#eghe

2. Which scene was your favorite to write in eghe?

Some of them I really liked writing because I they were centerpiece scenes that I basically had all the dialogue laid out for ahead of time, so it was easier to sort of just fill in the rest, like the meeting Dave’s family dinner, or when Klaus and Dave have their big fight.

Some I really liked because I didn’t anticipate them existing and then, hello! there they were! and cute and fun, like Rachel teasing Dave about Klaus, and the two of them baking and talking about homophobic dads after, and Diego meeting Dave. Dave going off on Reg was also not a way I thought things would go there and ‘cute and fun’ is not how I would describe it but oh MAN was it satisfying to write.

6. Which scenes did you cut, and which were added in eghe?

ooohh it stayed surprisingly intact, actually! One of the curses that plagues me as a writer is I basically have to write each scene in order, and then things sort of settle in, with scenes leading one to the next in ways I don’t tend to mess around with.

But I pulled out the docs and looked at notes for it, which honestly is where this all went wrong because I have A Lot Of Notes for it. The scene that probably got the biggest changes is in chapter two, where Dave shares about how the afterlife works and that the ghosts Klaus sees on earth are the bad bits that get left out of the afterlife.

So it never made it onto the page, but this was the scene where they decided that they needed a name for this afterlife and they settle on Peace, as in the spirits there are at peace.

And anyway, I always need to know everything that everyone on the page is thinking when I write, so when Klaus learns about the spirits on earth mainly being the worst parts of people’s souls, I have a note about what’s on his mind:  “not only is this a ‘here is why your life is so fucking shitty - solved it’ moment, which sucks, but also I think he’s conflating things a bit and possibly over the top self-pityingly toying with the idea that he keeps getting kicked out because allll of him is the worst of humanity. it’s not an entirely consistent idea, but when he wants to feel really shitty, he dabbles in the notion.”

ALSO in that scene, I have the only chunk of properly written stuff I found that was cut but still saved. I took it out because it seemed like it dipped into too much confusing plot stuff and made the timing weird and it just didn’t work there but - Klaus realizes that with ghosts basically able to time travel, a person or organization could quite effectively change timelines, as long as they had Klaus around to talk to said ghosts for them. (and maybe it was a backdoor idea for a fic that could exist, I don’t know) But anyway here’s a version of what that conversation looked like:

Then the magnitude of this new angle hits him. “This is a lot, Dave. Holy shit. This is turning out to be a lot.” “Too big to mess with.” Dave has had plenty of time to think this over already, and that’s the conclusion he came to as well. “Did you know, there’s a whole group of time-traveling cops who make sure that nothing changes the timeline too much?” Obviously Dave did not know about that. ‘The world got weird’ is turning out to be a greater understatement than he could ever have imagined. “Whatever that even means,” Klaus goes on. “‘Cops’ is actually too sanitized a word, probably. There’s no way they know about this. If they knew that I - I don’t know what they would do. Jesus.” Klaus is slipping into that long distance stare that means he is circling in on a freak-out. “That’s got to stay a state secret, Dave, that can’t be a thing people find out. I can come up with too many ways to exploit that just off the top of my head and I’m the world’s biggest idiot; I’m not half as devious as some of these motherfuckers.” Dave steadies Klaus’ knee as it starts to bounce compulsively. “I’m not going to tell anyone.” The question is unsaid, because they both know the answer, but Klaus flicks his eyes to Dave’s to check anyway before he says it out loud. “Because we’re not going to do anything to save you.”

There’s a part of me that wants to share a little not really written moment from the fic I probably won’t ever write where we get to see Klaus’ side of what happened through all of the fic, but this post is already so stupid long. (maybe I’ll make another post just to spill on that? because I really don’t think the fic is ever going to be written)

10. What are some facts readers may not know about eghe?

So since I went combing through notes, I’m just going to paste in some of the maybe interesting ones here. Most are like, half sketches of a dialogue that never found a spot, but there’s a headcanon and a Thought in there, too.

When Klaus finds out that they just can kind of see each other/be seen as however he wants, he’s appalled with modern religion. “How did modern religion get so hung up on sex? This place is kinky as hell!” (Hm word choice ha)

it cracks him up that he is having this ‘who is older’ argument with his bf and it’s just as nonsensical as it always is with his siblings and that shouldn’t be possible

an unwritten piece of Vanya’s book: “sometimes she wonders if maybe he doesn’t even have powers either, if he’s like her but managed to lie about it early enough to get included. You cant ever see his powers and he never did anything useful with them and he always lied, even about big things like Ben. Maybe he lied about this all this time”

Klaus leaves doors open because a closed door can’t stop a ghost anyway, and he at least likes to know when they are coming.

So anyway just so we’re clear, the subtext story of this whooole thing is about how Dave is carrying around this fear of being unlovable because of gay reasons, which are ridiculous and he learns to set himself free partially due to the ways Klaus shows him that there isn’t nothing wrong with that. Klaus is carrying around this fear of being unlovable because of personality reasons, which are also unfounded and he’s going to learn to set himself free due to the ways Dave shows him that there’s nothing wrong with him. Basically they have the same anxieties, but Dave’s are tied to sexuality and Klaus’ are not. Still about feeling like inherently bad people because of outside influences telling them that they are.

regarding the Diego meeting Dave scene: “Which, good job talking about your feelings, Diego! Klaus might (semi-)jokingly tell him this. Because they are both in therapy. Klaus wasn’t going to go unless Diego did, too.Also, his reaction at first when his doc was like, ‘yeah you’re depressed’ was “if that’s depression than I’ve been depressed for years. Longer than I haven’t” and the response is just 😬😬”