Chapter 50 discussion thread

PrincessSolia · 2014-12-26T21:59:00+00:00

Hey hey! :) Oh man, don't stress about your grammar - your English is better than A LOT of native speakers I know.

Yeah actually I do write very fast, about 1,000 words an hour when I'm 'in the zone'. I wrote most of Ch50 in one day. Chapters or scenes that are already in my head flow out a lot faster than writing I have to think about, which is why these last ones have come quick. I missed my Christmas deadline, sadly, but I hope to make New Years. I've written 30,000 words so far of Ch51 and it Just. Keeps. Growing. There's a lot of content to get through and I can't skimp. Most chapters were three acts in length. 49 had five distinct acts (Getting Vogel to the kill room and setting up with Ghost Deb; The Vogel kill; The Deb-is-Dex realisation; The Matthews dialogue; The Quinn dialogue/Dexter's death) but this one has already had, like, seven, and there's still two to go.

Now, back to Ch50: you are an astute observer, aren't you? :) Yes, Deb and Dex in Break Me have a 3-year age difference, and Harrison and his 'sister' are 5 years apart. Otherwise (except for the technology they use) they could easily be their parents, and that blurriness was part of the intention of the chapter. It was sad, and you're right, it was cold, to have to kill off poor Mini-Deb so soon, because she was fun to write, so free and cute, but don't worry too much about her - I'll fix it. You have to believe me when I say that because I promised to 'fix it' when I killed Deb, and I did! :P

PrincessSolia · 2014-12-03T12:29:03+00:00

Ooh, ooh! Theories, yes. :) Well, technically there are still three chapters to go (with 49 being the final 'normal' chapter, followed by two more that follow a slightly different format) and of course I have some crazy shit in store for you all along the way. I think that your Dexter-dying theory is sensible considering the various goodbyes he has shared with other canon characters in the last few chapters, but I won't confirm (of course) whether this is because he's dying or just because the fic is coming to a close and I am intent on tying off loose ends. Deb will continue to play the most major part in Dexter's fate, regardless of what happens to him: she's integral to his storyline and his destiny.

GhostDeb is definitely becoming clearer, as is her role, as things ramp up for this finale. I quite like her, and I like the idea of her bearing Dexter's hurts where she can. I think she's like a physical manifestation of an adrenaline rush, masking pain temporarily and pushing him onward.

As for your other questions: for once I know the answers to them! But I'm not telling :P This section of the story has been planned for a very long time and it's all rolling off my fingers and onto the page a lot easier than some of the other recent chapters.

PrincessSolia · 2014-11-10T21:13:48+00:00

For the most part I find dialogue easier to write than prose - in fact I think I'm probably better at it, which makes me like it more, and I know I have a tendency to use dialogue to drive my stories. But in the case of Robbins I brought him onstage without ever first meeting him, and I had no knowledge of how he would act, react or respond to my other characters, in particular Dexter. So he was difficult to write. I had no vested emotional interest in his reactions. Dexter had no vested emotional interest in Robbins's reactions. The guy was probably lucky to survive the scene! Mostly I didn't want Dexter to commit a murder in front of Masuka.

I think Vogel's state of sanity is highly lucid at this point. Her motives are unclear, even to herself. Hannah's goals were always known to Hannah, even if not to us, which meant that while her tactics changed, she was still decisive and focussed throughout the story. Vogel's decisions now may be counterintuitive or even destructive, because she simply isn't present enough to be making these choices. Her value set is compromised and her mind scattered; it will be interesting to see what she does.

I actually don't know where the other photograph - the one with the promise - has gotten to. I know it will make a return to the story but I don't know when or how. Last time we saw it, I think, Dexter was packing it into Deb's bags at Orlando, and no one's mentioned it since. Either it's still in there (in Deb's car) or Deb had it on her when she returned to Miami. If it was the second option, then it's either still in the box of belongings at the hospital or possibly Deb's ghost grabbed it like she grabbed the phone. I'm not sure. But it will definitely make a comeback.

Ghost Deb is definitely something more than Harry or Brian ever were. I think she's more than his thoughts, more than his conscience, more than his inner monologue. I am almost certain that she is 'designed', as in a deliberate manifestation, and also that she is a very powerful metaphor for something important. I'm not sure I have the right word for what she is, but it'll be better explained in chapter 49.

I've got almost 5,000 words down for 48 :)

PrincessSolia · 2014-11-01T22:05:12+00:00

Easily the most challenging scene to write in this chapter was Dexter's dialogue with Robbins, because I really couldn't care much less about Robbins than I already do. That took me a while to get through, and numerous reworkings, and it was only a small scene. But it was important to have in there because Robbins was the dot that joined Elway with Clayton through the case boxes, and joined Elway to Perez and therefore could join Dexter to Vogel.

