Anabasis: Notes, and Acknowledgements
As usual, there are a whole bunch of people whom I'm gonna need to thank. First, redwhitedresses , for the prompt that this entire fic began from, which can be found here. Second, and just as importantly (dare I say more important?) ellegen , for working with me on this...crazy epic mess. I think it's clear that big bangs are a collaborative effort, after all. Thanks for putting up with my crazy/compulsive needs to re-edit and re-edit and re-edit and all, and your art is something to be worshipped.
Also, thanks to everyone on my friends list who put up with my panicked flailing and whining as I got on the big bang track. In particular, thanks to kirstenlouise for helping me iron out the Schrodinger's Arthur problem, and to alchemyalice for helping me past the problem of the kick and trading deadlines with me.
Last: thanks to astarael_7th and M. for betaing. Yes, I know, a flight shouldn't have taken ten weeks. I'm still vaguely shamed by that mistake.
-
Notes:
This isn't anything truly comprehensive, more of a series of notes on what it took to get the whole Anabasis process underway, and an illumination of some of the ideas underpinning the entire process. Obviously, it started with a rather fascinating prompt, and a challenge: to rework the key/central conflict in Inception. I'll paraphrase the idea of the prompt for those who have no idea about it: essentially, Inception began as a heist story. It's arguable that in a lot of essential ways, it still is, but I'm not a lit major and I shan't dwell too long on an analysis of the key elements of Inception and how much of a heist story Inception really is.
Originally, the antagonist had been meant to be Arthur - or whoever the Arthur-figure was, since it's arguable that had Nolan run with the original heist conceit, as he names it, we would not have perceived the character Arthur in the way he is interpreted today. In the end, Nolan hit upon the underpinning key he needed to make the plot go on: Mal, Cobb's wife. Instead of a emotionally flat betrayal, the stakes suddenly became more personal, and what was originally a heist story had a less characteristic emotional dimension added to it. Which, of course, tied back in nicely to the emotional vehicle of the movie: dreams.
redwhitedresses 's prompt wanted the opposite. Reverse the plot, take it back to the old heist conceit, with Arthur as the antagonist. So my very early drafts ran into the same problem. There had to be some kind of emotional connection between Arthur and Cobb for the story to be anything more than a superficial heist story, which I probably could have pulled off, with crazy amounts of action and madness. But it was just that. There wasn't going to be much depth, and any kind of climax or depth would only have been reached by me pulling out a trick that the reader didn't see coming, a trick so wild that it would be the Heist of Heists. Not to mention that it would have seemed odd, I think. Emotionally flat.
And that wouldn't have worked because this is a fic about betrayal, and that's a very emotionally loaded word, implying a lot of depth, a great deal of intensity.
So I played it safe. I worked off an Arthur-Cobb connection. The thing with the way Arthur and Cobb work in the movie is, however they relate and work off each other is usually understated. Subtle. So one key concern I had in the writing at each point is: how obvious is their interaction getting? I think to classify the way they relate, the depth of any kind of connection that they have would, in some way, go against the idea of how Arthur and Cobb relate to each other. It took a lot of edits to be certain I'd blurred that sufficiently, and that the only obvious thing was that Arthur and Cobb were very close. A lot of things don't really get said, because Cobb and Arthur aren't exactly particularly clear about psychoanalysing themselves and their desires. So in a sense, again, it's questionable as to whether Cobb's epiphany of sorts might have worked.
A minor problem I had was with cribbing too far off the movie. I felt it was essential for a balance to be struck: on one hand, it's really not likely for things to change that much. Simply put: Yusuf, Ariadne, Eames and Saito are all likely to behave in the same manner they usually do. The biggest of changes would have been to Cobb, and the surprise inclusion of Mal. To a lesser extent, because of the way the story went, Saito's behaviour shifted a little as well. On the other hand, on a pure reader level, it gets boring. You're essentially reading a movie novelisation. And yet, I felt it was important for some things to remain the same, or to show similar events happening without Arthur, to give an impression of - there, but for the grace of God, go I - this whole idea of how little or how much things could have changed, for better or for worse, if one little thing had shifted. A critical point, if you like.
