![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
i can't remember if i've ever explained anywhere why i call it spirit hat
doing a reread of spirit hat bc finally feeling the motivation to work on it again, but i equally feel the need to reread it to make sure i'm remembering details correctly bc it's been SO LONG, and it's just amusing the heck out of me to get to certain points and know exactly where certain things were changed or even entire chapters deleted. there's also the level of "how much i planned out from the beginning" vs "how much was added in later."
just got thru ch5 of pt1 and realized i'd worked in ethan's alternate sprint (the underground teleportation lmao sorry for the bad genshin ref) that he gets in pt3 without ever having intended that that be one of his reg powers from the get-go. when i first was writing pt1, i'd intended that section to be wholly ethan gaining increasing control over the dreamspace as the megamycete aligns itself with him, but it still ends up working really well with him having the easiest time with the alternate sprint later.
the reason i'd decided on that as a power for him is bc the megamycete could do it--move people (miranda) around, or at least i always assumed that's how she was zooping in and out like she does. so it made sense to me that as ethan subsumed the megamycete he'd be able to do some of the things miranda could do using it. wanted there to be enough differentiation that he wasn't just miranda 2.0 (also bc the powers given by the cadou differ between the lords as well, so figure the megamycete is going to work differently on everyone. i also have the pet headcanon that the duke came in contact with the megamycete long before miranda, fell under it's corrupting influence, but instead of trying to use it/getting manipulated by it like miranda, he broke away (still tied to the village tho, just like the others). thus his distaste for it in the duke pov ch in pt2.)
anyway, just real happy to see that i managed to keep things as consistent as i did lmao. there's still plenty i decided on later that contradicts stuff in pt1 if you're paying close enough attention, mostly stuff with how i decided the cadou mutation would have changed karl's physiology. and that really bothers me and i have to try really hard not to go back and retcon stuff lmfao.
it's been neat remembering all this stuff tho. i started writing this fic early june 2021, and i hadn't initially intended it to go as long as it did; originally i was going to tie things up at the end of pt3. heck, i'd wanted things to be contained in pt1, but while writing i realized that the explanation for what was going on wasn't something that ethan and karl would be able to figure out without outside help (which is why mia gets to do the heavy exposition lifting in pt3, sorry mia!) then while working on pt2 and 3 i started going "hahah, but what if [spoilers]. just kidding. unless...." and lightmode helped by being all "Do It." and here we are, three years later. ha ha.
writing pt1 was such an experience tho. i hadn't sat down and just gotten sucked into something like that in years. over a decade, really. it was like being fucking possessed: i wrote the whole thing in a matter of days; i even misremembered the events of the Daughters DLC happening in the base game, and had a whole chapter towards the beginning where karl had to fight off marguerite so ethan could gtfo, and then had to ax it and rewrite the whole thing once i remembered. i had also initially toyed with having ethan blip out during the lucas section, so that karl had to go through that section of the game himself while ethan was just a silent observer, before i decided that that really wouldn't work with what i was setting up with the megamycete and had to scrap the whole thing. originally karl's extra worked up in that section bc he's lowkey freaking out that ethan disappeared and is handling that whole deal as he normally does: thru anger. kept him being pissed off in the final version even tho i changed the rest; thought it was funny :p
oh, and the karl pov section in ch6 was meant to mirror the mia section of re7! (and boy was i intimidated af to try to write his pov! he's easier than ethan for me to write now but at the time...Difficult.) ethan gets to the ship and then just like in the game there's a pov shift. this was the part where i'd intended karl to figure out what was going on, before i realized there wasn't a way to believably have him do that. again mirroring the unfolding of events that the player gets through the mia flashbacks during that section, the karl flashback was going to do the same thing. and it does, a little. not the way i'd initially wanted though. i'm not unhappy with it; i've enjoyed the heck out of writing the later parts of the fic too. but it is something i kind of dwell on during rereads.
and then the other part of rereading pt1 is seeing everything that i was setting up that i haven't even gotten to write yet, but that i've been dying to, and getting all motivated to continue writing.
got so hung up on and frustrated with doing rewrites for so long that it just really compounded the burnout i was feeling and the stress i was under from irl shit that i just had to shove everything to the side. which is, honestly speaking, probably for the best. was getting to where i hated even thinking about the fic for a while there, like it started feeling like a job, not a hobby, and that's exactly the opposite way i want to feel about fiction writing.
