Chapter Text
AE: Hi, I’m Apfelessig, writer and worldbuilder for The Lighthouse. I also made the graphics because I'm a Canva addict and it was a great way to put off wrangling the story when I was stuck.
SL: Hi all, I’m ASheepsLife, worldbuilder, editor, and all around partner in crime.
AE: The Lighthouse has truly been a labour of love and a long time in the making. So instead of posting it as a one-off, we're adding this DVD Commentary to share what ideas went into each chapter and the many, many twists and turns it took to get there.
SL: Any excuse to nerd out about the literary themes of a work, particularly if it's our own work.
AE: This is going to be an experiment. How far can we push the meta envelope with this project? I guess we can start with: how did this come about? What do you remember of this coming about?
SL: Well, I remember you messaging me, I believe it was a voice message, with this Halsey song, “The Lighthouse”. And you were talking about how you had been listening to this and how it inspired this – I can’t now recall how fully formed this AU was at that point, but I remember that in this voice message you were talking about “The Lighthouse” in connection with [REDACTED], specifically, and TURN.
AE: I remember an even earlier discussion we had.
SL: Oh yeah?
AE: Where we were doing a werewolf/vampire AU and it was so obvious Caleb was going to be the werewolf and Ben was going be the vampire that you said, ‘Why don't we switch that?’ And then I have very early drafts from over a year ago of like, Ben as this wolf and Caleb as this vampire interacting on the coastline of some shore. And then I read about sea wolves and this whole thing kind of spiralled. And then we were like, ok what are the other characters? And then it kind of grew from there.
SL: Are you sure that it was me that came up with this?
AE: I think so because I was like, ‘oh, huh’. And it was awkward for me at first, and it must have been you because I remember thinking like, ‘oh, ok, how do I make that work?’ And then it worked out fantastically.
SL: Right, ok. I mean, it could have been me. I'm just trying to think back because somehow I remember this idea of not doing the obvious thing being brought to me and having that same reaction of, ‘actually that would be a very cool idea’. [both laughing.] But maybe that was inside my head.
AE: That’s definitely going in the commentary. That's so funny that we're both like, ‘this was your idea’.
SL: Great minds and all.
AE: We can look this up.
🍎 [14/02/2023 8:44 pm]
Lately, I’ve been in the mood to write some more Tallster. Shoot me a prompt or something. I’m thinking something quite peaceful. Just like, a one-shot or something like that.
🐏 [17/02/2023 4:14 pm]
Inspired by my own grotty night, how about "sleepless night(s)" for a prompt?
🍎 [30/06/2023 7:45 pm]
Btw our chat has led to several handwritten pages of an increasingly elaborate world of supernatural Turn characters
🍎 [30/06/2023 7:45 pm]
including a Witch!Townsend and an UnidentifiedApparition!Simcoe
🐏 [30/06/2023 10:37 pm]
Oh dear, seems like I really did create a monster 😅
🐏 [01/07/2023 01:53 pm]
If we make this thing collaborative, it's really gonna become a monster.
SL: Reader, it was not a one-shot.
AE: Reader, it was not peaceful.
SL: Anyway, let's get to the story.
AE: Okay, so we have the Drowned Man. I love Ryder as the Drowned Man because his fate is so, his life is so short in the show. It seems as soon as we know that Rogers is looking for him, he seems fated to die, so to have him already be this undying pitiful creature, I think that just works really well.
SL: Yeah, absolutely. I hadn't thought about it in those terms, this ‘as soon as you appear on Rogers’ radar, that's game over for you’, in connection to Ryder specifically, because he is more of an incidental character on the show. I also really liked the interactions you wrote up for the two of them, Caleb and him. I thought that worked really well. That's always the question, right? If you have an AU, do characters have the same history together? Oftentimes they don't, right? And so how do you make that work, to what degree do you want to get them to the same place? What would they be, you know, if they were transplanted into this different setting?
AE: And I like that they're not friends in this one. They are friendly, but not even that much. There’s a friction between them that is based on this exchange of Ryder eternally suffering. Caleb has the means to alleviate that suffering, but it's not actually helpful, really. And there's always this kind of push and pull. I think no one in the Frontier is kind. You can't be, or they've decided you can't be. And so there's a camaraderie between them, but it's not warm, I don't think.
SL: It's not warm, no, I would agree. And I think you can tie it into what you were saying to me earlier, that in this world you need to consume, you need to feed in some way to survive. And so it's a sort of, you know, perverted camaraderie, if you look at it.
AE: Yeah. Mutual cannibalism, if you will.
SL: Exactly! Mutual cannibalism! [both laughing]
AE: I can't remember why I thought it would be so cool for Ryder to be eternally wet –
SL: [laughing] Eternally wet?!
AE: Internally! Internally wet all the time. In my mind it made so much sense that he would be waterlogged, completely waterlogged, and it's such an uncomfortable feeling to be bloated and wet. So he would want to reduce that feeling somehow, completely impossibly, of course. I remember thinking, ‘oh, this makes so much sense’, and now, looking at it cold from the outside I'm like, ‘why? There's no logic there at all.’
SL: I mean, does the thing need to have logic?
AE: Not in the Frontier, no. He's a rotten sea monster and that's sort of his fate, right? And I wanted it to be gross, I wanted it to be uncomfortable. I wanted us to open with something that kind of sets the tone, that this is not a nice story. This isn't, you know, things don't end well, really, for anyone. And there's a lot of discomfort. And you can't get away from the putrefaction of not dying properly.
SL: I think it works great for that opening – and I was also just thinking of this element of Caleb then bringing him this Spanish moss, which is not really a coastal plant –
AE: Yeah, it's southern, southeastern coast. Let me look this up. Every creepy movie has Spanish moss, it made sense for it to be there, but no, you're actually right, it doesn't belong. Maybe I should change that.
SL: No, but I was thinking: Ok, we have Ryder, his element is the water – and it could be because later on we have Ben, whose element is not really the water, it's the land more, and Caleb as the courier, right, as the go between – but I was just thinking it actually makes perfect sense. Because, you know, Ryder, being the Drowned Man that he is, has no recourse to something as far inland as Spanish moss, and so he's relying on Caleb to, as you said earlier, bring him this sort of relief.
AE: It's so sad somehow that Ryder suffers like this. I think that’s almost all we can say about the Drowned Man, unless you want to add something. Oh yes, of course! The Lighthouse! We have to talk about the Lighthouse beam showing up for the first time. The big, important thing in this chapter that we've forgotten about completely. And my God, it's been such a long journey figuring out the stupid lighthouse, and this Lighthouse beam and what it does and why it does what it does. I like that Ryder doesn't feel much, because, for one, he's just not associated with the Lighthouse in the same way, but also, the things the Lighthouse stands for don't mean much to Ryder in the first place. So it's a passing nostalgia, but it doesn't hurt the same way it hurts Caleb, who has a much more personal attachment.
SL: It makes sense for Ryder not to have the same connection, because for most of what we see of him in the show, he's just chilling out in the woods, right? And he seems to have created his personal, you know, homosocial world of his dreams. He's just hanging out with his privateering mates, and he's quite removed from quote unquote ‘civilization’. So yeah, long story short, it makes a certain kind of sense for him to just not have a very strong sense of connection to, or projections of, idealized versions of domesticity because he’s removed himself from all of that.
AE: I love that you said homosocial because it goes so well with what we learned about, or what you and I believe of Robert later on in the upcoming scenes.