[Original] Not Enough Spoons

[beckyh2112]

Title: Not Enough Spoons
Genre: Science Fiction
Word Count: 1100+
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Latta and Dorje argue, because even being two outcasts together, their cultural assumptions are still pretty far apart.
Author's Notes: This is what happens when I only have a vague idea of what I'm doing with the setting and have never written the characters

Comments

[beckyh2112]

Keeping track of our IM discussion for ease of future reference:

(2:10:22 PM) [Bex]: *nibbles* What was confusing? *knows there's a lot of confusion - I am still world-building and the flashbacks aren't clear and stuff* But specifics help.
(2:11:01 PM) [Luna]: Like, all of it.
(2:11:12 PM) [Luna]: It was hard to catch that Dorje has something in his head.
(2:11:16 PM) [Luna]: That took a reread.
(2:11:35 PM) [Bex]: *nods, listens*
(2:12:03 PM) [Luna]: Hard to figire out where they were and what they were doing...
(2:12:15 PM) [Luna]: If Viper was a name or an insult...
(2:12:33 PM) [Luna]: If Latta is, in fact, part-snake...
(2:12:47 PM) [Bex]: ... That is a good point.
(2:13:10 PM) [Luna]: I keep imagining her as a reptile-woman, for some reason.
(2:14:05 PM) [Bex]: That's... kind of fitting with what I've been imagining since I decided she was less humanish than I originally conceived. (Though "Latta the Viper" is more metaphorical than not.)
(2:14:06 PM) [Luna]: But like, I know, the characters are not going to explain things that seem obvious to them.
(2:14:20 PM) [Bex]: Yeah, that's one of the tricky things about writing two people who've been together for a while.
(2:14:47 PM) [Luna]: Also, Dorje just seems really weird, given that he apparently has no problem with putting people through meat grinders.
(2:15:00 PM) [Luna]: AND I keep thinking Latta, voice of Starscream.
(2:16:04 PM) [Bex]: "has no problem with putting people through meat grinders"?
(2:16:29 PM) [Luna]: He looked at her in confusion. "But it's fixable- I mean, isn't the whole point of Protectorate bio-tech advances so they can heal the kinds of damages they regularly put their soldiers through?"

"Meat grinder," she said absently. "We go through a meat grinder, we come out the other side, and they put us back together. Yeah, that's pretty much the long and short of it."

"So...?"

"So?" Latta blinked the inner eyelid that would move at him.

Dorje shifted uncomfortably, eyes dropping to the deck. "Nothing, I guess. Get strapped in, I'm lifting off as soon as my butt hits the seat."

(2:16:59 PM) [Luna]: To me, that reads like he's saying that it is weird that she doesn't want to go back home and go through a meat grinder to get her spine fixed.
(2:17:42 PM) [Bex]: I was using meat grinder in the metaphorical sense of what war does to people.
(2:18:09 PM) [Luna]: Ah, I was reading it as 'their medical process involves heavy vivisections and is rather painful'.
(2:18:18 PM) [Luna]: And that Dorje is fine with this.
(2:18:18 PM) [Bex]: Aaah.
(2:18:25 PM) [Bex]: I will have to make this more clear in the future.