the hardcore and the gentle
Happy New Year, friends. And happy Yuletide reveals. :)
This was clearly not going to be the year when I could pull off more than one fic (potentially next round’s goal? life things depending anyway), but I did receive what was very much the prompt of my heart. I did my best to do well by it:
refraction and recombination, for
halfeatenmoon
Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers (specifically the second book, A Closed and Common Orbit)
Sidra/Tak, Teen & Up, 8,858 words
Summary: Tak takes Sidra to a different kind of party, Sidra dabbles in Aeluon color language, and her sensory analogues might be trying to tell her something.
So, A Closed and Common Orbit would be a strong contender for my favorite book of the decade, if I have such a thing. The whole Wayfarers series is exceptionally close to my heart, but the second book stands out in particular, with some of my favorite themes (building an identity, navigating a confusing and counterintuitive reality, finding/creating a family, boundless curiosity, artificial intelligence/nonhuman personhood, defying imposed roles), using one of my favorite narrative devices (parallel narratives), and just ... all the many things that make Becky Chambers’s writing so fantastic, from her inclusive, optimistic, yet grounded (in a metaphorical sense) viewpoint through the incredibly well-thought-out social and cultural background details she layers in, and of course, the careful, thorough approach to characters communicating and getting to know each other, themselves, and their worlds.
I know I’m gushing, but look, I just love that book a lot. I think this (canon refresh/note-taking in preparation for my assignment) was my fourth time reading it since it came out in 2016? Maybe fifth. And there was a lot of note-taking, let me tell you. I read some author interviews, too. Went back through pieces of A Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet for some context on A.I. personality development, and the first hours of proto-Sidra’s (Lovelace’s) life, and made a basic chart of Aeluon colors/emotions based on what I could dig out of both books.
This was the first time I’ve written for the same fandom twice since Yuletide started! Which is kind of cool, but a little intimidating too. My 2017 fic, unmoving, but in transition, is possibly the best-received thing I’ve written for fandom. I’m still really proud of it, and I have to admit, the several comments I received "accusing" me of being Chambers were immensely flattering.
So all things considered, it’s a bit of a shame that this assignment had to coincide with the holiday season in which I a) was nursing my partner/cooking/doing chores for them post-top-surgery, b) had a minor surgical procedure myself, c) developed a mysterious stomach ailment, d) attended and briefly participated in a theatrical production written, directed and starred in by my father, based on highly personal/intimate family history/tradition, and e) you know ... had all the usual holiday shopping, end-of-semester madness at work, etc etc to contend with. Ah well. Didn’t take away from how great an assignment it was!
Here are some random notes for the fic itself:
-the working title was "what you can’t grow, you build," which I loved but just didn’t fit the final product. This was in reference to Sidra’s synthetic nature/body, and how she put work into "building" a self and, in this case, a new kind of relationship. I had a ton of material to start with, and probably could have gotten into longfic territory if life had been calmer. As it was, paring down was necessary.
-"refraction and recombination" as in light into colors into light, natch. Aeluon color language/feelings, "seeing the light" as in coming to understand, making sense of said emotions, etc.
-I have Sidra’s second tattoo in my head and can’t get it down on paper, which is driving me nuts! I have little facility with the sort of blocky, highly stylized/symbolic style I imagine it in. Oh well. Still pretty proud of that one.
-
halfeatenmoon‘s prompts mentioned Sidra and tattoos, so that seemed like a natural place to start ... and when I was rereading the chapter where she gets her first one (mostly), the fact that she seemed to register nothing at all from the process on a sensory/systems level struck me (she’s so focused, at first, on giving the impression of feeling something - because she doesn’t). Which got me thinking about pain, which seemed like an intimate subject that could lead into ... new things between her and Tak.