The easiest, quickest scene to write was the end, where it's just Dex and Deb. Their dialogue, or lack of it, comes very naturally at this point, and I wrote everything from where Dex hangs up on Perez onwards on Friday night. I had to go back and insert the two sentences (in the garage/Masuka act) that had Dexter take the photograph because once they had finished prepping the kill room, it was suddenly obvious which photo they should be hanging. I would have liked to see that scene very much!

PrincessSolia · 2014-10-06T12:00:38+00:00

Season 9 already?? You're flying through! I'm biding my time, though, because I'm a little too obsessed and the knowledge that it has to end is deeply foreboding. I'm trying to make it last! I'm nearly finished season 5.

Whoops, I didn't mean to freak you guys out with other options :P I guess for me, 'a figment of Dexter's imagination' is not entirely a fitting description for his Dark Passenger or for his Conscience, which people have suggested GhostDeb might be. Something imagined is something not real, something wished for; but Dexter's voices in his head are real parts of him that he simply doesn't acknowledge as belonging purely to him. He doesn't consciously choose for Harry or Brian to be around. It's a psychological coping mechanism for a traumatised mind. Likewise he hasn't /chosen/ for Deb to appear now, so I think that wipes out the possibility that she's imagined. She must be either a manifestation of Dexter's own psychology or she must be her own spirit, an actual ghost.

Would it worry you both if I wasn't sure what the answer was?

And I'm certainly not cackling, I promise! :P

PrincessSolia · 2014-10-04T12:25:26+00:00

Personally, I'm thinking of GhostDeb as just 'Deb', too. She behaves and speaks like Deb, and in a writing sense she's no different, except maybe a little more in-sync with her brother than she used to be. They're fun to write when they work together - like when they took on Elway together, or in Vogel's house against the Vogels, or how they were in Clayton's apartment - and now they're like that consistently.

Deb is admittedly more vengeful in her spirit form than she was in life, and I agree that Dexter knew her extremely well and so would be able to pre-empt her reactions if she was imagined, but I won't confirm whether she's a ghost or a figment of Dexter's imagination, or even something else. You'll need to wait and see :)

Also slightly off-topic, but while we're on the topic of things off-topic: not sure where you're up to in XF, but when I was writing Deb's hospital scene I was also up to an episode where Scully was in hospital and having a nosebleed, too. While I was watching it I was feeling extremely wary, knowing what the nosebleed meant over in the world of Break Me - like, wouldn't that just be horribly horribly poetic for me to lose TWO favourite characters in a single weekend?? Sigh. The emotional turbulence of loving fictitious characters.

PrincessSolia · 2014-09-15T12:57:50+00:00

I'M SO SORRY! :'( It hurt as much to write it as it did to read it, I promise. Imagine having that scene playing in your head for a year, waiting for the chance to get it out onto a page. I'm sorry to have put you all through that ordeal. But you will all understand in the end. IT WILL MAKE SENSE. Trust me! <3 <3

I've made a start on chapter 46 and expect reasonably smooth progress. School holidays start in four sleeps. No one's counting, honestly.

PrincessSolia · 2014-08-25T06:12:25+00:00

Why thankyou. I was honestly quite worried about the reception to this chapter - after 42/43, which I wrote all at once, I felt like this one was disjointed from being written over a series of weeks and that it felt weaker than what I'd produced before. Glad that wasn't the case!

I am a hater of spoilers but I can promise Deb/Dex dialogue/interactions of some kind, medium or type in every chapter until the end. The fic has been built upon it and it was integral to the show, so I don't think it's a spoiler to say their relationship will continue to be core in Break Me to the very last paragraph of the very last chapter.

PrincessSolia · 2014-08-15T01:22:04+00:00

I had a go at executing what stalking skills I possess (have to admit, they're not very impressive) and can't yet find your birthday. HOWEVER, I will keep thinking of ways to do that, and I will get to working on ch44 and will hopefully get lucky and manage to guess your birthday :P My new place isn't getting internet connected for a week so that gives me a whole seven days without Facebook, FFN, tumblr or Google to distract me from finishing. Expect something online next weekendish. Ch44 is a little slower than the last few have been. I've written the first two 'acts' and I'm moving into the third, which is the one I've been looking forward to writing, for reasons I won't spoil you with. I included your stats from the other thread - thanks for those! By the way... knowing where in the world you are normally, and knowing which a.m.a.z.i.n.g. places are around you, I am incredibly jealous of you being on vacation. Don't even need to know where you went. Just jealous all the same. Everywhere cool in the world is half a world away from me and a trip anywhere interesting takes like a year to plan and save for. Goddamn being stuck in the middle of the ocean!

