Waiting for an Indication: Final Notes
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FINAL NOTES
Here's the thing: this started out, the whole fic, in February 2009: a way to write about Ryan's breakup where he cheated with Brendon, but the whole thing was really about how he's in love with Spencer. (In my truest, tinhattiest heart of hearts, I will always believe that Ryan is in love with Spencer, even though I also believe that Brendon and Spencer are married and in love.) I wanted to write about Ryan's jealous comments re: air mattresses, the supreme Brendon/Shane domesticity that was being demonstrated to us at the time, Brendon and Ryan being assholes, and how Spencer and Ryan's relationship might be insanely complicated, reciprocal, and essential to how they defined themselves.
Clearly, in the course of writing this fic, which has taken approximately sixteen months to write (it was originally supposed to take two), other things have happened, which had to be taken into account.
It was a little freaky, actually, how events followed the outline I had vaguely mapped out in my head. Of course Ryan and Spencer were on opposite sides of the split, I found myself thinking in one particularly traumatized post-divorce moment, they both blame themselves for ruining the other's happiness. (It wasn't my first reaction, and I don't believe it's true, but the thought totally crossed my mind. Because I am a crazy person.) There is no way to convey how much "New Perspective" freaked me out, because to me it read like exactly this story here, where Brendon learns to embrace polyamory and to love Sarah because she's more than just someone who likes having a famous and talented guy as her boyfriend. The song came out a couple of weeks after I solved the Sarah problem, and it was eerie.
The Sarah problem? Sarah wasn't planned for. The Disney pictures came to my attention, I dunno, three weeks after I had planned out most of this fic (it was supposed to be A LOT shorter) and she knocked my whole outline for a loop. I didn't know what I wanted to do with her. Handwave her? Incorporate her? The entire Sarah-Brendon-Shane polyamory plotline owes its existence to my becoming aware of what some people were saying about Sarah shortly after her involvement with Brendon became public: she'd dated other guys on the label, she was going to break his heart, she was just in it for the publicity/money/whatever the hell, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought, you know what? This is misogynist bullshit. So she liked to date guys in bands? Was that all there was to her as a person? Let's face it, if I could date Sarah Rees Brennan, I would, because I love books in general and her books in particular and if I could publicly appear at a book signing as the person she chose to share her life with and maybe get a shoutout in the acknowledgements I would die of happiness. It wouldn't be all there was to either me or our relationship, although certainly both the aspect of hero-worship and the aspect of feeling special because the person I was with was special would be part of that.
I fell for Brendon's Sarah, for the fact that she was a nanny (so am I) and her "twitter dat twitter dat" and the way she and Brendon were swapping clothes. I liked that she couldn't stop grinning when she was supposed to be playing dead at Disneyworld, and her spiky hair, and I thought, you know what? If it lasts at all, there's going to be more to it than just the fact that she might get off on being Brendon Urie's Girlfriend. So that was where the part of the story about her came from.
AS A SIDE NOTE: Despite eerie coincidences aplenty, I am thoroughly aware that at many points I have screwed with the actual timelines of reality. I actually stole an old desk calendar and plotted all tweets and blogposts at one point, but I needed more time in some places and less in others than was actually available, so all around, call it an AU just slightly left of reality. Obviously they didn't break up the band in South Africa, because there were tweeted pics of Ryan and Spencer amicably hanging out with Greta and Ryan's new crowd after they got back, etc. (Also, there is no major league baseball in February. I know that. Don't break off our engagement, Becky!) Similarly, as has been made abundantly clear (damn you, Young Veins, and your interviews that kill my rose-colored glasses) Ryan and Spencer did not make up and make out on Spencer's birthday, or even just make up.
Music is totally responsible for the fact that this kept getting written and kept getting written and kept getting written. I had, in fact, almost entirely forgotten about the whole fic when I was driving home, my iPod on shuffle, and a song started that was so this Shane that I started crying because he was so sad and needed to be fixed. New Perspective I've already mentioned. And there are half a dozen others I've kept around just because they brought me back to where I could write this story, time after time after time. Half of them don't even fit the way the story turned out, but I still owe them credit for luring me back and spurring me on. The incredible mixes created by my mixers are amazing and awesome and so much better than anything I could possibly put together, but if you watch this space when BBB is over I'll post the weird semi-mix of songs that kept me writing this fic, just for the hell of it. ^_^
Last but most, I will never be able to express just how much my pre-reading team, in particular shihadchick, mrsquizzical, and maple_mahogany who commented on every single snippet with helpful comments and reassuring reactions, made this happen. It would never have gotten even close to done without them. I utterly recommend creating a filter for snippets of any long fic if you can put them on it, because your whole story will be a zillion times better if you do. Personally, however, I have to apologize to Maple and Q and everyone else: I'm pretty sure the way I left them in the dark about plot twists means this fic is nothing like what they were expecting the final product to be.
