Big Bang 2009 Author's Notes Master Post
Complicated Author’s Notes
Read this only after you read the story, for you will be spoiled.
My desire to write BSFR started, really, with my reading Missing Persons by Dira Sudis, which is so good, that after you read it, you’ll be eternally ruined for anything else, The story is so fascinating, do deep and rich and detailed, you’ll be fanatically watching Numb3rs and obsessing about “Mac” and “C” for ever and forever. Like I was.
During the summer of 2007, I was equally obsessed with Big Pink’s Red and Dazzleland, so obsessed that I obnoxiously hounded her till she patiently taught me how she did it, with the triple plot structure and going back and forth between time lines. From her teachings, I produced Phantom Load, which I submitted for the Big Bang 2008. Since I was unemployed for a lot of the writing, I had plenty of time to obsess and revise.
The summer of 2008, I was so obsessed with MP, that I wanted to do something like it. The plot was fairly straightforward, but what Dira did with it really blew me away.
I went through her story that summer, reading it several times, reading it like I was studying it. I also obnoxiously obsessed about every detail to my friend Amothea, until she kindly suggested that I write to Dira herself. Which I did.
I asked her how she made everything so real. Dira said that she used clichés, every cliché in the book, and assembled them in such a way that allowed her to do the work and to break down the characters so that they would actually consider crossing a taboo that seems almost embedded in our DNA.
Then I asked Dira’s permission to riff off her story, and re-create the elements in the Supernatural universe, which she kindly did, callooh, callay!
One profound thing that Dira told me that it wasn’t just the clichés themselves, but why they worked. Here is a direct quote she told me about the kind of story she wanted to create:
“(It's) a story that does all the heavy lifting on the page. Bad guys made them do it, confined space, bed sharing, hurt/comfort, amnesia - these are the things that lower the character’s resistance to what they’re doing. Incest and slash, the suspension of disbelief - the foundation of that sexual relationship and the way the characters are warped to fit it.” (Author quoted with permission.)
I hit that philosophy so hard, I internalized it, and had a sticky note on my wall with the words on it. I wanted to keep that idea in front of me throughout the whole writing process. I’m fond of stories where the boys angst about breaking the taboo; in stories where they don’t angst, there isn’t as much impact for me. (Very good porn seems to overcome this problem for me, however.) So I wanted to make sure that even though I like internally motivated stories, to break the incest taboo, there would typically have to be some sort of external motivator. With the pile of motivators that Dira used, it would take some kind of superman to resist.
Then I registered for the Big Bang 2009 in January, and was suddenly confronted by the daunting task of writing something AS good as Missing Persons, with the same themes, but different, because it was Sam and Dean rather than Don and Charlie.
I came up with a list of elements in her story that seemed essential. The are:
Amnesia
Non-con
Kidnapping
Bad guys
Torture
Hurt/comfort
Close quarters
Intimacy
Showers
Shared activities
The secret: Brothers in love
I did my best to create a correlation in the Sam and Dean universe. Some of her elements didn’t work, so I discarded them.
***
Amnesia - MP: Charlie is kidnapped by the bad guys and forced to do equations to plan bank robberies so they appear random. All of the drugs and torture and isolation give him post traumatic stress amnesia.
Amnesia - BSRF: I couldn’t have either of the boys kidnapped because their profiles are so low, no one even hardly knows they exist. But it was fairly easy, I came up with the djinn from WIAWSNB causing the amnesia, and giving them each the nightmare that the other one had died. They go a little crazy and end up in a mental institution. But it’s a magical amnesia, and anything a mental institution could do for them won’t help. Thus the boys must help each other.
***
Non-con - MP: There was lots of contextual background noise about non-con in Missing Persons, but it never really happens. Charlie is very afraid when Williamsons hints that he could make it happen, so Charlie decides to head it off at the pass. I love Charlie for this!
