#please david make it happen 4 me 🙏

[lokiiied]

in my wildest dreams orlando bloom makes a guest appearance in ofmd as will turner in all his flaunting bisexual pirate fucker glory

[khaleesiofalicante]

reread the new chapter (as i often find myself doing) and the present timeline seems pretty self-explanatory so i wanted to dive into the flashback scene.

So we start with max’s psych eval where he’s just constantly thinking about David (and the kids, but really David). He doesn’t even remember exactly what happened but is always trying to keep David safe 🥺

It looks like along with some insanity, max is just dealing with PTSD, particularly shock, about what happened. He keeps spacing out, and stays in a state of disbelief.

And we get more information about the big Mallory accident. Max shooting Mallory again when she said the line about David was very deserved. We keep learning more and more about the truth, but it seems like every new chapter just gives us more questions, I’m excited to see how it turns out :)

Max thinking David will forgive him when he sees that the kids are fine but then him having tears of grief when he sees lance :( Or were those tears of grief more because David can’t look at max anymore🧐

“Max couldn’t blame him. He wished he could hold his husband too” when I tell you my stomach dropped.

And visualizing Max’s depression like a movie was a very effective choice. It makes much more sense to the reader to see why max was so unresponsive to an outsider’s perspective. Max being catatonic basically. I always loved how nuanced your takes on mental health and depression are. Depression can come in many different forms. For max, it seems to be deep disassociation.

I think those are all the coherent thoughts I have on this chapter. Again, I just love how complicated your descriptions of mental health are, and how the vary so much between characters. I really should use this energy to right my upcoming analysis on my English assignment, but my priorities said otherwise. Love you 💛

ps: can we expect another chapter on Monday or Tuesday? Or maybe some time later in the week?

pps: you mentioned that “before Mexico” was gonna have a mavid situationship development and a job development. We DEFINITELY got the situationship development, but is there more to the Mexico thing we haven’t gotten to yet? Please don’t tell me max is gonna get hurt on the job 🙏

thank you 🥺

writing about (and creating awareness about) mental health is so so important to me. i think it's crucial that stories need to portray mental health struggles more (not just in the extreme way but also in terms of everyday struggles - like with rafe in tlnd). it's not always easy to write, but it's good work :)

the decision to use dissociation is max's prevalent symptom is such an easy one. i can't even explain it properly. but when i sat down and thought about how his depression would manifest, the visuals were so intense and easy for me to imagine. I'm glad i was able to do it proper justice.

one of the things i decided while i was writing this story was NOT to write the scene between max and mallory (i.e, how she died and what exactly happened). it was for many reasons including 1) only max knows what exactly happened and his memories of the incident are so fuzzy it won't make sense for me to write an accurate version of it 2) it's one of his darkest memories and something he is not proud of, so i didn't want to go back to it. i preferred to give context and info where and when necessary. it was also symbolize that it was something he had left behind in the past, and something he had healed from and did not want to revisit 3) i did not want the risk of humanizing mallory by writing her death - especially because she dies in his arms (ew). 4) just didn't wanna write it period lol

but we will see what happened with mallory and David. it's an important scene and that's why we learn about it at the very end of the story too. in the real life, people learned about the incident first and it really messed up with their perception of David and made them take sides (mostly david's side). it was very important to me that the incident doesn't change how the readers feel about max or David. in david's show too, you learn about the incident at the very end. it's almost an anecdote, an incident that changed their life, but is not their whole life. what the readers need to remember is all the love they built, not what happened over one weekend. so i hope, at this point in time, when we read what happened to David and lance, it only gives us context. that it doesn't make us hate max or feel pity for david. it only fills the gap we've been carrying around.

ps - we will definitely get a chapter update later this week (perhaps thursday?). i definitely have my energy back to think and write (as you can see ha!)

pps - there is no more to Mexico. it did what it was supposed to do :)