![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Making It Better | Fire Emblem 7
Fandom: Fire Emblem 7
Words: 8,668
Pairing/Characters: Kent/Lyn, Sain, Hausen
Extra Info: This was originally written for girlnamedtsu on Tumblr as part of the 2013 Holiday FE Exchange. The original story was 7,908 words long.
Rating: T for basic Fire Emblem things
Genre: Romance, progressing relationship, friendship, humor
Even more extensive notes (including a detailed history of rewriting and more about the process of writing) can be found on YouTube. Please be aware that the notes for this story are long, since I was asked to explain how I go about rewri
Notes:
Warning: this is long. And it's not just about what I rewrote but why.
Recently, I put up a 24-hour poll on my Tumblr that featured a handful of fics I was considering for a rewrite. The story that won was “Making It Better,” a 2013 Fire Emblem 7 ‘fic starring none other than Kent and Lady Lyndis.
I was glad this ‘fic won, because it was actually the reason I was considering doing a rewrite in the first place.
I had an idea for a rom-com type of fic, and I could have sworn that I’d written something in that vein for Fire Emblem 7, so I wanted to re-read it to see if writing my newer idea was even plausible. Like, if I re-read the FE7 fic, and it was dogshit, then I’d feel pretty certain that attempting a romantic comedy spin in 2024 for a brand-new fic was maybe…not the play.
However, when I reread the fic, it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t great, but it had a solid enough foundation, and most importantly, it was actually telling a story. The biggest issue I had with it was just how repetitive it felt. So I thought, naively, that it would be pretty easy to rewrite—just time-consuming, because the original story was 7,908 words long.
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t easy. It was time-consuming, and not just because of the length. It was because I basically had to rewrite the entire damn thing. Why?
Well, let’s get into it.
I’m going to go over my rewrite for “Making It Better” to give those interested an idea of why I do rewrites and what that process typically looks like for me. I’m sure other authors have their own method, but this is mine!
--
So, to start with, I look at my comments and reviews from the original story. I’m looking for two big things, here: what worked, and what didn’t. What people liked, and what they didn’t like.
Some stories are honestly jackpots in this department. For example, the original version of “Graves” received some really solid feedback. For critique, I had: the formatting wasn’t very good, the transition between poetry and prose was too abrupt, and the story needed more balance with the two writing styles. For positivity, I had: Lucina’s characterization was good, the details made the story and gave excellent context to why Gerome is the way he is in-game, several people liked my attempt at weaving together poetry and prose, and I even received a comment from someone who had read “almost everything” I had written but had never taken the time to comment—until they read “Graves.”
I cannot stress enough how valuable this feedback was—and how instrumental it ended up being when I sat down to rewrite the story in 2017.
Unfortunately, I didn’t hit the jackpot with the comments that had been left on “Making It Better.” I feel like the reason for this was partly because it was a romcom and people tend to lower their expectations for that style of story; like, not only is it harder to want to nitpick a fic when you know it’s supposed to be silly, but it’s also harder to find fault in something when the story being told just isn’t that serious.
But let’s go over the feedback I did receive.
Commenters liked the premise of the story being something “mysterious but lighthearted.” They thought the characters were in character. It was fun to read, “a great little story.” One person said that part of the story “felt like an S support for Kent and Lyn.” And finally, almost everyone loved the reveal of who the Bread Bandit was.
There was ZERO negative feedback; nobody criticized anything.
However, I think even positive comments can sometimes hint at things that could use improvement, so I deduced that at least one person picked up on the repetitiveness of the original story, and also that the characters’ relationship was maybe a little too immature at a couple of points.
So basically I went into this story to rewrite it while considering the following things:
- Keep the premise of the story exactly the same.
- Find the part that felt “like an S support” and make it better.
- Cut repetitiveness out.
- Write Kent and Lyn’s relationship to be a little more mature, but without sacrificing the “fun” of the story.
So with that, let’s look at “Making It Better”!
--
The funniest part about re-reading your own work is that even after you’re done editing, you still see things to change, so trust me when I say I’ve had to refrain from continuing to edit even while putting notes about the rewriting process together.
I’ll do my best to talk about the differences in a way that makes sense, but I can’t promise much. You know how it is.
If you'd like to follow along, you can find the original fic here.
Now, I’m sure that right out of the gate, at least one of you—and I know exactly who, too—will prefer the original opening to this ‘fic for its simplicity and the way it flings you headlong into the story.