-then the topic of pain ran away with me, to the point that I believe that first scene hit the minimum word count all by itself. And while I’d initially intended any reference to masochism/kink as pretty general, just a way of breaking boundaries a bit ... out of nowhere I found myself sending them to a kink club/dungeon/what have you. Which felt risky, since I wanted to make it fit into the canon landscape without being too jarring ... and I wanted it to be a fic with kink, not a kinkfic, if that makes sense. (I do, of course, love kinkfic. Just didn’t want that this time.)
-also I had always intended to heavily feature Sidra’s sensory analogues, but once I started thinking about pain, I really noticed the specificity of what kind of input seems to trigger them in the book, which really got me thinking about reaction/intention and how one’s own experience of the same input can change, and then also became super useful for advancing the story.
-(I really wish I could sit down with Chambers for a cup of tea and a really in-depth discussion of some of these themes and world building features. More than I usually do. But anyway!)
-rereading Record of a Spaceborn Few, which I also did because by that point I just wanted to stay in that universe for as long as possible (apart from research, talk about comfort reading), reminded me of just how delicate and fragile Harmagians are. But Tak also talks about tendril piercings in Orbit. With this and other bits and pieces of worldbuilding in mind, have now decided Harmagians are probably the kinkiest fuckers in the galaxy.
-speaking of Harmagians, the one Pepper and Blue chat with in the first scene at Home is meant to be FunkyFronds, the GC inspector/picnic regular. picnic was on my long-list of things to use in the story, and while I never managed to make it fit, I couldn’t resist a nod. ("Omar" was chosen at random, though. No clue who he is.)
-playing with the petbots, and the way Sidra’s senses work when she’s using them, was one of my favorite things. I’d love to write more about that someday (and also, much more about the experience of disconnecting from them and the Linkings when she wants to go out, which in spite of being much more intentional/managed, has to be at least as intense as some of her earlier struggles with the body kit’s limitations in those areas).
-I figured that the smell of mek powder and actual brewed mek would have to bring up different analogue images, but I decided I wanted them to be directly related. Even though the taste canonically isn’t. It made sense to me, IDK.
-having Sidra feeling freaked out about romantic relationships as a result of her earliest experiences is something I initially thought about doing a lot more with. It seems like a pretty significant potential theme - because of the nature of her initial installation, the fallout, etc. And because she, new and a more or less out-of-the-box base version of Lovelace, was immediately learning about Lovey’s growth in some probably very unintended directions (for the manufacturer’s purposes, I should think). Her whole existence and development as Sidra happened because of that (Lovey’s death, and Lovey’s relationship with Jenks), in a sense. The first time she was told that Lovey and Jenks were in love, she thought it would be "nice" to have someone feel that way about her ... and she thinks the same sort of thing several times while observing romantic couples. But at the same time, the drama and violent emotions and consequences that accompanied that first awareness!
-that said, I ultimately didn’t want the version of the story I wrote to get bogged down in heavy emotional territory. I tend to prefer a lighter, gentler sort of story for Yuletide ... and if I were going to go there all the way, I’d want a lot more space for catharsis and learning and romance and joy to balance it out. That would be a much larger story.
-I was nervous about including the exchange with Jenks for the same reason, but it felt really important. I wouldn’t have felt satisfied with the end of the story otherwise. I think-I hope-it worked okay.
-thank goodness for Pepper. I have no idea how this version of the story in my head would ever have worked without her talking some sense into Sidra. I only wish I’d had space for more of her, and the rest of Sidra’s family. I love them all to bits, and it was important to me not to just ... pull Sidra and Tak out of their context, into a little fic-bubble about the two of them. Sidra operates within a small but close network, and I don’t just mean her petbots. It would be a disservice to the source material to remove or ignore that.
-coming up with random alien words is hard! I’m happy with h’rag cheese (and really don’t want to know what sort of creature it derives from). less so with r’leu.
-speaking of cheese, that last line is cheesy as hell. I have no shame.
Man, that was fun. I’m so glad
chocolateboxcomm exists so I don’t immediately go into fandom withdrawal. I have plans this year that preclude much fannish participation for a lot of it, probably, but this should be a good easing off.