So key ideas in Anabasis, I think, were estrangement/alienation, guilt/atonement/punishment, redemption, betrayal, truth/deception, love/connection, courage/confrontation. The hard thing, I think, is to conceive of under precisely what terms a character like Arthur, who seems to be defined by his loyalty to Cobb would have turned and betrayed Cobb, and how to make such convincing for the reader. Because I didn't want to write this directly from the point of betrayal, I chose to allude to it instead. That was approximately when I had the idea to twist things: to make Cobb think Arthur had betrayed him. Arthur didn't need to be the traitor: he had to be the antagonist, and a villain and an antagonist are two very different things. Like the figure of Mal in Inception, therefore, the projection of Arthur was Cobb's right-hand man, a trusted friend turned worst enemy - amplified by Cobb's guilt, his fears, and his very strong need to punish himself/seek redemption.
Some psychology students will probably know better than I how legit a case can be made for Cobb actually suffering from a sort of PTSD in Inception. Certainly, while I was aware of the symptoms, I left it open: being far more conservative in an estimation, I suggested it wasn't likely Cobb was suffering from some kind of psychological trauma. To establish Cobb as a slightly unreliable source of information, I added and buried instances of vague discrepancies, things that don't quite fit or gel with reality as we know it - although none of these occurrences as Cobb remembers them would, by any means, be absolutely impossible by the physical laws of nature. So here we have it: Cobb remembers nothing, if not little of the night itself. He admits, himself, that what little of his memories that are left is somehow sufficient for him to possess a conviction that he was betrayed by none other than Arthur, who turned out to be one sick shit.
Cobb is partly aware of how unreliable he is. Hence his search for the truth about Arthur, to know what happened that night. And yet, in a very essential way, he's conflicted. He wars against the conviction that Arthur did betray him, and guilt: both of which fuel the projection that consistently opposes him. In a sense, he is therefore self-destructive, and his sense of guilt leads to self-punishment, dealt by his own projection. And yet in the same way, even the projection of Arthur isn't outright mad. Cobb's polarised his memories, preserved the positive ones, and in a strange way, there's evidence of a possible split-nature to the Arthur projection, hints of a similar positive-negative duality.
On the surface then, the main movement in Anabasis is similar to that of Inception : the Fischer job is a means to an end. Specifically, a means to Cobb's end. The second movement or journey that underpins both stories is this: a journey towards the truth (in the case of Anabasis ) and even more intrinsic than that: a journey towards redemption, atonement, and renewal. In a sense, this is the entire idea behind Anabasis in the first place. Someone who studies Ancient Greek should probably translate better than I do, but as the master post notes: Ana.basis. The words literally translate to a journey upwards, from the depths that Cobb has already descended to. The proper use, however, is a journey from the relatively lower terrain at the coast, from the ocean, in towards the higher country of the inland regions. (This is basic geography as I understand: rivers flow downwards and to the sea, from higher elevation to lower elevation.) In a sense therefore, anabasis does imply an ascent.
As the title suggests, the story is about the journey, and not so much the destination. Redemption and atonement is a process, not an endpoint, and teleportation doesn't quite work here. There's a second layer of ideas to anabasis as well: a journey that begins at the ocean, and travels back to the source, back to the beginning for a sense of closure, and a sense of ending. The idea of journeys is further hinted at very close to the ending: the journey back to the gutted apartment, the symbol of Cobb's memories of the night, and for the first time, it isn't on fire. There's nothing left there but ashes, and that says something very telling about what's happened to Cobb's fixation on those memories.
That safe, again, carries with it two sets of ideas: as we learn earlier in Inception, a safe is where most marks fill with their secrets, that which is most valuable to them. In the same way, a safe also becomes a place of lies, a place of denial, when we see Mal locking away her totem in that safe. The safe in Anabasis is mostly alluded to: little is said of its contents. Cobb can't actually remember if he's reached the safe, can't remember if he's opened it. But that in itself is significant: as a character, Cobb has a tendency to run away from things. He doesn't confront his conflict with Mal. He doesn't confront the fact that he has serious psychological issues from what Algol did to him. He doesn't open the safe, or suppresses his memories of it, and has made little attempt to return to that which holds what is most precious to him, and that which holds what he doesn't want to actually think about, things he's denied. At the end, the safe is destroyed, revealing two things: a red flower, and a golden branch of mistletoe.