You can definitely feel that way, but let me defend my choice to change it. This open is really swift, and while I would normally prefer that (especially for a lighter tale like this one), the rest of the story’s pacing is quite slow comparatively. I could have trimmed a lot to force it to match, but that would require telling a much shorter story—and cutting the word count in half would have also eliminated half the heart and fun of the fic.
I’m not saying I couldn’t tell a fun rom-com story in 4,000 words—but I couldn’t tell this story in 4,000 words.
So I altered the opening to make it feel a little more in line with the rest of the story. You should know I rewrote this like, 15 times, but I’m mostly satisfied with the outcome. I decided to introduce Kent with his title, which isn’t strictly necessary for the audience since his men salute him almost immediately; it’s more flavor text for Kent himself, since he holds pride in his title—and satisfaction in his men doing good work.
Then we lead into information presented in the original opening paragraph. I changed the ambiguous “paperwork” to “supply requisitions” because I am haunted by that Tumblr post that came for my life. You know the one.
Kent is no longer “investigating” the mysterious Bread Bandit because to investigate kind of implies that he’s putting in some serious effort here—but he’s just looping past the kitchens to see if he might catch the thief in the act since he was up late finishing work and figures it’s worth a shot.
I added the bit about how the disagreement with the head cook went on until Hausen gets brought up because he is one of very few people whose opinion means something to Kent. In the original, the head cook just kind of hounded Kent until he caved in and reprimanded his men, but that doesn’t really make sense; Kent doesn’t take orders from a cook; the man could not FORCE Kent to do anything. Kent has some of the highest authority in the castle. However, considering theft in the castle would 100% be in Kent’s court, and also his responsibility to deal with, bringing Hausen into it definitely evens the playing field in the sense that to involve Hausen would be to admit that Kent isn’t doing his job right or well. In the rewrite, I just wanted the fact that he reprimanded his men to be something that felt a little more likely for him to (begrudgingly) do.
Kent acquired a headache in the rewrite that he didn’t have before. This was mostly to explain why he was a little extra irritated for part of the story.
I changed the clanking of pots and cutlery to make Kent think of one of his own men in armor because I thought it was odd that he jumped immediately to believing it was one of his own men after he’d denied it and was “forced” to reprimand them in the first place. Like, either he trusts his men or he doesn’t? And I thought it might be nice if he was reasonably proud of them at this point (and only turns to anger when it really seems like his faith was misplaced, which highlights the issues he’s been having keeping everyone in line).
Changed the time Sain told Kent about the trap to the afternoon to help suspend disbelief (that he would have had time to do something) and tried to make him sound more like Sain, but this is something I have to admit I struggle with. Verbose characters are so much fun but they are not in my writing wheelhouse.
Added the bit about Hausen and Lyndis to kind of put some context to Kent’s concerns about his men and his worry that they might not respect him. This is a complex theme I don’t really get into too much here, especially because the bandit ends up not being one of his own men, but Kent is pretty young considering his position in Caelin’s military (I always imagined him no older than 24) so it’s not hard to imagine his authority was met some serious resistance.
Speaking of, I don’t think his men believe he just goofed off the whole time he traveled with everyone, but he and Sain did leave them to clean up the mess of Laus’s invasion and um…someone took his and Kent’s places in the ranks until they returned to Caelin and just…took their jobs back? Yeah, they both probably have a few enemies.
-Kent’s knee injury was in the original story so I kept it here and ran with it. I’m not sure why I made that choice in the original, because it never really meant anything; it was more like flavor text? But I thought it might be better to actually integrate it into Kent’s life in the rewrite, so we’ll return to it.
-Darin of Laus is an important bit for Kent and/or Sain; in the chapter you fight him, if you deploy Sain in Eliwood's Mode, he'll make a comment; if you deploy Kent in Hector's, he asks to take the point in that fight. Either way, I run with that shit EVERY TIME because Kent never comes off like the type to want revenge—but this is proof he did want it—even if it wasn’t for his own sake. (And it's satisfying to let Kent and/or Sain and/or Lyn defeat Darin.
The original story was a bit goofier with the “dragons and ancient heroes and necromancers, oh my!” bit, which was super fun, but it just didn’t jive with Kent’s voice at all and I couldn’t make myself write it out like that for the rewrite.
The original line about him keeping his men in line was just…terrible. I had to rewrite that.
I changed the wording about the glasses due to the fact that the word “unmistakable” was used again later (and the second use of it was far better).
