better late than--
Can you still do this meme if you haven't posted anything in...[meep] six months?!
Pick any passage of 500 words or less from any fanfic I’ve written, and stick that selection in my ask/fan mail. I will then give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what’s ( Read more... )
Pick any passage of 500 words or less from any fanfic I’ve written, and stick that selection in my ask/fan mail. I will then give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what’s ( Read more... )
Comments 14
The hungry child from the train platform has taken Brad by the hand. She leads him through the aisles, between the beds, but the far wall of the hospital is gone, bombed out. He tries to stop her, to explain that it’s not safe, but he doesn’t know the words in German and she is so strong. Her feet are on the very edge of the torn floor, one more step and she will pull them both over, into the open air and-Nate. When Brad opens his eyes, he sees Nate, smiling fondly down at him ( ... )
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I wrote this opening to be disorienting, but not immediately so. It picks up after a section break, we’re still in the Soviet hospital and it refers to the child who was a semi-distinct character in an earlier section. Brad’s initial reaction (threat assessment) is as you would expect. Basically, I wanted it to seem like maybe this is really happening-until the reader starts to wonder why the hospital has suddenly been bombed, where this child came from, how she found Brad. It is meant to become increasingly implausible…
Her feet are on the very edge of the torn floor, one more step and she will pull them both over, into the open air and-Nate. When Brad opens his eyes, he sees Nate, smiling fondly down at him.Until [smash-cut] we realize it’s ( ... )
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Thanks for talking about the reason you chose Dream trope. It worked so well in this. Brad definitely does not have external tells, but this let us see what was going on with him. I hadn't thought about it that way before.
In response to other news, I have had falling dreams before... so interesting! I really want to find a good dreams dictionary.
But the bigger part is that Nate is honestly not surprised Brad made his way across
a wartorn country to find him. He always knew Brad would come.
Perfection. ♥
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Comprehension dawns on the Reporter’s face. “You were mis-informed!”
That’s not exactly how Brad would put it, but he’s already tired of the conversation. “Sure, okay.”
“No! It’s like…Have you ever seen Casablanca? Somebody asks Rick-that’s Humphrey Bogart’s character-how he ended up in Casablanca. And Rick says, My health. I came for the waters. And then the other character says…” the Reporter is now excitedly sketching the whole scene with his hands, “What waters? We’re in the desert! And then Rick says-totally deadpan, Bogart is great- I was mis-informed.” Rolling Stone looks delighted by this punchline and Brad wonders if the guy thinks in terms of storylines and good dialogue all the time, if that’s what it means to be a writer. He wonders what movie the Reporter has mentally cast them all in. Probably something suitable for John Wayne.
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Comprehension dawns on the Reporter’s face. “You were mis-informed!”
That’s not exactly how Brad would put it, but he’s already tired of the conversation. “Sure, okay.”
I’m not sure where the idea for this story came from. Doesn’t fit with the rest of my GK stories, or really with the rest of the fandom, really. It is a story about miscommunications and misinformation: everyone is talking, and no one succeeds in actually explaining or understanding anything. Brad has climbed under his vehicle just to get away from the damn noise…
“No! It’s like…Have you ever seen Casablanca? Somebody asks Rick-that’s Humphrey Bogart’s character-how he ended up in Casablanca. And Rick says, My health. I came for the waters. And then the other character says…” the Reporter is now excitedly sketching the whole scene with his hands, “What waters? We’re in the desert! And then Rick says-totally deadpan, Bogart is great- I was ( ... )
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From Landmarks in Space:
The article is little more than a compilation of other news clips, but it becomes evident that over the years, the Core Council had filled its mid-level positions with the disgruntled and disenfranchised. Just goes to show the value of keeping your friends close and putting your enemies out the airlock, since several of these disgruntled bureaucrats had been lying in wait, biding their time until something came along to destabilize the council. That something had been a report about a distant planet named Miranda, where the Alliance had made a terrible mistake. The exact source of what the press is calling the Miranda Memo is still unknown-it had been broadcast from some sort of multi-band signal satellite-but maintaining public support outside while fighting numerous internecine enemies from the inside had proven too much for the Alliance. (Serenity’s ( ... )
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“Like a cup!”
Mal waits a moment to see if River’s comment will make more sense given time.
Mal does this a lot.
Nope. “How’s that, little one?”
River looks at him like they have never met. “Where’s Zoe?” she asks.
This is what conversations with River are like. Mal is really curious: how is the Alliance like a cup--not big, not intricate, not machine-like or dangerous? But River has already jumped on to something else. Later in this story, Mal will describe her as having “a brain like a busted clock.” River’s mind is the real vast, intricate machine in this story, and what was once a beautifully complex mechanism now functions erratically. You never know when she’s going to spit out something brilliant (or something that would be brilliant if we knew the whole story) or when she’s just talking nonsense.
“River, the captain asked you a question,” Simon interjects. He glances over the top of his paper and might have pursued it, except that Zoe enters right then. Oh ( ... )
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The cup-one of a decorative set given to Inara by an admirer-shatters in a spray of tea. They never really get the stain out of the tablecloth and the whole crew is left picking up random glass slivers for days. Between the cursing and the mopping, Mal never does get an answer to his question.Do I need to say that the shattered cup is the one River was referring to when she compared the Alliance to a cup? I really agonized over that question and re-wrote the scene a few different ways. Is it too obvious? Too subtle? Too unclear? Does the punchline, as it were, come too long after River initially introduces the idea of a cup? Firefly fans are generally pretty close readers, so in the end, I left it. If you make the connection, it shows that River’s comments often do make sense, they just tend to operate out of sequence (I explored more of this in another of my Firefly stories, Prep for a Flight). She mentions the cup, as she asks for Zoe, before those things become relevant. The right answer, but at the wrong time, and so no ( ... )
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