catja:

Dirtbag and sick part of a sick thing by @bettsfic

a tête-bêche binding- two fics in one volume, back to back, so both covers are front covers. read one, flip it over to get the other. duo pepperoni (green/red shift) bookcloth, paste papers i made on the cover, green htv titles. half-letter, 105k words total, 400 pages.

i don’t know what i was on when i wrote dirtbag but i’d kill to have it back.

initially i didn’t plan to write anything for hellcheer because, yk, 3 minutes of on screen interaction and i don’t actually like stranger things. but i got an ask about if i would ever write for them, and that got me Thinking* and then i slipped into some kind of fugue state where i wrote sick part of a sick thing across 8 days.

if you ever want me to write for your ship, send me an ask asking what i WOULD write for them (assuming i know canon), and i may say i dunno or i may write a 50k multichap

sick thing was not satisfying to write on a craft level because i relied heavily on the same cheap moves stranger things employs to create conflict, namely totally flat antagonists that exist only to propel the protagonist into action.

and so after i wrote sick thing, i thought i would try the exact opposite, a fic that takes place over a long time where every character has some degree of nuance.

and that challenge was…challenging. i’ve never worked harder on a fic, but it was worth it i think for what i learned in the process of writing it. i think it made my characters stronger and my story structures more complicated and interesting. it reframed my perspective of developing tension through context rather than chronology.

i re-read it recently and it made me really sad because i don’t think some of the things i admire about it can ever be replicated. i’d love to be able to put that degree of loneliness and longing in an original work, but i’ve tried and i seem to lose something along the way.

i remember while i was posting it being very happy about the response, because there weren’t a whole lot of people reading it, but the people who were reading it really seemed to be engaging with it. it’s one thing when people enjoy a story, but it’s another when they allow the story to move them. i got a lot of really insightful asks and comments. so it was hard to write and it was a huge struggle, and there’s at least one chapter that i re-wrote like 5 times, but overall it was very rewarding.

ahsoka is a VERY unreliable narrator, and she’s growing and healing at a different rate and direction than rex is. (direction doesn’t mean “away” exactly. it’s more like rex thinks he’s moving in a straight line and ahsoka is bouncing all over the place like a pinball machine.)

also, re: not if, when: you know those periodic jumps into the future where we find out about the foster kids and that she’s become obsessed with cinnamon? well in earlier drafts, there *was* a present timeline, set 12ish years later, where gloria meets up with caleb at a business conference every year and they sleep together. if it were fic, i would have kept it because that was where the smut was going to happen, but when i finished the past timeline i decided not to keep the business conference parts of the jumps into the future.

but i was obsessed with the idea of an ongoing annual affair with a lot of history, and that became the premise of dirtbag!

thank you for the lovely ask @maple-clef!

wrecked-fuse:

Also them are together and having a dog 🏀🎸📣

🔪🔪🔪 в вк не репостить🔪🔪🔪

idk how you i call em carmunham lol

hello favorite hellcheer writer uwusillygirl!! i’m so glad you enjoyed dirtbag. i’m hoping to eventually write more hellcheer when i need a break from other things. also i’m excited to read your porno fic!!

oh jesus oh god eddie and horny pregnant chrissy. if it were a dirtbag sequel, jason would be the level-headed one being like, but guys we need to set up the nursery and plan a baby shower and– while chrissy and eddie won’t even come out of the bedroom. i am maybe possibly writing down this idea.

AHAHAHAHHAA i’m sorry to ruin such a banger for you, anon. conversely i’ve been listening to it on repeat to stew longer in the agonies.

thank you, anon! i hope to circle back to hellcheer too! i’ve had so much fun writing it. i mean, dirtbag wasn’t exactly “fun” but it was definitely a great challenge!!

i’m so glad to hear it! thank you for reading!

the final chapter of dirtbag is posted! i know a lot of people were probably upset about the penultimate chapter but i hope the ending soothes the hurt. 

thanks so much to everyone who stuck it out to the end! i really appreciate all the kindness and support i got on what really turned out to be a difficult fic.