Non-Con - BSRF: There is no real non-con in my story, no matter how much Amothea begged, I just couldn’t see my way through that. But pretty much, just for her, I developed Randy Pointy Fingers into a character who was *obsessed* with it. I think it’s just because he has a huge crush on Sam, and, well, who could blame him?
***
Kidnapping - MP: Charlie is kidnapped so that the bad guys can use his magical math powers.
Kidnapping - BSRF: In my story, no one is kidnapped. Again, another idea that didn’t quite fit in. I mean, it would be cool if someone DID kidnap them and put the boys in a mental institution; I think that would make a fine read! (And maybe it’s already been written.)
***
Bad Guys - MP: Dira had Williamson as the Big Bad who had captured Charlie and had drugged him and tortured him and made him do Bad Things, like plan all those bank robberies. Williamson was the perfect Big Bad, he was obviously cruel but he wasn’t a cookie cutter, moustache twirling bad guy. He was smart, had a smart crew, knew how to get things done, and was able to get Don smile at him once. He connected with people, he was perfect, he was ambiguous and definitely not a cliché. But he was mean to Charlie and for that he deserves to die.
Bad Guys - BSFR: The lack of external bad guy was one of the most troublesome parts of the story. I didn’t want the typical bad guy doctor who’s got it “in” for Sam or Dean, or the mean, cruel orderly who delights in torturing one of the boys for his own nefarious pleasures. So I really didn’t have a bad guy.
I was a little lost, so I complained to Amothea who said it sounded like my story lacked tension. I agreed. I needed to up the ante, I really needed a bad guy. I had several doctors, an art therapist, and a handful of orderlies who seemed to enjoy their jobs, and did their best to care for patients. Maybe the budget was a little tight, maybe the food was a little iffy and boring, but overall, Manson County Mental Hospital was not the worst place you could find yourself with a case of amnesia and a brother who swore you were dead and didn’t recognize you.
Then I logiced it through. If Sam and Dean have amnesia, then the kind and caring staff of Mason County would enter their names into a database of missing persons, the kind of database that would be picked up by the CIA, and local police, perhaps the news stations, and, best of all, The FBI in an effort to locate someone who might be able to identify them. Our friend Hendrickson watches everything, don’t you know, I figured it wouldn’t be long before he would get wind of a “Sam” and a “Dean” of no particular last name who were found wandering not half a mile from a 1967 Chevy Impala and who were now securely locked up in a mental ward. He’s the impetus for the boys to get the hell out.
***
Torture - MP: Dira’s a genius is all I can say. I counted all the times that Charlie or Don is actually hurt “on screen” and I could only come up with three, maybe four times. The rest of the time, Dira only alludes to a torture, and the mind is wonderfully inventive in making it worse than it actually might have been. My favorite torture is “off screen” where the crazy bad henchman decides that since Charlie has pissed himself that he needs a bath. We don’t see the bath, but we see the results of the bath, and in my mind’s eye, I’m sure it was a terribly horrific event for Charlie.
Torture - BSFR: My torture needed to involve something that would happen to the boys in relation to the mental institution. I didn’t want to do the typical mental institution/amnesia story that’s found in so many fandoms, which is where one character is in the hospital, and the other one poses as a doctor to rescue him, or where the bad doctor or bad orderly mistreats one or both of the boys. I wanted to make it harder for myself, so I determined to put the boys in a place that was actually trying to help them get better. Don’t ever do this! This is where I painted myself into a corner.
I couldn’t use the normal methods of “hurt” so that there could be comfort. Like, okay, lobotomies. Lobotomies are a thing of the past, as are insulin shock and electroshock therapies. Okay, maybe in some states, but really, Dr. Freeman is long dead and most places rely on drugs and tons of therapy, so I had to get really inventive. I did some research, and the cold wrap method is still used, especially in state run places, where the inmates are poor, and funds are low. This kind of isolation and immobilization, plus the lack of external stimulus can cause hallucinations. It was the perfect “treatment.” Props to my friend Amy for reminding me of this. I decided to follow Dira’s lead and only have three or so actual “hurt” sessions on screen, and allude to the rest, letting the reader fill in the blanks.
