#mission parameters

Inspired by what_alchemy's 𝑴𝒊𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔 with Bucky and kid!Steve, probably my fav de-aged fic til now 🥰

another little snippet! this was originally the start of the clark POV to mission parameters and then i realized that if i continued the fic like this it was a) going to be so so depressing and b) it was going to be a real challenge to get clark to the place he actually is in mission parameters.

Clark was seven, the first and only time he saw his father cry. He hadn’t been able to sleep, and so he’d snuck down into the kitchen to get a glass of milk and see if he could stand in the kitchen doorway and make out the tail end of one of the late night shows Ma and Pa stayed up for. Only Ma and Pa weren’t in the living room. A puddle of golden light was spilling from the kitchen doorway, and Clark thought he’d be in trouble for being out of bed, but neither of his parents noticed him. Ma’s hand was on Pa’s shoulder, rubbing small circles into the worn fabric at his collar. Pa had his face buried in his hands. There was a pile of papers on the table. “Well, maybe we can take out another loan,” Ma was saying, in the soft soothing voice she used when Clark had a nightmare. “Just to get us through the year.” “There are no more loans,” Pa was saying, muffled through his fingers. “I talked to [name] at the bank last week. They’re going to start taking the land if we can’t make payments. Martha, we have to seriously talk about--” And then Clark was fleeing back up the stairs, but up the stairs was no good, because his hearing was getting better and better every day, and he could still hear the low, desperate drone of his father’s voice, the words he did not yet understand-- mortgage, interest rate, loan term-- and the tone he did.

a snippet from Clark's pov of mission parameters! I'm probably not ever going to make it through the whole fic from Clark's pov but I was picking at it for a bit. this takes place during the scene at the end of ch3 where Clark and Bruce are talking about identity

"Oh, Superman isn't me," Clark quips, between bites of cracker. "Superman is who I'd like to be. I figure if I spend enough time on it, maybe I'll get there eventually."

Something flashes across that mercurial face, too quick for Clark to catch. That's the thing with Bruce. Speaking to him so often feels like having a conversation with a magic eye painting, like you have to cross your eyes just so to see the truth underneath it. And then just as quickly it slips away. Bruce is standing up, muttering something about wanting to check the food for tomorrow with Pholtu. It's patently obvious he just wants to get away from Clark.

21. Have you ever deleted an entire scene after spending hours laboring over it? If so, why?

Yes! In Mission Parameters I had an entire scene written out where after their psychic torture trial proving they're a real couple Bruce goes with Clark to say goodbye to Pholtu, the alien Clark's befriended, and their wife, Zut'an, and to try to convince them to leave the planet. I wanted to show Pholtu and Zut'an together onscreen and give them some agency in their own lives, and also to show that like, sometimes you can't fix systemic injustice by pretending to be married, even when you're superman and batman. and then once I'd actually written the scene I did not like what it was doing (it ended up feeling very national geographic welcome to our humble abode 😬). so after talking with @suedeuxnim (who I truly cannot say enough good things about how they made that fic significantly better) I cut it and replaced it with Clark going alone to say goodbye and Bruce only seeing the aftermath of that conversation.

22. Do you know how your fic will end before you start writing?

Usually no! I really struggle with endings, because I usually start with a scene that ends up taking place about... 75-80% of the way through the fic and then work back from there. But once I've gotten to that initial scene I have a hard time figuring out how to get past it. I've definitely had a couple of fics where I've written an ending and then written several paragraphs more and then cut those extra paragraphs. I usually know the general emotional arc and most of the plot stuff, but knowing what moment to leave things on is hard for me. (This is why half my fics leave things unresolved. I like to leave some things unresolved bc I find it unsatisfying when stories are all neatly tied up with a bow but also bc often I write the emotional catharsis and then I'm like, okay, can we be done now? Luckily for me often the answer is yes!)

53. when writing, do you have an outline? and do you stick to it?

i don't usually start off with an outline at the very beginning, but as I've been writing more long stuff and fewer 1-3k character studies i've been outlining much more– I think there are people who can write plot without an outline but I sure am not one of them! i use scrivener to write, so i usually create a bunch of scenes i want to hit and then end up adding more/structuring them into actual chapters as i write. so for instance here's the mission parameters outline when i'd only gotten a few scenes in, and then the final outline:

so i definitely do insert scenes as needed while writing. I rarely find myself needing to cut whole scenes once I've written them (although I did cut a big scene out of mission parameters.) also i looooove scrivener it has been SO helpful as i've started to write longer fic!

65. what is your favourite title for a fic you’ve written?

i am so so bad at titles, almost everything i've written is titled with a song lyric. i do really like "a silent and particular scream," or the zombie yanqing fic, which was one of my rare non-lyric titles and i think encapsulates the whole fic quite well!

69. how do you write emotional scenes? do you ever feel what the characters feel?

emotional scenes are honestly pretty easy for me because I am always just doing what i've been doing since i was 12 years old when i started enacting whispered conversations between characters in the bathroom mirror. i'm just banging characters together! i really love writing high-conflict/high-emotion scenes— i got back into writing via making my friends incredibly miserable via posting sad fatt headcanons on twitter, which is the most concentrated form of "follow the emotions juice" imaginable. basically i just sit down and let the characters bounce off of each other!

i wouldn't say that i'm actually feeling what the characters are feeling— i've never had kids, or fought a war against my husband, or murdered my spouse!— but there is a certain feeling of shivery delicious misery that lets me know i'm doing things right.

73. how do you visualize scenes? do you see it like a movie in your head, or do the words just flow?

a little of A a little of B! I tend to start scenes with dialogue because that's easiest for me to write, and that's just a flow thing. and then I'll let the setting coalesce around the scene based on what's happening emotionally. I do think a lot about lighting, because it's something that very much shapes my own emotional experience of a space! (anyone who read timkon road trip fic is like "we know" lol.)