sholio
in
whaleverse
Q&A for "A Clear and Different Light"
When sgabigbang offered the Big Bang writers the option of doing a promo post for our stories, naye and I knew immediately what we wanted: a Q&A! To our delight and gratitude, several people asked questions (we were terribly afraid we'd be talking to ourselves!) -- and excellent questions, too! We really enjoyed answering these, and we hope that you find our answers interesting.
lavvyan asks:
I kind of want to ask how you even got the idea, and which one of you came up with it.
The whole idea in the beginning was simply to break the canon characters' brains. *g* This was originally what the story was supposed to be about; we had no idea that the AU would take off like it did and become the story. We were using the "encounters with alternate universes" prompt for sgabigbang, and we tossed around two different ideas, one where the Wraith invade Earth, and one where our team runs into a version of the Stargateverse where everyone has/is magic. We went with the second because it seemed like it would be much more fun -- less depressing -- and an absolute joy to build.
All we started with in the beginning was the idea of adding magic to the canonverse and seeing what happened. We also wanted to make things suck as much as possible for canon Rodney -- who would be trying to use his scientific brain to make sense of the place, poor guy -- which is why AU Rodney had to be as different from canon Rodney as possible. The original idea was to make him a dryad, but then someone typed "whale rider" in chat, and it was all downhill from there. *g* Our whole plan for the story in the beginning was simply: "How can we make canon Rodney cry?"
Also, I know you had planned to make this gen, so I'd like to know which scene it was that made you realise you were, in fact, writing McKay/Sheppard. :D
The scene that actually pushed us into full-fledged slashdom doesn't exist anymore; it was cut. But it had been building for a long time. The farther we got into the story, the slower our progress was, and the more we felt as if we were doing something wrong. Like you phrased it in your question, it wasn't so much a conscious decision to start writing McKay/Sheppard, but more the realization that we were already doing it.
The deleted scene was part of an entire deleted sequence where "our" (canon) team meets the AU Whaleverse team. There were huge, momentous events swirling around them -- AU John is missing, the Wraith are coming, etc. -- and, in lieu of actual plot, we ended up with this long sequence where AU Rodney is on the beach just staring at a wet, dripping canon John. And that was the point where we realized, "This is not gen, dammit!" We came to the conclusion independently, and tossed it out in chat, and were amazed and relieved to find the other person thinking exactly the same thing.
One way of looking at the problem is that we'd taken probably the hottest possible versions of the two boys (naked, tanned, wet swimmer Rodney; long-haired, earring-wearing, rebel mage John) and, being two heterosexual women, had been accidentally describing them with a female gaze, from a limited third-person male POV. The end result is that these characters were spending WAY too much time staring at each others' naked chests and long curling nape-of-neck hair for a couple of heterosexual guys. And it all came to a head (so to speak) in that beach scene, when the unreasonable intensity of Rodney's apparent fixation on John -- unreasonable, that is, for two people who are supposed to be platonic friends -- came to the surface.
Oh, and! The whales, do they usually take an interest in humans? Rodney seems to be just about the only one who can understand them (except for Ronon and the Satedan script thing), so why were they hanging around Atlantis anyway (apologies if I just managed to miss that somehow)?
Just as humans enjoy whale-watching, whales enjoy human-watching. *g* They may not understand all of what they see, but they're very curious about what goes on in the dry. Also, they live a long time. Atlantis has been pretty dull lately, but they remember when it was lively and bustling, and they keep coming around in the hopes that things will get interesting again.
winter_elf asks:
I LOVED the idea of how the wraith possessed people/moved about/oily/etc. That was just too cool for words. So, curious on what prompted that idea.
Thank you! ^_^ We went back to the original root concept of wraiths: apparitions, ghosts, freaky non-corporeal entities. We wanted Wraith that were really, truly scary, and powerful/creepy enough to be a serious threat in a universe where so many people have magical abilities. In order to be that intimidating to people who can create protection circles and throw fireballs, they had to be more than just big scary monsters. We kept expanding and adding to their powers as we wrote the early Wraith scenes, coming up with the idea of Wraith possession, the idea that they can go through wards and that they taint whatever they touch, until we ended up with a creature that's terrifyingly powerful and that everyone in Pegasus just wants to stay the hell away from.