Red is a colour that is referenced to several times in the story. Arthur's die is red. Mal's scarf is red. Red is a vibrant colour, associated with love, with life, and with passion, maybe even joy. Cobb hasn't been feeling very much of that lately. The flower itself is a symbol of life and renewal, associated with spring and that's something interesting, come out of the ashes of the apartment and the safe, so as to speak. Cobb's problem throughout Anabasis is a misdirection of passion, and an inability to feel passion. He doesn't dare to trust his conflicted feelings, and he's trying to rely on objective, external evidence in order to gain some measure of control back over his understanding of the past. He's a haunted figure, and his reaction to his psychological issues is to run away, which estranges him from Mal and alienates him, causing them to be quite often at odds. (I treated this as a likely reversal: in Inception, Cobb's guilt over Mal and his unwillingness to confront it estranges him from Arthur, who also seems far less confrontational and content to let Cobb take his time...to some extent. In Anabasis, Cobb's guilt over what happened with Arthur accentuates the intensity of the Arthur-Cobb connection, in addition to the associated psychological issues. Mal's direct confrontation is met by Cobb running away and an increasingly frustrating and conflicted relationship.) Yet red also has other connotations: conflict, blood, violence: and Arthur and Mal two conflicting influences - working against each other, and in conflict with Cobb.
I wouldn't say it's impossible, to whoever who suggested the 'kiss under the mistletoe' idea that happens for Christmas. And yet the roots of that include other ideas: the kiss of peace. Reconciliation. More importantly, was the association of mistletoe with the Golden Bough of Aeneas in the Aeneid , which Franzen argues is the mistletoe. It was taken so the living Aeneas could descend to the Underworld, speak with Anchises his deceased father, and then return. I wanted to evoke that layer of mythology, that aspect of understanding to Cobb's journey.
Other symbols, I think, should include fire. It makes a great many appearances in Anabasis and can probably be analysed in a similar fashion: fire as passion, and untamed destruction and violence. At the same time, fire is purging, purifying, and Cobb and projection!Arthur both pass through the flames near the end of fic. It evokes a Catholic idea of Purgatory, also called Limbo. In a small way, the fire is also punishment, and the heat and the smell of smoke often signals Cobb's inability (possibly partly a physical inability, due to the nature of psychological trauma) to let go of what transpired.
Truth/deception and dualities also play some kind of role in this story when I was writing it. Clearly, because it was about dreams, I wanted the same 'is this real?' edge to it. There were plenty of Inception fics that already skillfully managed this transition( *cough* The Outrage of the Years *cough*), and so I didn't want tricking the reader to be too key a issue. What I felt was really important, at the end of it, was far less about making the reader doubt and far more about Cobb's doubt: the idea of what is real and what is true. Projection!Arthur isn't real, and in some ways, he's very real for a manifestation of Cobb's guilt and the impact he has on Cobb. I did add discrepancies, as I mentioned, little things that aren't impossible but simply unlikely. The solution to the problem of Arthur's betrayal and the twist the fic needed presented itself with the real Arthur (if he is the real Arthur. Funny enough, he seems to know some things he shouldn't.)
I hinted at it from the start: Algol/Mirfak. Algol is the second-brightest but probably most famous star in Perseus. Alpha Persei, or Mirfak is the brightest. Again, there's the idea of the guide, of hope that the symbol of the stars carry: and in a way, the brightest star, Mirfak, as Arthur's code name hints to the function he serves, regardless of whether he's real or just another facet of a complicated projection that Cobb has. Where psychotic!Arthur is Cobb's demon, the traitor and the exemplification of Cobb's guilt, Mirfak!Arthur is Cobb's metaphorical (guardian?) angel, the savior and the guide and the exemplification of hope, and possibly, a desire for salvation that Cobb possesses - that gets more and more powerful towards the end of Anabasis. In a sense, Arthur is both the best and the worst character in this story: psychotic!Arthur is, to use Mirfak!Arthur's words, a nasty piece of work. The potential to be both exists in what seems to be the same person.
Other hints included Saito's glances at Arthur, and Arthur's appearance in Mombasa, as well as Arthur mentioning Hong Kong to Eames. I strongly contrasted their physical appearance: while psychotic!Arthur is considerably more well-dressed, Mirfak!Arthur is messier, and consistently far more human in that he appears to feel a lot more than psychotic!Arthur does. At closer examination, however, it's still vague because there's no notion of how Mirfak!Arthur should have known about Limbo, and there's no notion of whether all the Arthurs who appear at various points in the story are really the same projection or person.
Oh, and another of those little buried moments I'm a little proud of is Eames possibly catching on, right before Arthur and Cobb and Ariadne go under. His dialogue can be seen as an olive branch, or a hint of realisation.
