i plead the fifth: a retrospective
to honor finishing my first ever longfic, i thought i'd start a new tradition of answering this tumblr questionnaire as a final goodbye to such a big project! questions and answers are under the cut <3
1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?
i first had the idea for i plead the fifth (IPTF) simply for the drama tbh. i already had two installations into a long drag (ALD) and wanted to explore the characters and world i had been building in a bigger way. lethal company already had a "format" for me to follow, which each day of a quota being dedicated to whatever planet you landed on, ending with a stop at the company, so that's how i structured the fic!
2: What scene did you first put down?
the first scene i had in mind was the ending of the very first chapter, actually! here's what i jotted down in a message: speedy plays nice in front of everyone, but the moment him and platy are alone he threatens him
3: What's your favorite line of narration?
hard choice, but probably chapter 6's jester encounter:
“You fucked me,” Speedy pointed an accusatory finger at it. “What happened to being buddies?” The Jester remained silent for a moment, as if contemplating Speedy’s words. And then, its hand raised to its crank and started turning.
one of my friends and betas (drill my beloved <3) particularly loved this line:
The Jester regarded him with what Speedy might ascribe as curiosity, tilting its aluminum casing to the side.
as she says: it could be curiosity. and yet its the most dangerous creature in this place by far. it could be curiosity. you hope it is.
4: What's your favorite line of dialogue?
another really hard choice, god... the dialogue in chapter 7 was the most fun to write, especially the back and forth between chilled and larry:
“That wouldn’t stop me! He wouldn’t need the dick pills, I’d fucking—“ “Larry!” Chilled chastised, still laughing. “You can’t say that!” “What? Don’t be jealous!” Chilled leaned back and cackled. “That’s not what I-“ Larry slammed his fist down on the stand. “I said I’d fuck everyone else, that includes you!” “This is a court of law!” Chilled cried. It fell on deaf ears as Larry doubled, tripled down.
5: What part was hardest to write?
chapter 8 in it's entirety, honestly. the payoff in the previous chapters was easy, wrapping it all up in a neat conclusion while simultaneously leaving some things open-ended for future continuations was so much harder. i think it added to the fic, though: nothing ever ends as perfectly and neatly as we'd like it to.
6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?
well, one, it's like, 37k words... i typically write one-shots, this is my first real attempt at a longfic. i know, some authors drop 300k word fics, but i basically just wrote double what i've posted on ao3 in one work!
7: Where did the title come from?
the song "kaleidoscope eyes" by panic! at the disco. it's from a b-side on the album "vices and virtues". (of course i'm a p!atd fan, i was born in the 2000s. some habits die hard...)
i could ramble on about how the b-sides on this album are as good or in some cases better then what got on the album, but the important part is the lyrics and the general vibe of the album as a whole.
There's a get out of jail card If I can think of something clever ... I'm just a crook, with no intent or stash Pour gasoline on the vault, just to burn the cash
like, is this not speedy? and the bit at the end where brendon urie psychs himself up for an evil laugh is so speedy-coded. (not brendon urie, fuck that guy)
8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?
youtuber rpf? being inspired by real people and events? i sure hope so... i originally got the idea for a speedy-platy homoerotic rivalry from speedy's among us videos. i can't find the exact video now, but speedy just dropped a video of him and platy at each other's throats for like 15 minutes. art truly imitates life.
characterization like junk being absent-minded, or kara being one to throw herself into work, those come from a combination of existing roleplays they've done (like kara being on smplive/smp earth, or chilled on purgesmp) or inside jokes within the group. basically, combining a bunch of details and my personal infallible interpretation of their streamersonas and making some interesting characters to put in the barbie doll house/torment labyrinth. y'know, usual rpf stuff.
9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?
sort of! i had to move around events after chapter 3 because some things fit better a certain way. i also accidentally added an entire day by accident when i was drafting the story, that was funny. guy who can't count to 7
10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?
ALD has a lot of ships within it, but i think pr1 is a unique fandom in the sense that you can take any ship and make it work. even if there are some popular ships (zrc, speedarms), those weren't even started in pr1, those are legacy ships from the fandoms that collided to make pr1. arguably coldburger is the first pr1-specific pairing that didn't carry over, but that's kind of a different answer for this question. i've always had a bias for speedy since i started watched him at the beautiful age of like, 13? and he led me to find all of the other youtube groups i've grown up with. so it felt right making him the main character.
chilled is my second favorite, since purgesmp, and i like putting that guy in situations. when lethal company came out (a year ago! wow time flies) it was the perfect concoction.
naturally, other ships followed: i couldn't not include some speedarms. background romances felt obvious, like the larry and side match-up is so right it'd feel wrong to not include it. and the speedy-platy romance was a given, i mean... fellas, is it gay to have a rival you hate but know everything about to the point where you can read his emotions like a book?
11: What do you like best about this fic?
the all of it? haha, i don't know, i love the entire process of fic writing. the planning, the drafting, the editing, the posting, silly shit like the playlist and this questionnaire. every aspect of this project has been enjoyable, most of all connecting with the fandom and other creatives with everything that inspired IPTF.
12: What do you like least about this fic?
probably the length of time in between the last few chapters. i had a lot pre-written, but it took one busy work week to completely derail the train... sigh.
13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn't listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?
i actually have a playlist of songs that have directly or indirectly inspired ALD as a whole!
14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?
you probably shouldn't take moral lessons from my characters. that being said, we all put a little bit of ourselves in our writing, and my piece was learning to not torture myself with what-ifs and my own assumptions about the people around me and the way they feel you can't make people stop caring about you in the same way you can't force them to care about you. they either do or they don't. and it's up to both of you to communicate to either end
15: What did you learn from writing this fic?
posting as you go is not my thing, so for future projects, i'll probably try to have a bigger buffer or maybe even the entire fic written? who knows!
also, i think i really refined my process, especially regarding editing. i gained a lot of confidence from posting my silly story, now i can post even sillier stories <3