***
Hurt Comfort - MP: Dira has Charlie and Don caring for each other in different ways and at different points along the way, sometimes switching places as to who was the comforter. This helped develop their relationship in a very natural way, because if you care about someone, you don’t want to see them hurt, and you want to help them.
Hurt Comfort - BSFR: When either Sam or Dean come back from Treatment, or Dr. Logan’s office, or a difficult Group session, the other one is there for them. I particularly enjoyed having Sam come out of himself and his misery because he feels that “his” Dean needs him.
***
Close quarters - MP: Williamson (bad guy) hires Don as Charlie’s bodyguard. Charlie is a very valuable property, and Williamson is nervous that someone will steal Charlie or that one of his own men might decide to make a profit by selling Charlie. Thus, Don and Charlie are locked in a basement room together for 23 hours out of each day. It doesn’t take long for those close quarters to have an effect.
Close quarters - BSRF: From the amnesia came the mental institution, which naturally is a very confining environment. You can’t just walk out of one of those places because you say you are well. Then I came up with the idea that Dr. Logan would decide that Dean and Sam should share a room; this is an external factor, rather than an internal one, but I figured it was no different than Williamson throwing Charlie and Don together. Sam and Dean are together most hours of the day, and then tend to panic when they are separated. Poor babies.
***
Intimacy - MP: In addition to the constant round the clock contact, the room that Dira put Charlie in Don in had a bathroom that had no door. Dira only mentions it a few times, this lack of door, and the fact that either Don or Charlie would run the water when they used the toilet, and the habit each of them had of pretending that the bathroom did have a door. One other cool thing was the fact that the basement bathroom didn’t have any towels either, and so Charlie and Don would end up wiping their hands on their shirts or pants as they came out of the bathroom. This small detail remained constant; later in the story, either Charlie or Don come out of a motel bathroom, and even though there are towels in there, they still retain the habit of wiping their damp, just-washed hands on their clothes.
Intimacy - BSFR: Using the facilities without a door (or with the door open, or with someone walking in) seemed rather provocative, and I kept looking it out of the corner of my eye. I lifted this completely from Dira’s story, the idea of it, and the vague references to it, so that the reader would know there was no door, but I didn’t dwell. You know you’re close when you can pee in front of someone else. And sometimes survival supersedes personal dignity.
***
Showers - MP: Charlie has been stuck down in the basement, neglected by the bad guys and by himself; he can barely raise his hand let alone ask for a trip to the bathroom upstairs, where the only shower is. Poor guy. I loved watching him suffer through this! Along comes Don, who quickly determines that hot showers are the answer. Hot showers with Don waiting outside the curtain become hot showers with Don and Charlie inside the curtain, oh, bliss!
Baths - BSFR: I loved the showers, but I wanted to do something a little different here. When she was in college, my friend Danuta used to live in an apartment that had been converted over from a, yes, local nut house. Or maybe it was one of those sanitariums. Anyway, the bathroom had this huge bathtub in the middle of the room on a raised pedestal. Still in use, and pretty darned creepy. So much so that many years later, it is still in my head. I was so very glad to have found a use for that particular memory, I can’t tell you. There are many baths in my story, and Sam seems a little obsessed with them. That’s okay. The boy looks good wet, and that’s just all there is too it.
***
Shared Activities - MP: To wile away the hours in the basement, Charlie and Don play chess and scrabble on the chalkboard. They place wagers, if Charlie wins he gets hugs and kisses, and if Don wins, they play scrabble, which he is better at than Charlie, because Charlie can’t spell for shit. This allows the characters to interact in a regular way, building more intimacy. They also read comic books together, which was adorable. One of my favorite lines of this theme was when Don says, “Some stuff you don’t have to win from me,” and then he hugs Charlie anyway.
