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performativezippers · 10 months

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I’ve had quite a few people asking me on twitter and in the comments what my thought process was for writing Awake (which I keep calling Alive, LOL sorry). So I figured I’d write out what I did in case you’re curious. I mostly did this via voice-to-text while walking my dog this morning, so enjoy the ramble.

As soon as I saw the finale, I knew that I really wanted to address what happened in Venezuela because it was super fucked up. The writing didn’t make a lot of sense, and most of it was kind of out of character for Tennant. The whole set-up was that she couldn’t kill this one guy, but during the course of the episode, everyone kills a bunch of people. Including Kate. Makes no sense.

One thing that struck me was that I believe this is only Kate’s second on-screen confirmed kill, the first being the guy in the bottom of the boat with Lucy in Nightwatch 2. She’s shot at other people, but those are the times we see her bullets impact a person in a dead-sort-of-way. So her having to touch all these dead bodies in Venezuela, to kill one of the guys in the car with Tennant, having to ram her car into that other car, having to get herself out of handcuffs—all of that were new experiences for Kate. New hard, bad experiences. It was a rough trip, let’s say.

I didn’t like in the show that all we heard her say was “it didn’t matter why we were doing it, I didn’t need to know, I trusted Tennant, she’s family,” because Kate didn’t trust her the whole time, Kate did want to know what was going on the whole time, and then Tennant did all this terrible stuff to her. That was such an erasure of everything Kate went though, and I wasn’t here for it! There is angst to be had and god damn it, WE ARE GOING TO HAVE IT ONE WAY (CANON) OR ANOTHER (FIC).

Originally I thought that I would have all this in Kate’s POV, and then I thought maybe I’d alternate POV’s. But then as I was conceiving of the fic, I realized that I was most interested in Lucy‘s POV. In Kate’s POV, there wouldn’t be a lot of depth or complexity. You shouldn’t have betrayed me. You shouldn’t have handcuffed me. That was really upsetting so I’m now upset. There’s not a lot of curiosity, not a lot underneath the surface, or more than meets the eye there. That didn’t actually interest me that much, and I decided Lucy’s POV would be richer because she could be both really upset on Kate’s behalf and on her own behalf.

I was really fascinated by what it would be like for Lucy to not trust Tennant, and to feel betrayed by Tennant, because they haven’t played with that dynamic at all in the show. Lucy has always been her devoted mentee. There’s so much trust in Lucy for Tennant, and I was interested to see what the impact on Lucy would be if she had to stop trusting her.

When I was watching the episode, the thing with the handcuffs was really upsetting, obviously. The fact that Jane would do that to Kate, the logistics of how is Kate supposed to go to the bathroom?? The inherent danger the fact that people could’ve followed them—really, really upsetting. For sure. But the thing that impacted me the most was the scene with all the corpses under the tarps. Kate has just seen Charlie One, a person that she knows, dead. I’m not sure if she’s ever seen a dead person before, the body of a friend, someone she knows well. That’s so painful. And it was it was gross! There’s a piece of bone from his head in the pool of his blood. (I actually think realistically some of his brain matter would’ve been out, but I’m OK with the fact that they didn’t do that). But it’s graphic!

So she sees her one friend, dead, and she knows this is the last place her best friend was, and there are six corpses on the floor covered in tarps. It’s just such evocative imagery, it’s so upsetting. And Tori does this incredible acting job in that micro-scene where she’s pulling the tarps off the corpses one by one, where she somehow shaking and crying but not actually doing either. You can just feel it. It really hurts.

There’s that long horrible breath/pause before she takes the tarp off the last one, bracing herself for it to be Tennant. And then it isn’t. That immediately struck me as what the nightmares would be about. That peeling back, peeling back, peeling back, every time the tension just ratcheting up and up and up. This time it’s going to be your person, this time, this time, this time. I knew immediately that was going to be the crescendo of the dreams.

