Notes: A Terrycloth Mother
A Terrycloth Mother (Fire Emblem 10)
Genre: Angst/Romance is the best FFN fit, but I really hate having to put a genre on this one.
Word Count: 3700
PG-13 for implied sex, graphic mental not-okay-ness (albeit without self-harm)
Summary: It was Almedha - The truth is only the stone cast into the pond; he is its broken surface. Soren, whole and divided. Soren and Ike, apart and together.
Thanks to
blankspectrum for betaing under my intense annoying pressure.
FE Contest / FFN / AO3
These are really long-winded. You don't have to read them. You really don't.
As I write this, I'm passing through that phase where I've just stopped being happy about finishing ~~MY NEWEST MASTERPIECE~~ and it seems to have a zillion flaws instead. I'm starting to think, for example, that I should've gone with the terrorist AU idea, in which the canon Branded stand on very different positions about recent, uh, radical current events, and this demonstrates the differences in their Branded identity. Something like that. It's the current incarnation of an idea going back at least four years. I tried to begin it for
fe_contest at least three times. It didn't work.
About a week before the previous deadline, it occurred to me that I could apply the "unity and division" idea to Soren's psyche, and I had at least two abandoned projects that seemed to go well with that. The old one is something shitty I wrote in 2007, and the other one was something I had been trying to write very recently, an AU in which Pelleas tells Soren instead of Almedha.
I went through two drafts of that, both with some lines I liked very much and a heart that spoke to me, but neither well-thought-out.
Draft One was uninspiring.
It was a long descent.
Soren would have never admitted that he was as stunned as he was - from speaking to Ike, from fighting the goddess who had abandoned them, from the conclusion of something so overgrown, mutated far and beyond from the wars of man to which he was accustomed. If it showed on his face, no one remarked on it. Some of them might have felt the same way, anyway. In the absence of the goddess there was a world of celebrating and negotiating to be done, but in this place these practical things seemed suspended, and they only walked in unspoken comradie. The world for a moment was separated into those who had stared down the end of the world and those who had not.
And once-wretched King Pelleas looked like he'd become a man overnight, dark curls matted to his forehead with sweat and a vague grin adorning his dirt-smudged face. Maybe he'd be an adequate ruler after all, Soren thought idly, although the coming days would need more than adequacy.
Draft Two was derailed.
To Ike's credit, it was only careless reminiscing and awful jokes on the way there. It wasn't until halfway through the return trip when, laden with a sack of potatoes and beets and other such winter fare, Soren suggested that they take a break halfway along the way, and Ike decided that their privacy was opportune.
Soren agreed with his lips, and steadied himself with his arms around Ike's chest as feet found purchase where the sack of potatoes had pushed away the snow.
“How much,” Soren whispered in a sharp demand of a question, rough bark digging into his back.
“How much do you think?”
“No. It's freezing.” As if to prove that point, Ike's hand let in a frigid nip of air upon his stomach. Soren swatted it away and pulled one of his scarves in an attempt to warm himself. “It's freezing. And your hands are freezing.”
... Well, okay, honestly I thought that scene was cute, but it just wasn't going anywhere. And when I tried to yank it back on track, it got melodramatic on me.
(I really hope the final result didn't end up reading like a bunch of unwarranted emo angst.)
But anyway. That brings us to the fic itself.
The title is a reference to this classic paper in psychology. I do recommend reading it if you're interested. It's a bit long, but perfectly accessible, sometimes amusing, and probably the most beautiful thing to ever come of animal torture.
To summarize, Harlow's experiment was about baby monkeys needing a mother. Let me quantify that. It wasn't necessarily about needing an actual monkey mother. Nor was it about providing food and shelter. Baby monkeys need something soft and warm to snuggle up against. It reduces their stress and helps them live past the first few weeks. And they bond with that object and go running to it when scared, even when it doesn't do a thing for them. They'll gaze longer at pictures of its "face".
Maternal love is about having something soft to cling to. Imagine that.
