I want to make clear that I should be doing my finals, not dithering over how to write the flashback chapters in Age of Aquarius. That said, as they've proven to be a very useful procrastination tool, I've been thinking about the flashbacks more and more lately.* Now Normally, when I story write, I just write sequentially: chapter 1,2,3,4,5,6 etc. it is literally the only way I can get through a long fic without leaving massive plot holes or screwing up the displays of character development. but character development is exactly what I have been grappling with in the flashbacks, especially given in their past lives, I've significantly changed the age differences between the Outer senshi and the Inner senshi. (because it really doesn't make sense that, at the same age we see the inner senshi in Nehelenia's flashback, Uranus and Neptune would have been tasked with the majority of the border patrol - even in the panel of the manga where Neptune views the princess as a tween/teen, it seems clear that she and Uranus have been out in the depths of space for quite a long time before.) I digress: Flashbacks. I've written 2-and-2/3 so far (pluto's needs a few more worldbuilding scenes) but got caught whilst working on Endymion's, as in his life, interactions with some of the older senshi are very central to his developing deeper sympathies towards the moon kingdom. (we're not doing that shallow romeo and Juliet narrative - nope. because that wasn't real love or true romance. and if i'm going to like Serenity and Endymion's romance at all their story needs to go a little deeper than "she was beautiful and i wanted to sleep with the enemy to be edgy" blah blah blah) I keep getting off track. Oh yeah: The flashbacks. I started struggling with Endymion's. wondering who he knew and when and what they thought of him. I kept looking back and forth between my character and an excel workbook seven sheets deep with timelines and important events and character turning points,** always trying to figure out where his story fit into the mishmash, aware that in writing it, i would be narrowing the field into which I could write other narratives. in the cases of Uranus and Neptune, those were stories that had started decades before... And then I realized... This was hard because unlike the main story, i was writing the flashbacks out of order. So now I'm not. I'm going back and writing at least the outlines of Uranus and Neptune's first 16 and 13 years, adding in Jupiter around that time, then mars, then Endymion, and then Saturn. I've done a little bit like that so far and it is going MUCH better. Neptune's, admittedly, is one of the most interesting narratives. so i am more that Happy to write some of hers first :) * I want to be clear here that SMH is still the priority and still being written sequentially. a holiday update or two is still absolutely on the table. **One of the consequences of my studying international affairs is that one of these excel sheets is titled "Proxy Wars" with details of all the conflicts the bipolar powers of The Moon Kingdom and the Earth use to weaken the other's hold on the solar system during the Cold War style conflict in the Silver Millennium. Another consequence is that there's a whole sheet dedicated to Mercury and Pluto's attempts at political neutrality... as well as two more sheets with info on Earth/Moon's allied coalitions, weapons capabilities and Senshi (who yes, absolutely are the Silver Millennium equivalent of a nuclear arsenal - i swear to you I didn't think like this until I took Art and Science of Statecraft and now I can't STOP thinking like this...) XD you're in for an epic wartime drama in some of these flashbacks.
