For the fanfic ask game, a. For precious things and f.? <3
A: How did you come up with the title to [insert fic]?
precious things is the title of my favorite tori amos song, and when i set out to write the fic and was thinking about victor’s childhood and the song is just like. i don’t know. big mood. in the second verse, among some of the song’s other traumatizing stuff … tori sings about getting discovered, for those unfamiliar with her work it’s worth noting that she’s prodigy levels of talented on piano and that breaking into the music business was ridiculously difficult, and so i think victor would empathize with that? (’he said you’re really an ugly girl / but i like the way you play / and i died / but i thanked him / can you believe that sick / holding on to his picture / dressing up every day’) maybe physical appearance isn’t something he’s had a problem with, but he’s certainly been someone people have grafted ideas onto.
that and it’s just. an incredibly stormy sounding song and it sounds to me the way victor’s head must feel on his bad days. also: i knew i was going to be doing a lot of music throwback in those early chapters, and because of his androgyny i really liked the idea of making him into female singer-songwriter types, so out there somewhere in precious things canon is a victor who has a playlist full of tori amos, ani difranco, fiona apple, portishead, etc. all the chapter titles are taken from tori lyrics.
F: Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.
christophe in ch. 19 of silver splendour, which i won’t go into a ton of detail here in regards to the circumstances precisely because spoilers, but this is the key dialogue line:
“Before I do this,” Christophe said, looking up at Viktor, “I want you to ask yourself one question. Tell me now that you believe he’ll be precisely the same person you love, once the wish is made.”
i like it because that scene is such a highlight moment in christophe’s story, how well he knows victor, how much he’s learned about the two main cultures of silver splendour’s world, how self-assured and comfortable he’s become with himself. what’s happening is also a pretty key part of the plot devices that have been set up in all the previous chapters, and it’s christophe’s agency (to choose to make the wish) and victor’s (to choose to ask for it) that will determine the outcome of history there. and finally: it is, of course, the moment where victor has to come to terms with the fact that loving yuuri means loving even the part he hates and wants to avoid, that while he might have spent an awful lot of time manufacturing a mask for himself, it’s not ever something he’d want to push onto yuuri. so. yeah. a lot of work went into getting to that moment and writing it honestly felt like getting to be proud of a friend (chris), like i knew him and we got to low key high-five after / offstage of the fic / celebrating how much of a badass he was in that particular moment.
