MOVED TO @gracilissart !!

first of all I'm mad I spelled the word 'cadaver' wrong for the title page 💀 I only learned recently that it's cadaver and not cadavre so I'm malding. I'm so professional (/s)

however. onto actually author's notes:

the process

the idea kind of came to me all at once, really. it was roughly a year ago, I was at work and Kikuo's Corpse Dance was looped in my head while doing tasks and the ideas came from there. it was one of those stories that seemed a lot cooler in my head as fragmented key scenes LMAO. needless to say I wasted zero time getting the plot jotted down, and I believe I managed to finish the core story in a matter of two or three days.

what took me so long was the editing lol. the editing of this story was kind of hellish, with me trying to snip a few things out and failing to do so. however, the main change was the characterisation of noah.

he was written too.... normally in the beginning, and with the direction I was planning to go for the story, a relatively well-adjusted kid would not be the kind of person I had in mind as a victim to the dancing frenzy. instead, I decided upon writing him as already being established to be rather unstable.

what I additionally changed from the first draft was the dance itself. it seemed too comprehensible, too executable in the first draft (and I didn't want it to resemble Kikuo's MV too much). other than this, most changes were minor.

the ideas and themes

I had several concepts swirling about in my head while writing and editing this, though I don't know how I feel about the execution.

the main ones at play here, I'd say, are suicide, its signs leading up to it and the aftermath. you already know what happened to noah, and you now need to watch it unfold. the signs leading up to everything are obvious as a reader and is purposefully made to be agonising in this way.

additionally, there's luke and the fact that he was a bitter, angsty 15 year old. he makes incredibly stupid decisions... because he's 15. the amazing thing is I can blame everything on that (/j), and you then get the commentary of a now 20 year old luke on top of it, along with the guilt he continues to feel for everything, including things that ultimately were out of his control and not really his fault.

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