I decided to change the moment before Kent’s entrance into the kitchens slightly. The original was repetitive: a great example of the issue that plagued the original story. It’s already been established that Kent is going to go off on whoever is in the kitchen because he thinks that it’s one of his own men who has chosen to disobey a direct order; I don’t need to repeat that information. And while I like the idea that he takes disobedience personally (rather than just getting angry about it from a professional perspective), the earlier mention that he had some issues keeping his men in line helps stoke the fire of his anger enough; there’s no reason to make it personal in this story, too—especially considering there’s no room to do anything with it. Also, “and he was sick and tired of the latter” just sounds so petulant, which doesn’t feel right for Kent.
Kent’s entrance changed as well, of course. “Deliberately” was an odd way to start that sentence; we know he’s mad already, we know he’s going in there to chew someone out; we don’t need to say his entrance is deliberate. What else was it going to be? An accident?
In the original, Kent’s tirade uses the word “repeatedly” and that doesn’t actually make a lot of sense; he told his men once, not repeatedly. So that dialogue changed a bit to better reflect the actual issue.
His discovery that it’s Lady Lyndis in the kitchens, and not one of his men, was written with some intended suspense in the original (where he doesn’t actually say who the figure is until he speaks her name); that’s silly and doesn’t do much, here, since it’s not a place where such a tactic would be useful (like the end of a chapter). So I changed it so that he shares his realization with the class.
His dialogue also changed here because, while I wanted to let Lyn clown on him for a hot second about him mistaking her for one of his men, I realized in the rewrite that he could imply it instead and that Lyn, being smart, could make that connection herself. Also, Kent’s whole schtick is duty and honor and servitude; I don’t think the first thing out of his mouth after literally yelling at someone he’s sworn fealty to would be to speak to her like that. Even in his confusion, he would apologize right away.
Lyn’s a tricky character to write! She’s usually very confident, but we see her insecurities in a few supports (and most obviously in Kent’s, but I’ll get to that a little later). I always got the distinct impression that, while Lyn is confident in things she can personally control, she’s a lot less-so when she steps out of her comfort zone. And we know that Caelin isn’t really a place she’s comfortable. She shouldn’t feel even a little guilty for being caught eating food in her own kitchen, but she doesn’t quite view Caelin as “hers”—as something she ‘owns.’
Lyn’s teasing here changed a bit here to reflect what ought to read as a slightly more mature relationship/interaction between them. The original felt too much like she was fishing for a compliment…and while that is in-character in the game (because what are their first two supports but Lyn fishing for his true feelings and striking oUT), I feel like after their A Support she should know such tactics aren’t very effective. So instead, she’s gonna just mess with him a bit…for fun and entertainment.
Lyn laughs here to make it clearer to both Kent and the audience that she’s only teasing him. But it also gives a great opportunity to show that he misses her.
Kent’s relief was kept mostly the same here, but I did change the wording to try to better reflect that he wasn’t looking forward to a confrontation with anyone (and that asserting his authority is more or less just part of his job description).
His observation of Lyn’s clothing was trimmed slightly and tightened up to convey the same idea but in fewer words.
In the original, his dialogue suggests he’s surprised she’s the thief…but we’ve seen his thoughts on this already, paragraphs ago, so that doesn’t even make sense. Also, his awkward fumbling in calling her a thief outright just didn’t seem very in character—to say nothing for his childish self-hatred here. In the rewrite, I decided to take a different approach; he’s amused and decides to try to gently tease her in return. He’s still aware he’s being “too bold” but it’s a much more deliberate choice.
Also, the “whisper of an understanding” they share is more or less what occurs in their A Support. I added this because their B-into-A Supports are confessions, but very understated ones. Lyn obviously wants to hear that he supports her and spends time with her because he likes her (not just because it’s written into his contract), and Kent eventually grows bold enough to tell her that he remains by her side because of who she is as a person, and that even if their circumstances end up changing, his heart will not. This is a great segue into their ending together (where she abdicates and he follows her to Sacae), but it feels REALLY subtle in light of that, too—like the very beginning of something serious that we’re not privy to. Thus, they have an understanding of sorts, but nothing set in stone.
I wanted to keep the smile in this scene because it was sweet, and added it in after he tries to tease her to show that she catches on.
This next bit was expanded quite a bit, which…I have mixed feelings about. On one hand, I definitely see the appeal of the original’s simplicity, but on the other, I thought it was a bit odd that Lyn let the thief thing go so quickly without asking a question, which makes it sound almost like she knows who the culprit is—even though she doesn’t. So that gets discussed briefly before the cellar and larder/pantry gets mentioned.
Pantry was changed to larder; I don’t think it REALLY matters because these words mean more or less the same thing, but our modern understanding of pantries is more like, “dried goods storage” and less “all foods storage.”