I have had a prolonged interest in the phase of Soren's life that he talks the least about:
SorenWhen I reached Crimea, I took refuge in a church along the way. They took my brand to be a sign that I had been trained in the arcane arts. They took good care of me, and taught me things. Once I had learned to speak and behave like other people, I wandered Crimea for several years. Then I finally found you. クリミアについた僕は
一番近い教会を訪ねました。▼
そこでは、僕の“印”が役立ち
魔道の才のある子だということで
それなりの世話が受けられました。▼
話し方や一般的な常識を学んだ僕は、
クリミア国内を数年さ迷って……
やっと…あなたを見つけた。▼ When I reached Crimea,
I visited the nearest church.
There, my mark was useful and
because it says I am a child with magical talent,
that in itself allowed me to receive assistance.
Having learned things such as how to speak and typical common sense, I
wandered within Crimea for several years... and
at last ... I found you.
Here you have a kid who's been so backwardly "sheltered" that he needed a bunch of Good Samaritans to teach him how to talk and hold a fork. And then he leaves them and wanders around a foreign country for several years -- all in pursuit of a boy who was nice to him, once, and even left him hanging the next day.
Imagine the kind of unrealistic expectations that must've sustained him for X years. And imagine how it must feel to be let down by this kid twice (once the next morning, and then when he doesn't remember). Factor in the fact that Soren's never had a caretaker for much longer than two years.
Pow. Issues.
And I guess this fic is also sort of my take on some things I've seen in fandom that I don't really like. Like fandom's interest in sappy Soren-Almedha reunions where he yells a bit and then everyone cries and all is hugs. And also Ike being okay with Soren and Soren's issues magically vanishing. The last one is something that happens frequently in canon, but surely I'm not the only one who finds it kind of dismissive to assume that what we see is the whole story? These kind of nuances take elapsed time to explore, and I wouldn't expect the game to go out of its way to address them, especially when it's already given the pairing so much screentime to build up the "Soren is unsettled, look at him being unsettled" thing.
... tl;dr this fic is basically "issues are complicated", I guess. I'll shut up now.
This entry was originally posted at http://amielleon.dreamwidth.org/163884.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Genre: Angst/Romance is the best FFN fit, but I really hate having to put a genre on this one.
Word Count: 3700
PG-13 for implied sex, graphic mental not-okay-ness (albeit without self-harm)
Summary: It was Almedha - The truth is only the stone cast into the pond; he is its broken surface. Soren, whole and divided. Soren and Ike, apart and together.
Thanks to
blankspectrum for betaing under my intense annoying pressure.
FE Contest / FFN / AO3
These are really long-winded. You don't have to read them. You really don't.
As I write this, I'm passing through that phase where I've just stopped being happy about finishing ~~MY NEWEST MASTERPIECE~~ and it seems to have a zillion flaws instead. I'm starting to think, for example, that I should've gone with the terrorist AU idea, in which the canon Branded stand on very different positions about recent, uh, radical current events, and this demonstrates the differences in their Branded identity. Something like that. It's the current incarnation of an idea going back at least four years. I tried to begin it for
fe_contest at least three times. It didn't work.
About a week before the previous deadline, it occurred to me that I could apply the "unity and division" idea to Soren's psyche, and I had at least two abandoned projects that seemed to go well with that. The old one is something shitty I wrote in 2007, and the other one was something I had been trying to write very recently, an AU in which Pelleas tells Soren instead of Almedha.
I went through two drafts of that, both with some lines I liked very much and a heart that spoke to me, but neither well-thought-out.
Draft One was uninspiring.
It was a long descent.
Soren would have never admitted that he was as stunned as he was - from speaking to Ike, from fighting the goddess who had abandoned them, from the conclusion of something so overgrown, mutated far and beyond from the wars of man to which he was accustomed. If it showed on his face, no one remarked on it. Some of them might have felt the same way, anyway. In the absence of the goddess there was a world of celebrating and negotiating to be done, but in this place these practical things seemed suspended, and they only walked in unspoken comradie. The world for a moment was separated into those who had stared down the end of the world and those who had not.