So then I had to figure out what happened before the crescendo. Originally the first line/framing was going to be “The nightmares change after Venezuela.” But then I realized that a much more interesting first line was “The nightmares change again after Venezuela.” More surprise/curiosity/depth there.

But then, of course, I had to establish what the dreams were at the beginning, and how they’ve changed in the past, oops. I have a friend who a couple months ago was telling me about how even as a little kid she had very adult nightmares. I don’t know what the content of them was or what they were like, but she talked about having a lot of trouble sleeping as a kid because of them. That gave me the idea for this originally, but then I had to figure out what would a child know about enough to dream it, but be too young to visualize safely.

That’s why so much of her nightmares are bodily, a because nightmares for many of us, for adults, are bodily (not able to run, stuck in quicksand, whatever). I didn’t focus on the stuff many of us dream about as adults, like embarrassment (being naked at school) or the unprepared dreams (final for a class we never took). They needed to be things that would be scary to a four year old, to a six year old, and little kids aren’t really embarrassed or unprepared. It’s pretty standard horror fare for a little kids, I think: the dark, monsters, being alone, fire, drowning. Of course because it’s Lucy, I want there to be lots and lots of water imagery, water everywhere. Plus corpses, and rotting. I imagine that most of Lucy‘s siblings are older than her, so maybe she watched a movie with a rotting corpse when she was very young, and it really stuck with her. The rotting, the decaying, the visual proof of not being alive.

So in her dreams forever there have been dead bodies and stuff, but they were always already dead. The crux for me was the realization that the first person she would see being killed other than herself was Kate. That would be the first time the dreams changed.

Watching Kate die instead of watching herself die—that’s so interesting to me as a way to demonstrate love. And I know that’s like super fucked up or whatever, but I was really curious about, for someone who’s been plagued by nightmares their whole life, what would being in love with a soulmate-type-person mean for you? What would it change? What wouldn’t it change?

So that’s how it came together. And don’t kill me, but at first, I didn’t plan on writing the second chapter at all. It was just gonna be a one shot that was honestly about love, because of the way the dreams changed, but also really just about Lucy’s well-being and the impact of Tennant’s betrayal on her. And then I decided that was too mean. I thought I was going to have her dealing talking about it with Tennant, but I realized that would be too far in the future. I don’t think she’s ready for that right now. She needs some time, to stop having the nightmares every night so that she could get some semblance of herself back. She needs to figure out what’s actually feelings of betrayal, versus what is left over fear from what happened. And I think Kate and Chase are going to be able to help her sort through that, although, of course, I think a good therapist could do wonders!

And tbh I don’t understand why Sam is joining the cast. I love the cast as it is. That’s one of the things that made me really not engage after the finale for a little while, this sort of disinterest in his character, and how he unbalances the gender dynamic. I’m worried he’s going to take some leadership and responsibility from Tennant, blah blah. And of course, I’m always worried that Yas is going to leave the show, #NoDiscourse.

But the fact that Sam was in Venezuela, that he just happened to be there, that he got the call to come help them, while Lucy was sitting at her desk, waiting for her phone to ring—so, so, so fucking scared—that was kind of beyond the pale for me, and I like thinking about how far beyond the pale it would be for Lucy.

The whole problem in the episodes is that Jane didn’t trust any of them with the truth, or care about Kate enough to keep her alive, but then she trusted Sam? That someone cared enough about Tennant to call Sam to keep her alive, but no one cared enough about Kate to call Lucy? To get Kate out of the hotel room? Fucked up.

So once Sam was there and I realized he could trigger a daytime activation of Lucy’s nighttime PTSD, the second chapter really came together. And that’s it!

I’m sure you didn’t care at this level of detail, but I have nothing better to do while walking my dog than voice-to-text all of my thoughts and feelings. Bye!

#awake by zipps #alive by zipps #ask zipps #in which i get too in depth about things you don't care about #ncis hawaii season 2 finale thoughts #how do i writing #kacy #kate whistler #lucy tara #ncis hawaii #ncis hawai'i

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