Also, love magic in general, so how hard was it to write the magic aspects - or what did you look at for inspiration?
It wasn't hard at all; in some ways the story kind of wrote itself! Basically, we took lots of random bits and pieces from things we've read (and games we've played!), with copious unrelated imagination and plotting. A lot of the inspiration was unconscious, but became apparent as we worked out various scenes. We owe a particular debt to the Shadowrun/Earthdawn RPGs, Jim Butcher's Dresden Files books, Roger Zelazny's Amber, and Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman's Death Gate Cycle, plus a dash of Celtic myth with the Ancients=faeries thing. This is essentially a conglomeration of many of the magic systems we've read about, all distilled into something that makes sense with the Stargateverse.
jadesfire2808 asks:
This may sound like a kind of odd question, but I was wondering if you knew in your own heads what happened in the 'off-camera' time, during which John settles into Pegasus and does all the snooping that you tell us he does - I know that if you'd included it you wouldn't so much as had a novel as a series of novels, but I just wondered if *you* knew what happened. Was it the kind of adventures we see on the screen, or was it a bit lower key than that?
Our summation of that period in our chats is basically "... and then a really boring year goes by". *g*
We had decided that most of what happens in the first season of canon doesn't happen here. No Genii -- though we have the idea that they're out there somewhere, still waiting to be discovered. The Wraith didn't become a problem immediately, and Atlantis was supplied regularly from Earth. Basically, the first "season" consisted of John settling in and getting to know everyone, and Earth starting to open up trade negotiations with the Pegasus Galaxy, and that's about as far as we went with our plotting. Also, this time period was originally supposed to cover three years (putting us about contemporary with late season 3/early season 4 in the canonverse), but we shortened it to one year because SO little happens that we figured three boring years was really a bit too much!
There's still plenty of potential for stories -- John getting in trouble for asking questions, the "team" getting to know each other -- but we didn't work out the specifics; we just had an idea that no major, earthshaking events happened. This is one area that we may expand upon in side stories, as in this short fic that naye wrote.
jimandblair asks:
How do you perceive the whales? You went with mammals rather than the large fish (Flagisallus spp.; c.f. ‘Echoes’), was that a conscious decision? And are we talking Humpback or Killer Whale scales?
We definitely wanted them to be mammals, though we didn't consciously realize it until we'd been writing them for a while and came to the conclusion that we were definitely writing them as mammalian air-breathers. They're more along the lines of humpbacks in size and general appearance.
The Whales’ telepathic method of communication, why do you think only Rodney can telepath the whales: his genius; his propensity to manipulate math or an innate skill?
The whales got to him during a critical period in his brain development, like the way that humans have a critical period for language development (and it may actually use similar parts of the brain). Jeannie didn't have as much exposure to the whales as a small child, so she never really got it the way Rodney did. Theoretically, any child could learn, but they'd have to be around the whales a lot as a baby, and they'd need to keep exercising that part of their brain or they'd slowly lose the ability as they aged. Swimming with whales for a few weeks as a toddler wouldn't do it.
The Whales sing… so do they have a spoken language?
No, though it's possible that their songs have symbolic meaning (as instrumental music often does on Earth). They sing because they enjoy it, and because it helps them collect mathematical data on the ocean; they're not precisely sonar-based, but they can use it that way. And it's a social activity for them, too.
trystings asks:
I'd love to know more about the writing/collaborating process. The fic is so cohesive and in one style, I can't tell it was written by two people. How did you manage that?
Um ... whale magic, apparently. *g* Even we were surprised at how well it worked out. We really got lucky, because our writing styles turned out to mesh wonderfully (even our betas, who know both of us personally, couldn't tell who wrote what) and we both had compatible ideas for how the story should develop. Editing undoubtedly helped -- both of us edited each others' parts of the story as we went along, and we both, of course, had our betas doing line-level edits on our phrasing and word choices, which probably smoothed and streamlined the end product. (Our betas were unbelievable. Our betas sent us 10,000 words of edits -- not counting the words they were commenting on!)
