Title: The Return
Words: 2,290
Quote: "No one returns to this city unless they have a very good reason to."—Lucius Fox
Song:
The Writing Process
I had "The Return" written for a few weeks before I decided to finally post it on FanFiction.Net. Given my tendency to fall by the wayside on my other multi-chaptered fics, Reclusion and Shadows of Ourselves (both of which I do plan to finish, perhaps in the very near future!), I was hesitant to commit myself to another story. But two factors really spurred me to finally publish Gotham's Cinderella: 1) the timeliness of the fic with "The Dark Knight Rises" currently filming with an anticipated release in July 2012 and 2) the fact that I had the whole story pretty much outlined from beginning to end, something I had never done with any previous story.
Before I uploaded the first chapter, I forced my younger sister, practically the only person I share my fanfiction ideas with, to listen to the entire chapter. It's a great practice to read aloud the final draft of a chapter from beginning to end, even if no one is listening, because in hearing what you wrote versus just reading it, you pick up on a lot of dialogue that sounds forced and/or just not something that character would say. (FYI, She wanted me to try to do voices, but I failed miserably. Bruce Wayne sounds infinitely sexier in the silence of my head.)
The Books
When I was reading aloud to my sister, I almost took out the paragraph that names the three books Alfred pulls out to open the secret that leads to the cave. But then I asked my sister what three books she thought I had chosen, given that they're symbolic to Batman/Bruce Wayne and I had picked them. She got them all right on the first try.
"The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand: This is my favorite book in the entire world. The protagonist, Howard Roark, is a man who rigidly refuses to compromise his ideals. The novel is about a single man's fight against everyone and everything else, something Batman knows a little about. Also, I believe Christian Bale could play Howard Roark to perfection, but then again, I think he could play anything to perfection.
"The Scarlet Pimpernel" by Baroness Orczy: It's basically Batman set in Revolutionary France. The protagonist, Sir Percy Blakeney, is a stupid, fastidious aristocrat by day and a masked superhero rescuing guillotine-bound victims frrom the Reign of Terror by night. His control is so complete and heartbreaking as he keeps his secret from his wife, reminiscent of Bruce Wayne in "Batman Begins" before he tells Rachel his big secret (particularly, the scene in front of the restaurant, when he runs into her after swimming).
"The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas: Another historical Batman, this time set in the Mediterranean during the 19th century. The protagonist, Edmond Dantes, reincarnates himself as a mysterious count in order to exact revenge on those responsible for ruining his life. This novel is right in stride with the anger and terror the Dark Knight channels, both the character and the movie, and the dilemma of negotiating the thin line between justice and revenge.
The Passage of Time
The lengthiest part of Chapter 1 is the description of the new and improved cave. Part of it was just wallowing in cannon, and I did contemplate cutting a lot of it out, but it also works to show how much time has passed since "The Dark Knight."
Despite the feeling you get in the movies that Bruce has been Batmanning around Gotham for quite a while, "The Dark Knight" takes place only six months after "Batman Begins," and all of TDK takes at most a few weeks. In my story, Lucius Fox says it's taken them about 6 months to build a successor to the Tumbler, putting the story at just a little more than a year after "Batman Begins." According to a few minutes of intense Googling, Bruce Wayne's birthday is probably February 19 (though there are many conflicting reports). In my original outline, The Return takes place in April, so that worked out quite conveniently! A more detailed outline will be included in Chapter 3's commentary, since Bruce's age does have a huge influence on Valencia's history.
Enter Valencia Carter and Gotham City
Valencia's two scenes bookend The Return. I included no physical description of her because I knew I wanted to save that for Bruce's POV when they first meet in Chapter 2. Another good reason for leaving out a detailed description of my heroine was because I wanted to avoid making her sound too much like a Mary Sue, which, let's face it, is pretty much any OC in the fanfiction world.
Valencia's fleeting visit to Wayne Manor was one of the first—if not *the* first complete scene I wrote for this story, and what I published is practically unchanged. Valencia's ending scene, as she is driven to her apartment on the edge of the Narrows, was actually the very last thing I wrote in this chapter, and it ended up being my favorite scene, in particular these two grafs about Gotham:
"They drive through downtown Gotham, and she catches glimpses of cheap girls in expensive dresses, hanging onto the arms of designer suits, stumbling out of exclusive clubs and five-star restaurants, stepping into limos and sports cars, traipsing into $30,000 per night hotels where the front desk knows them by name because they either own the building or live in the penthouse."and
"Gotham was never a gentle city, but as much as she wants to hate it, she can't. It's the city of her childhood, the city she'd escaped, the city that still draws her in no matter how much she resists. She can't think of any other word to describe it except beautiful—a terrifying, breathtaking, soul-sucking sort of beautiful. It's a city of extremes with no room for in-betweens, a city that could only break and never make, a city that knows of no happily ever afters, but it's still the city she calls home."My descriptions of Gotham are fast becoming an indulgence, one I have to reign in from time to time, but in my imagination (and perhaps this is an exaggeration of what is shown in the Nolan films) Gotham has a personality of its own. It is almost a main character in Gotham's Cinderella because of how much it influences all the other characters' lives. Much more to come on that later.
The Song
One huge influence for me in writing this story is my so-called soundtrack. Franz Ferdinand's album "More Than You Think You Are" could basically be the musical embodiment of Gotham's Cinderella, but their song "Come on Home" was such a perfect fit (especially the lyrics and change of tone in the last part of the song) for The Return that it determined how I was going to structure this fiction: Every chapter will feature one song and use the lyrics as the page breaks between scenes. For an entire day and a half, I scoured my iTunes library for possible songs for each chapter, and the same artists kept coming up, so stay tuned for more songs from Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, The Hush Sound, Phantom Planet and Panic! At the Disco, among a few others.
Moving Forward
Despite my determination to try to write ahead as far as possible, hardly a word of Chapter 2 was written before I posted The Return. Thanks to my outline, I knew what needed to happen in the next chapter, but typing it down proved to be more difficult than I anticipated. See Chapter 2's commentary for the story of how I got Bruce and Valencia to first meet.
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