“Tallow light” was fine, but tallow is more a descriptor of what the candle is made of, rather than the color of the light it gives off, which I don’t think I realized when I wrote the original, so I changed it to “warm candlelight.”
I do think that Lyn would feel slighted or get annoyed by repetitive attempts to “babysit” her, so Kent isn’t wrong to bite his tongue, here. That said, I wanted that to come from his understanding of her character; he does not wish to offend her with a meaningless warning.
This actually brings me to the biggest change in this story: Lyn’s fall. In the original, she misjudges how many steps there are and falls because of that. This isn’t the shameful “Lyn is clumsy” characterization that I was guilty of writing once or twice back in the day, and it’s certainly not a crime, but later in the story she falls again (for the same reason), so I wanted to change the situation just enough to make it feel less…silly? My first thought was that I could have her trip on the hem of her nightgown, but she’s not wearing it the second time she falls (and it wouldn’t make sense for her to be). Thus, the steps themselves are to blame for her fall (and this is revealed a little further down in the rewrite, rather than immediately). I think this works better for their characters, too: she knows he’s worried and so gives him the most relevant information first (that she is all right).
Truth living on a sliding scale is here to combat the fact that the original low-key had Kent accusing her of lying in his mind, even though one of Lyn’s defining character traits is her honesty (something Kent would know very well). And while I can imagine Lyn being a bit of a hypocrite about shrugging off her own injuries while refusing to let her friends do the same, I don’t think she would tell a falsehood or intentionally mislead Kent, here. Thus, he knows her well enough to know what questions to ask her.
In 2013 when I wrote this, I had experienced some knee issues (due to falling on the edge of a concrete step in the school gymnasium many many years previous) but over a decade later I have arthritis in that knee (and everywhere, but I digress). I cannot overstate how stairs have shifted from being an inconvenience to becoming the sort of thing I have to navigate with care. In this story, with Kent’s knee being bad, I wanted to kind of highlight his own carefulness. This also calls back to him wanting to tell Lyn to be careful—so it feels a bit more like the urge to remind her to be careful stems from his own issues and not any carelessness he imagines from her.
The next section was extended a little bit. I don’t think Kent would find her easily in the dark without a little help, and I wanted to show them interacting a bit more naturally. Like, her sliding her hand into his more fully is a small thing, but that he understands that this is her giving him permission to help her up is not.
The door falling would be enough to scare the crap out of anyone, but this brings me to another change—and a rather big one. In the original story, they barely talk about the door. This makes some sense: there’s no reason to believe the door might be locked, after all—they think it just fell closed. But Kent is…not a lax sort of person. I found it hard to imagine he wouldn’t want to look at the door right away. Poor Kent does have to feel a little shitty about himself here in the rewrite, but it seemed appropriate considering he yelled at her, then she fell down the stairs, and then he believes he must have forgotten to latch the door properly.
Due to this change, I switched the order of events: in the original, Kent checks on her foot and they get a little carried away in fooling around, and when the guilt settles in he untangles himself to check the door. This is when he realizes that the cellar door closing like that was Sain’s stupid trap.
In the rewrite, Kent goes to check the door right away and finds it closed so tightly it doesn’t even rattle. This strikes him as odd and he realizes it was Sain’s trap. When he shares this information with Lyn, she suggests they get comfortable and then the scene happens where he checks on her foot.
I don’t want to highlight every single paragraph here, but I did add a few things into the rewrite that I hope made both of these sequences feel a little less silly while adding something to Lyn and Kent’s characterization. Like Lyn calling him out for saying Sain’s trap was foolish when it worked (which makes him laugh a little because she’s right).
The scene with her injured foot was not very good in the original. I didn’t hate it when I first reread it, but when I got to this part with my editor’s brain going full blast, it just felt very immature and slightly OOC. The situation isn’t dire enough for Kent to feel comfortable ordering her around, so I gave control over to Lyn, which just made way more sense.
I also expanded the start of this scene to better show the line Kent is walking as both a man who loves Lyn and as a servant of Lady Lyndis (and Caelin). The line about her permission made its way into the story specifically to highlight that his loyalty is, above all else, to Lyn. And this of course comes with its own problems, but we’ll get to that.
I also added in the line here about the step being warped to give closure to the reason she fell (and to make sure it was clear she wasn’t just clumsy, which would be an acceptable choice once, but not twice in the same story).
Lyn’s teasing doesn’t change here, but Kent’s reaction to it does. Him holding on tighter while embarrassed didn’t feel right to me.
