Snowflake Challenge- Day 1
Happy New Year! Starting off the year with the 
snowflake_challenge .
Day 1
In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator.
I have 77 GIFsets and 7 fics to choose from in 2016, but I'll focus on 3:
The Martian: Newton's First Law
I'm really proud of this three parter fic because it has a great structure and heart. Also, the theme and conflicts are as science-y and detail oriented as the canon. Plus the love declaration in the second bit is pretty moving. ("This is what falling in love looks like.") I also tried writing in epistolary style for the third chapter and I LOVED IT. 10/10 would do again. Newton's First Law also does what canon (and fandom) doesn't: it focuses on the rest of the Ares 3 crew and the ground crew (although Watney is very much in character thoughts), it fills in that "7 MONTHS LATER" gap, and it challenges fanon theory about keeping Beck/Johanssen secret. I know Watney is everybody's fave, but I think even Weir understated how heroic the crew really were to come back for him.
In the background of The Martian (both book and to a lesser extent, the movie) was Beck/Johanssen in a quiet little friends-to-lovers relationship arc. This is obviously a canon set in space so I thought that the law of inertia was the perfect theme: they had a great relationship as Beck&Johanssen that was moving along just fine. I wanted to figure out why they made the leap to Chris/Beth despite it being against "about thirty rules" since they were two of a tiny crew of five on a 110 m2 ship on an epic mission to go to Mars to rescue their stranded crewmate. I also wanted to explore how they would transition/compartmentalize it while on the Hermes.
I did so much research for this fic and it was all super interesting. It's turned me into a "ruddy stargazer" too- I can look up at night and tell you where Venus, Mars, Neptune and Mercury are now. The biochemistry in both the second and third chapters is accurate (I found Chris' POV way easier to write because medical/biology stuff is way more up my alley than math and computer code), as are the details about solar weather and magnetic shielding that I decided would be the Hermes' first line of defense against cosmic and solar radiation. (Weir assumes the Ares missions will have "a special kind of material" to block radiation, but redundancy is always NASA's MO, so I assumed both.) I also checked the flightpath of the Hermes while doing my outline and discovered that Weir had handwaved its safety on its journey back to Mars although at closest pass, the Hermes would have come within 72 million km of the sun. This cuts within even Mercury's orbit. The Hermes would heat in a way it would not have been designed for- (surface temp on Mercury is 427 C, Venus is 462 C.) NASA doesn't design manned missions that close to the sun, ever. Weir avoided the issue by skipping blithely over those months in his book (and the movie follows suit) but I wrote it out in "Coming to Rest." It fills a nice canon hole, with a love story that depicts the transition from one kind of loving, respectful relationship to another, which is exactly what I look for in fic.
The Originals: Dear Destiny, F*ck You
I'm proud of this GIF set because of the way the poem and the scenes match up so perfectly. (Also look at that crisp resolution and how I flipped and then merged two GIFs in the 6th!) I think even the text placement makes symbolic sense.
Moana: Smitten
I was leery of writing this at first because I was really worried about disrespecting the tone and theme of the film. It's SUCH a fantastic movie, with themes about self concept and determination, the importance of family/culture and relationship arcs between family and friends. The heroine is fourteen, she doesn't need a love interest.
But just as Moana itself solves a historical puzzle (Why did Polynesian explorers stop for 1000 years and then start again?) by mashing up Polynesian myth with an incredible OC, Maui's death myth seemed to be begging for a Disney-fied solve. One does not simply walk into Death's obsidian-toothed vagina without consent. (Also why the hell would he have expected to come out of her mouth? Wrong hole, dude.) Plus I love flipping prophecy on its head and canon fix-its.
Fandom also seems to have a thing about needing Moana to be exactly 10 years older before she gets to have romantic feelings, which just makes me side-eye a bit because um. Her cultural expectations are not your cultural expectations. (Also, have you met any teenagers?) The puritan attitudes in tags were bugging me, even though I also knew exactly where they came from. (See also: me wondering if I'm for sure going to hell now while writing.) So I allude to time having passed and show her matter-of-factly enjoying her own body by masturbating. It was a way to show that she was ready for a sexual relationship while also giving insight into her thoughts/feelings, even though it pushed the fic into M rating territory. I think I succeeded in doing it tastefully, with language that alluded to both the ocean and lava too.
I also wanted to pay respect to the state of her relationships with both Maui and her family at the end of the film. There's so much love and mutual respect between all of them, but I do think the dynamic between Moana and Maui could change to something else once she was a bit older.
Overall, this fic has been really well received. It's also the fastest I've ever written anything (I wrote it in three days. It usually takes me three weeks to produce 3000 words.)
This entry was originally posted at http://nrgburst.dreamwidth.org/82036.html. You can also comment there using OpenID.
snowflake_challenge .