it is very genuinely frustrating to have basically the whole of pt4 technically written, but being unable to post any of it bc so much of it needs to be rewritten, in some cases for the third or fourth time (aaaaaaa!!!!!!!!). slowly being backstabbed by my own perfectionism over and over and unable to do anything but sit there all: "okay :-("
and focusing on getting to the parts i'm dying to write doesn't help bc it's just a reminder that i'm not writing it lmfao.
like only lightmode knows how many times i rewrote what i've been calling the shed chapter (the "ethan gets drunk and they make out on the porch" chapter). and i think it's infinitely better for it but by the end i was so fucking sick of it. nothing was working for me 100% and i needed that chapter to work 100%. it was goddamn imperative that it work 100%. not even for like. the success of the narrative, i just needed it to be perfect bc i guess i'll die if things i make aren't perfect? idk.
anyway, enough time has passed now that i'm not feeling the burnout as much and i feel like i actually want to write again. to specifically write spirit hat again. gotta get thru pt2 and ethan's castle explorin' first tho (not a big fan of that section tbh; would prob rewrite it if i was editing pt2 rn). there's stuff that got axed from pt2 too; not bc i misremembered something from the game, just because it fucking sucked lmao. no one knows what bullet we all collectively dodged, but we should all be glad to have dodged it lol.
(oh, except for the part where i was going to have karl find the karl book when they got to the winterses' house and things were going to go Very Poorly bc no telepathy yet and ethan was going to end up impaled and it was going to be So Fraught, and then i was like "nah they spent most of this fic fighting, the karl book discovery can be moved to later." but like initially was really gonna lean into the enemies to lovers thing, was gonna need to For Real Tho the dubcon tag, and then i was just like nah bc i was tired of writing them fighting. also bc i wanted to add in fake married bc i knew lightmode enjoyed the trope. the ways lightmode has unknowingly shaped the fic: fake married. the ways lightmode has knowingly shaped the fic: i asked them what they wanted to see and they said karl in a hawaiian shirt on the beach. i mean also all their edits/suggestions lmao, but here specifically i am referring to Unforeseen Plot Divergences.)
just rambling at this point. a lot of this is stuff i've wanted to talk about for a while, but twitter isn't exactly the best place for it, and then i also figure that this is all a "no one cares" sitch. but thankfully i've remembered my dreamwidth exists: my personal internet word vomit space, hell yeah i'll holler into the void.
anyway back to the reread. here's hoping i can finish soon and actually get to some writing!
just got thru ch5 of pt1 and realized i'd worked in ethan's alternate sprint (the underground teleportation lmao sorry for the bad genshin ref) that he gets in pt3 without ever having intended that that be one of his reg powers from the get-go. when i first was writing pt1, i'd intended that section to be wholly ethan gaining increasing control over the dreamspace as the megamycete aligns itself with him, but it still ends up working really well with him having the easiest time with the alternate sprint later.
the reason i'd decided on that as a power for him is bc the megamycete could do it--move people (miranda) around, or at least i always assumed that's how she was zooping in and out like she does. so it made sense to me that as ethan subsumed the megamycete he'd be able to do some of the things miranda could do using it. wanted there to be enough differentiation that he wasn't just miranda 2.0 (also bc the powers given by the cadou differ between the lords as well, so figure the megamycete is going to work differently on everyone. i also have the pet headcanon that the duke came in contact with the megamycete long before miranda, fell under it's corrupting influence, but instead of trying to use it/getting manipulated by it like miranda, he broke away (still tied to the village tho, just like the others). thus his distaste for it in the duke pov ch in pt2.)
anyway, just real happy to see that i managed to keep things as consistent as i did lmao. there's still plenty i decided on later that contradicts stuff in pt1 if you're paying close enough attention, mostly stuff with how i decided the cadou mutation would have changed karl's physiology. and that really bothers me and i have to try really hard not to go back and retcon stuff lmfao.
it's been neat remembering all this stuff tho. i started writing this fic early june 2021, and i hadn't initially intended it to go as long as it did; originally i was going to tie things up at the end of pt3. heck, i'd wanted things to be contained in pt1, but while writing i realized that the explanation for what was going on wasn't something that ethan and karl would be able to figure out without outside help (which is why mia gets to do the heavy exposition lifting in pt3, sorry mia!) then while working on pt2 and 3 i started going "hahah, but what if [spoilers]. just kidding. unless...." and lightmode helped by being all "Do It." and here we are, three years later. ha ha.