Shared Activities - BSFR: I became obsessed with chalk for a good two months at one point because of all the chalkboards in the story, but couldn’t find the equivalent for Sam and Dean. The closest I could come was the fact the warehouse had old chalkboards and boxes of chalk, I wanted that to be a running theme, an homage to MP, but I really couldn’t find a way to work it in.
Then, two things happened. The first thing is that it turns out had, over the years, developed a case of iron deficiency anemia, one of the effects of which is a strong desire for minerals, which some people find in paper, or dirt, or in my case, chalk. TMI, right? I wanted to eat chalk, I was desperate, but since so many places have turned to white boards, it would take a trip to the Big City to the school supply store and ask them if they had some old chalk I could have. Not the dustless kind they make nowadays, but the old, bad, wrong, chalk in your lungs kind of dusty chalk. I dreamed about chalk, couldn’t stop thinking about it. I finally gave in and started taking iron supplements, and bingo, no more chalk obsession. I still wanted to include chalk, but found only dead ends.
Second thing was me asking Amothea if there was anything particular she wanted to see in the story, since she’s my BFF, I wanted to do something nice for her. She said no, and be sure to be really mean to Sam and Dean, and had I ever considered Art Therarpy? Light bulb. I looked it up, and lo, one of the things they do is ask patients to draw stuff IN CHALK. Pencils are too pointy, ink is too messy, chalk you can eat, so it was perfect. Suddenly I had runaway Art Therapy in my story, but I think it tied everything together nicely. Sam and Dean spend lots of time drawing with chalk, and putting together puzzles, and working out in the yard, and in the laundry. They do everything together, what could be more perfect?
***
The Secret - MP: One of my favorite parts about the story was the progression of The Secret: Don knows Charlie is his brother, but to keep Charlie safe, and to keep Williamson from using this against them, he can’t tell anyone, not even Charlie himself. Charlie might break down and tell under duress, you see. (Which is smart, because Charlie breaks down and spills the beans anytime Williamson asks him to.)
Problem is, Charlie falls in love with Don, in sort of an anti-Stockholm Syndrome way: Don is not his captor, but he is nice to Charlie and protects him. Don has the impulse to give Charlie anything he needs, so when Charlie asks for physical contact, love, affection…Don gives it to him. Along the way, he justifies his actions to himself, saying they are for Charlie, but even after they escape, and the sex still continues, Don is unable to justify his actions. It eats him up inside because ONE DAY Charlie will remember, and Don is sure that his brother will hate him. I loved the deliciousness of this effect, the long, drawn out nature of the angst.
The Secret - BSRF: Anyone with even a small experience with Supernatural knows that protecting Sam, doing for Sam, giving to Sam is Dean’s Prime Directive. Nothing else matters, not even Dean, when up against those big green eyes just asking for something. Wanting it. It wasn’t hard developing this aspect of the story, but I mixed it up a little too, because in the mental institution, Dean is not protecting Sam against anything but himself. Dean is also needier here than Don was, he’s had a djinn attack too, and for several weeks was out of it and thought Sam was dead, and grieved and suffered. He’s on meds, he’s unarmed, he’s almost as helpless as Sam. Except he’s got his memory back. So on him rests everything, the escapes plan and stifling the desire to tell Sam the truth. How fun it was to play with the idea of Dean angsting over Sam finding out!
This rest of this page contains links to all of my author's notes. I had such copious notes I can hardly organize them. Still, I thought it might be interesting to include my outlines, links I used to research, and deleted scenes. Enjoy!
(A/N: If a link is active, it means the notes/information has been uploaded. Otherwise...there's nothing there yet.)
General Notes
Music Liner Notes
Web Sites I Used
January Notes
Outline Middle of January
February Themes
February Notes
March Notes
April
May
June
Blue Skies From Rain Master Fic Post
Read this only after you read the story, for you will be spoiled.
