sees Pidge come pelting out of a hallway at the very top at full speed, but she doesn’t listen to him, and is running straight for the balcony. She’s going as fast as she can towards a 10-story plummet and is out of her mind with fear and hasn’t been responding to any of them. Cue horrified realization that if he doesn’t stop her right there, she’s going to throw herself off the edge and fall to her death, probably without even realizing the danger. But she doesn’t listen, so that’s when he ends up tackling her and holding her still until he can get her to recognize him. Man. Phantasmagoria is STILL one of my favorites, even 22 fics in.Get the DVD Commentary on a passage of your choice from my work!
