Comments | honeylocusttree: Fic (sort of): Avalon, PG; Gabriel, various angels

honeylocusttree

Fic (sort of): Avalon, PG; Gabriel, various angels

Sep 06, 2012 19:41

Avalon

Warnings: Confusing near-meta, science given precedence over religion, made-up terminology, angels travelling at light speed, lots and lots of talking and almost zero plot/action. Also language? Eventually.
Summary: Gabriel visits the material plane and spreads some funky new ideas among the Host. Then he leaves, and things get weird.

Notes ( Read more... )

lilith, gabriel, raphael, catiel, fic

Comments 10

claudiapriscus September 7 2012, 00:46:57 UTC

This is really, really *clever*. MY first reaction was to call it awesome, but really, we call everything amusing in fandom awesome, and this goes beyond that. It's fundamentally /clever/, and that is a far rarer thing. You write so well to begin with, but the perspective you put on this, the way you imagined the angels and the universe and the perception of angels and the perceptions of living creatures...and working in the free will thing...cool. I just really, really liked it. It's nifty.

honeylocusttree September 7 2012, 01:14:14 UTC

I never know what to do with stuff like this, because left to its own devices my brain just wants to make everything I write about consciousness and the nature of reality. This isn't the first time that's happened...but at least I learned a lot in writing this, especially in terms of the timescale involved here. It's on e of those things I know cerebrally, but it's different when you think of an entity hanging around hundreds of million or even billions of years, suddenly that time becomes a living thing. It's amazing. And I know more now than I did when I started writing it (at 3:30 yesterday WTF) so I guess it worked out ( ... )

antrazi September 7 2012, 12:51:56 UTC

This is great. Strange in a positive way. So totally different, and you gave the angels so much more substance (hm, wrong word in this context, but you know what I mean) and it really explained why Gabriel decided on leaving his siblings for the material world.

honeylocusttree September 7 2012, 16:58:49 UTC

I definitely had only minimal control over what happened in this thing, but I really was interested in exploring the angels as noncorporeal lifeforms. Because science fiction! Eee! So I'm glad that the way they're depicted here felt substantive to you. Thanks for reading my mad meanderings, I'm so happy you enjoyed it!

rokhal September 7 2012, 16:45:06 UTC

Okay, how do I put this.

You taught me to be humble as a single isolated brief consciousness arising from a matter body, the same class of being as an annelid or a flatworm or whatever kind of critter a spriggina is. You taught me to be proud as a consciousness that questions and extrapolates and reaches beyond itself to explore higher planes it has no physical access to. You came up with an actual explanation for the whole destiny/free will dilemma. You show us what it means for a higher being to look down and take joy in a physical creature.

And plus the research. Holy crap. I'm glad you're writing. You're awesome.

honeylocusttree September 7 2012, 17:05:37 UTC

I thought this might appeal to you. ;) This turned out to be a lot more of an undertaking than I meant it to be, and the free will thing was not originally part of the plan. My brain likes to bash out those questions and answers every chance it gets, for some reason, but it was nice that it seemed to actually fit really well and make sense. I came really close to putting something in about how consciousness is a kind of decision engine for defining reality, but that's a bit too metaphysical and I don't know that there's any evidence for it, so I decided to leave it open-ended. I do think there's more to the story than just 'hey, consciousness exists, yay.' Recently a whole bunch of scientists declared that a lot of animals actually have consciousness as well, and that's pretty striking ( ... )

monicawoe September 7 2012, 20:11:38 UTC

This is awesome! I love how you show Gabriel evolve - become more and more himself just by learning how to exist separate from the Host.
The last section with Lilith was fabulous. Very, very cool!

honeylocusttree September 7 2012, 20:40:19 UTC

I like the idea that the angels were somehow 'contaminated' by dimensionally different lifeforms. And I was unfortunately t able to get to the whole 'I'm going to punish the jerks of the world' phase of his psychological development, so I worried his characterization rang a bit OOC. Glad to see it worked for you! I really do want to like Gabriel more, and having him be the most sympathetic of all the angels made me happy.

Thank you so much, really glad you enjoyed this!

(The comment has been removed)

honeylocusttree September 8 2012, 01:17:19 UTC

I don't know where the free will argument came from, I just turned around and there it was. But it did seem to fit well. One thing I don't think the show ever explored was what the significance of the free will issue was. Maybe overcoming one's own parental programming? Or something? Or humanity over supernatural interference, I suppose. But I always want to make things more complicated. And I feel like I articulated some of the issues I have with spiritual practices promoting the idea of oneness with the cosmos. I mean it's a nice idea in theory and has a lot of benefits, but is the ultimate goal really worthwhile? And now I have to wonder, and the answer is I don't know ( ... )