And once-wretched King Pelleas looked like he'd become a man overnight, dark curls matted to his forehead with sweat and a vague grin adorning his dirt-smudged face. Maybe he'd be an adequate ruler after all, Soren thought idly, although the coming days would need more than adequacy.
Draft Two was derailed.
To Ike's credit, it was only careless reminiscing and awful jokes on the way there. It wasn't until halfway through the return trip when, laden with a sack of potatoes and beets and other such winter fare, Soren suggested that they take a break halfway along the way, and Ike decided that their privacy was opportune.
Soren agreed with his lips, and steadied himself with his arms around Ike's chest as feet found purchase where the sack of potatoes had pushed away the snow.
“How much,” Soren whispered in a sharp demand of a question, rough bark digging into his back.
“How much do you think?”
“No. It's freezing.” As if to prove that point, Ike's hand let in a frigid nip of air upon his stomach. Soren swatted it away and pulled one of his scarves in an attempt to warm himself. “It's freezing. And your hands are freezing.”
... Well, okay, honestly I thought that scene was cute, but it just wasn't going anywhere. And when I tried to yank it back on track, it got melodramatic on me.
(I really hope the final result didn't end up reading like a bunch of unwarranted emo angst.)
But anyway. That brings us to the fic itself.
The title is a reference to this classic paper in psychology. I do recommend reading it if you're interested. It's a bit long, but perfectly accessible, sometimes amusing, and probably the most beautiful thing to ever come of animal torture.
To summarize, Harlow's experiment was about baby monkeys needing a mother. Let me quantify that. It wasn't necessarily about needing an actual monkey mother. Nor was it about providing food and shelter. Baby monkeys need something soft and warm to snuggle up against. It reduces their stress and helps them live past the first few weeks. And they bond with that object and go running to it when scared, even when it doesn't do a thing for them. They'll gaze longer at pictures of its "face".
Maternal love is about having something soft to cling to. Imagine that.
I have had a prolonged interest in the phase of Soren's life that he talks the least about:
SorenWhen I reached Crimea, I took refuge in a church along the way. They took my brand to be a sign that I had been trained in the arcane arts. They took good care of me, and taught me things. Once I had learned to speak and behave like other people, I wandered Crimea for several years. Then I finally found you. クリミアについた僕は
一番近い教会を訪ねました。▼
そこでは、僕の“印”が役立ち
魔道の才のある子だということで
それなりの世話が受けられました。▼
話し方や一般的な常識を学んだ僕は、
クリミア国内を数年さ迷って……
やっと…あなたを見つけた。▼ When I reached Crimea,
I visited the nearest church.
There, my mark was useful and
because it says I am a child with magical talent,
that in itself allowed me to receive assistance.
Having learned things such as how to speak and typical common sense, I
wandered within Crimea for several years... and
at last ... I found you.
Here you have a kid who's been so backwardly "sheltered" that he needed a bunch of Good Samaritans to teach him how to talk and hold a fork. And then he leaves them and wanders around a foreign country for several years -- all in pursuit of a boy who was nice to him, once, and even left him hanging the next day.
Imagine the kind of unrealistic expectations that must've sustained him for X years. And imagine how it must feel to be let down by this kid twice (once the next morning, and then when he doesn't remember). Factor in the fact that Soren's never had a caretaker for much longer than two years.
Pow. Issues.
And I guess this fic is also sort of my take on some things I've seen in fandom that I don't really like. Like fandom's interest in sappy Soren-Almedha reunions where he yells a bit and then everyone cries and all is hugs. And also Ike being okay with Soren and Soren's issues magically vanishing. The last one is something that happens frequently in canon, but surely I'm not the only one who finds it kind of dismissive to assume that what we see is the whole story? These kind of nuances take elapsed time to explore, and I wouldn't expect the game to go out of its way to address them, especially when it's already given the pairing so much screentime to build up the "Soren is unsettled, look at him being unsettled" thing.
... tl;dr this fic is basically "issues are complicated", I guess. I'll shut up now.
This entry was originally posted at http://amielleon.dreamwidth.org/163884.html. Please comment there using OpenID.