This entry was originally posted at my dreamwidth. (
comments)
This was clearly not going to be the year when I could pull off more than one fic (potentially next round’s goal? life things depending anyway), but I did receive what was very much the prompt of my heart. I did my best to do well by it:
refraction and recombination, for
halfeatenmoon
Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers (specifically the second book, A Closed and Common Orbit)
Sidra/Tak, Teen & Up, 8,858 words
Summary: Tak takes Sidra to a different kind of party, Sidra dabbles in Aeluon color language, and her sensory analogues might be trying to tell her something.
So, A Closed and Common Orbit would be a strong contender for my favorite book of the decade, if I have such a thing. The whole Wayfarers series is exceptionally close to my heart, but the second book stands out in particular, with some of my favorite themes (building an identity, navigating a confusing and counterintuitive reality, finding/creating a family, boundless curiosity, artificial intelligence/nonhuman personhood, defying imposed roles), using one of my favorite narrative devices (parallel narratives), and just ... all the many things that make Becky Chambers’s writing so fantastic, from her inclusive, optimistic, yet grounded (in a metaphorical sense) viewpoint through the incredibly well-thought-out social and cultural background details she layers in, and of course, the careful, thorough approach to characters communicating and getting to know each other, themselves, and their worlds.
I know I’m gushing, but look, I just love that book a lot. I think this (canon refresh/note-taking in preparation for my assignment) was my fourth time reading it since it came out in 2016? Maybe fifth. And there was a lot of note-taking, let me tell you. I read some author interviews, too. Went back through pieces of A Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet for some context on A.I. personality development, and the first hours of proto-Sidra’s (Lovelace’s) life, and made a basic chart of Aeluon colors/emotions based on what I could dig out of both books.
This was the first time I’ve written for the same fandom twice since Yuletide started! Which is kind of cool, but a little intimidating too. My 2017 fic, unmoving, but in transition, is possibly the best-received thing I’ve written for fandom. I’m still really proud of it, and I have to admit, the several comments I received "accusing" me of being Chambers were immensely flattering.
So all things considered, it’s a bit of a shame that this assignment had to coincide with the holiday season in which I a) was nursing my partner/cooking/doing chores for them post-top-surgery, b) had a minor surgical procedure myself, c) developed a mysterious stomach ailment, d) attended and briefly participated in a theatrical production written, directed and starred in by my father, based on highly personal/intimate family history/tradition, and e) you know ... had all the usual holiday shopping, end-of-semester madness at work, etc etc to contend with. Ah well. Didn’t take away from how great an assignment it was!
Here are some random notes for the fic itself:
-the working title was "what you can’t grow, you build," which I loved but just didn’t fit the final product. This was in reference to Sidra’s synthetic nature/body, and how she put work into "building" a self and, in this case, a new kind of relationship. I had a ton of material to start with, and probably could have gotten into longfic territory if life had been calmer. As it was, paring down was necessary.
-"refraction and recombination" as in light into colors into light, natch. Aeluon color language/feelings, "seeing the light" as in coming to understand, making sense of said emotions, etc.
-I have Sidra’s second tattoo in my head and can’t get it down on paper, which is driving me nuts! I have little facility with the sort of blocky, highly stylized/symbolic style I imagine it in. Oh well. Still pretty proud of that one.
-
halfeatenmoon‘s prompts mentioned Sidra and tattoos, so that seemed like a natural place to start ... and when I was rereading the chapter where she gets her first one (mostly), the fact that she seemed to register nothing at all from the process on a sensory/systems level struck me (she’s so focused, at first, on giving the impression of feeling something - because she doesn’t). Which got me thinking about pain, which seemed like an intimate subject that could lead into ... new things between her and Tak.
-then the topic of pain ran away with me, to the point that I believe that first scene hit the minimum word count all by itself. And while I’d initially intended any reference to masochism/kink as pretty general, just a way of breaking boundaries a bit ... out of nowhere I found myself sending them to a kink club/dungeon/what have you. Which felt risky, since I wanted to make it fit into the canon landscape without being too jarring ... and I wanted it to be a fic with kink, not a kinkfic, if that makes sense. (I do, of course, love kinkfic. Just didn’t want that this time.)
