Yuletide reveals!

[wakeupnew]

To the surprise of no one, I am sure, since (A) I was really bad at the secrecy this year (I needed a lot of help!) and (B) this thing had my mark all over it --

For yuletide this year, I wrote Listen to Bands That Don't Even Exist Yet, based on the Scott Pilgrim comics, for bexless. (Rated M; Stephen/Joseph, Stephen/Julie, + pretty much the entire cast; 10,001 words.)

Stephen's mouth goes dry as he watches Joseph curve around his guitar, the body resting on his knee; he's looking down at the strings as he plays, eyes hooded and expression fiercely intent. His hands look strong and sure, long fingers curled around the neck of the guitar and brushing across the nick in the wood just below the soundhole. His hands are touching places that only Stephen usually touches, playing one of Stephen's songs; he could shut his eyes and almost feel the chords and the warm, battered wood under his fingers.

Stephen swallows hard and pours himself another shot of tequila. What this situation needs is more Señor Frog's.

Embarrassingly, several days after the archive opened, I realized why the title had come to mind so readily: it's what hkath named a Scott Pilgrim comment-fic that was written for me over the summer. So, to give credit where credit is due: 1) I am an idiot! an idiot with the memory of a goldfish!; and 2) y'all should read hkath's I listen to bands that don't even exist yet. It is Ramona and Kim, and is thoroughly delightful.

Writing this was a slightly frantic (because, as usual, I procrastinated) but really, really awesome experience, and I've been totally incoherent over and humbled by the response to it (I don't know where the hits are even coming from apparently it was linked on MetaFilter; things suddenly make so much more sense now!), and in conclusion: YAY YULETIDE. My one and only regret: the fact that I wasn't able to wedge Wallace Wells in somewhere.

I really wanted to play with some of the comics' stylistic flourishes (bold face commentary in the narrative, Joseph's tiny-text dialogue, the SCOTT PILGRIM, 23 YEARS OLD, STATUS: ETC. ETC. title cards, and things like that), but I also felt like, since this was Stephen's story and not Scott's, it should be a little more -- normal, if that makes sense. So there were title cards and the occasional bold-face interjection, but there were no boss battles or points given out, or moments where somebody's brain cracked open like an egg due to a sudden realization.

I would just like to put it out there that when I received my assignment, I actually set my laptop down so that I could roll on the floor with glee. bexless asked for Stephen/Joseph to fill in the gaps that the comics leave, since ... Scott Pilgrim is mind-blowingly oblivious and he only realizes that they're dating when they kiss right in front of him in the final pages of the final volume. The comics are from Scott's perspective, so the reader doesn't realize that they've been dating until that moment, either. (I mean, I was like "wow, Stephen and Joseph are kind of slashy" while I was reading, but I didn't think they'd be actually canonically dating.) I've been looking for a "fill in the blanks" Stephen/Joseph fic since I finished the comics, and I hadn't found one; I actually came really, really close to making this my own Yuletide request, to the point where I listed it as a potential scenario in my letter. So I definitely cracked the hell up when my assignment came in!

The things I wanted to do with this were pretty simple: (1) portray the course of Stephen and Joseph's relationship as loving and fairly stable while still a little dysfunctional and without veering into sap, since it didn't seem in keeping with either character (hence "I'll just kneecap you a little" in place of an "I love you"); (2) follow Stephen as he figures out that he's gay and comes to terms with that, and how it does/doesn't affect his friendships; (3) do little homages to all of the subtle moments that Bryan Lee O'Malley provided, that I didn't notice til after I'd read the book 6 reveal and then went back through the comics to see if the relationship had been hinted at earlier (it had); and (4) avoid the slash trope where the woman who is in the way of the slash gets marginalized and villainized and tossed aside. Julie's personality made that last one a little difficult, but the comics' moments where she's darkly funny and Stephen is clearly amused by that were helpful! Bonus #5 was seeing how many allusions to Stephen being gay and Stephen/Joseph I could fit in while Scott was on-page, since that just makes his total obliviousness all the funnier to me. I really, really wanted to deal with all of the off-page conflict with Young Neil (Neil is very clearly feeling hurt and abandoned through most of the last two volumes, and the Captain Homo comment was a big old WAIT WHAT after the book 6 revelation of Stephen and Joseph's relationship), but I just ran out of time; that, along with the lack of Wallace, is my other regret!

I did absurd amounts of research on geography and outdoor skating rinks in Toronto, for the record; I wound up using very little of it in the actual fic, but I now want to move to Toronto.

So writing this was basically the funnest ever! That is terrible grammar, but it's the truth! It was also scary, since there is very, very little canon for their relationship, so I had to make pretty much everything up. And also because, to be honest, I used a whole lot of my own experiences in the fic. Stephen faced the fact that he was gay, came out, and got his first boyfriend at age 23; I did the same thing -- just without the boyfriend -- at age 22. The parallels were surprisingly helpful! Quite a few scenes/details were based on things that actually happened to me.

Thanks to ruffwriter, littledust, and spooky_lemur for holding my hand as I wrote. Thank you to mercuriazs, who didn't know the fandom at all but still somehow managed to write absolutely perfect song lyrics, and to agonistes, who provided Die Hard details after I realized it had been too long since I'd seen it. And most of all thank you to wickedtrue, who read about fourteen million frantic drafts and was my eleventh-hour hero.

And while we are discussing Yuletide reveals: HAHAHA littledust!!! I knew someone on my f-list had written that "You Belong with Me" fic!!! omg, thank you! ♥♥♥ It's three in the morning so I'm going to bed now, but tomorrow I shall track down and thank irmelin, smithereen, and longwhitecoats, who wrote my other three stories.

Comments

[wakeupnew]

It was Scott's friend/bandmate Stephen Stills!



Whose journey into gaydom didn't make it into the movie, and neither did the character who eventually becomes his boyfriend in the comics. They apparently cast someone to play Joseph (and good lord, do I want to know who that was), then realized they wouldn't be able to fit the character in and cut his part.

[kindness_says]

I never ended up watching the whole movie...

Also, I think sometimes about how I owe things like drabbles. You know what the primary reminder for me of those things is? when a certain Tswift song comes up on my iPod... I really don't think I'll ever be able to hear it objectively again. -sigh-