Only I could blow up one sentence into so many, but I felt like Kent would think a little about where she might have heard the turn of phrase "to kiss something better" and also decide that it’s harmless enough to answer her…for a second, anyway, until he starts to get the idea that she’s very intentionally flirting with him.
In the original, Kent picks up on things without any fanfare and asks her preference, which felt too bold for him (knowing what I know about where their relationship is). In the rewrite, I wanted his understanding of where the conversation was headed to be a lot clearer. Due to this, it goes on a bit longer—and we get a better idea of how he feels about it. He’s mortified at his own curiosity but indulges it nonetheless by yielding to Lyn (but not Lady Lyndis). Despite this, he still ensures the ball is in Lyn’s court for a final decision, not comfortable enough to make that choice himself.
The original felt uhhhhh borderline…like a foot fetish thing? I’d say I’m just paranoid due to the current landscape of fanfic and fandom, but one comment did kind of call this out by saying: [Who'd have thought he'd actually be willing to kiss her foot, but I guess nothing's too steep for love.] Woof. Let’s just say there was a very old fanart of Kent kneeling by Lyn’s bed to kiss her foot that has lived rent-free in my head from the moment I first saw it. I want you guys to know that, feeling absolutely deranged and a bit like I made it up, I went digging through old hard drives until I found all my old Fire Emblem saved art, so that I could prove it was real. This thing altered my brain chemistry in that from that point forward I was just like, “Yeah, Kent would do that.” Anyway, I always viewed this piece as depicting Kent performing an act of humble reverence and I'm 99% certain I was trying to emulate that in the original story.
Speaking of the original, it was just meant to be silly in that they’ve obviously skipped a step in their relationship by doing this before they’ve even kissed one another lol.
The end to this moment wasn’t bad in the original story by any means, but I wanted to explore Kent’s character a little more, here—to make his decision to pull away less about him reining himself in despite wanting to continue and a little more about him wrestling with his own responsibilities to Lyn as the woman he loves and believes deserves respect. In the rewrite, he feels like it’s wrong to pull away (because Lyn wants this), but knows it’s objectively the right course of action. This isn’t about Kent being older and needing to be more responsible, but rather, he knows the rules of his culture far better than Lyn does—and understands the consequences of not following those rules.
He also knows a line has to be drawn, but doesn’t know where to draw it, exactly. He means well, though.
In the rewrite, him calling her “Lyn” at this point is the first time he does so directly (though he thinks about how it’s Lyn he’s yielding to). In the original, he referred to her in his mind as Lyndis and Lyn earlier but it didn’t feel right so I changed all of those to “Lady Lyndis” even in his own head—like he’s stuck thinking about her that way to keep the two sides of her separate (and to keep himself from getting carried away in imaging that she is "his" in any way).
This is the point in the original where he went to check the door; as you can see, it was a really short moment, and not very interesting. Not funny, either. You can probably understand why that was changed if you didn't before.
I wanted to keep the awkwardness between Kent and Lyn to echo their B Support, but I wanted to change the reason for it. In the original he’s certain he’s been clear about his feelings, but for some reason he doubts hers—even though he was the one to pull away. In the rewrite, the awkwardness is much more firmly on Kent.
I wanted to go into just a little more detail about their travels to kind of give a starker contrast between those days and their current situation. It’s pretty clear in their C/B Supports that Kent didn’t exactly shed conventions when traveling with Lyn (he’s still very respectful and keeps his feelings to himself until their A Support), but the situation of their travels undoubtedly did provide them with moments of privacy they would not so easily obtain in Caelin.
These changes also helped me fix the issue I had in the original where Kent called her his “lady” and then very belatedly Lyn says “You called me Lyn a moment ago.” With things slightly rearranged, he was able to drum up the courage to try to talk to her, which let her respond with that banger of a line instantly (rather than way after the fact).
His dialogue changes afterward because it felt super unnecessary in the original.
I changed Kent’s wishy-washy language in his head, too, because he would definitely know if they’d had any private moments since returning to Caelin. I also cut a bit of his thoughts from the original, because they weren’t important.
Kent didn’t need to blush or imagine he was being too bold; in the rewrite, he knows he’s just continuing the game (but in a safer way). Her laugh immediately after helps convey that she’s pleased he’s chosen to do so.
There’s a big new section in the rewrite that felt very necessary to add in light of Kent’s bad knee. If Lyn knew him well, she’d know he struggled a bit with stairs and show him some compassion and care. The way she just ignores it entirely in the original felt really, really off.
