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fontasticcrablettes · 7 years

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FOR WANT OF A NAIL AND ALSO STILL answer as little or as many of the questions as you want idc I just 👀

Thanks! I’ll answer all of them :)

For Want of a Nail

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way? So I’ll talk about the structure because this is one of the few things I’ve written with a set chapter structure (usually I just write until I find a natural end to the chapter). So, the first half of the fic runs on the question, “What is going on with Flynn?” After that question is solved, it’s immediately replaced, “How did this happen to Flynn?” I don’t know if anything in particular inspire this but there have been a few stories I’ve read where I was really impressed with the way the author kept the pace moving by resolving and replacing mysteries and wanted to do something like that. When I wrote N’oubliez pas, I had a lot of success with keeping two storylines, one in the present and one backstory, running side by side in chronological order and it seemed a good structure to use here. In that one, I fit the flashback scenes into the story more while this one just inserted them at the start of each chapter. The main reason for that is because I worried it would be confusing with two different viewpoint Flynns, so I wanted readers to be able to expect the first scene in each chapter was flashback Flynn.

2: What scene did you first put down? I always write things in the order you read them, so the first scene was the first version of child Yuri and Flynn at the river.

3: What’s your favorite line of narration? Argh so I’m really bad at picking favourite bits of narration but I like this one not for the sentence itself but the context: “In that moment, they remembered they were supposed to be enemies.” I really like the whole part where Yuri and Not-Flynn are both so caught up in solving the case and working together to fight off the killer that they momentarily forget they aren’t friends. It’s a hint to the fact that Not-Flynn isn’t so far gone to be irredeemable and that he and Yuri can be friends in the futurre.

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue? I hope you’re not expecting anything deep or meaningful because I really enjoy this dumb joke that brings out my inner Dad™“Gagged? Sundlow, how did you find the corpse?”“Appalling, to be honest.”

5: What part was hardest to write? I think all the parts in the flashback scenes charting Flynn’s descent into villainy. I wanted to make sure it didn’t seem to happen too fast or too abruptly and that throughout it, he was still recognizable as a warped version of Flynn and not just an evil OC.

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics? It’s the only one with an evil Flynn! That is, this one really delves into Flynn and the possibilities of inverting all his positive traits and considering what he’d be like in other circumstances, so I guess it’s one of the most Flynn-character-analysis-y ones.

7: Where did the title come from? I’m sure I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but it’s from an old poem! It expresses how one tiny change can cause a catastrophic domino effect.For want of a nail the shoe was lost;For want of a shoe the horse was lost;For want of a horse the battle was lost;For the failure of battle the kingdom was lost

8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it? The Butcher was inspired by Jack the Ripper, especially the theories that he was a noble or very wealthy man. Plus serial killers in general, especially cases where they had wives or girlfriends who had no idea.

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic? I deliberated a lot about whether it should be Flynn’s decision to not go with Yuri that night as kids, or if it should be a coin flip. The coin flip would make it more of pure luck that Canon-Flynn turned out ok, but I went with Flynn making the decision because it caused him more guilt and self-loathing for feeling responsible.

10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story? Fluri really worked for this story because one of the primary reasons Flynn was so antagonistic toward Yuri was that he’d spent all these years being hopelessly in love with the Yuri he put on a pedestal. His Yuri died as a kid, but he spent the rest of his life pining for the idea of Yuri. Meeting an irl Yuri who didn’t match the vision in his head is what really drove him to despise Yuri and try to kill him - those intense feelings of hatred had to come from an intense love.

11: What do you like best about this fic? I like Not-Flynn’s conversations with Canon-Flynn and Canon-Flynn’s introspection about what this means about himself.

12: What do you like least about this fic? They figure out the identity of the killer too fast. I wanted there to be more time between the attack on Yuri and figuring out the killer but then I couldn’t think of anything else to happen and had them make an inspired logical connection to figure it out.

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading? I don’t listen to music as I write; I prefer to work in silence. I don’t really know what you should listen to… I don’t really put much thought into music. I did think about this song while writing the final confrontation scene though.

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic? Answered!

15: What did you learn from writing this fic? How basement flooding and drainage systems work. LMAO were you expecting something deep. I learned uh…. evil Flynn is fun to write?

Ok, on to Still.