Anonymous asks:
In canon there are other surviving Satedans--does Whaleverse have other Satedan refugees somewhere offscreen, or is Ronon the last living Satedan?
Actually, any backstory on Ronon would be great; what the fall of Sateda was like, for example.
We were actually a little reluctant to make the Satedans winged, because the whole idea of an entire race of winged Satedans with aerial cities was so completely awesome that we didn't want them to all be dead!
Luckily, in canon, there are quite a few other surviving Satedans to play with, including the 300 from "Trinity" that have since been, apparently, completely forgotten by canon. When we were answering these questions in chat, we immediately went to a "Yay! Satedan survivors! Wings! Cliff cities!" kind of place, so if we do decide to a sequel to the story, this is quite likely the form it will take. But our basic idea is that yes, some Satedans did survive (because they are simply too cool to kill off) and that, because of the Wraith, they've been in deep hiding ever since.
In the story, Ronon hints at what the fall of Sateda was like in the Whaleverse -- the Wraith broke into a "feeding frenzy" just like they started to do on Atlantis, and killed or tore apart every living thing on the planet. The residual taint so completely poisoned the air, water and soil that life still has not begun to grow back. As in our universe, Ronon was made into a Runner -- the Whaleverse Wraith, with their focus on negative emotions, are even more interested in Runners than canon Wraith -- but he wasn't a Runner for nearly as long; Teyla and the Athosians rescued him after only a year or two, and the fact that he's still sane after everything the Wraith no doubt put him through is a testament to his inner strength.
We imagine Sateda as a place that was designed for fliers, with many spires and perches; a city where the traffic is in the air, not on the streets.
usomitai asks:
I'd love to know more about your writing/collaboration process. :) How did you divy up the writing? Was there problems in different writing styles-- if so, how did you work that out? If not, any particular reason why? What resources did you use to write together (google docs, swapping word docs through email attachments, sitting together with pen and paper)? And how much/in what way did you two plot the story? Any interesting anecdtores/explanations about the process?
The vast majority of the writing was done in a single .txt file that we swapped back and forth. Our time zones are almost completely inverted, which, aside from the occasional difficulty of scheduling chats, worked out beautifully for collaboration -- one of us would work on the document until she went to bed, and then would send it off to the other person. We always made sure that we knew who had the document, because we didn't just add new text, but also made revisions to the existing text! We only had one "oops!" moment where the changed version didn't get passed along and we accidentally reverted to an old version of the document, but luckily we were able to find and re-create all of the changes. *g*
We did the plotting in chat sessions. We didn't start with an outline; we basically plotted as we went, writing for a little while and then going back to chat to work out the next bit of story. As we got closer to the end and the shape of the story became more apparent, the chat sessions became more infrequent since we both had an idea of where we were going. And there were emails. Tons and tons of emails. *g*
Usually one of us would write until she ran out of inspiration or had to knock off for the evening, so very often this meant that the other person would pick up in the middle of a scene. There were times when we divvied up the writing tasks by scene ("Okay, I'll write the John-torture scene, while you write the Teyla on Atlantis scene") but more often, we both worked on almost every scene. This is probably a large part of what makes the end product so seamless; even we have trouble remembering who wrote what parts!
kristen999 asks:
How did you guys come up with the idea to give Ronon wings? It really worked, but for me it was such an interesting gift.
Thank you! We gave Ronon wings because we wanted someone in the story to have wings and neither of us could ever remember reading a winged-Ronon story before. We've seen quite a few winged-John stories and an occasional winged-Rodney story or two, but Ronon never gets them, and the idea of bird-of-prey wings was so gorgeous and perfect for him. The only problem we had was that we so thoroughly loved the idea of winged Satedans that we didn't want all of them to be dead! But they might not be ... see the answer to the Sateda question above. *g*
Naye said the original ending was far more complex than what you guys wrote...what was it? :-P
Originally, the whole story was supposed to be about "our" canon team encountering the AU team. The scene in the finished story where Rodney and Jeannie build the portal was originally much longer and more complex, and ended with Rodney opening a portal to the canonverse. However, once we actually started writing that part, we realized two things:
1- Trying to keep two complete teams straight in the narration, and trying to write scenes that consisted of a minimum of 8 characters at once (some of whom had the same name and personality) was HORRIBLE. *g* It broke our brains every time we tried it.
