My friend. You have broken me with this comment. I had to stop like three separate times while I was reading it and just take a moment because I was so overwhelmed by your wonderfully kind words. (Also, I had to get up at 5am yesterday morning for work and I saw the email as soon as I woke up, and by the time I finished reading it I was so awake and alive I didn't even need coffee. This comment is better than coffee.)
But all flippancy aside, I am so incredibly honored and grateful and humbled that this story struck such a chord with you, not just in terms of the story we're retelling but just in life?? and I don't really have the words to express how much this comment means to me. I only started sharing my writing in any capacity fairly recently and to know that it affected even one person in this way is just...astounding and wonderful and I can't thank you enough, both for taking the time to write this and for writing The Kindness of Strangers in the first place. I am so glad that this felt true to your story because I love yours so very, very much, and what I wanted most out of this was to do justice to that story and the versions of these characters that you created, because they felt so true. There is an emotional resonance to them that just hit so hard and was part of what made me want to expand on it in the first place. And so the fact that my Tim felt the same as your Tim, and that this felt like a continuation of the same story, is just!!!! I’m verklempt.
also wanted to say THANK YOU for all your reactions to the specific lines, as they made me so happy and I wanted to respond to at least a couple:
The thing about the parallel with the questions is that it wasn't even entirely intentional?? I thought a lot about how Nikola would react differently to Tim and Jon with this different context of them and their relationship, and the whole business of keeping Jon quiet by threatening Tim was just so painful, and also felt like something that Nikola would definitely remember and bring up again. but I didn’t even think about the full parallel until the scene was written and then I was just like “oh, no” and had to keep it in there.
Re: the House of Wax, I am so glad that you felt that this worked because I almost cut it, but I couldn't let go of just how much more terrible the absolute banality of the setting made every part of this. I cannot take credit for the blue gateway, however, because did you know that the House of Wax is a real place?? In the podcast Daisy mentions at one point that there were other buildings surrounding it, and I was curious so I Googled it and there are pictures and it's just...really the most ordinary-looking place, in the middle of a busy street. Which just makes it SO much more awful to think about them being trapped there.
and YES I was so happy to be able to give Tim that moment of catharsis - I felt like one of his biggest motivations in this would be that he wanted to be able to protect Jon in the way he wasn’t able to before, the way he wasn’t able to protect Danny, and then also drawing the parallel with that moment with Melanie (which is one of my very favorite moments of that chapter) felt great and I am so glad you caught it! Protective!Tim is my favorite and also just hurts real bad.
On the subject of tragedy, I think one of the things I like most about fanfiction is the fact that by nature it does allow for the exploration of like..the realities of tragedy. Novels and movies and even podcasts like TMA focus sort of out of narrative necessity on the Big Moments, and they don't always have the time or the inclination to explore what happens right before, or right after, and how the characters are actually affected by these events. And those moments in between have always been in some ways the most fascinating to me: like, in canon, what was it like for Basira to have to come home from Great Yarmouth all alone? What was it like when Martin and Melanie found out what happened? And in fanfic you can actually take the time to explore those moments. The moments of processing, but also the ways that life just...goes on. And how we deal with that. And that, like you said, it's painful but it's not all one-note, there are still so many things, even tiny things like going for drinks, that can bring hope. Which is why it felt so important to have this version of Tim be motivated not just by his hatred of the Circus, but also by the memory of those small moments, and the desire to keep a world where they’re possible.
Anyway I think about this a lot and so I can't tell you how much it means that it came across in this, that you got out of this kind of exactly what I hoped I could maybe express.
(and on that note I did end up writing sort of a..bonus scene? With Jon and Martin when Jon first returns to the Institute and is faced the absence of Tim, and I would love to share it with you at some point if you would like? Basically I’m not done having emotions about your Tim and the relationship that he and Jon developed.)
I am rambling a bit because I am just still so overwhelmed by your kindness, and I feel like anything I say here is just a little bit inadequate? to accurately express how much I appreciate you and everything you said here. I am so happy that you enjoyed this and that it meant something to you, and i can’t thank you enough for writing the original story in the first place because it just...makes me feel a lot of things that I don’t have the words for, except apparently in story form. So thank you!!!
Comment on a promise and a prayer
journalofimprobablethings on Chapter 1 Tue 13 Apr 2021 07:24PM UTC
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