#but des quietly accusing the narrator of being the monster from the future is near and dear to my heart

[skittidyne]

12 and 18 for the writer ask meme?

12. Is there a trope you haven’t written yet but really want to?

i suppose there's a couple, but overall i've hit most of my targets! i do want to write sloppy drunk sex, if that counts as a trope? and i'd love to try my hand at a royalty type type that has ladies in it (shoves blood will have blood under the bed) so i can have fun with the devotion of ladies in waiting...

18. What is a line/scene you’re really proud of? Give us the DVD commentary for that scene.

OKAY SO WE'RE GONNA GO BACK IN TIME FOR THIS ONE BC IT REMAINS ONE OF MY CROWNING ACHIEVEMENTS

(uh. pedestal spoilers ahead. a fic that is 11 years old...)

throughout the ENTIRE fic, there was the warning of the dark-haired monster, and later on, we had nick's famous black hoodie. (separate things, but related in what i pulled off - bear with me!) pedestal was sparse on physical description, but what we did know: that nick wore a black hoodie, that nick had black hair, that the narrator looked like his little brother, and that lola dressed like a goth and had black hair.

this was set up in the 10s-20s of a 160 chapter fic.

fast forward to after nick goes evil - we catch a handful of incriminating glimpses of a figure in a black hoodie. the narrator is repeatedly warned about the dark-haired monster, too. the narrator, and the readers, assume these to be the same person*.

cue the finale.

lola is the figure in the black hoodie; she's one of the big bads. seriously, that reveal - the foreshadowing of a GOTH TRAINER but everyone was sooooo focused on nick, readers and narrator a like - still fills me with golden light. i can't 100% say with certainty that it was planned from the beginning, since pedestal was written so long ago and had zero outline for most of the fic, but i am good at accidental foreshadowing like that. or maybe my subconscious hoards details like that to pop up in my conscious mind later. i don't know how it works, but i love it!

it didn't get as much reader attention, but at the very end, des (pedestal), the narrator's starter, watching the approaching moral event horizon - i'll just put an excerpt here.

"You are going to stop the dark-haired monster?" Des questioned, voice low and even more frightening.

I looked back down at Lola. Pitch black hair, always had that dark of hair. She had been behind this all. She had twisted Nick, put him up on the white thing's pedestal just to help him fall again. He had died because of her. "I am."

"No." Des shook his head and took a step towards me. He reopened his eyes and they were hard. Resigned. "I am."

"...What?" No. I wasn't going to let him do that—but in my surprise, he had taken a couple more steps towards us, until he was so close I could have reached out to touch him.

I started forward, intent on wrestling him back if I had to, but he told me simply, "My color eyesight is not very good."

I paused, set back by his bizarre and random statement.

Des turned on me and physically pushed me out of the way, placing himself between Lola and I. "To me, your hair looks as dark as hers. I will not permit you to do this, Trainer. Not to her, not to anyone. Can't you see what she is trying to do?"

as i said, it didn't get as much reader attention, but given the comparison with nick's brother (and a very lively art community, so there were canon character designs), the narrator could've been the dark-haired monster, too. not black hair, but dark brown - and what does it matter to a starter pokemon?

i'm still very proud of pedestal, and those plot twists are still high up on my heart pedestal of Written Things To Be Proud Of

[ask me more things here!]