"Eight Days A Week" Commentary Track
Jun. 2nd, 2019 03:51 pmThe backstory for this post is that usually I write something and then move on with my life and don't think about the writing process again. However, from what I can tell, a lot of people saw my fic post for "Eight Days A Week" and decided it must be a story that sexualizes a three-year-old without any proper warnings or tags. (I know; this is neither logical nor kind, but is the kind of thing that happens to me.) As a result of that, I've thought a lot about my thought process when I was writing the story, with an emphasis on all the ways I was conscious of making sure it wasn't weird about the three-year-old.
The reaction to this story surprised me. I think fan fic has two kinds of shorthand. One is the nature of fan fic itself: the reader and writer generally have a shared knowledge of whatever fandom the fic is about so there isn't a lot of setup and explanation of the world. The other is tropes. As a reader, I can drop into an omegaverse, coffee shop AU, or fake dating story in any fandom, even one I don't know well or at all, and know more or less what to expect from the story. Similarly, as a writer, I can generally expect my audience to be familiar with fic tropes and not have to explain them. I was (possibly foolishly - more on that in a bit) expecting people to recognize the de-aging trope and know what to expect from it.
The de-aging into a small child trope as I know it: Person A turns into a small child. (In a magic-based fandom it's the result of a spell/potion/magical being, in a sci fi fandom it's the result of some sort of technology, in RPF it frequently just happens with no explanation because the how is less important than the what happens next.) Person B takes care of them for some period of time. During this time, they form or strengthen some sort of (age-appropriate!) emotional connection. Maybe Person A tells Person B some sort of secret, like they come out or admit to being scared of something they wouldn't admit to being scared of as an adult or tell someone that their grown-up self has romantic feelings. Maybe they get the cuddling and snuggling they didn't get when they were a child in the first place or that they don't know how to ask for as an adult. Maybe they get to know that Person B is warmer/gentler/kinder than they knew. At some point, Person A gets turned back into an adult. At the end of the story, the adult versions of Person A and Person B have a closer relationship. In a gen story, this generally means they become closer friends/teammates. In a pairing story, it generally means they get together at the end of the story. Bonus note: according to Fanlore, the first known piece of fan fiction where someone gets de-aged into a small child is from 1969.
This goes with the previous point but seems worth pulling out on its own: the de-aging aspect of a de-aging story in general and this story in particular doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not like Harry meets Louis for the first time when he's a three-year-old. The de-aging happens in the middle of a relationship (in the broadest terms) in progress. "Eight Days A Week" starts with the de-aging, but their history and time together starts before that. The de-aging isn't how they get to know each other; it's the catalyst that changes their relationship. That's one of the reasons I thought it worked to have the story end the way it did - their interest in each other doesn't start at the beginning of this story.
( Way more details about the writing process. )
The reaction to this story surprised me. I think fan fic has two kinds of shorthand. One is the nature of fan fic itself: the reader and writer generally have a shared knowledge of whatever fandom the fic is about so there isn't a lot of setup and explanation of the world. The other is tropes. As a reader, I can drop into an omegaverse, coffee shop AU, or fake dating story in any fandom, even one I don't know well or at all, and know more or less what to expect from the story. Similarly, as a writer, I can generally expect my audience to be familiar with fic tropes and not have to explain them. I was (possibly foolishly - more on that in a bit) expecting people to recognize the de-aging trope and know what to expect from it.
The de-aging into a small child trope as I know it: Person A turns into a small child. (In a magic-based fandom it's the result of a spell/potion/magical being, in a sci fi fandom it's the result of some sort of technology, in RPF it frequently just happens with no explanation because the how is less important than the what happens next.) Person B takes care of them for some period of time. During this time, they form or strengthen some sort of (age-appropriate!) emotional connection. Maybe Person A tells Person B some sort of secret, like they come out or admit to being scared of something they wouldn't admit to being scared of as an adult or tell someone that their grown-up self has romantic feelings. Maybe they get the cuddling and snuggling they didn't get when they were a child in the first place or that they don't know how to ask for as an adult. Maybe they get to know that Person B is warmer/gentler/kinder than they knew. At some point, Person A gets turned back into an adult. At the end of the story, the adult versions of Person A and Person B have a closer relationship. In a gen story, this generally means they become closer friends/teammates. In a pairing story, it generally means they get together at the end of the story. Bonus note: according to Fanlore, the first known piece of fan fiction where someone gets de-aged into a small child is from 1969.
This goes with the previous point but seems worth pulling out on its own: the de-aging aspect of a de-aging story in general and this story in particular doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not like Harry meets Louis for the first time when he's a three-year-old. The de-aging happens in the middle of a relationship (in the broadest terms) in progress. "Eight Days A Week" starts with the de-aging, but their history and time together starts before that. The de-aging isn't how they get to know each other; it's the catalyst that changes their relationship. That's one of the reasons I thought it worked to have the story end the way it did - their interest in each other doesn't start at the beginning of this story.
( Way more details about the writing process. )