Art and Music: Amazing Extras by Big Bang Creators ~*~ Master Post ~*~ Return to Part One
FINAL NOTES
Here's the thing: this started out, the whole fic, in February 2009: a way to write about Ryan's breakup where he cheated with Brendon, but the whole thing was really about how he's in love with Spencer. (In my truest, tinhattiest heart of hearts, I will always believe that Ryan is in love with Spencer, even though I also believe that Brendon and Spencer are married and in love.) I wanted to write about Ryan's jealous comments re: air mattresses, the supreme Brendon/Shane domesticity that was being demonstrated to us at the time, Brendon and Ryan being assholes, and how Spencer and Ryan's relationship might be insanely complicated, reciprocal, and essential to how they defined themselves.
Clearly, in the course of writing this fic, which has taken approximately sixteen months to write (it was originally supposed to take two), other things have happened, which had to be taken into account.
It was a little freaky, actually, how events followed the outline I had vaguely mapped out in my head. Of course Ryan and Spencer were on opposite sides of the split, I found myself thinking in one particularly traumatized post-divorce moment, they both blame themselves for ruining the other's happiness. (It wasn't my first reaction, and I don't believe it's true, but the thought totally crossed my mind. Because I am a crazy person.) There is no way to convey how much "New Perspective" freaked me out, because to me it read like exactly this story here, where Brendon learns to embrace polyamory and to love Sarah because she's more than just someone who likes having a famous and talented guy as her boyfriend. The song came out a couple of weeks after I solved the Sarah problem, and it was eerie.
The Sarah problem? Sarah wasn't planned for. The Disney pictures came to my attention, I dunno, three weeks after I had planned out most of this fic (it was supposed to be A LOT shorter) and she knocked my whole outline for a loop. I didn't know what I wanted to do with her. Handwave her? Incorporate her? The entire Sarah-Brendon-Shane polyamory plotline owes its existence to my becoming aware of what some people were saying about Sarah shortly after her involvement with Brendon became public: she'd dated other guys on the label, she was going to break his heart, she was just in it for the publicity/money/whatever the hell, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought, you know what? This is misogynist bullshit. So she liked to date guys in bands? Was that all there was to her as a person? Let's face it, if I could date Sarah Rees Brennan, I would, because I love books in general and her books in particular and if I could publicly appear at a book signing as the person she chose to share her life with and maybe get a shoutout in the acknowledgements I would die of happiness. It wouldn't be all there was to either me or our relationship, although certainly both the aspect of hero-worship and the aspect of feeling special because the person I was with was special would be part of that.
I fell for Brendon's Sarah, for the fact that she was a nanny (so am I) and her "twitter dat twitter dat" and the way she and Brendon were swapping clothes. I liked that she couldn't stop grinning when she was supposed to be playing dead at Disneyworld, and her spiky hair, and I thought, you know what? If it lasts at all, there's going to be more to it than just the fact that she might get off on being Brendon Urie's Girlfriend. So that was where the part of the story about her came from.
AS A SIDE NOTE: Despite eerie coincidences aplenty, I am thoroughly aware that at many points I have screwed with the actual timelines of reality. I actually stole an old desk calendar and plotted all tweets and blogposts at one point, but I needed more time in some places and less in others than was actually available, so all around, call it an AU just slightly left of reality. Obviously they didn't break up the band in South Africa, because there were tweeted pics of Ryan and Spencer amicably hanging out with Greta and Ryan's new crowd after they got back, etc. (Also, there is no major league baseball in February. I know that. Don't break off our engagement, Becky!) Similarly, as has been made abundantly clear (damn you, Young Veins, and your interviews that kill my rose-colored glasses) Ryan and Spencer did not make up and make out on Spencer's birthday, or even just make up.
Music is totally responsible for the fact that this kept getting written and kept getting written and kept getting written. I had, in fact, almost entirely forgotten about the whole fic when I was driving home, my iPod on shuffle, and a song started that was so this Shane that I started crying because he was so sad and needed to be fixed. New Perspective I've already mentioned. And there are half a dozen others I've kept around just because they brought me back to where I could write this story, time after time after time. Half of them don't even fit the way the story turned out, but I still owe them credit for luring me back and spurring me on. The incredible mixes created by my mixers are amazing and awesome and so much better than anything I could possibly put together, but if you watch this space when BBB is over I'll post the weird semi-mix of songs that kept me writing this fic, just for the hell of it. ^_^
Last but most, I will never be able to express just how much my pre-reading team, in particular shihadchick, mrsquizzical, and maple_mahogany who commented on every single snippet with helpful comments and reassuring reactions, made this happen. It would never have gotten even close to done without them. I utterly recommend creating a filter for snippets of any long fic if you can put them on it, because your whole story will be a zillion times better if you do. Personally, however, I have to apologize to Maple and Q and everyone else: I'm pretty sure the way I left them in the dark about plot twists means this fic is nothing like what they were expecting the final product to be.
Art and Music: Amazing Extras by Big Bang Creators ~*~ Master Post ~*~ Return to Part One