Comments | runaway_tales: yin: A Mara Story

nathskywalker in runaway_tales

yin: A Mara Story

Apr 25, 2011 04:34

Author: Nathalia
Rating: PG-13
Challenge:
Buttered Popcorn #06 - tightrope
Flavor of the Day #248 - yin (a principle in Chinese philosophy associated with negative, dark, and feminine attributes)
Milk Chocolate #19 - detachment
Extras / Toppings: brownie, hot fudge, malt (bingo: remember to act sad + best con in town + long time, no see + let me in + ( Read more... )

[author] nathalia, [extra] malt, [extra] brownie, [challenge] milk chocolate, [topping] hot fudge, [challenge] buttered popcorn, [challenge] flavor of the day

Comments 10

shayna611 April 25 2011, 13:41:21 UTC

Wow. I can't believe you wrote this whole thing in one night.

This really does shed a lot of light on Mara (and I think it actually fills in and straightens out a few things here and there about things in general too) I so enjoy characters who are - I don't want to say evil, because really when they are actually "evil" they become stilted - adamant in their own principles (however odd they may seem to the rest of the world) and determined to get what they want, I suppose. Mara has definitely become one of my favorites of yours.

Can I have that sneaky little green egg, trying to slip in over at the right?

nathskywalker April 25 2011, 13:53:16 UTC

You were around for most of the time but it's really been a while since I wrote so much in one night. It felt really good.

I had this huge gap in how Mara came to work for Bishop and why she defected and it was while writing the first scene when Petrovich first mentions her father that suddenly, everything made sense to me because I didn't know that this was what happened. I knew she had a strange relationship with her father but it was only while writing that I decided that she needed to kill him to move on, to make him pay for everything he had done to her. This was supposed to just be a story about Mara doing her job as a spy but I'm much happier with how it actually turned out.

I agree with you about Mara not being evil; her motivations just aren't very conventional and she will go a lot further than most people to achieve her goals.

"Everything that has a beginning has an end. I see the end coming. I see the darkness spreading. I see death... and you are all that stands in his way." -The Oracle, The Matrix Revolutions

shayna611 April 25 2011, 13:57:09 UTC

Don't you love it when a piece just snaps into place like that? I think it worked really well here!

also, lol at that prompt...how appropriate ;)

nathskywalker April 25 2011, 14:02:04 UTC

I love it when I suddenly know where I'm going after having written 500 words that I thought were the main story only to then realize that that was just a tiny little introduction to juxtapose what Mara does later. And it was worth staying up late because otherwise, I might have dropped the ball on this.

The prompt was going to be a picture of a train but I didn't feel like it would work for you at all, so I picked a random one from my other prompt list and that was so fitting that I had to give you that one.

smoothiegarten April 25 2011, 22:08:16 UTC

Wow, this is a LOT for one day and you packed a lot of info in it with great pacing. Good for you!

It's nice to know how she ends up working with Bishop and more about where she's come from. The scene with her father in the apartment was just enough that I was glad for her but still unsettled. I like the whole thing a lot.

May I have the yellow egg?

nathskywalker April 27 2011, 17:45:37 UTC

I basically plowed this out in five or six hours non-stop till six am and then I was too sleepy to even read through it again and edit it. I just wanted to get this out. I know myself well enough to know that if I had stopped and picked it up later, I might have not gone through with it or discarded it ( ... )

roisin_farrell April 27 2011, 01:08:17 UTC

This explains a lot about Mara. As I was reading it, I kept going "Oh, oh, oh." Great job!

nathskywalker April 27 2011, 17:37:25 UTC

I learned a lot about Mara while writing this because I honestly wasn't sure why she had defected and I worked it out while writing it. I knew she had a strange relationship with her father but I didn't know she had killed him (I thought he was still alive and she had killed her mother at some other point in her life).

I think it helped me learn a lot about Mara.

ninablues April 27 2011, 09:37:03 UTC

Holy shit, intense. Mara has such a distinctive voice when she's at the centre of the writing, it's really easy to feel. Also, I absolutely loved this line in particular for whatever reason: "...she couldn’t imagine a man like him ever retiring and playing chess with other old men all day long instead of giving orders and making unethical decisions." Maybe just the tinge of dark humour. I'm in agreement with everyone else: it explains a lot about Mara and truly, I would have expected nothing less from her. She's definitely one of your most fascinating characters.

May I have the black and white egg at the top?

nathskywalker April 27 2011, 18:41:22 UTC

I blame you for this. I was writing the first scene and the first mention of Mara's father came up in it and all of a sudden I felt like this was the best way to explore Mara's betrayal and it kept going from there. It would not have happened if we didn't talk about it a while back when I told you that there was barely anything about Mara and Bishop.

Mara is very tactical and driven in what she does and I think that distinguishes her from a lot of other characters who aren't that secretive or wear their hearts on their sleeves much unlike her.

"Truth and relationships don't make life easy. They make it possible." - Father Jack, Six Feet Under