heavyartillery | WIP Thursday [2020-04-02]

Working on a fic where Andy survives the war, but his head injury combines with general trauma to make him forget the war years.

"Have you heard from any of them?" Everett asked, pushing past Andy's silent awkwardness.

"From who?"

"Your company."

Andy flushed, realising that he'd utterly misunderstood Everett's earlier comment, not known a military term that should have been as familiar as breathing. "No," he said, then hesitated. That wasn't true. Andy sighed and pulled the blanket around himself even though he was already too warm. "I had a stack of letters waiting for me when I got home, all with Marine Corps postmarks, but..." Andy stopped. He didn't know how to say it felt like reading a stranger's mail. He hadn't recognised a single name, and they'd all known a different man.

"I'm sure you'll feel up to it soon," Everett said, but his smile was disappointed. He knew as well as Andy did that Andy had let his boys down.

I'm not really sure how to deal with the letters though. I don't want to include entire letters, but a lot of Andy's understanding of the situation is going to depend on them, so, there should be some of the letters?

Oooohhh my heart! This one is going to hurt so good, I can already feel it.

I like the idea of peppering pieces of different letters through for additional context. I think it'll add a really fun layer of depth to the narrative.

Yeah, I had been thinking of including bits of letters as scene breaks, both Eddie's letters to Andy, and Andy's letters home including mentions of Eddie, since he starts to get context from that.

But that'd mean rethinking the structure of the story.

Depends how much retroactive work you want to do, I s'pose, but I think that sounds really nice.

I was hoping to get this done quickly, is the problem, but it's turning into one of those Fast or Well situations that had the Melbourne fic in process for months.

I'll have to think about what to include.

Ah, yeah, the whole "rock and hard place" of the fandom world, lol. Godspeed however you decide to go. I'm sure it'll be excellent either way!

Aww, Andy. <3

I love the idea of including bits of the letters, if it doesn't cause a ton of extra work for you. The scene break idea you mentioned above sounds like it could be a really fun way of incorporating them.

Also love that you're including Pope in this fic.

I think if I can make it an excerpt rather than a whole letter, it'll keep the situation under control.

Pope was conveniently going to Yale right then, so he's useful.

All the delicious angst <3333 Amnesia is a great trope! And that's a great snippet.

Also (chants): letters! Letters! If you want to do it the quick and dirty way, you can just use self-explanatory bits from the letters to break the scenes.

I'm still figuring out how to tool the letters in terms of length, timing, and format, but we'll see.

So the hockey fic has more than doubled in size since last time I mentioned it, which I'm pretty proud of considering that it's a format I've never done before. I'm currently working on a transcript from a fictional episode of Hockey Central, which is a radio show/podcast I listen to almost on the daily, wherein the hosts discuss the video of Eddie Jones being outed and I thought, what's better to pique everyone's interest in this already incredibly niche fanfic than a look at some characters you (probably) don't know talking about the impact of a player coming out in a sport you (probably) don't care about? ;P

STEWART: - but the thing that's kind of jarring me, on this one, is - it's the suddenness of it. The disrespect for a player's personal privacy. I mean, we're all used to the - the celebrity of hockey, right?

MAREK: [behind] Sure, sure.

STEWART: There's a certain amount of that that comes with being an elite athlete on the pro circuit, a certain amount of fame. You're in the public eye, y'know? And you expect a certain amount of scrutiny, from fans, or from the press. But I think in this case, it's a situation where that celebrity had the potential to backfire in a big way and it kind of did. I mean, you gotta be a little pissed off on Jones's behalf, y'know? Whether he - however he identifies, whether he's gay or bisexual or whether it was some big misunderstanding or whatever the case may be, it's frustrating to see some of these media outlets latch onto the whole situation as some big scandal when it's not really anybody's business.

MAREK: See, Stewie, that raises the question for me—when a player's public conduct has an impact on the overall well-being of the team, does it become anybody's business?

STEWART: Well -

MAREK: When a player is reported for making inappropriate advances or when a player engages in conduct unbecoming as a figurehead for the team they represent, those kinds of incidents get reported and they become everybody's business.

STEWART: Right.

MAREK: Or so Twitter would lead me to believe.

BURKE: Oh yeah, everyone on Twitter's an expert. Doctor, lawyer, professor, you name it.

MAREK: Now, I'll grant you, this is kind of a different situation –

STEWART: [top] This is a completely different situation! This isn't a player assaulting a cabbie over some loose change or a - a player consistently showing up in the tabloids being tossed out of bars. I haven't seen the video myself, but from what I gather, Jones wasn't doing anything different than any other guy out celebrating a win with his buddies might've been doing if he ran across someone he liked. It's the fact that it's another man in the video that's drawing everyone's attention and that's, y'know, that's a problem. Especially in our community, that's a problem.

Man, I'm looking forward to this so much.

YOU TELL THEM, Stewart.

It's still absolutely hysterical to me that you're one of the biggest cheerleaders of a modern hockey AU. <333 It's deeply flattering, lol.

I mean, maybe it's because I'm not in Hockey fandom, so I haven't read character gets outed 500 times, but this seems like a really thoughtful examination of sports culture and celebrity, and the unfair pressures put on queer people to behave a certain way, written by an insider who's given it a lot of thought and is a great writer to boot. Which I'd be delighted to read in any setting.

Oooh this is excellent. I'm so excited for this fic!! Just thinking about all the different formats you're going to include has me :D :D :D

<333 I’m very excited about it too! It’s a lot of dialogue, in different formats, which is nice because I love that stuff, lol.

Formatting is going to be a bit of An Ordeal but I think it’ll be good when it’s done. Hopefully soon, if I can keep up at this speed.

Thank you for your cheerleading on this one also, friend~

I have only a faint clue of what's going on but man, that looks so incredibly cool.

WIP Thursday [2020-04-02]

Andy/Eddie Amnesia

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