2- We'd just spent about 50,000 words developing the AU team, and then introducing the canon team suddenly threw the spotlight onto them. It made the story feel very disjointed and incoherent. It was originally intended as the canon team's story with a large side dish of AU team, but it ended up being the AU team's story, so we reluctantly cut the canon team out of it completely. Considering that we went ahead and wrote another 40,000 words or so just to wrap up what we already had, we shudder to think how long it would have been if we'd kept the canon team in there!
When did you guys realize you were going to write slash? I had forgotten the genre rating and the story read gen to me all the way to the climax scene in the chair room...so was it at that point or earlier?
We have a more detailed response to this particular question in our answers to lavvyan's questions, but the tipping point for us was the point where the canon and AU teams met. We both felt at that point that we weren't writing them in a gen kind of way, and that we hadn't been doing so for a long time. It was a tremendous relief to finally realize and accept this, because we'd been struggling very hard to keep the story gen (it's somewhat difficult when your protagonists are running around wet and half-naked all the time! *g*) and our progress on the story had been grinding to a halt -- when we finally threw up our hands and said, "All right, it's slash, it's slash!" it took off again; the creative blocks that had been making us stall out weren't there anymore.
It's interesting how perception influences the reading experience; we both saw slashiness in the story where there wasn't supposed to be any, even before getting to the point where we were consciously trying to develop it. Of course, we're both primarily gen writers, so it's not too surprising that our one big stab at writing slash would come out very gen-like, and since we, of course, are too close to the story to see it with anything approaching objectivity, it's completely fascinating to get an outsider's-eye view of the end result.
That's all of the questions, and thank you again to everyone who answered our Q&A post! We really appreciate it, and we loved having the opportunity to chat about our story. (We also kind of started plotting a sequel in chat, while we were answering the questions. Er. Oops?)
Also, before you go, don't forget to check out greyias's review too! We're still blushing. *blushes*
lavvyan asks:
I kind of want to ask how you even got the idea, and which one of you came up with it.
The whole idea in the beginning was simply to break the canon characters' brains. *g* This was originally what the story was supposed to be about; we had no idea that the AU would take off like it did and become the story. We were using the "encounters with alternate universes" prompt for sgabigbang, and we tossed around two different ideas, one where the Wraith invade Earth, and one where our team runs into a version of the Stargateverse where everyone has/is magic. We went with the second because it seemed like it would be much more fun -- less depressing -- and an absolute joy to build.
All we started with in the beginning was the idea of adding magic to the canonverse and seeing what happened. We also wanted to make things suck as much as possible for canon Rodney -- who would be trying to use his scientific brain to make sense of the place, poor guy -- which is why AU Rodney had to be as different from canon Rodney as possible. The original idea was to make him a dryad, but then someone typed "whale rider" in chat, and it was all downhill from there. *g* Our whole plan for the story in the beginning was simply: "How can we make canon Rodney cry?"
Also, I know you had planned to make this gen, so I'd like to know which scene it was that made you realise you were, in fact, writing McKay/Sheppard. :D
The scene that actually pushed us into full-fledged slashdom doesn't exist anymore; it was cut. But it had been building for a long time. The farther we got into the story, the slower our progress was, and the more we felt as if we were doing something wrong. Like you phrased it in your question, it wasn't so much a conscious decision to start writing McKay/Sheppard, but more the realization that we were already doing it.
The deleted scene was part of an entire deleted sequence where "our" (canon) team meets the AU Whaleverse team. There were huge, momentous events swirling around them -- AU John is missing, the Wraith are coming, etc. -- and, in lieu of actual plot, we ended up with this long sequence where AU Rodney is on the beach just staring at a wet, dripping canon John. And that was the point where we realized, "This is not gen, dammit!" We came to the conclusion independently, and tossed it out in chat, and were amazed and relieved to find the other person thinking exactly the same thing.