-Kent was a little too self-deprecating in the original and too anxious. Also, he thinks it’s odd to hear her sounding shy but he should recognize this from their B and A Supports so I took that detail out. The original never had her reference her own feelings so that was fixed in the rewrite.
“Lighting” felt like too modern a term in this context.
Not a lot changed about Kent and Lyn's fumbling first kiss, but I decided it might be better to let Lyn take charge, here, especially in light of the whole goat thing later.
Kent is WAY WAY WAY too embarrassed in the original for no real reason. Like I get that he might be a bit shy about talking about such things, and when asking for clarification (it would be awkward), but it just reads as over-the-top cringe to me, now. There’s no reason for them to discuss their feelings because that’s already been more or less established, so I also eliminated Kent’s admission that he loves Lyn because even though he does love her, I don’t think he would find this an appropriate time to say so.
Additionally, the much earlier line about them having an understanding enabled me to eliminate all of his confusion here—which I replaced with something much more important (and hopefully compelling): an actual discussion about what it means to make time for one another.
Don’t get me wrong, I know this story is supposed to be lighthearted fun, but I felt like the biggest issue in the original at this point was how it felt like issues from the game were getting rehashed, rather than seeing progress being made with all of the new concerns that might pop up after their return to Caelin.
Kent is still allowed to be awkward in the rewrite because it’s very presumptuous to talk about marriage with someone you’re not even courting, but in context he’s at least aware that they HAVE to talk about this in advance. Their stations don’t really allow for Casual Dating Scenarios, you know? And while he knows how things work in Caelin, Lyn might not have nearly as solid a grasp of that process… Like, he wants to make sure she knows what she’s getting herself into—not in a patronizing sort of way, but a compassionate one. He loves her, and that means he wants to ensure her happiness—not just his own.
Again, this story is supposed to be on the light side, so I didn’t really dive too far into whether or not Hausen might approve of the match or not (and all of the other obstacles that might stand in their way) but I did want to at least hint at the fact that them choosing to “spend time together” isn’t just an off-the-cuff kind of decision, but rather, one they both understand has weight to it.
Kent didn’t really need to tell Lyn that he wouldn’t have spoken to her that way if he knew it was her—that’s part of the repetition issue in the original. Instead, I had him just act embarrassed that she had seen him lose his temper in the first place. Her response is pretty similar but it feels more in-character for Kent.
I wanted Lyn to admit the clumsiness of kissing in the dark was mostly her bad (and I wanted it to actually be her fault)—to prevent Kent from being too down on himself about it (because him being too self-conscious just kind of ruins the mood).
The next part changed quite a bit, though. In the original, Lyn kisses him effortlessly the second time and he’s relieved because he knows he sucks and he isn’t a quick learner...which was boring and OOC. Kent and Sain are two of the youngest leaders in the military; neither of them are slow learners by any definition of the phrase. Kent undoubtedly learns quickly. In the rewrite, she “challenges” him to try his hand at it and this allows him to find her easily.
Then he says a line that would read a lot spicier if they were in bed instead of at the bottom of a cellar.
Lyn’s in her goat era now; this is kind of her way of poking fun at herself because she struggled to kiss him in the dark but he managed it easily. She’s just playin’, and I wanted to keep that part of her personality here (where she can laugh at her own mistakes).
I cut out some fat from the original where they talk about what to say in regards to being found; what is there to even explain but the truth? And also, Lyn would certainly not lie.
Kent would know better than to try to stand up when he heard the real Bread Bandit overhead so I wrote that part out in the rewrite. I don’t think it’s silly for him to think about how the head cook shows up earliest and thus they’ll be released before the rest of the staff arrives (saving them a lot of embarrassment and probably a few nasty rumors), but in the original version of the story, he thought about it way too much. Instead, I let Kent kind of think idly about how to handle the reveal, and his conclusion is more or less: anyone with a brain will realize we didn’t do this to ourselves for fun.
I also added in the bit about Sain because Kent and Lyn’s relationship would not have made nearly as much progress if they hadn’t accidentally fallen into Sain’s cellar trap. (Because when would they have had the time to be alone enough to make that progress?)
Kent wakes Lyn up AND she manages to wakes up in a more normal way in the rewrite. The original was just weird, here.
Cut quite a few little things after this because Kent shouldn’t be angry with Sain, especially in the rewrite where he’s already determined he kinda owes him.
The “even if it costs me my” / “bread” bit amused me, so I added it.