For the more banal bits: combat styles. I played a little with the Assassin's Creed II models for physical combat, and did good old-fashioned research into police procedure as well as hand to hand combat and did my best for guns research. And of course, when in doubt: do the physics, draw the free body diagram, and examine the axis of rotation and work out leverage and moments from there. As a fighter, Cobb's more dirty, and his little fist fight with Arthur earlier is unorthodox enough. I styled whatever Arthur did more on judo - mostly because the only thing I ever see him use in the movie, when unarmed, are shitloads of throws. Eames...well, I probably have to blame a picspam from my friends list, because I got it in my head Eames did boxing, and from there, it was only a little jump to Muay Thai as the inspiration for Eames' fighting style.
Fun physics fact of the day: first, never handle a live wire with both hands. Now, had that happened, Eames’ kick might have failed. Electricity’s like water: it doesn’t flow back along the same path twice. Had anyone been shocked through both hands, the current would have formed a dangerous loop: through one hand, through the chest, and out through the other hand, back to the source. Bzzzt. Fibrillation, probably death. You don’t need a high current to kill the heart. Electricity and the human body’s funny that way. Equally, as Arthur pointed out, had they been grounded, they might have been in some kind of trouble. But because they were floating, the path the current was most likely to take was (since it travelled along what I assumed was a compound with complex ions, probably with sodium which could carry a charge) was in through the wrist, looping out to the fingers, or palm, and then back to the wrist. Anything such as to the elbow or beyond would have been far more unlikely.
Stylistically, this resembles Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover. Mostly because of the raw edge to Stover's writing that I felt really accentuated the idea of betrayal and brotherhood a lot better. Also, I worked with ellegen to produce a soundtrack for Anabasis, and I call it a soundtrack because it can pretty much be called 'Whatever Seek Was Listening To When She Wrote That Scene'. Or my copy and pasted playlist.
Other aspects I played with was (alright, I know I'm abusing the term): stichomythia. It's a really great way to racket up the emotional intensity and tension several notches, and you'll notice near the climax, there's a great many examples of it. In particular, I'm proud of the late addition, which was the Arthur-Ariadne and Cobb-Saito-Arthur simultaneous dialogue across layers.
For those of you who want the closest scene-mood matching you can get, try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unmb2hPuHJo . I was pretty much listening to this on repeat and working on the ending (and then the ending edits.)
In conclusion, thanks to everyone who helped, in one way or another. It was a wild ride, a fun ride, and I hope it was wicked cool :D
Linking Post
Also, thanks to everyone on my friends list who put up with my panicked flailing and whining as I got on the big bang track. In particular, thanks to kirstenlouise for helping me iron out the Schrodinger's Arthur problem, and to alchemyalice for helping me past the problem of the kick and trading deadlines with me.
Last: thanks to astarael_7th and M. for betaing. Yes, I know, a flight shouldn't have taken ten weeks. I'm still vaguely shamed by that mistake.
-
Notes:
This isn't anything truly comprehensive, more of a series of notes on what it took to get the whole Anabasis process underway, and an illumination of some of the ideas underpinning the entire process. Obviously, it started with a rather fascinating prompt, and a challenge: to rework the key/central conflict in Inception. I'll paraphrase the idea of the prompt for those who have no idea about it: essentially, Inception began as a heist story. It's arguable that in a lot of essential ways, it still is, but I'm not a lit major and I shan't dwell too long on an analysis of the key elements of Inception and how much of a heist story Inception really is.
Originally, the antagonist had been meant to be Arthur - or whoever the Arthur-figure was, since it's arguable that had Nolan run with the original heist conceit, as he names it, we would not have perceived the character Arthur in the way he is interpreted today. In the end, Nolan hit upon the underpinning key he needed to make the plot go on: Mal, Cobb's wife. Instead of a emotionally flat betrayal, the stakes suddenly became more personal, and what was originally a heist story had a less characteristic emotional dimension added to it. Which, of course, tied back in nicely to the emotional vehicle of the movie: dreams.
redwhitedresses 's prompt wanted the opposite. Reverse the plot, take it back to the old heist conceit, with Arthur as the antagonist. So my very early drafts ran into the same problem. There had to be some kind of emotional connection between Arthur and Cobb for the story to be anything more than a superficial heist story, which I probably could have pulled off, with crazy amounts of action and madness. But it was just that. There wasn't going to be much depth, and any kind of climax or depth would only have been reached by me pulling out a trick that the reader didn't see coming, a trick so wild that it would be the Heist of Heists. Not to mention that it would have seemed odd, I think. Emotionally flat.
