some (a lot) remix meta
Alright, here's my remix documentary.
Original: Limn by rebelliousrose
Remix: Fade Away
Got my assignment. Went like, "Are you kidding me? She's way better than me. All I could write would necessarily be bad." (Mind that I usually have more of an ego than that. Still... rebelliousrose's fics are so pretty! And all the things I love about her characters are things I can't make work when I write those characters!) Then I shook my head about myself and had a look at her fic. Then, picking a fic wasn't hard actually, because I just worked by way of elimination (can't write that one... can't write this one...) and I ended up with "Limn." "Limn" is gen. I can deal with gen. Also it's about Sharon who I've wanted to write again ever since "Back to Earth" and it's about Gaeta who I'm used to. "Limn" it was.
"Limn" is set shortly before the New Caprican one-year-leap. Sharon has just not told anybody that Cavil is a Cylon, she isn't talking to Helo, she's in the brig, and she's angry as hell. At basically everything, including herself. Therefore she doesn't bother being grateful when Gaeta comes for a visit, trying to be nice to her.
Being a Gaeta girl, I immediately took note of these lines:
“Is the table helping?” Gaeta asked her, holding out the chair so she could sit. Such courtesies were automatic to him, and a luxury to her.
“Yes. Tell the Admiral thank you.” A hurt look flashed across his face, and Sharon noticed. “Was the table from you?”
A flush showed on his high cheekbones. “I thought you’d have an easier time working, with something to work on. And now you can see, too.”
This was very interesting. When I write Gaeta, I try to write him so that he would never show he's hurt when he can help it. For my Gaeta, this would have been quite the reaction. There had to be a story to this. I remembered that this was when Gaeta was about to go live on New Caprica. It's a fanon assumption that his decision to leave was connected to the way he was treated by Adama and especially Tigh after he discovered the election fraud. It's not an easy time for Gaeta either. Now, there was an interesting observation about Sharon's situation:
Not that “in Galactica’s special Cylon storage” was going to help any of the rest of her people mount a rescue, anyway. Or that they would try to rescue her. She was a liability. The Cylon lived by the group, and she was a renegade- a reject. Her programming was flawed, and if she returned, she’d be boxed. She was boxed now, just in a different way.
Obviously this is a metaphor of genius, and it also made me think there might be a connection between Sharon and Gaeta's situation. Gaeta would be feeling like a reject too, and he's about to run away to New Caprica, to live in exile. Until then, I thought, maybe he busies himself by running away to Sharon. Maybe he feels they have something in common. It's easier to be in the brig. However, that's rather sad because Sharon doesn't quite notice what he's trying to do, being caught in her own anger and pain. Gaeta barely registers for her at the beginning of the fic. He starts doing so in the end though.
Being the proper literature major I am, I went back and had a look at the title. It's a good title. I was quite fascinated by how good a title it is. Good thing that rebelliousrose provided me with an explanation in the header (limn: to illuminate) because this word hadn't been part of my vocabulary yet. The picture of Helo that Sharon is given by Gaeta is like a light at the end of the tunnel for Sharon, so to say. And she learns to see Gaeta in a new light, figuring out that he's been doing those kind things for her. Addionally Gaeta also brings Sharon a lamp.
So I decided to expand on that growing awareness, the way Sharon starts to notice Gaeta's kindness. It's one hell of a lot of development, considering the fic is very short, so I could draw that out no problem. I decided to add a scene at the beginning where Sharon is completely unaware of her benefactor. I also wanted to add a scene in the end to go one step further, having Sharon's mind go to Gaeta immediately although Gaeta isn't even present. First I wanted to have Baltar come over and tell her he ordered Adama to let her out of the brig but then I realized that doesn't work out in the timeline. However, introducing Helo was a better choice anyway since he gets a lot of mentions, and I could conclude the fic by way of Sharon and Helo making up. It's a fic about Sharon trying to reconnect with the world too so it would be neat to show her interacting with somebody other than Gaeta.
