Remix reveals (and meta)
Apr. 29th, 2012 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiroseThey came out earlier than I expected! Especially for the Madness ficlets.
Anyway, I wrote the following fics:
* In Learning (The Hula Hoop Remix) for Framlingem, my assignment. It's Star Trek (2009), aka Star Trek Reboot, and it's Amanda, thinking about learning. (It's a remix of her "Guide", which can pretty much be summed up the same way.)
* Heard the Truth of Myths and Legends (The Remix of the Knight's Daughter) for livii as a pinch hit. It's Doctor Who (1963), a remix of "The History of the Kings of Britain", which has to do with Ancelyn and Bambera, two one-shot characters from the 7th Doctor story "Battlefield" (and probably my Doctor Who OTP). This being me, I ended up with a story about Ancelyn talking to his eldest child about Merlin.
* Cute as a Lion (The Youngest Son Remix) for mousapelli, a remix of an untitled Kyou Kara Maou! ficlet of hers for Madness. Both of them have to do with Cheri and her memories of a very, very young Wolfram.
* The People on the Balcony (The Lone Girl Remix) for lost_spook in Madness. Her story was about Sapphire, Steel and Silver and their relationship with each other; mine was that of an outside observer viewing the same scene and her take on it.
Two of my fics got remixed, too: "All the Riches (Crab Canon Remix)" was written by Revieloutionne, and "Hitori Jyanai (The Six-week Rule Remix)" was written, funnily enough, by mousapelli. (Why I am so amused: Not only did we remix each other, but both "Hikari Saseba" and "Hitori Jyanai" are fics for the Chaotic Butterfly series of novels, which mousapelli wrote....)
I wrote four fics this time around. I was hoping to write more, but it was a busy time at work and at home, and so my spoons were depleted before I could write more. Drat!
The first fic, "In Learning" (The Hula Hoop Remix") was my assigned fic. (I call it the "Jumpy Puppy remix" because I started it and literally didn't stop until I was finished; it dragged me away with it!) When I first went through Framlingem's journal, the fic that most appealed was one featuring a librarian and James Kirk, but it was clear that not everything was up, and so I waited until everything was up. It was worth it, because I found "Guide", which was about Amanda. As a lifelong learner (and sometimes, it feels, an eternal student), I was immediately drawn to the whole view of education and how teachers shape us.
Now, I'm not a teacher, but I do train people upon request, I'm overly fond of school, and I've been working on classes towards being a library technician. Helping people learn is part of what library staff do, one way or another. I was interested in the school scenes in the movie, because they reminded me of articles I've read on long-distance learning, student-tailored learning, and computer-based education. (A library tech's degree/certificate is technically, no pun intended, in Library and Information Technology, or how to help people find the information or item they are looking for. Mostly, nowadays, it's information, thus the Information one sees in the titles of the Library and Information Technology/Library and Information Science degrees, respectively.) I have an interest in learning styles and how technology can aid them, and the role of humans in the world of information.
So, with all that in my background, of course I had to remix that particular fic! I stayed in Amanda's POV (one of the few times I haven't done a POV switch for a remix), moved the story a little later on, left the part about Sarek showing Amanda the school in there, and used it as a jumping-off point for my exploration of the importance of learning. And not only learning, but learning unusual things, like how to use a hula hoop. If we don't learn, I believe we stagnate and die. If we don't learn other peoples' viewpoints and reasoning, we turn a blind eye to their dignity and worth.
Thus "In Learning", because in learning we understand. And "The Hula Hoop Remix" because it's the hula hoop that symbolizes part of learning to understand.
(Trivia: The "sagarc" mentioned was a creature in the Japanese series "Kamen Rider Kiva", and was the first thing that came to mind when I needed a fictional, obscure, kind of avian-ish monster.)
My pinch hit was "Heard the Truth of Myths and Legends (The Remix of the Knight's Daughter)", which was a remix of livii's "The History of the Kings of Britain". I saw livii's name come up and felt bad that the pinch hit had gone out, so I grabbed it. Before I'd fully figured out what I wanted to remix, of course. I had a lot of fics that I could have remixed, but that one had been a favorite for a while.
So, during the slow moments of a work meeting, I brainstormed on what to do. I knew I didn't want to do a straight POV shift to Ancelyn or to one of Bambera's family members. In fact, I was stuck on what to do until I was looking at the very last paragraph of the story, where Ancelyn breaks one of Bambera's favorite dishes while explaining things to the kids. And of course, my brain went from there. I gave them three kids, one daughter, two sons. I knew the story would be about Ancelyn and Bambera and the events of the story (or at least the last part of the story) from the girl's POV.
Now, I'm aware that according to the novelization of Battlefield (which I cannot find my own copy of, despite the fact I know I own it), the story takes place too far in the future for Nimue to be fifteen. I kind of just handwaved that, because I wanted her to be older than her brothers, and very much so. I wanted her to be old enough to be aware of how her father was changing a little bit as he became a part of our world. In my mind, she was born less than a year after their wedding.
I intended this story to be more about Ancelyn's perceptions of The Doctor/Merlin, but it didn't turn out that way, though I tried to slip a little bit in. It's more about Ancelyn and his bond with his family than anything else. I tried to make Nimue as invisible a character as possible, because while she is important to Ancelyn, she is not the important part of the story, even though it's her question that lets Ancelyn talk a little bit about things and maybe settle things in his own mind a little. And maybe give Nimue a chance to protect herself/be prepared in case the Doctor shows up in her life. After all, it's his duty to protect his family. (And maybe he knows that Nimue is a bit of a romantic, even if she wouldn't admit it to herself.)
