[Fic] "The Stolen Colors of Oz" - Oz
Today is Yuletide reveal day! Here is the story I wrote this year:
The Stolen Colors of Oz (5268 words) by Elizabeth Culmer
Fandom: Oz - L. Frank Baum
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Button-Bright, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Adventure, Misunderstandings, Colors, Giant Spiders, Negotiations, Whimsy
Summary: The chief difficulty with having lost his Magic Umbrella, Button-Bright reflected a few days after his arrival in the Emerald City with Trot and Cap'n Bill, was that it was harder to get to far-away places without it. On the other hand, having to travel through all the in-between places on his way from here to there did mean he got to see a lot of interesting things he might otherwise have missed.
(Written for
moon_custafer)
-----
So, thoughts!
moon_custafer and I actually matched on two fandoms -- the other being Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees -- but in the event I only had the time and spoons to write for one of them. (I might try writing a New Year Resolution fic for the other prompt, because I did have a good idea for it; it's just that Mirrlees has a trickier narrative voice to imitate under deadline pressure. *wry*)
Anyway, these two prompts gave me a perfect excuse to reread a number of books I have loved for a very long time, which is always welcome. And then I figured the best response to a prompt about A) people in Oz making adjustments that allow very different people with very different needs to live comfortably together, and B) Button-Bright as a vehicle for exploring that, was to write a story in which Button-Bright helps resolve a conflict between some people with superficially conflicting needs and also gets some insight into the ways his approach to the world is slightly askew from many other people's attitudes. (In other words, tell your parents you're alive, child! They must be worried out of their minds.)
The conflict between the Metal Spiders and the Farbers happened kind of accidentally, to be honest. I started with Button-Bright in the cave with the giant spiders (I still don't know what the dickens my subconscious was on about there) and then back-filled a tunnel for him to leave through, which implied people who'd made the tunnel, which implied other people who wanted/needed something in the cave... and what was in the cave? A lot of colors. Aha! They needed the colors. Why did they need the colors...? And so on until I had a conflict and a solution.
(And that's one way I construct plots, if you were ever curious. They only look intentional in retrospect, though I will say that the bits about the Farbers previously being unable to paint the sky and the spiders using silk balloons to fly did come together very nicely.)
I am still amused by the Farbers' naming patterns. I named Killikikup basically by taking an existing Ozian name I liked (Kiki Arup) and mangling it until it sounded both unique and as if it belonged to a person perpetually ready for an argument, and then the other two are just things that sounded vaguely as if they might come from the same culture.
Anyway, I would have liked to make the story another thousand words longer, and go into a bit more detail about the cave, the spiders' army, the Farbers' army, and the general appearance of the colorless regions, but I think what's on the page works well enough. *wry*
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
The Stolen Colors of Oz (5268 words) by Elizabeth Culmer
Fandom: Oz - L. Frank Baum
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Button-Bright, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Adventure, Misunderstandings, Colors, Giant Spiders, Negotiations, Whimsy
Summary: The chief difficulty with having lost his Magic Umbrella, Button-Bright reflected a few days after his arrival in the Emerald City with Trot and Cap'n Bill, was that it was harder to get to far-away places without it. On the other hand, having to travel through all the in-between places on his way from here to there did mean he got to see a lot of interesting things he might otherwise have missed.
(Written for
moon_custafer)
-----
So, thoughts!
moon_custafer and I actually matched on two fandoms -- the other being Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees -- but in the event I only had the time and spoons to write for one of them. (I might try writing a New Year Resolution fic for the other prompt, because I did have a good idea for it; it's just that Mirrlees has a trickier narrative voice to imitate under deadline pressure. *wry*)
Anyway, these two prompts gave me a perfect excuse to reread a number of books I have loved for a very long time, which is always welcome. And then I figured the best response to a prompt about A) people in Oz making adjustments that allow very different people with very different needs to live comfortably together, and B) Button-Bright as a vehicle for exploring that, was to write a story in which Button-Bright helps resolve a conflict between some people with superficially conflicting needs and also gets some insight into the ways his approach to the world is slightly askew from many other people's attitudes. (In other words, tell your parents you're alive, child! They must be worried out of their minds.)
The conflict between the Metal Spiders and the Farbers happened kind of accidentally, to be honest. I started with Button-Bright in the cave with the giant spiders (I still don't know what the dickens my subconscious was on about there) and then back-filled a tunnel for him to leave through, which implied people who'd made the tunnel, which implied other people who wanted/needed something in the cave... and what was in the cave? A lot of colors. Aha! They needed the colors. Why did they need the colors...? And so on until I had a conflict and a solution.
(And that's one way I construct plots, if you were ever curious. They only look intentional in retrospect, though I will say that the bits about the Farbers previously being unable to paint the sky and the spiders using silk balloons to fly did come together very nicely.)
I am still amused by the Farbers' naming patterns. I named Killikikup basically by taking an existing Ozian name I liked (Kiki Arup) and mangling it until it sounded both unique and as if it belonged to a person perpetually ready for an argument, and then the other two are just things that sounded vaguely as if they might come from the same culture.
Anyway, I would have liked to make the story another thousand words longer, and go into a bit more detail about the cave, the spiders' army, the Farbers' army, and the general appearance of the colorless regions, but I think what's on the page works well enough. *wry*
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)