#like ppl do not seem to understand stranger things is a period piece they really dont

[kuroopaisen]

HEY it’s me the anon from a few days ago that told you they’d panhandle for the in between crumbs 👨🏻‍🦽 i read pt 1 again while i ate lunch after work and omgncnsms i forgot how much i loved them lowering their walls (and the hesitation that comes w sharing something personal,, tbh not me i just be sayin shit sometimes yk MFNSNSN) but i rlly wanted to ask how long the writing process took you (in general and for this fic), what order you wrote all the scenes in (1/2)

and your favorite scenes from the fic 🥺 or rlly anything you want i love hearing ppl talk abt their writing 🥺🥺 i might send more asks as i inevitably reread the series tho LMAO i woke up today and told my best friend (who’s been lobbying for me to watch more than half of season one,,,, My Bad) that i was rereading this fic for The Serotonin 🤝🤝 also to avoid confusion i’ll call myself pan anon for now!! (2/2)

PAN ANON that’s so cute!! real talk, thank you for showing so much interesting in this fic? it’s my lil baby, and honestly hearing that you’re literally re-reading it is so wild to me,,, i have trouble conceptualising it? but thank you so so much you’re so sweet :( i’m so glad i could provide you with that precious Serotonin, that’s all i want to do,,,

you’ve given me the space to ramble so ramble i did,,, and therefore it’s under a cut fklfds i’m so sorry but also thank you so much (if you do want to ask more questions, don’t be afraid to! although this is,,, v long so i completely understand flkjsklfj)

how long the writing process took

in general: depends on a lot of factors, to be honest! how inspired i am, how long it’s going to be, how developed the idea is,,, generally, I tend to work on fics when I’m inspired to do them, or i won’t touch them for a long period of time. so, it’s hard to give an exact timeframe.

for example, iwaizumi’s birthday fic (ataraxia) was banged out in about a day? concept, writing, everything – mainly because i was on a timeframe, but also because it’s a relatively simple fic. simple premise, gentle but simple emotions, simple outcome. and, because i was inspired (see: under pressure), it was easy to get it all out. albeit ataraxia wasn’t beta’d, which is a bit of a problem for it as a representative of my writing ssjfdklj

something like brat, a more thought-out piece, it might take a week depending on inspiration? brat particularly inspired me (and i wish i’d turned it into a multi-parter now, tbh), so it was easy to get into.

for something like this or little changes, it takes a bit longer? little changes took about three weeks from conception to end product! which leads to…

for this fic: this fic was a bit weird in that i had the idea in my head for a few months? sort of,,, little scenes, and the desire to write something about kuroo and nekoma’s manager, incorporating the theme of ‘an in-between kind of love.’ the actual writing process, however, probably took two weeks?

the first week was pretty lax, and then the second was a whirlwind. It’s honestly sort of a haze because I would write for hours straight? i don’t know what happened, and a lot of the first draft was not good by any means, but yeah. that was one wild week.

poor ren (@/w-yuren – if you haven’t checked her out, please do! she’s the auntie of the fic tbh) proofread all of it over the course of a week because i wanted to get it out by a certain date (i didn’t end up meeting this deadline but Oh Well).

what order you wrote all the scenes in

i didn’t have a particular order!! i would just go for the scenes that i felt most inspired to write. for this fic, it was the scenes that took place more around the middle that i tended to gravitate towards? i found it surprisingly difficult to write the beginning (probably because by the time i got there, i had their dynamic established in my head – meaning that them being strangers was difficult to parse), and i put off the ending because i didn’t quite know how i wanted it to end (the original plan had them going to university – the slowest of all burns).

favourite scenes

so one of my favourite scenes was the one where the reader is having a breakdown in the gym; i didn’t end up doing it as well as i would’ve liked, but it gave me a space to explore some emotions i haven’t really had the chance to in my fics yet. it’s a mini-example, for me, of how cathartic writing can be – before this i’d only written a short daichi fic featuring a reader who had anxiety.

being able to tease out those emotions, but having them received willingly by kuroo, was soothing? and i also enjoyed that it gave me some space to give kuroo his own development, too; we don’t know where his mother is canonically, so divorce is certainly possible. and, speaking as a child of divorced parents, that sort of thing really affects you – often more than you realise. getting to explore that concept without making it the main point of the fic was enjoyable, in some way? it feels like the wrong word, but i can’t think of a better one.

i also enjoyed the scene where kuroo’s feeling down, and both kenma and the reader notice. bc this is a fic and not a full-blown novel, the relationships both kuroo and the reader have with other characters inevitably fall to the wayside, so i enjoyed every opportunity i had to explore the dynamics with other members of the nekoma team. and because kuroo and kenma are so important to each other, it was a joy working out how that’d factor into moments like this (especially since we don’t tend to see kuroo be down, you know?).

I also enjoyed the “ethically sourced” scene just because they’re being such Dumb Teens and i thought the dialogue was naturalish?

i also like the scene at the end of part 2, because i like exploring how we conceptualise love versus how we experience it. kuroo’s very much trapped between the two in that scene, and i think it’s very much something a teenage boy would contend with. especially because the way he conceptualises romantic love makes it something scary, something that could threaten the relationship they currently have.

and finally, i really like the final scene for two main reasons. one, because they don’t need to say “i love you”; they both know. and they know, because they exchange the “i wouldn’t be who i am today without you,” which speaks to their friendship and how they’ve affected one another. it’s also the culmination of both of them realising that it’s okay for them to feel multiple kinds of love for one another, and one doesn’t transcend or smother the other.

two, because it’s a moment of genuine, comfortable vulnerability; something that they’ve always offered each other in one way or another, but it’s usually been one of them comforting and supporting the other. but in this scene, the vulnerability is shouldered by both of them (the reader betrays her vulnerability by giving him a thoughtful present, and kuroo betrays his vulnerability by tearing up and making his confession).  

honestly i had some lofty ideas that i don’t think i totally made good on, but i like these scenes because they gave me the opportunity to explore emotions that i find very interesting, or that relate to my own experiences with love; it’s always been a very strange grey area for me, and since i like to write for catharsis, the in-between was an opportunity to reflect on that! 

i love the friends-to-lovers trope because it focuses on that interplay between different ideas of love, but in a mundane context, what does that mean? how do you draw the line between the two? should you draw that line? 

so i’ve rambled a lot (looking at this wall of text,,, i’m so sorry) but thank for you for letting me indulge myself aslkjd my vocabulary is very limited and i hope i don’t seem like a Tool.