And that wouldn't have worked because this is a fic about betrayal, and that's a very emotionally loaded word, implying a lot of depth, a great deal of intensity.
So I played it safe. I worked off an Arthur-Cobb connection. The thing with the way Arthur and Cobb work in the movie is, however they relate and work off each other is usually understated. Subtle. So one key concern I had in the writing at each point is: how obvious is their interaction getting? I think to classify the way they relate, the depth of any kind of connection that they have would, in some way, go against the idea of how Arthur and Cobb relate to each other. It took a lot of edits to be certain I'd blurred that sufficiently, and that the only obvious thing was that Arthur and Cobb were very close. A lot of things don't really get said, because Cobb and Arthur aren't exactly particularly clear about psychoanalysing themselves and their desires. So in a sense, again, it's questionable as to whether Cobb's epiphany of sorts might have worked.
A minor problem I had was with cribbing too far off the movie. I felt it was essential for a balance to be struck: on one hand, it's really not likely for things to change that much. Simply put: Yusuf, Ariadne, Eames and Saito are all likely to behave in the same manner they usually do. The biggest of changes would have been to Cobb, and the surprise inclusion of Mal. To a lesser extent, because of the way the story went, Saito's behaviour shifted a little as well. On the other hand, on a pure reader level, it gets boring. You're essentially reading a movie novelisation. And yet, I felt it was important for some things to remain the same, or to show similar events happening without Arthur, to give an impression of - there, but for the grace of God, go I - this whole idea of how little or how much things could have changed, for better or for worse, if one little thing had shifted. A critical point, if you like.
So key ideas in Anabasis, I think, were estrangement/alienation, guilt/atonement/punishment, redemption, betrayal, truth/deception, love/connection, courage/confrontation. The hard thing, I think, is to conceive of under precisely what terms a character like Arthur, who seems to be defined by his loyalty to Cobb would have turned and betrayed Cobb, and how to make such convincing for the reader. Because I didn't want to write this directly from the point of betrayal, I chose to allude to it instead. That was approximately when I had the idea to twist things: to make Cobb think Arthur had betrayed him. Arthur didn't need to be the traitor: he had to be the antagonist, and a villain and an antagonist are two very different things. Like the figure of Mal in Inception, therefore, the projection of Arthur was Cobb's right-hand man, a trusted friend turned worst enemy - amplified by Cobb's guilt, his fears, and his very strong need to punish himself/seek redemption.
Some psychology students will probably know better than I how legit a case can be made for Cobb actually suffering from a sort of PTSD in Inception. Certainly, while I was aware of the symptoms, I left it open: being far more conservative in an estimation, I suggested it wasn't likely Cobb was suffering from some kind of psychological trauma. To establish Cobb as a slightly unreliable source of information, I added and buried instances of vague discrepancies, things that don't quite fit or gel with reality as we know it - although none of these occurrences as Cobb remembers them would, by any means, be absolutely impossible by the physical laws of nature. So here we have it: Cobb remembers nothing, if not little of the night itself. He admits, himself, that what little of his memories that are left is somehow sufficient for him to possess a conviction that he was betrayed by none other than Arthur, who turned out to be one sick shit.
Cobb is partly aware of how unreliable he is. Hence his search for the truth about Arthur, to know what happened that night. And yet, in a very essential way, he's conflicted. He wars against the conviction that Arthur did betray him, and guilt: both of which fuel the projection that consistently opposes him. In a sense, he is therefore self-destructive, and his sense of guilt leads to self-punishment, dealt by his own projection. And yet in the same way, even the projection of Arthur isn't outright mad. Cobb's polarised his memories, preserved the positive ones, and in a strange way, there's evidence of a possible split-nature to the Arthur projection, hints of a similar positive-negative duality.
On the surface then, the main movement in Anabasis is similar to that of Inception : the Fischer job is a means to an end. Specifically, a means to Cobb's end. The second movement or journey that underpins both stories is this: a journey towards the truth (in the case of Anabasis ) and even more intrinsic than that: a journey towards redemption, atonement, and renewal. In a sense, this is the entire idea behind Anabasis in the first place. Someone who studies Ancient Greek should probably translate better than I do, but as the master post notes: Ana.basis. The words literally translate to a journey upwards, from the depths that Cobb has already descended to. The proper use, however, is a journey from the relatively lower terrain at the coast, from the ocean, in towards the higher country of the inland regions. (This is basic geography as I understand: rivers flow downwards and to the sea, from higher elevation to lower elevation.) In a sense therefore, anabasis does imply an ascent.