Day 1
In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator.
I have 77 GIFsets and 7 fics to choose from in 2016, but I'll focus on 3:
The Martian: Newton's First Law
I'm really proud of this three parter fic because it has a great structure and heart. Also, the theme and conflicts are as science-y and detail oriented as the canon. Plus the love declaration in the second bit is pretty moving. ("This is what falling in love looks like.") I also tried writing in epistolary style for the third chapter and I LOVED IT. 10/10 would do again. Newton's First Law also does what canon (and fandom) doesn't: it focuses on the rest of the Ares 3 crew and the ground crew (although Watney is very much in character thoughts), it fills in that "7 MONTHS LATER" gap, and it challenges fanon theory about keeping Beck/Johanssen secret. I know Watney is everybody's fave, but I think even Weir understated how heroic the crew really were to come back for him.
In the background of The Martian (both book and to a lesser extent, the movie) was Beck/Johanssen in a quiet little friends-to-lovers relationship arc. This is obviously a canon set in space so I thought that the law of inertia was the perfect theme: they had a great relationship as Beck&Johanssen that was moving along just fine. I wanted to figure out why they made the leap to Chris/Beth despite it being against "about thirty rules" since they were two of a tiny crew of five on a 110 m2 ship on an epic mission to go to Mars to rescue their stranded crewmate. I also wanted to explore how they would transition/compartmentalize it while on the Hermes.
I did so much research for this fic and it was all super interesting. It's turned me into a "ruddy stargazer" too- I can look up at night and tell you where Venus, Mars, Neptune and Mercury are now. The biochemistry in both the second and third chapters is accurate (I found Chris' POV way easier to write because medical/biology stuff is way more up my alley than math and computer code), as are the details about solar weather and magnetic shielding that I decided would be the Hermes' first line of defense against cosmic and solar radiation. (Weir assumes the Ares missions will have "a special kind of material" to block radiation, but redundancy is always NASA's MO, so I assumed both.) I also checked the flightpath of the Hermes while doing my outline and discovered that Weir had handwaved its safety on its journey back to Mars although at closest pass, the Hermes would have come within 72 million km of the sun. This cuts within even Mercury's orbit. The Hermes would heat in a way it would not have been designed for- (surface temp on Mercury is 427 C, Venus is 462 C.) NASA doesn't design manned missions that close to the sun, ever. Weir avoided the issue by skipping blithely over those months in his book (and the movie follows suit) but I wrote it out in "Coming to Rest." It fills a nice canon hole, with a love story that depicts the transition from one kind of loving, respectful relationship to another, which is exactly what I look for in fic.
The Originals: Dear Destiny, F*ck You
I'm proud of this GIF set because of the way the poem and the scenes match up so perfectly. (Also look at that crisp resolution and how I flipped and then merged two GIFs in the 6th!) I think even the text placement makes symbolic sense.
Moana: Smitten
I was leery of writing this at first because I was really worried about disrespecting the tone and theme of the film. It's SUCH a fantastic movie, with themes about self concept and determination, the importance of family/culture and relationship arcs between family and friends. The heroine is fourteen, she doesn't need a love interest.
But just as Moana itself solves a historical puzzle (Why did Polynesian explorers stop for 1000 years and then start again?) by mashing up Polynesian myth with an incredible OC, Maui's death myth seemed to be begging for a Disney-fied solve. One does not simply walk into Death's obsidian-toothed vagina without consent. (Also why the hell would he have expected to come out of her mouth? Wrong hole, dude.) Plus I love flipping prophecy on its head and canon fix-its.
Fandom also seems to have a thing about needing Moana to be exactly 10 years older before she gets to have romantic feelings, which just makes me side-eye a bit because um. Her cultural expectations are not your cultural expectations. (Also, have you met any teenagers?) The puritan attitudes in tags were bugging me, even though I also knew exactly where they came from. (See also: me wondering if I'm for sure going to hell now while writing.) So I allude to time having passed and show her matter-of-factly enjoying her own body by masturbating. It was a way to show that she was ready for a sexual relationship while also giving insight into her thoughts/feelings, even though it pushed the fic into M rating territory. I think I succeeded in doing it tastefully, with language that alluded to both the ocean and lava too.
I also wanted to pay respect to the state of her relationships with both Maui and her family at the end of the film. There's so much love and mutual respect between all of them, but I do think the dynamic between Moana and Maui could change to something else once she was a bit older.
Overall, this fic has been really well received. It's also the fastest I've ever written anything (I wrote it in three days. It usually takes me three weeks to produce 3000 words.)
This entry was originally posted at http://nrgburst.dreamwidth.org/82036.html. You can also comment there using OpenID.