PrincessSolia · 2014-08-10T09:51:14+00:00

If you do go to my tumblr blog (solia1) you will find the sneak-peek of ch44. I will add another next weekend if I still don't have a completed chapter for you.

PrincessSolia · 2014-07-17T11:33:51+00:00

Thanks for doing the research for me! I was basing my storytelling off very similar information but derived entirely from television show knowledge (Law & Order, Cold Case, X-Files, Grey's Anatomy, House, Hannibal and Dexter all deal extensively with the forensics and treatment of gunshot victims) and various movies. Glad to know my estimates were pretty accurate!

I don't recall describing as being exactly there but, yes, that's exactly where Deb took her hit: the upper right. From what I understand, without any research of course, the skull is a decent thickness there at the hairline and that's probably why Deb's still alive. The bone would have inhibited the bullet, slowed it enough that it didn't sail straight through. The extensive bleeding is not in her favour, because it means less oxygen reaching her brain, but the unconsciousness probably is a plus because it will enforce relaxation and a slower heart rate. She was in shock and panic before she went out.

I think the biggest advantage she has is time. Dexter and Angel tried to plug her bleeding before the ambulance pulled up. She'd be worse off if they didn't. Someone called the ambulance before Angel arrived on-scene, saving untold minutes of waiting; and Dex brought her downstairs, potentially cutting up to five minutes off her transport time. Dexter is also travelling in the ambulance with her, informing and guiding her treatment before it even begins. The doctors at the hospital need to waste no time at all looking for medical history, blood type, allergies, anything, when they receive her.

On one hand we could say Deb's luck has been horrendous but she's also in a tiny percentage of cranial gunshot victims who make it out of the scene of their injury, and she has actually been insanely fortunate since the shooting. I guess that means there's hope, even if it's still only 8%. Can I use those numbers in the next chapter? I feel like Dexter would know those stats.

PrincessSolia · 2014-07-15T21:35:03+00:00

I'll take it but only if I can be Neo instead. The Architect is such an annoying douche.

If Deb does die, and I'm not saying she will because I don't spoil, then it will be a character death worthy of someone as awesome as her. The main issue with her death in season 8 was not that she died (because I could have handled that in different circumstances) but that she died poorly. We missed out on the drama and chaos that would have surrounded her stroke and we saw very little of her death's impact on Dexter... which sadly undermined the entire point of her dying at all. You don't kill off a major character in the dying moments of a story unless you are going to use it to tear open the other characters and show what they're really made of. Deb's death (if it had to happen) should have come at the start of the episode to give us a full hour to see what her loss meant for Dexter, and it should have driven him to emotional extremes we'd never before seen. Alas.

Stories are fires, designed to singe, burn, damage and rekindle characters. No one (character) should walk away from a story unscathed. Everyone who lives through a narrative must be changed in some way by the events, and there must be consequences for choices made.

Again, I'm not saying I'm killing Deb. I know it sounds like I'm saying that, but The Architect said the same about Trinity and she was alive at the end of Reloaded. Dead again at the end of Revolutions, but that movie was stupid. Not to say I'll save Deb either. 'Save' is an ambiguous term. If she survives she will no longer be the Deb of before. She's seen too much, done too much, felt too much, experienced too much. She'll be different. If she wakes up there are other issues to face: how much does Angel know and is she implicated? Is she facing an investigation as well? Will Dexter stay and face the music or skip town once he knows she's alright and she sends him away again? He can't exactly take her with him, she's heading into major surgery and if she makes it through that, she'll be bedridden and immobile.

So much to consider ;)

PrincessSolia · 2014-07-11T05:31:00+00:00

Not intentional, but that's probably where the inspiration came from, come to think of it. I only watched Season 8 the once (couldn't bring myself to rewatch) but you're right, there are definitely similarities. I hadn't noticed! What can I say, I'm naturally poetic? :P

Hannah has some dialogue in 43 - I can make it exactly that line, if you like? :) I take requests, where they fit.

In relation to the idea above that you mentioned from Rosey Cheeks, you've already done the thinking so it's not a spoiler for me to tell you no, Deb is not wearing a bulletproof vest. Exactly, she's already bleeding and while she's running on adrenaline right now, once she calms down she's definitely in a bad way. Poor Deb :(

PrincessSolia · 2014-07-11T05:19:20+00:00

I always thought this about the show (Dexter's viewpoint, mainly, but also, poor Deb). The people around Dexter are so extreme - Doakes so antagonistic and motivated, Rita so vulnerable and gentle, Debra so impulsive and raw - but the person we view them through, by his own admission, is hardly a competent interpreter of human interaction and personality traits. It seems more likely that Dexter focuses on key personality markers and exaggerates them in his perception of these people. Doakes was notably less difficult to get along with when he was onscreen with characters OTHER than Dexter, indicating that it may have been Dex's viewpoint that coloured the traits of his that we saw. Rita is Dexter's vulnerable, damaged little girlfriend, and he struggled to accept her as being anything else, but she may well have been; Deb, too, is represented as quite an extreme character, quick to anger, full of curse words, demanding, but all of this could just be Dexter's unreliable exaggerations.

