So this is a big mash-up of all kinds of info and trivia about this fic. No NEW stuff here, so you don't really have to read this, but I will say there are lots of little "mini-stories" that almost made it in (aka deleted scenes, aka THIS IS STORY CONTENT, FANFICTION BOT, DON'T DELETE IT KTHX).
First of all, thank you so, so much for taking this journey with me. That sounds cliché, but it's actually what it has felt like. My life has changed so much over the course of these last two years of posting (got a new job, moved to a new town, lost some family, gained some family, got quarantined by a sudden scary disease outbreak, etc.) but this story and all the folks I have met through it have been a constant in the background of it all. I so appreciate all the likes, follows, and reviews - particularly those of you that say silentshipping isn't usually your jam. It's fun to get approval and appreciation from the silentshipping community, but there's really no higher honor than someone saying "Shit, you made this pairing work. I didn't think it could be made to work."
I kind of assumed I would duck out of the fandom again for a while once Songs I Never Learned was wrapped up, simply because it was a big undertaking and it's taken a lot out of me. However, I've got to be honest… it's just made me want to stay all the more. I've gotten invested.
Spoiler alert: I'm writing a prequel.
I wasn't planning it (at least I wasn't until late February, when the idea just took off out of nowhere) but I've gotten about three chapters of it written and I actually like how it's turning out. In fact, I like it enough to share it with the world. It's probably not going to get as long as this one did, simply because it naturally has to end where this one picks up, but there was more story I wanted to tell.
The starting point will be Seto and Serenity meeting at the coffee shop where she worked, and the ending point will be a limousine with... infamous bad choices being made. Heehee.
The title will be "Attention's Sweet Center," and if that's something you think you want to read, add me on author alert.
Anyway. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧
Songs I've Never Learned is definitely the longest fanfiction I've ever written, and it has also evolved dramatically since its conception (pun intended, lol). So I thought it might be fun to recap a few of the biggest changes that took place over the course of its development, along with a few hopefully interesting pieces of trivia:
-A bit on the baby's name, since everyone's curious: her full name (though it's never mentioned in the story) is Anna Rose Wheeler-Kaiba. Rosie for short - a nickname probably coined by one of her uncles. There's always a struggle in the Yu-Gi-Oh universe about whether to give an OC a Japanese or American name, but I eventually decided that since I used everyone's American dub names, a western name would be more suitable. It's a nod to one of my favorite songs that I listened to while writing the story: "Anna Rose," by Vienna Teng. It's also a cute little callback to the roses Seto left for Serenity the day of the baby shower.
-The story has been on my mind for years (and I even tried to write it before, always starting with Serenity giving Seto the news) but it felt awkward. However, sometime during summer 2016, in a lawn chair beside the pool, chapter one as you now see it tumbled out fully intact and made me think "Okay… this is actually going to be a thing that I can make happen." It felt strange not having Serenity in the first chapter at all, seeing as she's pretty much the main character, but it ended up being the key to making it work. The reader needed to know Seto's feelings about the situation before Serenity even appeared, because there was no way he was going to be transparent with her.
-I've been out of the silentshipping fandom for a LOT of years. It's actually been since 2003 (!?) that I've started a new silentshipping fic, and even then it was on my other account. A reviewer mentioned off-hand that there were a lot of accidental pregnancy-themed silentshipping stories, but that was news to me! I have a huge, borderline-creepy obsession with pregnancy stories that dates back to my years in the Twilight fandom, so this is really just an extension of some of my own favorite types of plot lines. Regardless, I hope I managed to bring something unique to the table!
-The working title of the story was "Reve Interrompu," which is French for "Interrupted Dream" (or at least it would be, if it had the proper circumflex accent over the first 'e'). My working titles are very often poetic and sort of random, and they rarely make it to the finished product.
-This was only ever supposed to be about twenty chapters, but several segments of the plot (for example: the first hospital stay, revealing the news to Joey, and the delivery) that were supposed to be single-chapter episodes got more drawn-out.
