Does anyone else want to write Epic Fanfic based on "Bend Or Break" by Keane? Surely not just me. (Not for DWD, though, it doesn't strike me with the right tone.)
Anyway! I have the next batch of notes for AAE here, would've had them sooner but I only unpacked and set up my home computer this week since we moved a month ago. :)P Here's the lengthy blabfest for Act I, Chapter 1!
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References:
- "The Music Man"; as I said, Irene Webfoot is a nod to Mrs. Paroo from this musical. The line "an' yer changin' the subject" is a callback to the one song that Mrs. Paroo (kind of) sings on, an argument between her and her daughter where she is accused of changing the subject herself.
- "Donnie Darko" is the source of 'Yarn Barn', which is where Donnie's older sister works.
Man, there is stuff in here that I had forgotten I had already started by this point. Somehow that makes me feel awful. I didn't realize I was writing the therapy stuff this early... This fic just went on forever, didn't it? :P Not to mention I originally had Beth thinking how at this rate she'll need a month before she can see LP and Drake again... and then she's actually gone for nearly *two* months. Ay yi yi. The time got away from me, what can I say... I changed the line to "six months" just so it's less obvious. :P (And then I mention it here because I LIKE TO MAKE MYSELF LOOK DUMB apparently)
First scene with Beth and Irene, in which Beth immediately has no patience for her mother... Which I hope doesn't make her look unpleasant. I find it realistic. I know a number of adult women who respond this way to their mothers' well-meaning but nosy questions, and I'm NOT just referring to myself. ;) On the other hand, Beth isn't meant to be 100% in the right here, either.
And our total introduction to Candy! Candy is someone who took me a while to get to know. I had the idea for the scene between Candy and Beth towards the end quite early on, but I didn't really start to understand her as a character for a while. She remained a bit of a villain in my mind for a LONG time, which is pretty much what she is in these early scenes, though you can see a glimmer of sisterly love in there if you squint.
Actually, to be honest, Candy is a little bit based on me. I'm an older, rather than younger, sister, and I have perhaps too strong a dose of "I know best" in me. I kind of put that (on steroids, though) into Candy's personality. She goes way farther than I ever would.
I will be going somewhat more into the elements of Beth's personality that we see here; when she's around non-Webfoot people she so avoids confrontation that the idea of her arguing this much may seem completely alien. I'm going to address that in the rewrites of TWC, but I also address it (in a sort of retcon) in this fic and I hope it makes sense.
Dr. Mortimer is one of those names that I kinda picked out of nowhere because it sounded funny. Who knew I'd be writing it in nearly every chapter for the next three years. :P
I also have no idea if it's illegal or not to make an appointment for someone else to go to therapy. I think there are ethical reasons, the same way you can't have someone committed unless they're a danger to themselves or others, but it might not work that way for therapy - in fact I'm almost sure it doesn't but it made for a good way to show the extent of Irene's pushiness.
Beth not caring for waiting rooms is kind of a callback to "Something In The Air" which at the time was a throwaway gag. Deciding to turn throwaway gags into character points - yay! :P
I'm not sure where Beth's mistrust of therapists comes from, but it's a character trait I came up with in the late 90s. Personally I have high regard for the entire profession of psychology and psychiatry, and I ate up the classes I took. (Yep, armchair therapist right here.)
You can see me kind of scrambling to come up with reasons why Beth wouldn't just go in and say "okay, here's what the problem is" and would instead start talking about her life history. There were two reasons I needed the story to go that way: 1, it was intended to be Beth's life history and this was the format I chose to frame it in, and 2, I was actually just as uncomfortable writing Beth talking about DW and Launchpad as Beth was with doing the actual talking, and I took that as a sign that Beth didn't want to do it and that forcing it would be out of character.
Note the brief description of Beth's job. I have never made it clear what she does, and I thought I'd toss that in there to outline it in slightly more detail. It's still quite vague.
Not everything Beth says here to Dr. Mortimer about being happy is entirely true. You know how when you're depressed it seems like everything has always been, and will always be, as bad as it is right then? That's the problem she's having.
I think I've mentioned this before, but Dr. Mortimer's "therapy" idea of having Beth write down her big regrets so that they can discuss them... that's not really any kind of therapy idea I've heard of, and to be honest, I just picked that so that I had a way to roughly divide up the flashbacks in the fic. I wanted it to go more thematically than chronologically, even though most of the flashbacks are in order anyway, but yeah... that's the reason for the "regrets". I thought it might be useful from a discussion perspective, too.
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