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way? So I always have trouble writing things where characters stay in one place. I always feel like they need to be physically moving and going somewhere. So this fic was in part written as a challenge to myself to write an entirely psychologically-driven story where the viewpoint character never leaves a single chair. There are some scenes where he hallucinates leaving the chair that might be cheating, but for the most part it’s entirely set with Yuri sitting in a chair in a dark room for 30k words.

2: What scene did you first put down? Once again, I always start from the beginning so it would be the opening scene where Yuri arrives in Halure.

3: What’s your favorite line of narration? There were convictions in his heart: Yuri never gave up, Yuri didn't give in to despair, Yuri didn't sob like a baby when he was hurt, Yuri didn't eat people, Yuri would never mull over ways to kill himself with his hands tied. But he, the man in the chair, did all of those things, so how could he be Yuri?My favourite part of this fic was having Yuri really break down and unravel until he reached a point where he completely lost his sense of self. This is the part where he really starts to think of “Yuri” as a third person and conceives of himself as merely “the man in the chair”.

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue? "I can't. I don't know what to do. I don't know what's going on. I was so sure I knew what I wanted but it's all just… slipping away." She took a deep breath and shook her head. "I'll think about it. I'm so sorry. Maybe it would be kinder to kill you quickly." I like this moment of clarity Clara has, showing that she isn’t just a heartless monster. There’s a coherent, remorseful girl in there buried beneath the combination of demonic possession and a lifetime of abuse. But also, it hints that the shadowy entity is leaving her... and presumably moving to someone else.

5: What part was hardest to write? All the in-between parts where Yuri was starting to break but hadn’t lost it yet. I had to find that balance of Yuri-style defiance and total despair.

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics? It’s really a bottle episode while I usually write larger stories with multiple subplots and larger casts. This one is hyper-focused on Yuri’s mental state and the tragedy surrounding Clara’s family. Until the final scene with Rita and Estelle, the only characters who ever speak are Yuri, Clara, and some hallucinations.

7: Where did the title come from? The original title referred to the exact timespan Yuri was there (I don’t remember the exact numer but it was like “127 Hours”) to indicate how every moment trickled by in that hell. But I decided I wanted the reader to be just as unsure as Yuri about how long it had actually been, so I changed it to “Still.” with the double meaning of Yuri sitting completely still and isolated, and throughout all of it, he’s still in that chair.

8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it? The murder of Clara’s family was inspired by the Hinterkaifeck mystery in which a farming family was murdered. There are some details adapted for the fic, like the significant footprints in the snow leading to the back door and some drama about infidelity and who the real father of a child is. Garrick leaving his brother in the tree was inspired by the case of a skeleton found in a witch elm back in the 40s and the graffiti “Who put Bella in the witch elm?” appearing later. An article I read concluded that girl in the tree was a spy for Germany named Clarabella; that’s the source of Clara’s name.

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic? This fic went through a lot of changes actually. My original plan had Flynn being the captive after he went to investigate a murder. At one point it was even a modern AU with Flynn as a police officer caught in this situation. Even after it stared Yuri, I had planned Yuri to be sitting upstairs, facing the forest directly and growing increasingly convinced about shadowy figures watching him from the trees and the dread that any day now something was going to emerge from the woods to finish him off. Hoskky suggested the basement and talked me into it just by pointing out how torturous being locked in darkness would be lmao. I had also originally planned to start with Flynn setting out looking for Yuri after he’d gone missing and switching between Flynn’s investigation and what had been happening to Yuri. I decided against this for the same reason I changed the title; better to keep readers in the dark about how long Yuri was down there. I cut out the Flynn investigating aspect entirely because I decided it would be better if the reader was just as isolated in Yuri’s basement as he was.

10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story? There is no pairing, largely because none is needed. Yuri having a romantic relationship back home wouldn’t have made his predicament any worse or better so it really wasn’t relevant.

11: What do you like best about this fic? When Yuri really loses it at the end and the narration stops ever referring to him as Yuri and also the grammar gets a little scrambled to reflect his mental state, full of intrusive thoughts and run-on sentences.

12: What do you like least about this fic? I think the ending is too fast. The doctor info-dumps a lot to Rita and Estelle in quick succession.

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading? Again, I don’t listen to music while writing. I don’t like listening to music while reading, either, so I can’t really recommend anything on that front. I’m open to suggestions.

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic? Don’t go home with strangers.

15: What did you learn from writing this fic? I am capable of writing character-centred psychological horror!

#flynns-king-kong-dong #Nightfoot writes things

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