omg I can't with your scy-fi faberry fic. is just so perfect! it made me cry but at the same time it made me want to know more about the universe. can you talk about the process of writing it? or how the plot formed in your head from the prompt or something? I just loved the universe so much I could read a whole book (or series) about it, even with OCs isntead of faberry. sorry if I sound a little crazy right now but I'm amazed
Oh, absolutely! I'm really flattered.
your.kat actually gave me two different prompts to choose from. the second was something more mundane, set at the Yale library, but the first went like this:
Quinn Fabray was nineteen when she realized she couldn't die, twenty-four when she figured out that she'd stopped aging completely. Rachel Berry was twenty-six when she learned she only had one year left to live; the next day, she met Quinn. One's life is painfully limited, the other is virtually limitless--how will this affect the time they have together?(Rachel's imminent death could [should?] be of the SciFi persuasion, and I leave that twist up to you. I'd prefer for this not to be some kind of encroachment on the subject of cancer or similar, if you know what I mean.)
I knew immediately that that's the one I'd do, because it stood out so much from all the others. Anything that feels original, that you can take in your own direction, is going to be worth exploring.
then became the long and arduous process of making sure this wasn't just a rehash of dust and ashes, which was my biggest concern. I'd already written a fic with an immortal Quinn trying to cope with Rachel's own mortality, and so that's why the focus turned more to that deadline and Rachel's death--it was the one thing that was CERTAIN in this prompt that the vampire story didn't have.
the next step was creating a world where this was feasible, and that's where i had fun.
the prompt really left it open, but i decided i didn't want to do the heavy lifting required to explain why only quinn had this longevity and only rachel was prophesied to die, so the sci-fi AU really sprung up around that. trying to normalize them as much as possible. so creating LAPP and all, that was trying to make them... boring, in a way. because what i like about faberry is that they're just two girls connecting, in the end. it doesn't need to be fantastical to be fantastic.
I'm really flattered everyone's taken so strongly to the world I set for the story, because I did try to make it seem feasible, if not realistic. making sure I accounted for privilege is something important in all sci-fi, and so that took precedence over, like... the fact that this world is inherently untenable. if you think about it too long, you realize that no matter what the balance is of Eternals to Ephemerals, even if Eternals are a quarter of the population, that number's only going to grow. population control isn't possible when you have immortal people who can procreate and make more immortal people, which means that eventually we'd use up all the earth's resources and die.
but that's no fun for a romance story, so i tried to hide it as best as i could.
Les Mis was initially chosen on a whim, because i liked the idea of a replaceable Eponine standard, but it quickly formed the thematic backbone of the piece. once I put it in, it was this sort of goldmine that gave me everything I needed.
the very first line I wrote was "Imagine that. Me living longer than you." everything else became about earning that line, and making it work.
