Thoughts on Stay Chapter Three
Feb. 26th, 2024 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quicktimeeventfullI'm really excited to have Chapter Three of Stay up! To me this is sort of the real start of the story.
I've been working on Stay for more than a year now. It's a really important fic to me for a number of reasons. It is in no way autobiographical, but it does of course draw pretty heavily from my experience as a mad person and my time in the Kpop fandom. Fic has always been something I gravitated towards to find depictions of other mad people -- traditionally published work tends to shy away from extremely common elements of mental illness such as self harm or suicidal ideation. Stay comes largely from my desire to see a story about people for whom self harm and suicidal ideation are normal and unremarkable parts of life, and vitally who are prepared to be friends with another person who is still in the thick of things.
Anyway, here's some random commentary on the past few chapters.
L lives in Yorkville largely because it seemed to fit his current position in life: very rich, outwardly ideal, but sort of sterile and stagnant. There’s something about Yorkville that feels vaguely dissociative. Personally I actually really like Yorkville -- it looks so much fancier than the rest of Toronto that it's kind of like stepping into a different world, which makes it fun to walk around in. There's also this giant blob of granite cut from the Canadian Shield that you can climb on if you're so inclined. It looks really stupid and there are always people running around on it. I love it.
Light is from Missisauga because it is to me the city of ennui, and also because it just made sense on a practical level. His commute into work is absurd and horrific by design.
L's cat is named after Kiki’s cat in Kiki's Delivery Service. He's had her through a couple pretty dramatic life changes.
L's coffee (De Mello) honestly isn't very good. Sorry. It sucks. I can't do anything about that. However, it's a Canadian brand and that’s sold in the kinds of trendy places L would shop at. L in this AU isn't much of a coffee connoisseur so he's not thinking too deeply beyond 'this bag has a tiger on it.' (For the record, the best coffee beans I’ve ever bought in Toronto were from Green Beanery.)
I kind of debated explaining Light's username (eighthgod) but I've decided it can be a fun puzzle for now. If you figure it out, please feel free to comment.
Okay. I think that's it for random little asides. Thank you for reading this fic, and thanks for reading this commentary as well!
I've been working on Stay for more than a year now. It's a really important fic to me for a number of reasons. It is in no way autobiographical, but it does of course draw pretty heavily from my experience as a mad person and my time in the Kpop fandom. Fic has always been something I gravitated towards to find depictions of other mad people -- traditionally published work tends to shy away from extremely common elements of mental illness such as self harm or suicidal ideation. Stay comes largely from my desire to see a story about people for whom self harm and suicidal ideation are normal and unremarkable parts of life, and vitally who are prepared to be friends with another person who is still in the thick of things.
Anyway, here's some random commentary on the past few chapters.
L lives in Yorkville largely because it seemed to fit his current position in life: very rich, outwardly ideal, but sort of sterile and stagnant. There’s something about Yorkville that feels vaguely dissociative. Personally I actually really like Yorkville -- it looks so much fancier than the rest of Toronto that it's kind of like stepping into a different world, which makes it fun to walk around in. There's also this giant blob of granite cut from the Canadian Shield that you can climb on if you're so inclined. It looks really stupid and there are always people running around on it. I love it.
Light is from Missisauga because it is to me the city of ennui, and also because it just made sense on a practical level. His commute into work is absurd and horrific by design.
L's cat is named after Kiki’s cat in Kiki's Delivery Service. He's had her through a couple pretty dramatic life changes.
L's coffee (De Mello) honestly isn't very good. Sorry. It sucks. I can't do anything about that. However, it's a Canadian brand and that’s sold in the kinds of trendy places L would shop at. L in this AU isn't much of a coffee connoisseur so he's not thinking too deeply beyond 'this bag has a tiger on it.' (For the record, the best coffee beans I’ve ever bought in Toronto were from Green Beanery.)
I kind of debated explaining Light's username (eighthgod) but I've decided it can be a fun puzzle for now. If you figure it out, please feel free to comment.
Okay. I think that's it for random little asides. Thank you for reading this fic, and thanks for reading this commentary as well!
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Date: 2024-03-01 06:54 pm (UTC)Also I feel the same way re: "romanticized." Like I feel it often gets used in a way that's really judgemental or something like that. (I absolutely know what you mean here, though, and it's absolutely what I was hoping to achieve.)