One way of looking at the problem is that we'd taken probably the hottest possible versions of the two boys (naked, tanned, wet swimmer Rodney; long-haired, earring-wearing, rebel mage John) and, being two heterosexual women, had been accidentally describing them with a female gaze, from a limited third-person male POV. The end result is that these characters were spending WAY too much time staring at each others' naked chests and long curling nape-of-neck hair for a couple of heterosexual guys. And it all came to a head (so to speak) in that beach scene, when the unreasonable intensity of Rodney's apparent fixation on John -- unreasonable, that is, for two people who are supposed to be platonic friends -- came to the surface.
Oh, and! The whales, do they usually take an interest in humans? Rodney seems to be just about the only one who can understand them (except for Ronon and the Satedan script thing), so why were they hanging around Atlantis anyway (apologies if I just managed to miss that somehow)?
Just as humans enjoy whale-watching, whales enjoy human-watching. *g* They may not understand all of what they see, but they're very curious about what goes on in the dry. Also, they live a long time. Atlantis has been pretty dull lately, but they remember when it was lively and bustling, and they keep coming around in the hopes that things will get interesting again.
winter_elf asks:
I LOVED the idea of how the wraith possessed people/moved about/oily/etc. That was just too cool for words. So, curious on what prompted that idea.
Thank you! ^_^ We went back to the original root concept of wraiths: apparitions, ghosts, freaky non-corporeal entities. We wanted Wraith that were really, truly scary, and powerful/creepy enough to be a serious threat in a universe where so many people have magical abilities. In order to be that intimidating to people who can create protection circles and throw fireballs, they had to be more than just big scary monsters. We kept expanding and adding to their powers as we wrote the early Wraith scenes, coming up with the idea of Wraith possession, the idea that they can go through wards and that they taint whatever they touch, until we ended up with a creature that's terrifyingly powerful and that everyone in Pegasus just wants to stay the hell away from.
Also, love magic in general, so how hard was it to write the magic aspects - or what did you look at for inspiration?
It wasn't hard at all; in some ways the story kind of wrote itself! Basically, we took lots of random bits and pieces from things we've read (and games we've played!), with copious unrelated imagination and plotting. A lot of the inspiration was unconscious, but became apparent as we worked out various scenes. We owe a particular debt to the Shadowrun/Earthdawn RPGs, Jim Butcher's Dresden Files books, Roger Zelazny's Amber, and Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman's Death Gate Cycle, plus a dash of Celtic myth with the Ancients=faeries thing. This is essentially a conglomeration of many of the magic systems we've read about, all distilled into something that makes sense with the Stargateverse.
jadesfire2808 asks:
This may sound like a kind of odd question, but I was wondering if you knew in your own heads what happened in the 'off-camera' time, during which John settles into Pegasus and does all the snooping that you tell us he does - I know that if you'd included it you wouldn't so much as had a novel as a series of novels, but I just wondered if *you* knew what happened. Was it the kind of adventures we see on the screen, or was it a bit lower key than that?
Our summation of that period in our chats is basically "... and then a really boring year goes by". *g*
We had decided that most of what happens in the first season of canon doesn't happen here. No Genii -- though we have the idea that they're out there somewhere, still waiting to be discovered. The Wraith didn't become a problem immediately, and Atlantis was supplied regularly from Earth. Basically, the first "season" consisted of John settling in and getting to know everyone, and Earth starting to open up trade negotiations with the Pegasus Galaxy, and that's about as far as we went with our plotting. Also, this time period was originally supposed to cover three years (putting us about contemporary with late season 3/early season 4 in the canonverse), but we shortened it to one year because SO little happens that we figured three boring years was really a bit too much!
There's still plenty of potential for stories -- John getting in trouble for asking questions, the "team" getting to know each other -- but we didn't work out the specifics; we just had an idea that no major, earthshaking events happened. This is one area that we may expand upon in side stories, as in this short fic that naye wrote.
jimandblair asks:
How do you perceive the whales? You went with mammals rather than the large fish (Flagisallus spp.; c.f. ‘Echoes’), was that a conscious decision? And are we talking Humpback or Killer Whale scales?