writing pt1 was such an experience tho. i hadn't sat down and just gotten sucked into something like that in years. over a decade, really. it was like being fucking possessed: i wrote the whole thing in a matter of days; i even misremembered the events of the Daughters DLC happening in the base game, and had a whole chapter towards the beginning where karl had to fight off marguerite so ethan could gtfo, and then had to ax it and rewrite the whole thing once i remembered. i had also initially toyed with having ethan blip out during the lucas section, so that karl had to go through that section of the game himself while ethan was just a silent observer, before i decided that that really wouldn't work with what i was setting up with the megamycete and had to scrap the whole thing. originally karl's extra worked up in that section bc he's lowkey freaking out that ethan disappeared and is handling that whole deal as he normally does: thru anger. kept him being pissed off in the final version even tho i changed the rest; thought it was funny :p
oh, and the karl pov section in ch6 was meant to mirror the mia section of re7! (and boy was i intimidated af to try to write his pov! he's easier than ethan for me to write now but at the time...Difficult.) ethan gets to the ship and then just like in the game there's a pov shift. this was the part where i'd intended karl to figure out what was going on, before i realized there wasn't a way to believably have him do that. again mirroring the unfolding of events that the player gets through the mia flashbacks during that section, the karl flashback was going to do the same thing. and it does, a little. not the way i'd initially wanted though. i'm not unhappy with it; i've enjoyed the heck out of writing the later parts of the fic too. but it is something i kind of dwell on during rereads.
and then the other part of rereading pt1 is seeing everything that i was setting up that i haven't even gotten to write yet, but that i've been dying to, and getting all motivated to continue writing.
got so hung up on and frustrated with doing rewrites for so long that it just really compounded the burnout i was feeling and the stress i was under from irl shit that i just had to shove everything to the side. which is, honestly speaking, probably for the best. was getting to where i hated even thinking about the fic for a while there, like it started feeling like a job, not a hobby, and that's exactly the opposite way i want to feel about fiction writing.
it is very genuinely frustrating to have basically the whole of pt4 technically written, but being unable to post any of it bc so much of it needs to be rewritten, in some cases for the third or fourth time (aaaaaaa!!!!!!!!). slowly being backstabbed by my own perfectionism over and over and unable to do anything but sit there all: "okay :-("
and focusing on getting to the parts i'm dying to write doesn't help bc it's just a reminder that i'm not writing it lmfao.
like only lightmode knows how many times i rewrote what i've been calling the shed chapter (the "ethan gets drunk and they make out on the porch" chapter). and i think it's infinitely better for it but by the end i was so fucking sick of it. nothing was working for me 100% and i needed that chapter to work 100%. it was goddamn imperative that it work 100%. not even for like. the success of the narrative, i just needed it to be perfect bc i guess i'll die if things i make aren't perfect? idk.
anyway, enough time has passed now that i'm not feeling the burnout as much and i feel like i actually want to write again. to specifically write spirit hat again. gotta get thru pt2 and ethan's castle explorin' first tho (not a big fan of that section tbh; would prob rewrite it if i was editing pt2 rn). there's stuff that got axed from pt2 too; not bc i misremembered something from the game, just because it fucking sucked lmao. no one knows what bullet we all collectively dodged, but we should all be glad to have dodged it lol.
(oh, except for the part where i was going to have karl find the karl book when they got to the winterses' house and things were going to go Very Poorly bc no telepathy yet and ethan was going to end up impaled and it was going to be So Fraught, and then i was like "nah they spent most of this fic fighting, the karl book discovery can be moved to later." but like initially was really gonna lean into the enemies to lovers thing, was gonna need to For Real Tho the dubcon tag, and then i was just like nah bc i was tired of writing them fighting. also bc i wanted to add in fake married bc i knew lightmode enjoyed the trope. the ways lightmode has unknowingly shaped the fic: fake married. the ways lightmode has knowingly shaped the fic: i asked them what they wanted to see and they said karl in a hawaiian shirt on the beach. i mean also all their edits/suggestions lmao, but here specifically i am referring to Unforeseen Plot Divergences.)
just rambling at this point. a lot of this is stuff i've wanted to talk about for a while, but twitter isn't exactly the best place for it, and then i also figure that this is all a "no one cares" sitch. but thankfully i've remembered my dreamwidth exists: my personal internet word vomit space, hell yeah i'll holler into the void.
anyway back to the reread. here's hoping i can finish soon and actually get to some writing!