The eyebrow waggling right in front of Lyn didn’t feel right for Sain. He’s a flirty romantic, and I think during the war might have been liable to speak out of turn, but they are in Caelin now...and I don’t think he’d feel the need to overemphasize his own jokes. He knows he’s funny.
Now that we’ve reached the first scene break, I think it’s safe to say that the first scene in this fic went. On. Forever. Unfortunately, I didn’t really see a way around that. I could have restructured the fic to start with them in the cellar (and then flash back to before) but that sort of “I bet you wonder how I got into this mess” technique just doesn’t work very well for Kent. (It’d be hysterical for Sain, though.) Thus, we wind up with the longest opening scene in history…which doesn’t bother me too much, because this is a one-shot and that leaves no real opportunity for natural scene breaks.
In hindsight, I think this ‘fic would have been better served as a 4 or 5-chapter long story where we’re privy to the very beginning of the Bread Bandit Issue; we see Kent and Sain argue with the head cook; we are there when he reprimands his men (and gets some minor flak for it); he glimpses Lyn or has a moment not-quite-alone with her where all he can do is offer her a smile in lieu of words. This would allow a lot of the “fat” to very naturally fall away from what ends up being the first scene of this story.
And honestly, if the FE7 fandom was really hopping these days, I’d be tempted to rewrite the story that way. But the fandom more or less died a long time ago, and I have very little interest in busting my ass for minimal reward. It took me a week to rewrite this story and I worked on it every single day and did almost nothing else in my free time. Rewriting this as a chaptered ‘fic would take far longer than that, so I’m sorry to my fellow KentLyn enjoyers, but: it is what it is.
I think this is an important and underutilized aspect of the rewriting process when it comes to fanfiction, though; sometimes you do have to weigh the pros and cons of full rewrites and reworks to determine a cost to reward ratio for yourself. A lot of stories simply won’t be worth rewriting at all—or might be worth rewriting in a very specific way. I feel like “Making It Better” is one of those situations. It’s worth the rewrite I did, but not a greater one.
I cut a little bit at the beginning to the next scene. Kent and Lyn have reached a much more solid understanding regarding their relationship, but I don’t think they’d just start making out the very next evening—especially knowing that Sain would be joining them later and might see something he shouldn’t. I didn’t take out kissing entirely, but just let it be one longer kiss.
I also took out Kent wishing he was alone in the cellar with her again because I don’t think he’d even idly wish for that. He wouldn't believe he needed Sain there to prevent him from doing anything stupid with Lyn, either. He might not be a perfect man, but he has plenty of self-control. Remember, "virtuous to a fault." So instead, Kent just takes her hand and is glad for the opportunity to do so unseen.
I have no idea why I wrote that Kent found words first when Lyn literally speaks before him when the Bread Bandit is revealed.
Sain’s original lines weren’t bad, but they also didn’t sound very much like him, so I tried to fix that, here.
Lyn looked guilty when Kent first found her in the kitchens, and that earlier bit is meant to be answered here; Hausen knows he owns the food and he has every right to be in the kitchens, but Lyn isn’t that comfortable in Caelin yet (and probably never will be per her endings).
Speaking of Hausen, I rewrote the scene with him to be a little more serious and in-character. In the original story, all of my readers were delighted by Hausen being a doddering old man which threw me for a loop (because he's not like this in the game at all).
While the post-game is kind of vague about when Hausen dies, we know that it happens eventually, and even though it does detract from the “humorous” vibe to basically show him suffering from the early stages of dementia, I kept it because it adds to his character and the situation everyone is in. I specifically added the line about Hausen recognizing that, in bringing him food, Lyn would lower herself to doing servant’s work to show that he's still somewhat mentally present, though, and recognizes Lyn's worth and position in relation to his own.
Anyway, there’s something sweet in Lyn being kind to him (and wanting to care for him/tend to him the way children often care for aging relatives).
Color of the apple changed because Hausen isn’t going to request the humble mediocre red apple. Kidding, I feel like red is kind of the default apple color, so I chose a different one for his request.
It was silly for Kent to think he was better suited than Lyn to retrieve anything from the cellar in the original, so I eliminated that bit.
I was imagining the middle of the step is worn back from the edge so that the step is shorter in the middle than those above it, thus Lyn putting her foot down wrong on it.
Kent has no reason to want to kick Sain lol. He’s actually being pretty respectful, all things considered. He could have definitely said something a lot worse. (So I fixed that.)
Kent doesn’t need to “try” to pick Lyn up; he can certainly physically do this, so the word choice was odd.