As the title suggests, the story is about the journey, and not so much the destination. Redemption and atonement is a process, not an endpoint, and teleportation doesn't quite work here. There's a second layer of ideas to anabasis as well: a journey that begins at the ocean, and travels back to the source, back to the beginning for a sense of closure, and a sense of ending. The idea of journeys is further hinted at very close to the ending: the journey back to the gutted apartment, the symbol of Cobb's memories of the night, and for the first time, it isn't on fire. There's nothing left there but ashes, and that says something very telling about what's happened to Cobb's fixation on those memories.
That safe, again, carries with it two sets of ideas: as we learn earlier in Inception, a safe is where most marks fill with their secrets, that which is most valuable to them. In the same way, a safe also becomes a place of lies, a place of denial, when we see Mal locking away her totem in that safe. The safe in Anabasis is mostly alluded to: little is said of its contents. Cobb can't actually remember if he's reached the safe, can't remember if he's opened it. But that in itself is significant: as a character, Cobb has a tendency to run away from things. He doesn't confront his conflict with Mal. He doesn't confront the fact that he has serious psychological issues from what Algol did to him. He doesn't open the safe, or suppresses his memories of it, and has made little attempt to return to that which holds what is most precious to him, and that which holds what he doesn't want to actually think about, things he's denied. At the end, the safe is destroyed, revealing two things: a red flower, and a golden branch of mistletoe.
Red is a colour that is referenced to several times in the story. Arthur's die is red. Mal's scarf is red. Red is a vibrant colour, associated with love, with life, and with passion, maybe even joy. Cobb hasn't been feeling very much of that lately. The flower itself is a symbol of life and renewal, associated with spring and that's something interesting, come out of the ashes of the apartment and the safe, so as to speak. Cobb's problem throughout Anabasis is a misdirection of passion, and an inability to feel passion. He doesn't dare to trust his conflicted feelings, and he's trying to rely on objective, external evidence in order to gain some measure of control back over his understanding of the past. He's a haunted figure, and his reaction to his psychological issues is to run away, which estranges him from Mal and alienates him, causing them to be quite often at odds. (I treated this as a likely reversal: in Inception, Cobb's guilt over Mal and his unwillingness to confront it estranges him from Arthur, who also seems far less confrontational and content to let Cobb take his time...to some extent. In Anabasis, Cobb's guilt over what happened with Arthur accentuates the intensity of the Arthur-Cobb connection, in addition to the associated psychological issues. Mal's direct confrontation is met by Cobb running away and an increasingly frustrating and conflicted relationship.) Yet red also has other connotations: conflict, blood, violence: and Arthur and Mal two conflicting influences - working against each other, and in conflict with Cobb.
I wouldn't say it's impossible, to whoever who suggested the 'kiss under the mistletoe' idea that happens for Christmas. And yet the roots of that include other ideas: the kiss of peace. Reconciliation. More importantly, was the association of mistletoe with the Golden Bough of Aeneas in the Aeneid , which Franzen argues is the mistletoe. It was taken so the living Aeneas could descend to the Underworld, speak with Anchises his deceased father, and then return. I wanted to evoke that layer of mythology, that aspect of understanding to Cobb's journey.
Other symbols, I think, should include fire. It makes a great many appearances in Anabasis and can probably be analysed in a similar fashion: fire as passion, and untamed destruction and violence. At the same time, fire is purging, purifying, and Cobb and projection!Arthur both pass through the flames near the end of fic. It evokes a Catholic idea of Purgatory, also called Limbo. In a small way, the fire is also punishment, and the heat and the smell of smoke often signals Cobb's inability (possibly partly a physical inability, due to the nature of psychological trauma) to let go of what transpired.
Truth/deception and dualities also play some kind of role in this story when I was writing it. Clearly, because it was about dreams, I wanted the same 'is this real?' edge to it. There were plenty of Inception fics that already skillfully managed this transition( *cough* The Outrage of the Years *cough*), and so I didn't want tricking the reader to be too key a issue. What I felt was really important, at the end of it, was far less about making the reader doubt and far more about Cobb's doubt: the idea of what is real and what is true. Projection!Arthur isn't real, and in some ways, he's very real for a manifestation of Cobb's guilt and the impact he has on Cobb. I did add discrepancies, as I mentioned, little things that aren't impossible but simply unlikely. The solution to the problem of Arthur's betrayal and the twist the fic needed presented itself with the real Arthur (if he is the real Arthur. Funny enough, he seems to know some things he shouldn't.)