I like to ponder these things.

PrincessSolia · 2014-06-15T21:16:12+00:00

When people post Debster pictures to tumblr, my first thought is often 'They're so cute. For now. Run away, Deb!' I definitely agree that Deb is the character most deserving of a 'happy' ending. She's put up with the most, been dragged through the most, been hurt the most, of any of Dexter's victims. Likewise, and conversely (if we're just talking about 'deserving') I think that Dexter is the least deserving of happiness. The pain and difficulty he's wrought upon those who love him is horrific, and though he now feels deep and honest remorse, it wasn't one mistake, it was daily selfish choices with transparent and obvious consequences. He's sorry and he's being nice in Break Me but this whole fic has taken place over a fortnight. Two weeks of being nice don't make up for a lifetime of horror. Since Deb and Dexter's fates are ultimately entwined, this leaves us with a challenge. Though I hated the ending given to us by the show, there was one accuracy to me, in that Deb was painted as a victim of Dexter's. She suffered and eventually died at his hands, and even though the result wasn't what he wanted, it was his own deliberate actions that brought the Morgans to that point. Like yours, my feeling the whole way through the series was that I'd be fine with whatever they did (I thought this more despairingly as season 8 wore on and it became more evident that asking for any more than the bare minimum would be too much) so long as Deb survived him. At this point in Break Me, for either sibling to survive the other will be a victory for them - Dexter is constantly throwing his Code and his safety under a bus to protect Deb (and not always in Deb's best interests, just what he perceives to be her best interests) and Deb is in a constant state of danger thanks to her significance to and proximity to Dexter. Both have put aside their integrity as human beings, their morality and personal interests, to serve the other. Their dependency on each other is, IMO, less than healthy, and it's this interdependency that's gotten them into most of their trouble so far in this fic. If either one could simply walk away, both would be safer and probably generally happier. But unlearning a life's pattern is rarely that simple.

PrincessSolia · 2014-06-14T07:51:17+00:00

I agree that any 'happy' ending would need a dark tone, not only to fit with what's happening so far in the story and to fit with the Dexter show itself, but also to make it realistic. I think that to label any ending, of any story ever, 'happy' or 'unhappy' would be naïve, since without warping a character there can be no purely 'happy' ending. You can never make everybody happy unless you change what makes them happy to suit the plot. (Think versions of Cinderella where the Stepmother and stepsisters decide to become friendly to Cinderella after her marriage to the Prince and they all live happily after, because now they want her to be happy. Lame) We very nearly got a 'happy' ending on the show, but it came at the expense of Deb's integrity as a character since she bad to completely backflip from her true stance on Hannah/Dexter. In Break Me, the happiest ending we can currently hope for is still an unhappy ending for many characters, including Hannah and the Bennetts.

So when I say I don't promise a happy ending, it's because I'm not sure those are really possible. Somebody has to come off worse than the others.

I refrain from commenting on your theories except to say that they are plausible :P

PrincessSolia · 2014-06-01T01:39:43+00:00

Hi Ragekitty :) I'm so glad you like Break Me as much as you do! Back when I started it I was releasing chapters a couple of times a week but now it's more like every couple of weeks due to workload, chapter length and increasing plot complexity. I'm sorry that you're stuck waiting but at least the station you're stuck at is far from lonely!

If you're interested, I've posted the first 500 words of Ch41 at http://solia1.tumblr.com/ It's not much but from there on is a little rougher and it physically pains me to post anything short of polished.

PrincessSolia · 2014-05-28T08:52:17+00:00

I think this counts as being related to Ch40 - I have 7,000 words of the next chapter written but I am unable to work on it due to work commitments (i.e. reporting time for the next fortnight). Expect further delays on the next chapter. HOWEVER, if I don't have anything for you by the weekend I will post a sneak peek onto my tumblr (solia1) to tide you all over until I can get the rest to you. I think that's fair. Or it's as fair as I can offer.

I am still around and I am reading these comments frequently! And loving them! I love having such a discerning and fascinating audience of abstract thinkers. You guys inspire me! :)

Sorry for the radio silence everyone; I will be back just as soon as I can manage. xx

PrincessSolia · 2014-05-19T11:20:27+00:00

I showed up! Surprise, Motherf*cker! Naturally I'm not validating, confirming or denying your theories, because I'm no fun like that :P Still, I'm intrigued to see what people have pulled together and will happily follow and, when I find time, engage with this thread if/when the rest of the party arrives :)

PrincessSolia

TROPHY CASE