#and about half of it is references to embarrassing moments from other DC properties.

[threewaysdivided]

Euughhh I can’t decide between #18 or #20, so I will let you decide :)

Meta asks for writers

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions?

(Plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations? Tell us about them.)

I think this may have come up as a glancing mention in the past but the Deathly Weapons you know is actually a stealth-re-write starting at around Chapter 10.  When I first came up with the idea, I had enough of a detailed outline to carry me to Interference, plus some loose notes for later plot-beats.  In that initial burst of unfettered creativity I kept going and freewrote up to roughly the equivalent of Chapter 17: Assessment in DW’s canon timeline.

There was some fun stuff in there (the “And here I thought I was just a pretty face” quip from Zatanna in Chapter 18/ Mission 1 comes from the OG version of Chapter 10) but there was also a reason I didn’t release those versions, and was already wanting to go back and re-do them.  The stealth-draft was incredibly barebones/compressed in places and some now-key scenes were straight-up missing (Propositions, Constants and Roads to Safe Places were all timeskipped over).  Plus I was leaning more heavily into fanon since I hadn’t decided to go back and revisit either show yet, which meant things were more surface-level and “standard” in a few ways.  In the stealth-draft, Ghost-Obsessions were explicit lore a headcanon which is fine but that I realised didn’t interest me or serve the story that much on consideration, Danny was more of an OP Gary-Stu type the OG version of the training session was a free-for-all spar where he beat the whole Team, which… no, and Danny and Wally’s conflict was a lot more superficial/arbitrary/unsatisfying.

I’ve walked myself to the stocks over this before but in the spirit of good-natured lampooning I’m happy to rummage through the old draft some more should you want further samples to jeer and hiss at.

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about?

(Symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

Considering my status as a shameless meta aficionado who can and will ramble for up to 20 pages on the barest prompting, one could say you’re playing a dangerous game here, nonnie.

For the sake of brevity I’m going to rapid-fire a bunch of meta I’d love to talk about and let anyone who’s interested take their pick:

I haven’t found a place to really dig into it in-story, but I went and read Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland etc. collection for extra Artemis material, and there’s some interesting parallels you could read into between Alice/Artemis and The Cheshire Cat/Jade, and what it suggests about their dynamic.  It could also indicate some things about how they themselves perceive their relationship given that Jade deliberately took the name Cheshire as her alias in-universe.  The Nguyen-Crock sisters are interesting.

YJ!Wally deviates from many iterations of Comics!Wally in that he canonically has a loving and functional homelife rather than an abusive one.  I have some potentially-controversial but mostly sappy thoughts about why that changed backstory is actually good for this iteration of the character and what it lets him bring to his version of the Team.

The central emotional arc of Deathly Weapons is Danny/Phantom’s journey through grief to healing.  I like how the planned scenes ended up coming together in a pattern where he initially tries to avoid talking about it with other people, then starts to reluctantly talk when asked, then starts talking freely when prompted, and eventually starts willingly volunteering information as he begins to form new bonds and move forward.  It wasn’t a conscious thing when I first set them out but it feels correct in hindsight.

There’s lots of little things that I’m either setting up on purpose to pay off later or have found ways to bring back as echoes in late-game chapters:

Danny’s appearance at Cadmus has developed into a pretty seminal point for his and Team Phantom’s journey between leaving Amity Park and joining The Team.  More information to come in Equilibrium but keep an eye out for references to the incident or things about his left shoulder.

I recently did some Martian Meta in prep for M’gann’s later focus chapter but there’s also a dynamic I’ve started setting up between her and Phantom (especially in the sparring scene) and it’s going to be interesting to see if anyone picks up on where that’s going.

There’s a very late game scene where Danny is talking to Conner about Danielle and The Clone Thing where I have Danny planned to say “but either way, she’s here and she picked our side.  The how and why… guess it just didn’t take that long to stop mattering” as an echo of Bruce’s conversation with Clark in the YJ Episode Schooled.

There’s a conversation between Wally and Dick in the final chapters whose ending parallels the end of Danny and Dick’s scene in Trade Secrets, paying off a promise that will be made in Equilibrium.

And, as you can see, there is so much Equilibrium character-meta which I am desperate to discuss about but also don’t want to talk about for spoiler reasons.  I am going to be so normal about it when publication day comes.

Thanks for playing!