#aatjs

I remember in one of your fics (pretty sure it's AATJS) there was a part where someone (I think Lisa?) Points out to Barry that he has been abusing Len who's an abuse survivor.

I've been racking my brain trying to find that conversation. If you can pretty please point me to which fic and which chapter that conversation takes place. I'll be so grateful

You're looking for AATJS chapter 30 "Bond Family" :)

Specifically the last section of the chapter, after the "**********" break, because the first bits are... not that.

Most fun with AATJS? 

Hmmm. I suppose the scenes that helped to defy expectations a bit? Barry being jealous of Len and Hartley in such a way that he decided to seduce Len instead of making a conflict. James’s entire PoV was really fun. I loved writing chapter 4 (5 if you count the glossary), maybe because Barry sort of swooning and falling into Len’s arms is one of my favorite mental images. Writing the moments where they come together and understand each other were also some of my faves, all throughout.

Idk if that’s the most fun ‘part’ or those were just things that were fun to write, but heh, that’s all I got.

As for TT... the most difficult part was just the whole ‘sticking with it’ element. I let it get a little too long and winding. Some parts were genuinely difficult for different reasons, like Len’s birthday part was tough in part because that was in my original outline for the fic as a totally different thing than it turned into, and in part because the “they don’t know we know” thing was really difficult to write in a way that made sense and seemed even semi-plausible, even within the world of TT. In general, TT posed me some difficulty the longer it went because it involved injecting some realism to a fun/silly fic and trying to keep the tone of the story relatively ‘even’ over the whole thing, so that people didn’t end up reading something they hadn’t signed up for. 

since you said be honest, i assume you're actively looking for spoilers, in which case i'll say that:

With the way you ended up writing TVD (incredible btw), how would your decisions effect/change the idea of a soulmate spin to the story? (I hope I worded my question properly!)

From what I read, what you had planned wound up a good bit different. So I was just wondering if you thought that would inspire changes to the thoughts you had about the soulmate tie in?

Much curious!

Hope you're doing well in all the madness of the world <3

What a lovely question :) Oddly enough I was actually thinking about this just the other day for some reason so the answer I have for you is top of mind and a bit long ^^;

The full history of These Violent Delights is that I wondered what it might be like to turn one of my fics into an original story and then things spiralled. I was specifically making notes on what AATJS might look like as an original, and my instinct was basically that to "file off the serial numbers" of fanfic for that piece, I'd keep the soulmates element but ditch the superpowers.

Actually to go back further, an even earlier idea i'd had with VP -- who wrote the amazing Zombie au -- was a co-written collaboration that would have both superpowers and soulmates in an original story, but it became unwieldy with all those separate worldbuilding elements into it.

as she moved on to other things and i stuck around longer in coldflash and dipped my toe into other original ideas, i ended up mentally splitting that concept in two:

a no-powers yes-soulmate story which later became These Violent Delights, and

a yes-powers no-soulmate story which has since turned into my original novel i'm working on at a snail's pace called Rest for the Wicked (also the chapters of that i posted are out of date since i've revised and changed them since then whoops).

Anyway, for the original concept of These Violent Delights...

In the first mental draft of that no-powers soulmate story, I kept most people's roles/relationships to each other similar (barry being a CSI, joe being a cop, iris being barry's pseudo-adoptive sister, len being a criminal, etc), took out superpowers, and made Grodd (from his role in AATJS) into a serial killer, and Eiling/the military into the FBI being called in on this local serial killer case.

Then someone dropped into my inbox to ask about a no powers / pre-lightning AU, and it basically gave me a chance to flesh that out.

And then someone asked about what it would be like with no soulmates and I thought that was fascinating! Because soulmates is convenient and a narrative shortcut, and how unhinged would it make that opening scene if there was no soulmate bond and yet these two people still responded to one another the same way??

i love unhinged dynamics more than i was willing to admit at the time, and it was a perfect excuse to write that dynamic in a way that was a bit more fun for me, i've i'm being honest. because without that easy narrative push from the bond, how do i play their attraction? can i effectively sell that they are drawn to each other enough to make all these terrible decisions, with no obligation or bond keeping them connected and bound to this?

(And my tags on the third ask about this seem to imply I was writing a len/savitar AU at the time and rolled my ideas for that into this fic, and I don't even remember that lmao. i think it had savitar stripped of the speedforce and working at a bar?)