Then came the fun part. I divided a file into five parts, went back to "Limn" and started cheerfully copy&pasting all useful paragraphs to where I could reuse them. I'd probably never do that if I wrote in my native language but since English isn't it, this was like creating a spare parts inventory. Lots of good lines that I knew would work! All mine! No work involved on my part! Heh.
Then I did some very lazy writing. ;)
And then I did some not so lazy editing, cutting approximately a page. I think I could still go back and cut more. Actually, rebelliousrose pointed out in her review that my whole last paragraph is kind of unnecessesary (she said it very kindly of course). Excellent point. I wanted to draw the attention back on Sharon because when it comes down to it, it's still a fic about her. But it would still work without the last paragraph. Hmm. I'm not sure. I think should have cut part of the paragraph or something.
Still, while it isn't one of my best stories, I'm still quite pleased with it. It was fun not to take the usual path of remixing- like using a different POV and telling a different part of the fic- but writing the same fic again but using a different genre. It was fun to write Sharon. Actually, the very same day I wrote this remix, I also wrote a scene about Sharon for my fic collaboration with millari and I feel I did a good job with Sharon there. The remix was a great opener to get to know the character. It's like it enabled me to add Sharon to my repertory in that I now know how to write Sharon fic that I'd personally like to read, and that's always a great bonus.
And that's it. :)
Original: Eighteen Hours Later by nicole_anell
Remix: Tools of God
"Wait, who?" I asked. "Ooooh of course! She wrote that brilliant fic about Gina! I'd totally remix that one!"
Yeah right. Turned out that was her safe story. So, not so much and I first had to go and have a look at all of nicole_anell's other fic that I didn't know yet. That was very enjoyable. It's one of the great things about remix that it helps you get to know writers you haven't formerly read, so yaih! It was a rather quick decision because I wanted to give a quick answer about whether or not I could pinch hit. So I decided that I'd have to say no if absolutely no remix would come to mind immediately. But I was fortunate. I decided "Eighteen Hours Later" would be fun to write from Head!Six' POV because first of all that's an unusual and unexpected twist, and second of all, since we now know what Head!Six is about, I could take this old fic written in 2006 and update it, so to say. I could just rewrite the fic about Sharon and Baltar but have Head!Six mock them mercilessly. Both her and me cherish mockery. I also had a Plan B in case Head!Six wouldn't work out, I wanted to remix Rewind with a focus on Caprica/Lee (stranger things have happened!).
I'd never written Head!Six before apart from few scenes where she was standing in the background, smirking at Baltar. I've never encountered fic with a Head!Six POV either. So I did what I always do when I write a new character. Research!
No fic with angel!Six as a main character could be found. So first of all, I had a look around for fic that included lots of Head!Six and a version of Head!Six that I liked. falafel_musings' fic came to mind so I went over to her LJ and had a good look at the words and phrases she uses to describe Head!Six. Then I rewatched "Resurrection Ship," an episode I mostly remembered for the almost-rape of Sharon and and Grace Park's powerful acting. I vividly remember when I first watched that scene. I had a moment of "WTF I thought she's super-strong!?" but had to admit that if you perceive Sharon as a woman in our society instead of a Cylon in the Colonial society, Grace Park did an excellent job. It made me rather uncomfortable watching that scene. Up to that point in the show, I had equated Cylons with men and humans with women. This scene said to me no, not so much, BSG women are still victims and men still aren't (Tyrol and Helo weren't threatened with rape). It made me uncomfortable.
One thing I had forgotten about the episode was that it included the major bulk of Gina's story. And more importantly, I'd forgotten about Head!Six' reaction to Gina. I'd generally thought of Head!Six that she might have some affection for Gaius but ultimately, she feels she's above the humans' struggles and none of it has to do with her. She looked very much in control all the time. Especially now that we know "Daybreak," what with her being an angel and an enforcer of the divine plan. After watching "Daybreak," I'd started assuming that Head!Six only ever played with Gaius even when she made an impression that she cared. She was just frakking with him because she didn't really care about him and she probably was really bored while waiting for the grand finale.