-Speaking of things getting drawn out longer than I expected, Seto was supposed to give in and become more emotional and authentic in terms of his true feelings MUCH earlier on. First, it was supposed to be after the dinner Serenity went to at his house (yeah, way too early, not happening!) then it was supposed to be triggered by the first stay at the hospital, but I eventually decided that given his personality, forcing his hand using drama wasn't going to be the best way to do it. That would just make him all the more stubborn. Finally, it ended up happening as all the best, unexpected things in life do: at a completely casual, unsuspecting moment. With ice cream.
-Mai played a bigger role than I originally intended, and the rest of Yugi's friends weren't even supposed to appear at all. However, all of their parts got bigger as I began to build the universe of the story and decided it needed to be wider than just the hospital and the Kaiba mansion.
-Speaking of which, Serenity's room in the Kaiba mansion is actually supposed to be the big master bedroom where Gozaburo lived when he was alive - there just wasn't ever a good time to address it in the story. It's the largest and most luxurious suite in the house, but I imagine that Seto never wanted to move into it because of his negative associations with his stepfather. He probably wouldn't have wanted to give it to Serenity either ( for the same reason) but I imagine that Mokuba talked him into it because it would be the most practical given its huge bathroom and the fact that it's on the first floor. Also, as he says, they do redecorate it dramatically. To me, there's just a charming sort of poetic justice in Seto re-learning how to show affection in the same room where he likely was made to forget.
-I almost want to write a spin-off one-shot of Seto and Joey working on the nursery together. I think their dynamic would be hilarious. That twist didn't get nearly as much attention as I would have liked; I just felt like I needed to address it then keep the plot moving. I love the idea of Joey being way better with practical things like woodwork and masonry and rubbing it in Kaiba's face. I don't think Kaiba's at all stupid enough to mistake a power drill for a sander (or vice versa) but Joey would definitely play up his relative ineptitude with manual labor for laughs. (If anybody wants to adopt that and write it, it's all yours!)
-I actually already have written a one-shot prequel of Mokuba thinking about how much easier his life would be if his brother had a son or daughter for an heir and wasn't relying on him to take over the company. That story may or may not ever see the light of day; it's sort of random and short. It also has a grown-up Rebecca Hawkins as a casual love interest for Mokuba, which is a little weird since she's not in this fic at all. That said, I do really like Mokuba's character exposition in it… so who knows.
-Speaking of Mokuba, his character was one of my very favorite developments over the course of this story. I've seen several different versions of timeskip-Mokuba in various different fics, but it seems to me that he often ends up getting characterized as a wild playboy who does nothing but exasperate Seto. Though I do think Mokuba would grow up to be more easygoing than his brother (really, it would be hard for him NOT to) I didn't want to sacrifice their relationship over that. Maybe just because of his long hair and his deadpan sense of humor in the source material, I saw him going more of a hippie direction. I tried to find a middle ground somewhere between the two tropes, and I really, really liked what I ended up with. His utter comfort in who he is provides a comfortable place for Serenity (and the reader!) to rest while Seto ricochets all over the place navigating a total character transformation.
-Like Serenity, I always sort of knew that the baby was going to be a girl. My reasoning is that we've basically already seen Seto raise a boy (Mokuba) and Serenity already has a brother, so there are boys to go around. Bottom line, there are just too many boys in the Yu-Gi-Oh universe… so there.
-I only reference Duel Monsters and tournaments like twice, and seeing as that's the literal foundation of the source material, that almost makes this into an AU story. Truth be told, I've never been as interested in the duels as the dynamics between the characters, so I sort of let the supernatural aspects of the story fall by the wayside in this one. I really don't regret that.
-The mention of a virtual world almost did make it in, though. There was originally a throwaway line in one of the Seto-perspective chapters about him "admittedly preferring virtual women for precisely that reason" (accidental pregnancies not being a risk). Though hilarious and totally in-character as far as I'm concerned - I have always had my suspicions regarding what was going on in all those virtual worlds - it was, unfortunately, too silly for this story.
-On the topic of scandalous things that I eventually scrapped because they were just a little too much, Joey was also originally going to find Seto's boxers in Serenity's bathroom (owning to the fact that they took a shower together) when he brought her the sandwiches - and basically lose his shit. As satisfying as that drama would have been, I was trying to set up a truce between him and Seto so they could work on the nursery together, so I couldn't afford that kind of conflict at that point in the story.
