How do you generate ideas for both plot and characters? I’m one of the hundreds who is swooning and getting her breath caught at the “what’s this, Granger?” moment and I’d love to know how you came up with the idea for this in particular + how you usually come up with other wonderful moments that constitute the glorious Lionheart saga.
Oh, gosh, you're lovely. When writing is good — and this is a big conditional, because sometimes writing is like riding a horse and sometimes it's like wrestling an octopus, and you can rarely predict which — I don't necessarily think about the Process. It's sinking into the world and going, "Okay, action." There's an outline lurking behind it, and latently I'm considering some miscellaneous higher-order ideas about theme and structure, but I'm not writing the book in order to talk about those themes; the themes are in the book because I'm writing it and I'm interested in them. I can't very well help it, they're gonna end up in there no matter what. I don't have to worry about the architecture when I'm doing the upholstery, if that makes sense.
Discovering the more specific character beats and exchanges like the one in Chapter 64 are one of the ineluctable joys of creation. Sometimes, I think of a line while I'm walking down the street, jot it down in my Notes app, and carefully, meticulously develop a context where I can deploy it. Other times, I'm standing there in the scene and a guy does a thing, and I'm as startled as anyone.
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"can you stay?" + atsushi & kyouka
"can you stay?"
atsushi's voice trembles as they speak, and kyouka freezes.
"nevermind."
atsushi laughs almost immediately, blinking away the impending tears and wavng their hands in front of them. "sorry. you don't... that was stupid of me to say. i'm-"
"stop apologizing."
kyouka slides beside them, curling up against their side. she head plops on their shoulder.
they're warm and shakey, and kyouka feels soft on atsushi's neck.
"i don't mind staying."
honestly, she wanted to stay. no matter how many times she watches atsushi - her sibling by everything but blood - get stabbed, the more she fears for them.
it's a little foolish, she knows; she's been familiar with blood and death and gore since her parents died. limbs being torn off and blood slowly oozing out of the body doesn't scare her.
but it does when she sees it happening to atsushi.
(and she doesn't say anything, but atsushi isn't the only one who gets nightmares - she's just better at keeping them quiet)
"you're just a kid..." atsushi mumbles, breaths shaky and uneven. "you shouldn't have to-to comfort me."
even so, kyouka soon feels the cool pads of their compression gloves rubbing her wrist.
"doesn't matter," she says, because she knows you're still a kid, too only upsets them more.
"okay."
they whisper it so quietly the only reasons kyouka hears it is because of her assassin training.
good.
she snuggles closer still and listens to their heartbeat. it starts off quick, but gradually falls until it's steady.
and kyouka is able to fall asleep with the reminder that her sibling is still alive.
(send me a sentence (+ a ship/character) and i'll write the next five sentences)
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Okay, here's the post I promised based on @ocean--grey 's poll! So if anyone randomly finds this and is confused, the poll was a question about who makes Lister feel the worst about himself: Low Lister, Sebastian Doyle, or the brain-in-a-jar from "Out of Time." I went tag crazy in my reblog, and this is just what didn't fit 🤣
So, Lister was ganged up on and victimized by all of the Lows in a scene that has to have been one of the most disturbing things that ever happened to him. But one small, probably unintentional detail that I'm going to emphasize is this: all of the Lows were working together, and reasonably well. They all teamed up against him, a solid team, 4 against 1.
And so, I find it FASCINATING that this episode directly follows "Terrorform" and "Quarantine," two episodes that heavily emphasize the everyone vs Rimmer dynamic.
Social patterns can be brutal. At the end of the day, there's very little that makes people feel more together than disliking the same person, especially if they can feel justified about it. And Rimmer is extremely easy to dislike, justifiably.
But unlike Cat and Kryten, who have fairly simple relationships with Rimmer (they know they need him there, and he has a couple redeeming qualities, but they genuinely dislike him), Lister actually sees Rimmer as a human being, with feelings that matter. He wouldn't have chosen to have this guy play a huge role in his life, but he does care about him.
And, sometimes, he treats Rimmer terribly.
It's usually not just him. It's him, the Cat, and Kryten playing off of each other, having Rimmer be the odd-man-out. And he gives as good as he gets, so it probably feels fine, mostly. You can't say that Rimmer doesn't deserve to have his own terrible actions thrown into his face, now and then.
Rimmer was exhibiting some horrid behavior in "Quarantine." His treatment of the rest of the crew before the virus set in was vindictive and petty in really destructive ways. But it was also a direct reaction to his peers talking about shutting him down. (Notably, this was right after an episode where they all pretended to like him, then threw it back in his face.) He probably saw that as a genuine threat to his life, and responded to it the way he's been conditioned to, since he was a kid: weaponize rules, use every scrap of power you have, no one else will help you.
Lister has come to understand Rimmer pretty well by this point in the show. He understands that "the wrong parents" doesn't just mean that Rimmer is ambitious and vain; he knows the guy survived some genuine, serious abuse. (Notably, he's the only character who looked disturbed at Rimmer's Uncle Frank story. Even Rimmer didn't recognize how messed up that was.) Everyone has seen Rimmer at his worst, but Lister has seen him at some of his best, like in "Marooned" when he waxes poetic about friendship and sacrifice, and wants to mirror what he saw as an act of selflessness. Lister knows how badly Rimmer craves acceptance and respect, and knows that he's actually capable of being decent under the right circumstances.
But he doesn't exactly keep that knowledge at the front of his mind. Very understandable, when your bunkmate, say, locks everyone in a room for weeks without entertainment or decent food. And it's especially easy to forget about when you're with two other people who can't stand the guy.
But I think sometimes, when the others aren't there, he remembers that Rimmer is a very miserable, lonely person, who faces almost constant antagonism from everybody in his life. He brings it on himself, but I don't think Lister wants to be a person who enjoys teaming up with his buddies to pick on the group misfit.
And yet, in series 4 and 5 especially, he kinda IS that person.
And I can't help but wonder if his treatment at the hands of the Low crew (ganged up on, having his autonomy taken away, being bombarded with everything he hates about himself) wasn't, in part, a reflection of the way he feels about all that subconsciously.
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