Changed “Kiss me first” to a request and not an order. I don't think Kent would mind being ordered around for romantic reasons (in fact, he might think it's kind of hot), but at this point in their relationship I wanted something gentler; Lyn understands Kent well enough to know how to phrase things so that he feels he has a say. Besides, I think she would want the basis of their relationship to feel more equal.
I kept the bleating in for two reasons. One: it’s dumb and therefore funny, but two: I like that Lyn is able to show this playful side (and that Kent is allowed to find it amusing).
I eliminated the kiss afterward because it didn’t fit in the context of the rewrite (where he doesn’t want Sain to see).
Rewrote a bit to give Sain some credit for knowing Kent well enough to get the truth out of him.
Sain is finally allowed to waggle his eyebrows once, since Lyn can’t see him. But this addition also addresses Kent’s knee; if it was actively causing him pain here, Lyn wouldn’t ask him to carry her, but he’s feeling well enough to do it.
He drops her off in her receiving room this time instead of in her bedchamber. She probably has at least one servant in her bedchamber that he would NOT want to wake up, especially so late at night. Remember, they’ve discussed courting; they don’t need anyone to think they’re banging or that will be ruined before it even begins. (And the best case scenario would be that he'd be removed from her service, though he'd likely suffer a much worse punishment for it.)
To that end, I got rid of the kiss in her rooms. They’re not going to kiss when they might (unknowingly?) have an audience considering the importance of keeping their courtship period proper.
Their goodbye was way too long in the original, and too repetitive and weird. The way she connected him calling her Lyn with courting and offers to invite him almost as a reward is awful, especially after their discussion the previous night. I could have added more to make their parting a little sweeter, but I think the respect he shows here (and the understanding that they are moving forward with attempting an official courtship) is food enough for the soul.
Just a fun note here, but Kent would have gotten away with this until the next day if he hadn’t told Sain right then and there that he needed him to cover part of his shift to call on Lyn. That was his grave error. I also changed “alone time” to the much clearer “call on” since his intention is to court her.
Added a tiny bit more to Sain's dialogue to make it seem a lot more important for Kent to shut him up right now immediately.
Not much changed about the very last bit of the story. I almost wrote this part to be longer, but every attempt was mediocre at best and Sain just wasn’t nearly as funny. Kent and Sain are close friends even if they don’t always see eye-to-eye, so I wanted this to be more of a goofy attempt by Sain to manipulate Kent into coughing up the truth right away rather than any serious event.
So that’s it! That’s the story. And my rewrite of it. If you couldn’t quite get on board the “this would read better as a short multi-chaptered story” train, you might be able to imagine it better, now. Or maybe you prefer the one-shot-get-it-got approach. There’s definitely something to be said for oneshots being good for silly ideas that aren’t meaningful or interesting enough to carry a longer story.
--
So now for some final thoughts.
I can't believe I thought this story would be easy to rewrite. Angst and tragedy and themes of loneliness and poor communication are easier to reconcile and make better than a story whose premise was goofy right from the get-go. Most of my rewrites—even the really long and thorough ones—were of a much more serious tone, which helped me slash the story to ribbons to build it back up again.
There weren’t any deep/dark themes to revamp here; this is just a story about Kent and Lyn being left alone together long enough to have a discussion about pursuing a romance they both expressed interest in during the war campaign—but with a humorous bent, rather than something tragic or sad.
It’s a lot of work to look at a theme and try to write it in a clearer or more effective manner, but I’d argue that’s still easier than trying to improve upon a silly story like this without also losing all the charm and humor of it.
But does the rewrite tell the better story? I’m honestly not sure!
The lack of theme meant the story hinged fully on the events that took place, so it wasn’t easy to change much about it; even the scene swap I did (where I chose to have Kent check on the cellar door before he tended to Lyn’s ankle) was a beast to wrangle for some reason. Another factor in why this was so difficult to work with probably rests with the fact that the story is supposed to be pretty lighthearted, so I’d often rewrite a few sentences only to delete them when I felt they were implying things that were too heavy to include in this story: like the very real concern that Hausen could forbid them to court in the first place. (And like, we know he’ll die and that he won’t actually prevent Kent and Lyn from getting together, but he is Lyn’s only living relative and she would feel SO torn up inside over his disapproval, especially if he died still disapproving! I didn't want to start down that path because I'd have to follow it to its natural conclusion which would drag the story down.)
So I felt a little like this story was on rails; I couldn’t let myself jump the track because I wasn’t here to tell a completely different story: I was here to tell this one.
What does this mean?
Thanks for reading all this—and for reading the story, too!