#motorghost

CHAPTER 4 !!!!

Summary: Hanzo and Jesse are sent on a deep reconnaissance mission in the industrialized wasteland of post-Crisis North Dakota, secretly hunkered down in a little room ill-fit for human occupation. Jesse seems fine with the situation, but Hanzo’s doubts extend far beyond that little room.

Chapter Notes: Because of Jesse’s mistake, they are confined to their room for the foreseeable future. 

23) Do you prefer listening to music when you’re writing or do you need silence?

It depends entirely on my mood. I like some background noise, so complete silence doesn’t usually work for me, but music can be very distracting too. It’s good for generating ideas, but I’m otherwise too easy to derail. If I do listen to music, it has to be a little moody and interesting, but not so interesting that I get really into it, and this is why I joke about liking “middle-aged dad music,” lol. 

48) What’s your favourite trope to write?

MY LIFE LOL also when you've written something and then see a dozen other people use it but it's just the bountiful economy of fandom

I think it’s really weird that fanon seems to be locking down an interpretation of Gabe that is a) he’s definitely McCree’s father-figure and b) he’s definitely a “good guy” or redeemable somehow. 

I don’t even hate these interpretations. I’ve used them in my own writing. I just hate that they’re treated as canon, instead of, you know, interpreted. 

Maybe McCree fucking hated him and it took a long time for him to reach the stage of “friendly Retribution banter,” but he really only saw Gabe as another means to an end. Maybe they liked each other a ton and were close friends, but Gabe was still not his “dad”. Maybe they had a really typical boss/co-worker interaction (my boss is great and I love her as both mentor and person, but she is also not my mom). Maybe McCree had a weird fucking crush on his superior, and the whole “dad” thing gets really uncomfortable. Maybe they barely interacted except when actually working. We have so little to go off of that I think trying to lock down singular interpretations and then treating them as “absolute facts” in this case is really bizarre.

Okay, I loved writing that fic and I have a secret love of the first chapter especially because like, obviously Jesse’s internal monologue makes him kind of hilarious, but I think Hanzo’s a little bit hilarious too, and it shows most there. So I kind of picture the whole first chapter as this: both of them are interested and have a sense that it’s kind of inevitable, but they’re still circling each other. 

If you have ever been flirting with this person who you’re pretty sure is flirting back but you still have that tiny nagging doubt that you could be totally wrong, so you keep kind of inching toward it in these restrained baby steps that, in hindsight, are embarrassingly obvious anyway? This is what this scene is meant to be and the sense I was trying to capture.

For extra fun, throughout most of the fic, and in this scene too, Hanzo is basically in the same boat as Jesse, or not too far from it. He’s being a little coy about it because he’s not lying about trying to make up his mind, but he’s definitely flirting and thinks he’s being more direct than he actually is, hah. When he says, “I have not yet decided whether they are worth my time,”Jesse’s reaction manages to hit that sweet spot between not-intimidated and not-grossly-pushy/overconfident and Hanzo’s pretty much sold. It wasn’t really a test, but Jesse passed.