In answer to a question about how I came up with Riddle in Reverse

[ninthfeather]

 I am spoiler-cutting how I came up with the fic because, well, how I came up with it basically spoils the ending of RiR; I came up with that before anything else in the fic.

 

As for how I came up with the idea,  I’d been wanting to write a timetravel fic for a while before I wrote Riddle in Reverse.  I also really liked Hakuba and I wanted to write a fic centered on him.  

 

But the catalyst for it was really the MK 1412 anime.  First off, the OP was done by a group I like and was immediately my favorite thing, and also, the lyrics sound kinda time-travel-ish.  A favorite Youtube singer of mine did translyrics, and the time-travel feeling got even more blatant (this is a song I can’t add to the eventual playlist because copyright but you should listen to it).  

 

Second, it really brought home how…weird Hakuba’s place in the narrative is.  Like, it makes sense for Gosho to have him help Kaito during the Chat Noir heist, in terms of what Gosho wants to achieve, but we’re never given an in-universe reason for why Saguru would want to engage in this frankly odd behavior.  He’s just really contradictory…dramatic at some times and cold to the point of being withdrawn at others; I know at least some of the reasons for his inconsistencies are that his appearances are years apart, but still…it made me want to try to write a fic where he had a backstory that made it all make sense. 

 

Finally, there was the Kaitou Corbeau arc, and I frankly just needed fixit for that on a number of levels.  Both because Chikage had potential to be interesting, and it was wasted, and because a terrible thing was done in those chapters but it had no emotional or actual consequences in the narrative.  I was not okay.

 

Anyhow, at some point, I think after watching an episode of the show together, I told miladyRanger, (my friend and beta reader for the fic) “I should write a fic where the explanation for Hakuba’s weird is that he’s timetraveling Kaito.”  And like the amazing person she is, she immediately started suggesting ways in which this could work and before you know it, we had a pretty sprawling AU.  

 

It starting with Corbeau, and being narrated by Chikage, came from my desire for Corbeau fixit as well as my love of complex female characters and spy shenanigans.  Everything else built from that point.  Structuring it as a mystery just seemed natural, given the fandom, and I thought it would make things fun. 

 

While I didn’t have it written first, Saguru quick-changing into KID was one of the clearest mental images I had from the fic, and it was present almost from the beginning.  I knew it had to happen. 

Originally posted 12/6/2016