We definitely wanted them to be mammals, though we didn't consciously realize it until we'd been writing them for a while and came to the conclusion that we were definitely writing them as mammalian air-breathers. They're more along the lines of humpbacks in size and general appearance.
The Whales’ telepathic method of communication, why do you think only Rodney can telepath the whales: his genius; his propensity to manipulate math or an innate skill?
The whales got to him during a critical period in his brain development, like the way that humans have a critical period for language development (and it may actually use similar parts of the brain). Jeannie didn't have as much exposure to the whales as a small child, so she never really got it the way Rodney did. Theoretically, any child could learn, but they'd have to be around the whales a lot as a baby, and they'd need to keep exercising that part of their brain or they'd slowly lose the ability as they aged. Swimming with whales for a few weeks as a toddler wouldn't do it.
The Whales sing… so do they have a spoken language?
No, though it's possible that their songs have symbolic meaning (as instrumental music often does on Earth). They sing because they enjoy it, and because it helps them collect mathematical data on the ocean; they're not precisely sonar-based, but they can use it that way. And it's a social activity for them, too.
trystings asks:
I'd love to know more about the writing/collaborating process. The fic is so cohesive and in one style, I can't tell it was written by two people. How did you manage that?
Um ... whale magic, apparently. *g* Even we were surprised at how well it worked out. We really got lucky, because our writing styles turned out to mesh wonderfully (even our betas, who know both of us personally, couldn't tell who wrote what) and we both had compatible ideas for how the story should develop. Editing undoubtedly helped -- both of us edited each others' parts of the story as we went along, and we both, of course, had our betas doing line-level edits on our phrasing and word choices, which probably smoothed and streamlined the end product. (Our betas were unbelievable. Our betas sent us 10,000 words of edits -- not counting the words they were commenting on!)
Anonymous asks:
In canon there are other surviving Satedans--does Whaleverse have other Satedan refugees somewhere offscreen, or is Ronon the last living Satedan?
Actually, any backstory on Ronon would be great; what the fall of Sateda was like, for example.
We were actually a little reluctant to make the Satedans winged, because the whole idea of an entire race of winged Satedans with aerial cities was so completely awesome that we didn't want them to all be dead!
Luckily, in canon, there are quite a few other surviving Satedans to play with, including the 300 from "Trinity" that have since been, apparently, completely forgotten by canon. When we were answering these questions in chat, we immediately went to a "Yay! Satedan survivors! Wings! Cliff cities!" kind of place, so if we do decide to a sequel to the story, this is quite likely the form it will take. But our basic idea is that yes, some Satedans did survive (because they are simply too cool to kill off) and that, because of the Wraith, they've been in deep hiding ever since.
In the story, Ronon hints at what the fall of Sateda was like in the Whaleverse -- the Wraith broke into a "feeding frenzy" just like they started to do on Atlantis, and killed or tore apart every living thing on the planet. The residual taint so completely poisoned the air, water and soil that life still has not begun to grow back. As in our universe, Ronon was made into a Runner -- the Whaleverse Wraith, with their focus on negative emotions, are even more interested in Runners than canon Wraith -- but he wasn't a Runner for nearly as long; Teyla and the Athosians rescued him after only a year or two, and the fact that he's still sane after everything the Wraith no doubt put him through is a testament to his inner strength.
We imagine Sateda as a place that was designed for fliers, with many spires and perches; a city where the traffic is in the air, not on the streets.
usomitai asks:
I'd love to know more about your writing/collaboration process. :) How did you divy up the writing? Was there problems in different writing styles-- if so, how did you work that out? If not, any particular reason why? What resources did you use to write together (google docs, swapping word docs through email attachments, sitting together with pen and paper)? And how much/in what way did you two plot the story? Any interesting anecdtores/explanations about the process?