-The plot twist of Joey initially jumping to the conclusion that Mokuba was the baby's father was not premeditated; it only happened as I was writing the chapter where he got the news. That said, it's one of my favorite little twists. The tenseness in that chapter was so much fun to write, and it's still one of my favorite ones to re-read. As a side note, I'm so glad poor Yugi ended up in the middle of that fray; he's probably the only one who could have kept it from becoming an all-out brawl.
-I took some liberties with Seto's mother's story, mainly because the canon doesn't ever tell us much about what happened aside from the fact that she died in childbirth (and even that much is only addressed in the manga, I'm pretty sure). Though Seto doesn't go into too much detail, I wrote the cause of death as hemorrhage due to a case of placenta previa, which is what you call it when the placenta covers the entrance to the birth canal. It's serious but can still turn out okay with a fast-acting medical team, but they clearly didn't have that. One of my reasons for not calling it by name in the story is that Seto, who is narrating in that scene, probably didn't know exactly what happened because of his young age when it all took place. I also wasn't sure how emo I wanted to get with him sharing the story with Serenity, but I knew it needed to be addressed because of all the dramatic irony that builds when Seto and Serenity are at the hospital (occurring, of course, because he and Mokuba know that their past is a huge motivation for his actions and they clue the reader in, but Serenity has no idea). When I finally wrote the brief section about it in the chapter where he feels the baby move, I decided it felt right, so I kept it.
-Tristan wasn't in the first draft of the baby shower chapter. I originally had him being sort of jealous and angry about Serenity hooking up with Kaiba. As time went on, I finally decided that it was sort of an unnecessary conflict to develop for a character who appears so rarely in the story anyway. Besides, in the source material, he's such a team player that I think he would have probably sucked it up and been there with his friends regardless of his feelings.
-On that same note, it killed me to not have Seto at the baby shower... but the time just wasn't right. It still would have been out-of-character at that point in the story. Besides, his absence gave me that opening to have him express his feelings for her in a romantic twist at the end of the chapter.
-After the story got longer than fifteen chapters or so, I decided I wanted actual chapter titles. I thought about doing something avant-garde like picking an inanimate object that was central to the theme of each chapter and making that the title (a few of the originals were "Hooker Boots," for the chapter where Mai confronts Seto, and "Endives," for the dinner scene) but I eventually decided that was sort of extra. I ended up settling on a small bit of dialogue from each chapter: something that would serve as a hook if you hadn't read it yet but would also make it very clear which chapter was which after you had.
-At the time that I wrote the açaí bowl chapter, I had never actually eaten one before. I have had the chance to try one in the time that passed since, and I've got to say… maybe it's an acquired taste, or maybe the one I had was just a little too heavy on the chia seeds. Either way, it was pretty slimy. Not a huge fan.
-I wasn't entirely sure until I started writing exactly how I wanted Serenity's character to be in this story. I didn't want the bland version from the dubbed anime, that's for sure. However, I did have the advantage of aging her from the roughly 13 she is in the anime to 19, which is a big transition for anyone. Her final version ended up being a girl who is an essentially a good and sweet person who wants the best for everyone, but she doesn't have a solid family background to rely on and she feels a little stifled by her overprotective brother. Her little sarcastic sense of humor and playfulness happened on their own as I wrote, and I couldn't be more thrilled that they did and still felt so authentic.
-As I read and re-read, I realized that Serenity cries in some form in more chapters than not. Initially I worried that I accidentally wrote sort of a pathetic character, but from a more objective perspective, I still really don't see her that way. She's dealing with the biggest emotional upheaval of her life, and even when she cries, she's still being steadfast and proactive rather than helpless; she's just being authentic about her feelings as she does so. I read back through the crying scenes after making the realization that there were so many of them, and I decided there wasn't a single one I regretted writing the way I had. She can be honest about her emotions and still be a strong character.
So there you have it: a window into my creative process and the added bonus of a couple of "deleted scenes."
Look for "Attention's Sweet Center" sometime soon, coming to a computer/phone screen near you!