But in "Resurrection Ship", Head!Six had this really intense, honest reaction to Gina that was so damn well played by Tricia Helfer that I couldn't believe it had just been an act. It's what I now think is one of the big flaws of the ridiculous angel!retcon. If Head!Six is an angel, then by no means would she react with "Oh God it's me" when meeting Gina. That just doesn't make any sense. She especially wouldn't start crying and acting all betrayed when Baltar uses things Head!Six told him to help Gina. Head!Six isn't Caprica, we know that now. If she is an angel, that means she isn't a Six.
Though fortunately for the remix, I was just in the process of excessively reading up on gender studies. It's never been part of my study course at all but I was currently in need to learn more about it for my thesis, so that meant diving in and getting an overview over the various theories in a very short amount of time. So that was all over my mind. Stuff like, how are identity and body connected, what makes a person themselves, rape as a loss of identity. I'd read about a story of a character losing her sense of self when s/he forgot whether she was male or female. I'd read about another story of a character who lost her sense of self when she lost her sense of time. That's probably responsible for the fact that it occured to me to have Six react in the way she does in the fic. I'm not sure how it comes across for a reader but when I wrote it, it was all about writing a little feminist manifesto. :) It's all about identity (Six identifies with Gina and Gina is powerless, and it makes Six angry because it reminds her of the fact that she's essentially powerless herself). Six identifies with Gina because they look alike but she also identifies with Sharon because they are both women. Both Sharon and Gina are in danger of being raped because they are women. Yet Six neither is a Model Six, nor is she a woman. Except she is, she has assumed a female identity the moment she took this body. It's out of her control. Her anger is very feminine, in that she is angry at Sharon for being a victim and at Gaius because she has to rely on Gaius. She can't do anything about that either. She can just try and regain her equlibrium, accept it and move on. For me, that very much is what a woman (or any member of any under-privileged group really) has to do at least to some extend. Accept it and move on. Much more so than a real woman, Six is incapable of changing anything because she has to act out God's plan.
Sooo. As you can see, even if it might not come across like that (I didn't try to make it come across like that), it's a very feminist fic for me. And I'm very pleased to have written such a story because being a fan of Helo and Gaeta, I don't get to write fic about women a lot. I don't get to write a lot of fic that passes the Bechdel test! But I did. And it was feminist, too. Hee. I took the BSG attempt of being dismissive about gender stuff and made it a fic about gender! I'm so pleased about myself for that. ;)
I'm pleased, too, about the fact that I feel I've kept the original fic intact. That what I perceive as the story of "Eighteen Hours Later"- the story of Sharon reaching out to Gaius- is still there in my remix. That makes me happy.
I did the thing again with the copy&pasting good lines for reuse, BTW. It worked the first time so I thought I'd do it again. But I think I mostly reused dialogue this time.
All in all, I participated in the remix by writing two fics and beta'ing two fics by others. I wrote two gen fics about Sharon which pleases me, I wrote about women for a change and I got to know two new characters, Sharon and Head!Six! All those things are good things. They make me glad. It was a fun challenge. :)
Now the remix written for me, Farewell Symphony by kappamaki33? Is a work of genius and if you haven't read it yet, you have to read it right away. Especially if you like music! It's about Dee and Gaeta and Hoshi and Tyrol and Helo! And Hot Dog making a list! And Chuckles writing porn! Basically it's about everybody important (well alright so Kara is important too but she gets mentions! Crucial mentions!). As you can see, it's a great fic. With an excellent score.
As a side-note, my Kara/Tyrol friendship fic How the Viper Jock Met The Choirboy was rec'ed on crack_van. That was a lovely surprise. I'd never have thought anybody would rec that fic. Then again, I wouldn't have thought Lilacs would get rec'ed either and yet it was.