-also I had always intended to heavily feature Sidra’s sensory analogues, but once I started thinking about pain, I really noticed the specificity of what kind of input seems to trigger them in the book, which really got me thinking about reaction/intention and how one’s own experience of the same input can change, and then also became super useful for advancing the story.
-(I really wish I could sit down with Chambers for a cup of tea and a really in-depth discussion of some of these themes and world building features. More than I usually do. But anyway!)
-rereading Record of a Spaceborn Few, which I also did because by that point I just wanted to stay in that universe for as long as possible (apart from research, talk about comfort reading), reminded me of just how delicate and fragile Harmagians are. But Tak also talks about tendril piercings in Orbit. With this and other bits and pieces of worldbuilding in mind, have now decided Harmagians are probably the kinkiest fuckers in the galaxy.
-speaking of Harmagians, the one Pepper and Blue chat with in the first scene at Home is meant to be FunkyFronds, the GC inspector/picnic regular. picnic was on my long-list of things to use in the story, and while I never managed to make it fit, I couldn’t resist a nod. ("Omar" was chosen at random, though. No clue who he is.)
-playing with the petbots, and the way Sidra’s senses work when she’s using them, was one of my favorite things. I’d love to write more about that someday (and also, much more about the experience of disconnecting from them and the Linkings when she wants to go out, which in spite of being much more intentional/managed, has to be at least as intense as some of her earlier struggles with the body kit’s limitations in those areas).
-I figured that the smell of mek powder and actual brewed mek would have to bring up different analogue images, but I decided I wanted them to be directly related. Even though the taste canonically isn’t. It made sense to me, IDK.
-having Sidra feeling freaked out about romantic relationships as a result of her earliest experiences is something I initially thought about doing a lot more with. It seems like a pretty significant potential theme - because of the nature of her initial installation, the fallout, etc. And because she, new and a more or less out-of-the-box base version of Lovelace, was immediately learning about Lovey’s growth in some probably very unintended directions (for the manufacturer’s purposes, I should think). Her whole existence and development as Sidra happened because of that (Lovey’s death, and Lovey’s relationship with Jenks), in a sense. The first time she was told that Lovey and Jenks were in love, she thought it would be "nice" to have someone feel that way about her ... and she thinks the same sort of thing several times while observing romantic couples. But at the same time, the drama and violent emotions and consequences that accompanied that first awareness!
-that said, I ultimately didn’t want the version of the story I wrote to get bogged down in heavy emotional territory. I tend to prefer a lighter, gentler sort of story for Yuletide ... and if I were going to go there all the way, I’d want a lot more space for catharsis and learning and romance and joy to balance it out. That would be a much larger story.
-I was nervous about including the exchange with Jenks for the same reason, but it felt really important. I wouldn’t have felt satisfied with the end of the story otherwise. I think-I hope-it worked okay.
-thank goodness for Pepper. I have no idea how this version of the story in my head would ever have worked without her talking some sense into Sidra. I only wish I’d had space for more of her, and the rest of Sidra’s family. I love them all to bits, and it was important to me not to just ... pull Sidra and Tak out of their context, into a little fic-bubble about the two of them. Sidra operates within a small but close network, and I don’t just mean her petbots. It would be a disservice to the source material to remove or ignore that.
-coming up with random alien words is hard! I’m happy with h’rag cheese (and really don’t want to know what sort of creature it derives from). less so with r’leu.
-speaking of cheese, that last line is cheesy as hell. I have no shame.
Man, that was fun. I’m so glad
chocolateboxcomm exists so I don’t immediately go into fandom withdrawal. I have plans this year that preclude much fannish participation for a lot of it, probably, but this should be a good easing off.
This entry was originally posted at my dreamwidth. (
comments)