My desire to write BSFR started, really, with my reading Missing Persons by Dira Sudis, which is so good, that after you read it, you’ll be eternally ruined for anything else, The story is so fascinating, do deep and rich and detailed, you’ll be fanatically watching Numb3rs and obsessing about “Mac” and “C” for ever and forever. Like I was.
During the summer of 2007, I was equally obsessed with Big Pink’s Red and Dazzleland, so obsessed that I obnoxiously hounded her till she patiently taught me how she did it, with the triple plot structure and going back and forth between time lines. From her teachings, I produced Phantom Load, which I submitted for the Big Bang 2008. Since I was unemployed for a lot of the writing, I had plenty of time to obsess and revise.
The summer of 2008, I was so obsessed with MP, that I wanted to do something like it. The plot was fairly straightforward, but what Dira did with it really blew me away.
I went through her story that summer, reading it several times, reading it like I was studying it. I also obnoxiously obsessed about every detail to my friend Amothea, until she kindly suggested that I write to Dira herself. Which I did.
I asked her how she made everything so real. Dira said that she used clichés, every cliché in the book, and assembled them in such a way that allowed her to do the work and to break down the characters so that they would actually consider crossing a taboo that seems almost embedded in our DNA.
Then I asked Dira’s permission to riff off her story, and re-create the elements in the Supernatural universe, which she kindly did, callooh, callay!
One profound thing that Dira told me that it wasn’t just the clichés themselves, but why they worked. Here is a direct quote she told me about the kind of story she wanted to create:
“(It's) a story that does all the heavy lifting on the page. Bad guys made them do it, confined space, bed sharing, hurt/comfort, amnesia - these are the things that lower the character’s resistance to what they’re doing. Incest and slash, the suspension of disbelief - the foundation of that sexual relationship and the way the characters are warped to fit it.” (Author quoted with permission.)
I hit that philosophy so hard, I internalized it, and had a sticky note on my wall with the words on it. I wanted to keep that idea in front of me throughout the whole writing process. I’m fond of stories where the boys angst about breaking the taboo; in stories where they don’t angst, there isn’t as much impact for me. (Very good porn seems to overcome this problem for me, however.) So I wanted to make sure that even though I like internally motivated stories, to break the incest taboo, there would typically have to be some sort of external motivator. With the pile of motivators that Dira used, it would take some kind of superman to resist.
Then I registered for the Big Bang 2009 in January, and was suddenly confronted by the daunting task of writing something AS good as Missing Persons, with the same themes, but different, because it was Sam and Dean rather than Don and Charlie.
I came up with a list of elements in her story that seemed essential. The are:
Amnesia
Non-con
Kidnapping
Bad guys
Torture
Hurt/comfort
Close quarters
Intimacy
Showers
Shared activities
The secret: Brothers in love
I did my best to create a correlation in the Sam and Dean universe. Some of her elements didn’t work, so I discarded them.
***
Amnesia - MP: Charlie is kidnapped by the bad guys and forced to do equations to plan bank robberies so they appear random. All of the drugs and torture and isolation give him post traumatic stress amnesia.
Amnesia - BSRF: I couldn’t have either of the boys kidnapped because their profiles are so low, no one even hardly knows they exist. But it was fairly easy, I came up with the djinn from WIAWSNB causing the amnesia, and giving them each the nightmare that the other one had died. They go a little crazy and end up in a mental institution. But it’s a magical amnesia, and anything a mental institution could do for them won’t help. Thus the boys must help each other.
***
Non-con - MP: There was lots of contextual background noise about non-con in Missing Persons, but it never really happens. Charlie is very afraid when Williamsons hints that he could make it happen, so Charlie decides to head it off at the pass. I love Charlie for this!