yep!!! the transcendent nature of breeding kink

2] when both of you seem miserable with your current lives.” However with some further reflection I recognize what you mean about the safety they had in the lives they built, since Eddie had the freedom to live for himself and doesn’t have to commit to anything while I assume Chrissy lives very comfortably because of Jason’s money and has his support & something to do with herself. With all of that + how difficult change is when you’re set in a routine, it makes sense why neither really chased

3] or wanted anything else for a ten years. Apologies for the very wordy ask, your take on these characters in this work really made me think and be conflicted in the best way possible, and regardless of all of their individual mistakes and awful decisions, I have never been more sure of the fact that both of them deserve what will eventually become the happiest of endings and futures.

i think when you grow up in an unstable environment like chrissy and eddie did, your perspective of what success looks like is really distorted. eddie’s perspective of success was always dichotomous; he both believed he’d be super famous, but also that he’d amount to nothing. so he undershot the former and overshot the latter, landing him in this space where he’s at least doing the thing he loves, but not in the way he loves to do it. like sure he’s a well-respected musician and he can earn a living on what he’s doing, but he’s ready to let go of the dreams and fears he used to have in order to pursue the next chapter in his life, which in this case is a career change and a family.

chrissy, meanwhile, was raised in an affluent household with a rocky marriage, and then it all fell out from under her and her mother stopped being a mother to her. so she was left to raise herself basically. it set her so far back that from ages 14 to 19 she was struggling just to get some ground beneath her feet. she didn’t get to go to college, so she clung onto this thing she found she was good at (sales) and made a life of it. she’s so terrified of instability that for ten years she’s been as afraid to pursue eddie as eddie has been to pursue her. they’ve just been holding on to each other, biding their time even though it’s painful. i think it always hurts to know when you’re destined for something but the road there is long and difficult. it’s also hard when you meet the right person at the wrong time.

so yes they’re both miserable, but both of their lives are still leagues better than where they came from, and it’s hard to give that up. for a decade, both of them had to weigh risk versus reward. for chrissy, is the reward of being with eddie worth the risk of instability? for eddie, is the reward of being with chrissy worth the risk of learning what he fears is the truth, that he really isn’t and can never be good enough for her?

now they’re both at a point in their lives where the reward and risk have new context. chrissy’s life is unstable again by virtue of the news about laura, so there’s no reason to keep clinging to the life she’s built with jason. in fact she *can’t* keep living that life. meanwhile eddie has only recently had the hard-won realization that not only does he want a family with chrissy, he believes it’s what he deserves. he would have never gotten there without the friendship he’d built with laura.

thank you so much for your insightful ask! i really put a lot of thought into this story and i’m happy to be able to talk about it.

thank you for your insight, anon!

i definitely agree eddie has made a lot of mistakes colored by the extremes of his own self-hatred, fear, and ambition, which have just now come down to reasonable levels in his 30s. his career as a musician has taught him he can be skilled in something and support himself without resorting to crime (like charlie) or a dead-end job (like wayne). laura has taught him he’s worthy of love. and chrissy starting to push the boundaries of their arrangement have helped him tackle his fears and doubts about their relationship now that he knows they’re finally on the same page.

so even though he’s done a lot of stupid things, i think if he’d gotten with chrissy any earlier they both would have been miserable together. eddie would have come to resent chrissy for her need to settle down when he wanted the opposite of that; chrissy wouldn’t have gotten the stability and support she was craving and which jason and a solid career could provide her. moreover, they’re both so comfortable in their lives; in a lot of ways both chrissy and eddie have been successful in everything they set out to do. and they’re just now realizing that that success isn’t necessarily sustainable, or what they really want from life. they both want a family now, and they only want that with each other.

now everything has aligned: eddie is ready to settle down, chrissy is realizing she misses home and that jason can’t give her everything she needs, and now something has come along to disrupt their lives and force them to reflect and make changes. it’s also given them both a sense of perspective they were lacking. it’s unfortunate that it’s such a tragedy, but only foundation-shattering news would have gotten them to uproot themselves.

(eddie doesn’t have access to this info, but jason is also going through some stuff. but don’t worry, the story will address that.)

thanks again for sharing your thoughts!