#dialogue is not my strong suit but I def tried my hardest

[phantom-does-a-thing]

i don’t have any morespecific questions off the top of my head but! are there any fun facts/behind the scenes details about ‘it won't be the same when my favorite person leaves’ or ‘just a bit of rain’ that you would be willing to share 👉👈 bc personally those two have been making me go bonkers lately

OHO! I am always willing to share and I will absolutely find something to tell you bc I love both those fics. "It won't be the same when my favorite person leaves" has been living in my head, I literally woke up the other day and forgot it wasn't actually canon that's how deep it has been engrained in my head. Sorry this is going to get long!!!!!!

So talking about that one first since it's in my head: That fic has been in my mind for MONTHS, ever since I listened to Episode 10 (like before I even finished it) I just really really wanted the idea of them having to stay at a motel or something. I think I did start writing an iteration of it that I completely scrapped.

Originally, I had started writing the fic from RIGHT after the base burned down and right after the battle but it frustrated me SO much that I just... dropped that fic bc personally I hate like doing a ton of scene changes or having characters go places. It's just so... clunky, it always throws off my pacing.

OH WAIT I think one of the inspirations for the motel idea was one of ur drawings as well the one you did of like the three of them plus Ashe cuddling, like I wanted to put them in a situation of one bed + cuddles and that was the situation that presented to me. All that build up for the final scene <3

Quick behind the scene fact, I actually went to the website of my local pharmacy and put a ton of things in the cart online to like buy just to try and see how much money it would cost. It ended up like 170 dollars and I said "no I am not making William pay that much" and dropped the price significantly. Just as a little fun fact of the entire writing process.

This fic also took me a really long time to write, like disregarding all the time it took for me to plan it and think of an idea (I might have gone through 2 or so iterations of it to plan out how I wanted to do it). Like actually WRITING it was a doozy, I don't know how it became 11k words.

This one was also a little more out of pocket for me, it's a LOT more dialogue heavy than most of my other fics which was definitely... interesting. To say the least. I was super worried about the characterization the whole time lol I had to use the excuse of "this is a high stress situation they are not thinking straight" to make it so I wouldn't go insane from nitpicking everything. I want to try and get bettter with writing dialogue so this was a step in that direction but it was sooo hard.

Ok now for the little details:

William had called Vyncent at least once more prior to the call that I actually wrote

Listen, William was thrown against a car in that fight he has a REALLY bad concussion and should not be left alone

Re: previous point, Dakota ALSO shouldn't be left alone because he's also super injured so it's a lesser of two evils and definitely a bad situation for Vyncent trying to deal with

I don't know how well it came across, but I was definitely trying to convey a communication barrier between Vyncent and William. From Vyncent's POV and like when he was speaking I 1) tried not to refer to the motel by "motel" since Vyncent wouldn't know what that means and 2) Vyncent knows that William has a really bad concussion he just doesn't know how to convey that but he knows Will is really hurt

When Vyncent came to get William he was not trying to hide ANYTHING. No headphones, no shoes, he didn't even tuck his tail in. He is *stressed* his main concern was finding William

Re: previous point, literally any passerby (this is like 2 am idk who would be out) would just 100% think that this like monster creature thing kidnapped a sobbing child in the middle of the night

Vyncent was very close to breaking down, when William grabbed him and like hugged him, he nearly broke as well.

Both William and Vyncent were trying to take the role of responsibility, Vyncent just has no idea what he's doing but he knows he's the least injured

OH I just saw this skimming through the fic but yeah Vyncent was purring as a way to try and comfort William bc that's a way of comfort that he is familiar with

Vyncent did not like the idea of Will going out on his own at all bc he didn't want them to be separated any more. He was already stressed after anything else

I need to emphasize the scene of Will and Vyn coming back to the motel and him noticing that Dakota had been crying that scene is so important to me

Dakota had been in and out of sleep the entire time, he's in so much pain (A lot more than in canon but he is sooooo injured) and can't stay asleep for super long bc of the pain. He kept crying out for someone while Vyncent was gone and no one was there.

another small side note: phantom has never seen a motel irl. He has no idea what a motel looks like. Phantom had to look up images on google. The only impression phantom has of a motel is from supernatural.

All three of them switched outfits btw this detail is also important to me, I mostly do it with Dakota n William but I needed to add Vyncent to it. William was wearing Vyncent's jacket (it was the least damaged, raised least suspicions). Vyncent was wearing Dakota's flannel (needed something at least) and Dakota was wearing William's sweatshirt (comfort).

Ok I think that's good I will tell you some things about the other fic tho.

"Just a bit of rain"

This one was like I really just wanted to emphasize more of that communication/language barrier between Vyncent and the other's. I think that was my main focus behind it. Also I thought it would be interesting to come up with different aspects and I just love the trope of character being afraid of storms.

Vyncent didn't know how to communicate the issue and Tide and the others didn't know how to go about it either. That was my main goal behind the fic. I wanted to convey that panic and frustration because Vyncent was stressed about the others getting hurt mostly.

It's been a hot second since I wrote this so I can't remember much of the process behind it but I can point out some details.

Vyncent went to William in the middle of the night because he trusted William's word so what William said would be safe, Vyncent would believe that

He could sense that there was going to be a storm, he could feel it in his tall bones or whatever idfk. But he knew it was gonna storm and it kept him awake so he needed to get reassurance from someone he knew he could trust.

"William knows what he's talking about" n all that or whatever idk it was the middle of the night.

I think William used to love storms but now... not so much

Vyncent was struggling so hard to wrap his mind around the concept of a storm not being some sort of catastrophic event. I am really obsessed with the miscommunication aspect of this fic I need you to know that. It was so fun to write.

Everyone assumed it was the noise that was bothering Vyncent bc of his sensitive hearing and all that so they also had a hard time wrapping their head around what could be wrong.

Every confrontation that they had, Vyncent was pretty quick to get defensive because it was a really "animal backed into a corner" type situation and he was getting stressed and frustrated

Tide being the first one to understand what the issue is when Vyncent starts going on about how dangerous it will be. That is very important to me.

The entire "walk me through your thought process" or "I need you to explain what your thinking" is something that I think they use a lot around the base bc they all have different needs or feelings and it's hard to get around those types of things. So often its just "tell me your thoughts from start to finish" so they can troubleshoot the issue.

its like rubber ducky decoding.

The one of the first points I mentioned when Vyncent went into the storm I think was the rain smelling nice and that was the biggest reassurance to Vyn bc like he's used to rain smelling like AWFUL but it didn't smell bad to him. The smell is very important to him.

He deserves to be able to stomp in some puddles I think, splash around n all that.

I don't really know what else to point out for that fic, I was kind of just emphasizing things with no meaning but those things I really like about the fic. That one was just super fun to write I think. It definitely deviated more from what I usually write or what I'm used to doing since there a few more nuances to it I think.

Anyway yeah yippee thanks for letting me ramble for a bit, if there's any other questions you have I would loveee to answer them.

<3