But to your question of how the original "yes soulmates" version went?

hmmm i didn’t come at it that way and i think therein lies the disconnect with what you’re asking and how i’m able to answer.

i didn’t start with “what would barry be like if he met his soulmate” or “what would len do if he met his soulmate” in a way that started from canon and then extended to a new setting.

i mean i sort of did, in that i went “what if they were soulmates” then went “len is a dramatic ho who would think that bank robberies and heists are the right way to woo his beloved and barry would be progressively more annoyed with this bullshit” then went “oh nevermind let’s take that idea but make it angst” 

but in many ways i couldn’t start perfectly linearly from canon because i was started in a world that exists just to the left of canon. the way soulmates are setup in that world makes everything just sightly different, and i had to take that into consideration.

so while i started with “haha what if len was a total brat” (much like i always start with tbh), the crux of the story’s starting point was the shape of the soulmate bond, the bleed. i’m a hopeless romantic who loves the idea of soulmates but i get stuck on worldbuilding details. soulmate AUs with the “first words” or “see in colour when you meet your mate” really leave me wanting more because -- what the heck would society even look like if that were the case and what are the millions of ways it would be different? 

so the bleed was baked in from the beginning, from before the beginning, half because there was a post that went around about “what if barry and len accidentally got psychically bonded thanks to a meta”. so psychic bonds and soulmates, that’s the setup.

then i dropped barry and len into that setup -- into that alternate universe i’d made with all its societal backdrop. and i knew i was writing for angst, and i knew i wanted it to be messy and complicated. i wish i could say that i sat down and was like “okay so if barry were soulmates with len here’s how he’d react” but i didn’t. instead i sat down and said “i’m making a story where barry and len are going to be bonded with an emotional bleed and they’re going to be soulmates and it’s going to cause problems.” and i implicitly knew i wanted to explore themes related to separation, expectation, and identity navigation.

so why was barry the one who pulled away, and len the one who wanted to bond? in part because it just seemed a lot more interesting to me, and i’d already written stories where barry is the one who is “all in” and len is the one who is reluctant to commit. 

i also felt it very true to len’s character from a “i’m a thief” standpoint that he’d be a bit greedy/possessive over someone who the universe has literally said is supposed to be his, in part due to his past and how much he keeps people at arm’s length (but how obviously he thaws for the people he does let close). len might not want to open up or commit or be emotionally vulnerable under normal circumstances, but this is a sort of ‘sure thing’ in his mind, at least at the outset before that faith is shaken. 

barry though - barry was tricky, actually. i did have to figure out that if the central romantic conflict was going to be him pulling away -- why? 

if he was on board with it quite then it would be a much shorter story. i knew he would plausibly balk at being soulmates with len at the outset, but barry is a forgiving and kind person, so realistically how/why might he pull away?

so of course they bonded in/under terrible circumstances. that was like - step 1. otherwise, if len had been like “oh should we bond” and barry agreed, then there would be a lot of cognitive dissonance involved that would make barry retroactively justify his agreement to bond by interpreting it as being because he wants to be close to len. so i had to take barry’s choice away, and then realistically i think he’d react negatively because that’s overwhelming and the whole thing was a mess and very confronting.

but i also -

there’s this line from season 1 when he first asks Len for help, right before he goes to the bar. the thing that gives barry the idea to ask len, when he’s talking to joe at the precinct. “we only break the rules to help people”

it tells you so much about how barry sees the world. so. much. i could unpack that for days. and it’s wild that he immediately thinks about len as a result of breaking the rules for somewhat noble reasons???? just - what???

but barry sees himself as the good guy. it’s fundamental to his worldview in this really really huge way. and what we know about self-concept is that very close others become enmeshed/embedded into our self-concept: our partners literally become included in how we see ourselves.

if you see yourself as the good guy, and that is fundamental to your identity and worldview and necessary for you to be psychologically healthy because you’ve made it a cornerstone of your self-concept.... how the hell do you respond when a giant fucking grenade lands right in the middle of that self-perception and says “actually part of your self-concept now involves kidnapping, tormenting, and torturing your friends, also killing a dude just to test the cold-gun, also a lifetime of theft and murder, also betrayal can’t forget that sweet sting of betrayal.”

barry coming to len over time in his own way is one thing. barry having len bond with him as a soulmate out of the blue is about the biggest psychological threat possible. it’s threatening his sense of self, his worldview, the structure of his self-concept, his expectations for himself (which are too damn high, he has to save everyone, he ‘has to try’) and leads him to believe that others he loves will be disappointed in him or reject him for this because len has hurt them, and because barry is disappointed in himself for wanted to connect with len, with his soulmate, despite all the harm he’s caused.

as soon as that clicked for me, as soon as i put it in context of barry’s self-concept, everything kind of flowed from there really really easily.

i was overly ambitious in writing that out though i think because most people, barry included, don’t introspect a lot about the structure of their self-concept, and don’t have the language related to social psychology to articulate what it means to be psychologically threatened. so he doesn’t really understand his own reactions and why they’re so visceral, and when he does he’s lying to himself about how much of it is coming from the fact that he wants len and wants to be with len but he’s upset with himself for how deep he wants that because the absolutely massive guilt he experiences because of it.

aaaand all that brings me to pointing out that the obvious resolution there is having barry’s loved ones find out about len and accept len as part of barry’s life and show that these people aren’t rejecting barry for being with len. if/when that’s the case, barry is able to more authentically work through all this shit. but because of how they bonded and how goddamn secretive his is (canonically) about personal shit, he decided to hide his bond with len, which meant he wasn’t able to deal with literally any of this during the first several chapters and all of it compounded and magnified until it reached it’s first breaking point.