fanfic DVD commentary

[caramelchameleon]

Pick any passage of 500 words or less from any fanfic I’ve written, and stick that selection in the comments. I will then give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what’s going on in the character’s heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you’d expect to find on a DVD commentary track. [Source]

bored, anxious, want to try this. just giving a fic title also valid if you don't have a specific passage although i might have a harder time finding anything to say.

here's my ao3: caramelchameleon 
the contents are 60-70% don't starve but any of it is free game, although i'll be deeply embarrassed if you dig up the stuff from 2014 and make me acknowledge it

Comments

This is such an interesting dynamic to choose

[(Anonymous)]

When Seizhi Schwan opens their eyes for the first time - comes into the joyful realization that they have eyes, that there’s a them to have eyes and to open them with - it’s in a neat and sterile laboratory, and, for a moment, they have to shield those brand-new eyes against a terrible and awe-inspiring radiance. They blink the spots away and stare at the person who, they assume, brought them here; that holy (? unholy ?) light is gone, but it’s unnerving how they can’t seem to focus on his (???) face. He’s not the person they somehow came into the world knowing, the emerald-green serpent who is a river and a wish and a dream and a thousand of thousands of feet long.

“Actual, I’ve brought you here and bound you here,” the stranger says, “to help me find an old friend.”

Re: This is such an interesting dynamic to choose

[caramelchameleon]

oh, dude, yeah! i actually rambled about my weird take on the general leonardo/seizhi dynamic over at jennafans awhile back so i won't repeat that, just link it

the thought that started me down this particular garden path is that a chuubo who was fully aware of his identity and position and didn't want to draw attention to himself just... wouldn't have brought an Actual into the world. i'm assuming he's competent enough at wishing that he knows what the potential consequences would be of an open-ended request like "i wish i had a best friend", and knows that Town is precarious enough without unleashing grey-goo reality-viruses on it. but i still wanted seizhi to exist... it would just be dangerous and irresponsible. enter leonardo de montreal, an expert at dangerous & irresponsible trafficking with powerful forces

the context i was imagining was that leonardo - closer to angel-of-recovery leonardo than wounded-angel-mimic-leonardo, obvi, with the lights and face hiding and all - had been attempting to locate chuubo, and vice versa, and each of them was too well hidden for the other, and leonardo had gotten desperate enough to pull some Drastic de Montreal Bullshit, Tee Em. presumably the logic is that someone who's shielded against miraculous detection is maybe vulnerable to deep chthonic Actual nonsense.

i dunno what this is mechanically, actually. (brief pause while i skim through Allegory) i guess if Allegory can do miracle stuff with mundane actions you can scientifically rip open the kind of realityhole that brings an Actual through... and... a curse from Bring to Fruition sealing away the worst of the infectious Actual nature under the justification of... recovering enough... to interact with reality in a positive way?? ? i TRIPLE do not know what seizhi's character sheet looks like after that but that is not my problem. on reflection i'm not even sure they strictly look like standard regular kid seizhi! maybe this is a weird abstract awakening!seizhi.

regardless, seizhi got dropped into reality knowing exactly who and what chuubo is, with the express intent of helping leo track him down, because i thought that made for an interesting spin on the canon. like, seizhi always being tailored to fit perfectly with chuubo even if chuubo didn't make them. it's a lot more clinical a relationship start than their base state in GMD and probably without the rest of the Schwan family unfortunately, but when they do find chuubo i'm 100% positive they're immediately friends anyway. chuubo's a friendly guy. leonardo is wary and standoffish and holds seizhi at arm's length at first but probably also warms up over time.

this is incredibly small but i like associating chuubo with water and rivers even though it's probably more of a nod to Spirited Away than part of his genuine nobilislore. i just think it's fun to give him ties to elemental earth + water so he can compliment the fire + air from leo. phoenix and dragon! i have NO IDEA if that was intentional but i fully intend to run with it forever