The vast majority of the writing was done in a single .txt file that we swapped back and forth. Our time zones are almost completely inverted, which, aside from the occasional difficulty of scheduling chats, worked out beautifully for collaboration -- one of us would work on the document until she went to bed, and then would send it off to the other person. We always made sure that we knew who had the document, because we didn't just add new text, but also made revisions to the existing text! We only had one "oops!" moment where the changed version didn't get passed along and we accidentally reverted to an old version of the document, but luckily we were able to find and re-create all of the changes. *g*
We did the plotting in chat sessions. We didn't start with an outline; we basically plotted as we went, writing for a little while and then going back to chat to work out the next bit of story. As we got closer to the end and the shape of the story became more apparent, the chat sessions became more infrequent since we both had an idea of where we were going. And there were emails. Tons and tons of emails. *g*
Usually one of us would write until she ran out of inspiration or had to knock off for the evening, so very often this meant that the other person would pick up in the middle of a scene. There were times when we divvied up the writing tasks by scene ("Okay, I'll write the John-torture scene, while you write the Teyla on Atlantis scene") but more often, we both worked on almost every scene. This is probably a large part of what makes the end product so seamless; even we have trouble remembering who wrote what parts!
kristen999 asks:
How did you guys come up with the idea to give Ronon wings? It really worked, but for me it was such an interesting gift.
Thank you! We gave Ronon wings because we wanted someone in the story to have wings and neither of us could ever remember reading a winged-Ronon story before. We've seen quite a few winged-John stories and an occasional winged-Rodney story or two, but Ronon never gets them, and the idea of bird-of-prey wings was so gorgeous and perfect for him. The only problem we had was that we so thoroughly loved the idea of winged Satedans that we didn't want all of them to be dead! But they might not be ... see the answer to the Sateda question above. *g*
Naye said the original ending was far more complex than what you guys wrote...what was it? :-P
Originally, the whole story was supposed to be about "our" canon team encountering the AU team. The scene in the finished story where Rodney and Jeannie build the portal was originally much longer and more complex, and ended with Rodney opening a portal to the canonverse. However, once we actually started writing that part, we realized two things:
1- Trying to keep two complete teams straight in the narration, and trying to write scenes that consisted of a minimum of 8 characters at once (some of whom had the same name and personality) was HORRIBLE. *g* It broke our brains every time we tried it.
2- We'd just spent about 50,000 words developing the AU team, and then introducing the canon team suddenly threw the spotlight onto them. It made the story feel very disjointed and incoherent. It was originally intended as the canon team's story with a large side dish of AU team, but it ended up being the AU team's story, so we reluctantly cut the canon team out of it completely. Considering that we went ahead and wrote another 40,000 words or so just to wrap up what we already had, we shudder to think how long it would have been if we'd kept the canon team in there!
When did you guys realize you were going to write slash? I had forgotten the genre rating and the story read gen to me all the way to the climax scene in the chair room...so was it at that point or earlier?
We have a more detailed response to this particular question in our answers to lavvyan's questions, but the tipping point for us was the point where the canon and AU teams met. We both felt at that point that we weren't writing them in a gen kind of way, and that we hadn't been doing so for a long time. It was a tremendous relief to finally realize and accept this, because we'd been struggling very hard to keep the story gen (it's somewhat difficult when your protagonists are running around wet and half-naked all the time! *g*) and our progress on the story had been grinding to a halt -- when we finally threw up our hands and said, "All right, it's slash, it's slash!" it took off again; the creative blocks that had been making us stall out weren't there anymore.
It's interesting how perception influences the reading experience; we both saw slashiness in the story where there wasn't supposed to be any, even before getting to the point where we were consciously trying to develop it. Of course, we're both primarily gen writers, so it's not too surprising that our one big stab at writing slash would come out very gen-like, and since we, of course, are too close to the story to see it with anything approaching objectivity, it's completely fascinating to get an outsider's-eye view of the end result.
That's all of the questions, and thank you again to everyone who answered our Q&A post! We really appreciate it, and we loved having the opportunity to chat about our story. (We also kind of started plotting a sequel in chat, while we were answering the questions. Er. Oops?)
Also, before you go, don't forget to check out greyias's review too! We're still blushing. *blushes*