Non-Con - BSRF: There is no real non-con in my story, no matter how much Amothea begged, I just couldn’t see my way through that. But pretty much, just for her, I developed Randy Pointy Fingers into a character who was *obsessed* with it. I think it’s just because he has a huge crush on Sam, and, well, who could blame him?
***
Kidnapping - MP: Charlie is kidnapped so that the bad guys can use his magical math powers.
Kidnapping - BSRF: In my story, no one is kidnapped. Again, another idea that didn’t quite fit in. I mean, it would be cool if someone DID kidnap them and put the boys in a mental institution; I think that would make a fine read! (And maybe it’s already been written.)
***
Bad Guys - MP: Dira had Williamson as the Big Bad who had captured Charlie and had drugged him and tortured him and made him do Bad Things, like plan all those bank robberies. Williamson was the perfect Big Bad, he was obviously cruel but he wasn’t a cookie cutter, moustache twirling bad guy. He was smart, had a smart crew, knew how to get things done, and was able to get Don smile at him once. He connected with people, he was perfect, he was ambiguous and definitely not a cliché. But he was mean to Charlie and for that he deserves to die.
Bad Guys - BSFR: The lack of external bad guy was one of the most troublesome parts of the story. I didn’t want the typical bad guy doctor who’s got it “in” for Sam or Dean, or the mean, cruel orderly who delights in torturing one of the boys for his own nefarious pleasures. So I really didn’t have a bad guy.
I was a little lost, so I complained to Amothea who said it sounded like my story lacked tension. I agreed. I needed to up the ante, I really needed a bad guy. I had several doctors, an art therapist, and a handful of orderlies who seemed to enjoy their jobs, and did their best to care for patients. Maybe the budget was a little tight, maybe the food was a little iffy and boring, but overall, Manson County Mental Hospital was not the worst place you could find yourself with a case of amnesia and a brother who swore you were dead and didn’t recognize you.
Then I logiced it through. If Sam and Dean have amnesia, then the kind and caring staff of Mason County would enter their names into a database of missing persons, the kind of database that would be picked up by the CIA, and local police, perhaps the news stations, and, best of all, The FBI in an effort to locate someone who might be able to identify them. Our friend Hendrickson watches everything, don’t you know, I figured it wouldn’t be long before he would get wind of a “Sam” and a “Dean” of no particular last name who were found wandering not half a mile from a 1967 Chevy Impala and who were now securely locked up in a mental ward. He’s the impetus for the boys to get the hell out.
***
Torture - MP: Dira’s a genius is all I can say. I counted all the times that Charlie or Don is actually hurt “on screen” and I could only come up with three, maybe four times. The rest of the time, Dira only alludes to a torture, and the mind is wonderfully inventive in making it worse than it actually might have been. My favorite torture is “off screen” where the crazy bad henchman decides that since Charlie has pissed himself that he needs a bath. We don’t see the bath, but we see the results of the bath, and in my mind’s eye, I’m sure it was a terribly horrific event for Charlie.
Torture - BSFR: My torture needed to involve something that would happen to the boys in relation to the mental institution. I didn’t want to do the typical mental institution/amnesia story that’s found in so many fandoms, which is where one character is in the hospital, and the other one poses as a doctor to rescue him, or where the bad doctor or bad orderly mistreats one or both of the boys. I wanted to make it harder for myself, so I determined to put the boys in a place that was actually trying to help them get better. Don’t ever do this! This is where I painted myself into a corner.
I couldn’t use the normal methods of “hurt” so that there could be comfort. Like, okay, lobotomies. Lobotomies are a thing of the past, as are insulin shock and electroshock therapies. Okay, maybe in some states, but really, Dr. Freeman is long dead and most places rely on drugs and tons of therapy, so I had to get really inventive. I did some research, and the cold wrap method is still used, especially in state run places, where the inmates are poor, and funds are low. This kind of isolation and immobilization, plus the lack of external stimulus can cause hallucinations. It was the perfect “treatment.” Props to my friend Amy for reminding me of this. I decided to follow Dira’s lead and only have three or so actual “hurt” sessions on screen, and allude to the rest, letting the reader fill in the blanks.
