"i'm not... normal. at all. so why... why d-do you like me... like i am?"
"because i'm not normal either."
~
no one else is dealing with his demons, dan thought. until he found someone who dealt with worse.
air catcher has come quite a long way from when the idea first hit me. fun fact: i'm pretty sure i wrote a lot of the first drafts in a really boring health class. i hated that teacher.
wattpad doesn't work at my school (so i can't reply to anyone or write from seven am to three pm est) so i jotted it down in a different application.
here's what it first looked like:
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it was comprised of bits and pieces, lacking a stable connection. you can see how the transition from phil's thoughts to finding dan wasn't created yet.
another example:
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here, i had no intention of adding a chapter of phil's perspective. later on, i realized it would be essential to establish his self-harm early on.
there were also plenty of aspects that would entirely change the story. for example, in the first chapter dan says "i didn't want to eat. more of, i shouldn't eat." i was originally going to have him be bulimic, but i realized that it would add too many subplots to keep together.
here's another uncut scene, from dan's view:
He (Phil) pulled a lighter out of his pocket and let the sparks catch on his cigarette.
"Could you... not, please?" I asked.
"Why?" He said before taking a breath.
"It's not good for me..." I told him, my fingers running over the inhaler in my pocket.
He rolled his eyes and blew out a cloud of toxic smoke.
"Do you know how bad that is?" I asked.
"It's not bad at all," he brushed me off, "in fact it helps me be... s-somewhat positive even with- with how messed up so... society is." The nicotine couldn't take off his stutter.
"It also has bad effects on your body too, like a much higher risk for a lot of deadly cancers and diseases," I informed him.
He glared at me and replied, "I don't care, smarty pants, I'm gonna die eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later." (whoops i forgot the stutters)
Anxiety began to bubble in my mind, rebelled by the trivial amount of common sense I had.
Hopefully sooner rather than later?
It doesn't mean anything.
But if he leaves, you'll be back to where you started.
i kept the anxiety and asthma, but took out the smoking for the same reason i took out the bulimia sideplot.
i also had the idea of making this a tutoring fic, but soon discarded it from air catcher. but you never know...
finally, in case you haven't heard it, this is a lyric video for the song "air catcher" by twenty øne piløts, the inspiration for some of the ideas in this fic:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9ajitBBOfr0
sorry for this lameness, i've been sick and busy all week and the in-the-works chapter is taking quite a while to write. i promise a formal update this week as the official first new chapter of 2018.