I hinted at it from the start: Algol/Mirfak. Algol is the second-brightest but probably most famous star in Perseus. Alpha Persei, or Mirfak is the brightest. Again, there's the idea of the guide, of hope that the symbol of the stars carry: and in a way, the brightest star, Mirfak, as Arthur's code name hints to the function he serves, regardless of whether he's real or just another facet of a complicated projection that Cobb has. Where psychotic!Arthur is Cobb's demon, the traitor and the exemplification of Cobb's guilt, Mirfak!Arthur is Cobb's metaphorical (guardian?) angel, the savior and the guide and the exemplification of hope, and possibly, a desire for salvation that Cobb possesses - that gets more and more powerful towards the end of Anabasis. In a sense, Arthur is both the best and the worst character in this story: psychotic!Arthur is, to use Mirfak!Arthur's words, a nasty piece of work. The potential to be both exists in what seems to be the same person.
Other hints included Saito's glances at Arthur, and Arthur's appearance in Mombasa, as well as Arthur mentioning Hong Kong to Eames. I strongly contrasted their physical appearance: while psychotic!Arthur is considerably more well-dressed, Mirfak!Arthur is messier, and consistently far more human in that he appears to feel a lot more than psychotic!Arthur does. At closer examination, however, it's still vague because there's no notion of how Mirfak!Arthur should have known about Limbo, and there's no notion of whether all the Arthurs who appear at various points in the story are really the same projection or person.
Oh, and another of those little buried moments I'm a little proud of is Eames possibly catching on, right before Arthur and Cobb and Ariadne go under. His dialogue can be seen as an olive branch, or a hint of realisation.
For the more banal bits: combat styles. I played a little with the Assassin's Creed II models for physical combat, and did good old-fashioned research into police procedure as well as hand to hand combat and did my best for guns research. And of course, when in doubt: do the physics, draw the free body diagram, and examine the axis of rotation and work out leverage and moments from there. As a fighter, Cobb's more dirty, and his little fist fight with Arthur earlier is unorthodox enough. I styled whatever Arthur did more on judo - mostly because the only thing I ever see him use in the movie, when unarmed, are shitloads of throws. Eames...well, I probably have to blame a picspam from my friends list, because I got it in my head Eames did boxing, and from there, it was only a little jump to Muay Thai as the inspiration for Eames' fighting style.
Fun physics fact of the day: first, never handle a live wire with both hands. Now, had that happened, Eames’ kick might have failed. Electricity’s like water: it doesn’t flow back along the same path twice. Had anyone been shocked through both hands, the current would have formed a dangerous loop: through one hand, through the chest, and out through the other hand, back to the source. Bzzzt. Fibrillation, probably death. You don’t need a high current to kill the heart. Electricity and the human body’s funny that way. Equally, as Arthur pointed out, had they been grounded, they might have been in some kind of trouble. But because they were floating, the path the current was most likely to take was (since it travelled along what I assumed was a compound with complex ions, probably with sodium which could carry a charge) was in through the wrist, looping out to the fingers, or palm, and then back to the wrist. Anything such as to the elbow or beyond would have been far more unlikely.
Stylistically, this resembles Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover. Mostly because of the raw edge to Stover's writing that I felt really accentuated the idea of betrayal and brotherhood a lot better. Also, I worked with ellegen to produce a soundtrack for Anabasis, and I call it a soundtrack because it can pretty much be called 'Whatever Seek Was Listening To When She Wrote That Scene'. Or my copy and pasted playlist.
Other aspects I played with was (alright, I know I'm abusing the term): stichomythia. It's a really great way to racket up the emotional intensity and tension several notches, and you'll notice near the climax, there's a great many examples of it. In particular, I'm proud of the late addition, which was the Arthur-Ariadne and Cobb-Saito-Arthur simultaneous dialogue across layers.
For those of you who want the closest scene-mood matching you can get, try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unmb2hPuHJo . I was pretty much listening to this on repeat and working on the ending (and then the ending edits.)
In conclusion, thanks to everyone who helped, in one way or another. It was a wild ride, a fun ride, and I hope it was wicked cool :D
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