Original: Limn by rebelliousrose
Remix: Fade Away
Got my assignment. Went like, "Are you kidding me? She's way better than me. All I could write would necessarily be bad." (Mind that I usually have more of an ego than that. Still... rebelliousrose's fics are so pretty! And all the things I love about her characters are things I can't make work when I write those characters!) Then I shook my head about myself and had a look at her fic. Then, picking a fic wasn't hard actually, because I just worked by way of elimination (can't write that one... can't write this one...) and I ended up with "Limn." "Limn" is gen. I can deal with gen. Also it's about Sharon who I've wanted to write again ever since "Back to Earth" and it's about Gaeta who I'm used to. "Limn" it was.
"Limn" is set shortly before the New Caprican one-year-leap. Sharon has just not told anybody that Cavil is a Cylon, she isn't talking to Helo, she's in the brig, and she's angry as hell. At basically everything, including herself. Therefore she doesn't bother being grateful when Gaeta comes for a visit, trying to be nice to her.
Being a Gaeta girl, I immediately took note of these lines:
“Is the table helping?” Gaeta asked her, holding out the chair so she could sit. Such courtesies were automatic to him, and a luxury to her.
“Yes. Tell the Admiral thank you.” A hurt look flashed across his face, and Sharon noticed. “Was the table from you?”
A flush showed on his high cheekbones. “I thought you’d have an easier time working, with something to work on. And now you can see, too.”
This was very interesting. When I write Gaeta, I try to write him so that he would never show he's hurt when he can help it. For my Gaeta, this would have been quite the reaction. There had to be a story to this. I remembered that this was when Gaeta was about to go live on New Caprica. It's a fanon assumption that his decision to leave was connected to the way he was treated by Adama and especially Tigh after he discovered the election fraud. It's not an easy time for Gaeta either. Now, there was an interesting observation about Sharon's situation:
Not that “in Galactica’s special Cylon storage” was going to help any of the rest of her people mount a rescue, anyway. Or that they would try to rescue her. She was a liability. The Cylon lived by the group, and she was a renegade- a reject. Her programming was flawed, and if she returned, she’d be boxed. She was boxed now, just in a different way.
Obviously this is a metaphor of genius, and it also made me think there might be a connection between Sharon and Gaeta's situation. Gaeta would be feeling like a reject too, and he's about to run away to New Caprica, to live in exile. Until then, I thought, maybe he busies himself by running away to Sharon. Maybe he feels they have something in common. It's easier to be in the brig. However, that's rather sad because Sharon doesn't quite notice what he's trying to do, being caught in her own anger and pain. Gaeta barely registers for her at the beginning of the fic. He starts doing so in the end though.
Being the proper literature major I am, I went back and had a look at the title. It's a good title. I was quite fascinated by how good a title it is. Good thing that rebelliousrose provided me with an explanation in the header (limn: to illuminate) because this word hadn't been part of my vocabulary yet. The picture of Helo that Sharon is given by Gaeta is like a light at the end of the tunnel for Sharon, so to say. And she learns to see Gaeta in a new light, figuring out that he's been doing those kind things for her. Addionally Gaeta also brings Sharon a lamp.
So I decided to expand on that growing awareness, the way Sharon starts to notice Gaeta's kindness. It's one hell of a lot of development, considering the fic is very short, so I could draw that out no problem. I decided to add a scene at the beginning where Sharon is completely unaware of her benefactor. I also wanted to add a scene in the end to go one step further, having Sharon's mind go to Gaeta immediately although Gaeta isn't even present. First I wanted to have Baltar come over and tell her he ordered Adama to let her out of the brig but then I realized that doesn't work out in the timeline. However, introducing Helo was a better choice anyway since he gets a lot of mentions, and I could conclude the fic by way of Sharon and Helo making up. It's a fic about Sharon trying to reconnect with the world too so it would be neat to show her interacting with somebody other than Gaeta.