***
Hurt Comfort - MP: Dira has Charlie and Don caring for each other in different ways and at different points along the way, sometimes switching places as to who was the comforter. This helped develop their relationship in a very natural way, because if you care about someone, you don’t want to see them hurt, and you want to help them.
Hurt Comfort - BSFR: When either Sam or Dean come back from Treatment, or Dr. Logan’s office, or a difficult Group session, the other one is there for them. I particularly enjoyed having Sam come out of himself and his misery because he feels that “his” Dean needs him.
***
Close quarters - MP: Williamson (bad guy) hires Don as Charlie’s bodyguard. Charlie is a very valuable property, and Williamson is nervous that someone will steal Charlie or that one of his own men might decide to make a profit by selling Charlie. Thus, Don and Charlie are locked in a basement room together for 23 hours out of each day. It doesn’t take long for those close quarters to have an effect.
Close quarters - BSRF: From the amnesia came the mental institution, which naturally is a very confining environment. You can’t just walk out of one of those places because you say you are well. Then I came up with the idea that Dr. Logan would decide that Dean and Sam should share a room; this is an external factor, rather than an internal one, but I figured it was no different than Williamson throwing Charlie and Don together. Sam and Dean are together most hours of the day, and then tend to panic when they are separated. Poor babies.
***
Intimacy - MP: In addition to the constant round the clock contact, the room that Dira put Charlie in Don in had a bathroom that had no door. Dira only mentions it a few times, this lack of door, and the fact that either Don or Charlie would run the water when they used the toilet, and the habit each of them had of pretending that the bathroom did have a door. One other cool thing was the fact that the basement bathroom didn’t have any towels either, and so Charlie and Don would end up wiping their hands on their shirts or pants as they came out of the bathroom. This small detail remained constant; later in the story, either Charlie or Don come out of a motel bathroom, and even though there are towels in there, they still retain the habit of wiping their damp, just-washed hands on their clothes.
Intimacy - BSFR: Using the facilities without a door (or with the door open, or with someone walking in) seemed rather provocative, and I kept looking it out of the corner of my eye. I lifted this completely from Dira’s story, the idea of it, and the vague references to it, so that the reader would know there was no door, but I didn’t dwell. You know you’re close when you can pee in front of someone else. And sometimes survival supersedes personal dignity.
***
Showers - MP: Charlie has been stuck down in the basement, neglected by the bad guys and by himself; he can barely raise his hand let alone ask for a trip to the bathroom upstairs, where the only shower is. Poor guy. I loved watching him suffer through this! Along comes Don, who quickly determines that hot showers are the answer. Hot showers with Don waiting outside the curtain become hot showers with Don and Charlie inside the curtain, oh, bliss!
Baths - BSFR: I loved the showers, but I wanted to do something a little different here. When she was in college, my friend Danuta used to live in an apartment that had been converted over from a, yes, local nut house. Or maybe it was one of those sanitariums. Anyway, the bathroom had this huge bathtub in the middle of the room on a raised pedestal. Still in use, and pretty darned creepy. So much so that many years later, it is still in my head. I was so very glad to have found a use for that particular memory, I can’t tell you. There are many baths in my story, and Sam seems a little obsessed with them. That’s okay. The boy looks good wet, and that’s just all there is too it.
***
Shared Activities - MP: To wile away the hours in the basement, Charlie and Don play chess and scrabble on the chalkboard. They place wagers, if Charlie wins he gets hugs and kisses, and if Don wins, they play scrabble, which he is better at than Charlie, because Charlie can’t spell for shit. This allows the characters to interact in a regular way, building more intimacy. They also read comic books together, which was adorable. One of my favorite lines of this theme was when Don says, “Some stuff you don’t have to win from me,” and then he hugs Charlie anyway.
