cimorene

I just had a pretty surreal experience.

About 10 years ago, in a long-abandoned fandom, I had one of those ideas that you talk about in chat without meaning to write because it seems unmanageable for some reason, like maybe too long or too much work or too angsty, and in this case, it was because I had a vision of a 20-year-long plot arc but with a giant puzzle piece missing from the middle. I had a vague sense that the answer should be obvious to me, that it was staring me in the face somehow or I was looking at it upside down, but the whole idea was silly anyway. However, I was easily persuaded to write a few individual pieces from it as vignettes (oh, and apparently the last bit was only 7 years ago).

I hadn't given the story any thought in years, and I was never particularly stressed about figuring it out, but just now I was reading something by somebody else in a completely different fandom and I suddenly looked up like my ears were ringing, and then, prompted by an abstruse connection between the reading material and a couple of conversations I had last week with

perhael about yet a third fandom, I suddenly knew what the missing piece was.

In fact it seems both laughably obvious and inevitable, like I can't believe I didn't figure it out before, like I had a key in a lock upside down. I haven't even heard from the friend I was writing it for in years, I think...

I hope my brain hasn't been wasting resources running that process in the background all this time.