Then came the fun part. I divided a file into five parts, went back to "Limn" and started cheerfully copy&pasting all useful paragraphs to where I could reuse them. I'd probably never do that if I wrote in my native language but since English isn't it, this was like creating a spare parts inventory. Lots of good lines that I knew would work! All mine! No work involved on my part! Heh.
Then I did some very lazy writing. ;)
And then I did some not so lazy editing, cutting approximately a page. I think I could still go back and cut more. Actually, rebelliousrose pointed out in her review that my whole last paragraph is kind of unnecessesary (she said it very kindly of course). Excellent point. I wanted to draw the attention back on Sharon because when it comes down to it, it's still a fic about her. But it would still work without the last paragraph. Hmm. I'm not sure. I think should have cut part of the paragraph or something.
Still, while it isn't one of my best stories, I'm still quite pleased with it. It was fun not to take the usual path of remixing- like using a different POV and telling a different part of the fic- but writing the same fic again but using a different genre. It was fun to write Sharon. Actually, the very same day I wrote this remix, I also wrote a scene about Sharon for my fic collaboration with millari and I feel I did a good job with Sharon there. The remix was a great opener to get to know the character. It's like it enabled me to add Sharon to my repertory in that I now know how to write Sharon fic that I'd personally like to read, and that's always a great bonus.
And that's it. :)
Original: Eighteen Hours Later by nicole_anell
Remix: Tools of God
"Wait, who?" I asked. "Ooooh of course! She wrote that brilliant fic about Gina! I'd totally remix that one!"
Yeah right. Turned out that was her safe story. So, not so much and I first had to go and have a look at all of nicole_anell's other fic that I didn't know yet. That was very enjoyable. It's one of the great things about remix that it helps you get to know writers you haven't formerly read, so yaih! It was a rather quick decision because I wanted to give a quick answer about whether or not I could pinch hit. So I decided that I'd have to say no if absolutely no remix would come to mind immediately. But I was fortunate. I decided "Eighteen Hours Later" would be fun to write from Head!Six' POV because first of all that's an unusual and unexpected twist, and second of all, since we now know what Head!Six is about, I could take this old fic written in 2006 and update it, so to say. I could just rewrite the fic about Sharon and Baltar but have Head!Six mock them mercilessly. Both her and me cherish mockery. I also had a Plan B in case Head!Six wouldn't work out, I wanted to remix Rewind with a focus on Caprica/Lee (stranger things have happened!).
I'd never written Head!Six before apart from few scenes where she was standing in the background, smirking at Baltar. I've never encountered fic with a Head!Six POV either. So I did what I always do when I write a new character. Research!
No fic with angel!Six as a main character could be found. So first of all, I had a look around for fic that included lots of Head!Six and a version of Head!Six that I liked. falafel_musings' fic came to mind so I went over to her LJ and had a good look at the words and phrases she uses to describe Head!Six. Then I rewatched "Resurrection Ship," an episode I mostly remembered for the almost-rape of Sharon and and Grace Park's powerful acting. I vividly remember when I first watched that scene. I had a moment of "WTF I thought she's super-strong!?" but had to admit that if you perceive Sharon as a woman in our society instead of a Cylon in the Colonial society, Grace Park did an excellent job. It made me rather uncomfortable watching that scene. Up to that point in the show, I had equated Cylons with men and humans with women. This scene said to me no, not so much, BSG women are still victims and men still aren't (Tyrol and Helo weren't threatened with rape). It made me uncomfortable.
One thing I had forgotten about the episode was that it included the major bulk of Gina's story. And more importantly, I'd forgotten about Head!Six' reaction to Gina. I'd generally thought of Head!Six that she might have some affection for Gaius but ultimately, she feels she's above the humans' struggles and none of it has to do with her. She looked very much in control all the time. Especially now that we know "Daybreak," what with her being an angel and an enforcer of the divine plan. After watching "Daybreak," I'd started assuming that Head!Six only ever played with Gaius even when she made an impression that she cared. She was just frakking with him because she didn't really care about him and she probably was really bored while waiting for the grand finale.