Shared Activities - BSFR: I became obsessed with chalk for a good two months at one point because of all the chalkboards in the story, but couldn’t find the equivalent for Sam and Dean. The closest I could come was the fact the warehouse had old chalkboards and boxes of chalk, I wanted that to be a running theme, an homage to MP, but I really couldn’t find a way to work it in.
Then, two things happened. The first thing is that it turns out had, over the years, developed a case of iron deficiency anemia, one of the effects of which is a strong desire for minerals, which some people find in paper, or dirt, or in my case, chalk. TMI, right? I wanted to eat chalk, I was desperate, but since so many places have turned to white boards, it would take a trip to the Big City to the school supply store and ask them if they had some old chalk I could have. Not the dustless kind they make nowadays, but the old, bad, wrong, chalk in your lungs kind of dusty chalk. I dreamed about chalk, couldn’t stop thinking about it. I finally gave in and started taking iron supplements, and bingo, no more chalk obsession. I still wanted to include chalk, but found only dead ends.
Second thing was me asking Amothea if there was anything particular she wanted to see in the story, since she’s my BFF, I wanted to do something nice for her. She said no, and be sure to be really mean to Sam and Dean, and had I ever considered Art Therarpy? Light bulb. I looked it up, and lo, one of the things they do is ask patients to draw stuff IN CHALK. Pencils are too pointy, ink is too messy, chalk you can eat, so it was perfect. Suddenly I had runaway Art Therapy in my story, but I think it tied everything together nicely. Sam and Dean spend lots of time drawing with chalk, and putting together puzzles, and working out in the yard, and in the laundry. They do everything together, what could be more perfect?
***
The Secret - MP: One of my favorite parts about the story was the progression of The Secret: Don knows Charlie is his brother, but to keep Charlie safe, and to keep Williamson from using this against them, he can’t tell anyone, not even Charlie himself. Charlie might break down and tell under duress, you see. (Which is smart, because Charlie breaks down and spills the beans anytime Williamson asks him to.)
Problem is, Charlie falls in love with Don, in sort of an anti-Stockholm Syndrome way: Don is not his captor, but he is nice to Charlie and protects him. Don has the impulse to give Charlie anything he needs, so when Charlie asks for physical contact, love, affection…Don gives it to him. Along the way, he justifies his actions to himself, saying they are for Charlie, but even after they escape, and the sex still continues, Don is unable to justify his actions. It eats him up inside because ONE DAY Charlie will remember, and Don is sure that his brother will hate him. I loved the deliciousness of this effect, the long, drawn out nature of the angst.
The Secret - BSRF: Anyone with even a small experience with Supernatural knows that protecting Sam, doing for Sam, giving to Sam is Dean’s Prime Directive. Nothing else matters, not even Dean, when up against those big green eyes just asking for something. Wanting it. It wasn’t hard developing this aspect of the story, but I mixed it up a little too, because in the mental institution, Dean is not protecting Sam against anything but himself. Dean is also needier here than Don was, he’s had a djinn attack too, and for several weeks was out of it and thought Sam was dead, and grieved and suffered. He’s on meds, he’s unarmed, he’s almost as helpless as Sam. Except he’s got his memory back. So on him rests everything, the escapes plan and stifling the desire to tell Sam the truth. How fun it was to play with the idea of Dean angsting over Sam finding out!
This rest of this page contains links to all of my author's notes. I had such copious notes I can hardly organize them. Still, I thought it might be interesting to include my outlines, links I used to research, and deleted scenes. Enjoy!
(A/N: If a link is active, it means the notes/information has been uploaded. Otherwise...there's nothing there yet.)
General Notes
Music Liner Notes
Web Sites I Used
January Notes
Outline Middle of January
February Themes
February Notes
March Notes
April
May
June
Blue Skies From Rain Master Fic Post