But in "Resurrection Ship", Head!Six had this really intense, honest reaction to Gina that was so damn well played by Tricia Helfer that I couldn't believe it had just been an act. It's what I now think is one of the big flaws of the ridiculous angel!retcon. If Head!Six is an angel, then by no means would she react with "Oh God it's me" when meeting Gina. That just doesn't make any sense. She especially wouldn't start crying and acting all betrayed when Baltar uses things Head!Six told him to help Gina. Head!Six isn't Caprica, we know that now. If she is an angel, that means she isn't a Six.
Though fortunately for the remix, I was just in the process of excessively reading up on gender studies. It's never been part of my study course at all but I was currently in need to learn more about it for my thesis, so that meant diving in and getting an overview over the various theories in a very short amount of time. So that was all over my mind. Stuff like, how are identity and body connected, what makes a person themselves, rape as a loss of identity. I'd read about a story of a character losing her sense of self when s/he forgot whether she was male or female. I'd read about another story of a character who lost her sense of self when she lost her sense of time. That's probably responsible for the fact that it occured to me to have Six react in the way she does in the fic. I'm not sure how it comes across for a reader but when I wrote it, it was all about writing a little feminist manifesto. :) It's all about identity (Six identifies with Gina and Gina is powerless, and it makes Six angry because it reminds her of the fact that she's essentially powerless herself). Six identifies with Gina because they look alike but she also identifies with Sharon because they are both women. Both Sharon and Gina are in danger of being raped because they are women. Yet Six neither is a Model Six, nor is she a woman. Except she is, she has assumed a female identity the moment she took this body. It's out of her control. Her anger is very feminine, in that she is angry at Sharon for being a victim and at Gaius because she has to rely on Gaius. She can't do anything about that either. She can just try and regain her equlibrium, accept it and move on. For me, that very much is what a woman (or any member of any under-privileged group really) has to do at least to some extend. Accept it and move on. Much more so than a real woman, Six is incapable of changing anything because she has to act out God's plan.
Sooo. As you can see, even if it might not come across like that (I didn't try to make it come across like that), it's a very feminist fic for me. And I'm very pleased to have written such a story because being a fan of Helo and Gaeta, I don't get to write fic about women a lot. I don't get to write a lot of fic that passes the Bechdel test! But I did. And it was feminist, too. Hee. I took the BSG attempt of being dismissive about gender stuff and made it a fic about gender! I'm so pleased about myself for that. ;)
I'm pleased, too, about the fact that I feel I've kept the original fic intact. That what I perceive as the story of "Eighteen Hours Later"- the story of Sharon reaching out to Gaius- is still there in my remix. That makes me happy.
I did the thing again with the copy&pasting good lines for reuse, BTW. It worked the first time so I thought I'd do it again. But I think I mostly reused dialogue this time.
All in all, I participated in the remix by writing two fics and beta'ing two fics by others. I wrote two gen fics about Sharon which pleases me, I wrote about women for a change and I got to know two new characters, Sharon and Head!Six! All those things are good things. They make me glad. It was a fun challenge. :)
Now the remix written for me, Farewell Symphony by kappamaki33? Is a work of genius and if you haven't read it yet, you have to read it right away. Especially if you like music! It's about Dee and Gaeta and Hoshi and Tyrol and Helo! And Hot Dog making a list! And Chuckles writing porn! Basically it's about everybody important (well alright so Kara is important too but she gets mentions! Crucial mentions!). As you can see, it's a great fic. With an excellent score.
As a side-note, my Kara/Tyrol friendship fic How the Viper Jock Met The Choirboy was rec'ed on crack_van. That was a lovely surprise. I'd never have thought anybody would rec that fic. Then again, I wouldn't have thought Lilacs would get rec'ed either and yet it was.