Name-wise, I chose "Vivianna" deliberately as a name for the Doctor's companion as it was one spelling (perhaps a typo) of the name of Merlin's companion, one of several Ladies of the Lake. In fact, it was deliberate, because I could easily see "Merlin" having a companion whose name would be woven into legend. Likewise, I chose "Nimue" for my viewpoint character because it was the simplest name to spell of the bunch for that particular character. Her brothers are also named for characters in the legend. The reason I don't go too much into the myths involving Nimue is because it's only partly relevant to the story, and while the story variants are fascinating, I didn't want to spend too much time going into them.
The title reflects back on the "History" and the "Kings" of the original title, and covers the "Myths" and "Legends" that were turning out to be more than just stories in Nimue's world. (After all, who expects Merlin to try to take one's father home to his homeworld?) The part in parenthesis, the remix title, was originally "The Knight's Daughter's Remix", but I thought that looked odd, so I swapped the order around, just as I kind of swapped the order around in the story.
(Trivia: I gave Nimue more-or-less her mother's skin color - it might be lighter, I never did get the genetics straight from what I read about that - and her father's eyes. I couldn't tell what color Ancelyn's eyes were from my source, but from pictures of Marcus Gilbert, who played Ancelyn, they look like they are probably blue or grey.)
"The People on the Balcony (The Lonely Girl Remix)" is a remix of lost_spook's "Stealing A Moment", which had been posted shortly before I started looking for stories to remix for madness. It's thanks to lost_spook that I got into Sapphire and Steel (by pinch hitting for Yuletide) and I love reading Steel/Sapphire/Silver. For once, I wrote a fic that wasn't in Silver's POV!
This was a POV shift, and this time around, I decided to use an outsider's POV. So I wrote an unnamed, lonely observer watching the three of them, picking up their closeness and the idea of the three of them "dancing" around each other, while missing most of their (mostly telepathic) conversation. Like Nimue, the POV character is less important than the canon characters, or that's what I hope.
(Trivia: I used the Mio of early Fatal Frame III/post Fatal Frame II as a vague mental template for the observer. As a nod to that, the girl rubs a "scar" on her throat where Mio's mark as a Remaining would be.)
"Cute as a Lion (The Youngest Son Remix)" was my cute, light remix. I watched the anime of "Kyou Kara Maou!" a while ago and have a soft spot for quite a few of the characters. My brain just seized on Wolfram being in footie pajamas and of course I had to write the fic! It took several drafts, though, because I wanted to do a flashback and it just didn't come out right the first few times around.
Anyway, I wrote the following fics:
* In Learning (The Hula Hoop Remix) for Framlingem, my assignment. It's Star Trek (2009), aka Star Trek Reboot, and it's Amanda, thinking about learning. (It's a remix of her "Guide", which can pretty much be summed up the same way.)
* Heard the Truth of Myths and Legends (The Remix of the Knight's Daughter) for livii as a pinch hit. It's Doctor Who (1963), a remix of "The History of the Kings of Britain", which has to do with Ancelyn and Bambera, two one-shot characters from the 7th Doctor story "Battlefield" (and probably my Doctor Who OTP). This being me, I ended up with a story about Ancelyn talking to his eldest child about Merlin.
* Cute as a Lion (The Youngest Son Remix) for mousapelli, a remix of an untitled Kyou Kara Maou! ficlet of hers for Madness. Both of them have to do with Cheri and her memories of a very, very young Wolfram.
* The People on the Balcony (The Lone Girl Remix) for lost_spook in Madness. Her story was about Sapphire, Steel and Silver and their relationship with each other; mine was that of an outside observer viewing the same scene and her take on it.
Two of my fics got remixed, too: "All the Riches (Crab Canon Remix)" was written by Revieloutionne, and "Hitori Jyanai (The Six-week Rule Remix)" was written, funnily enough, by mousapelli. (Why I am so amused: Not only did we remix each other, but both "Hikari Saseba" and "Hitori Jyanai" are fics for the Chaotic Butterfly series of novels, which mousapelli wrote....)
I wrote four fics this time around. I was hoping to write more, but it was a busy time at work and at home, and so my spoons were depleted before I could write more. Drat!
The first fic, "In Learning" (The Hula Hoop Remix") was my assigned fic. (I call it the "Jumpy Puppy remix" because I started it and literally didn't stop until I was finished; it dragged me away with it!) When I first went through Framlingem's journal, the fic that most appealed was one featuring a librarian and James Kirk, but it was clear that not everything was up, and so I waited until everything was up. It was worth it, because I found "Guide", which was about Amanda. As a lifelong learner (and sometimes, it feels, an eternal student), I was immediately drawn to the whole view of education and how teachers shape us.
Now, I'm not a teacher, but I do train people upon request, I'm overly fond of school, and I've been working on classes towards being a library technician. Helping people learn is part of what library staff do, one way or another. I was interested in the school scenes in the movie, because they reminded me of articles I've read on long-distance learning, student-tailored learning, and computer-based education. (A library tech's degree/certificate is technically, no pun intended, in Library and Information Technology, or how to help people find the information or item they are looking for. Mostly, nowadays, it's information, thus the Information one sees in the titles of the Library and Information Technology/Library and Information Science degrees, respectively.) I have an interest in learning styles and how technology can aid them, and the role of humans in the world of information.
So, with all that in my background, of course I had to remix that particular fic! I stayed in Amanda's POV (one of the few times I haven't done a POV switch for a remix), moved the story a little later on, left the part about Sarek showing Amanda the school in there, and used it as a jumping-off point for my exploration of the importance of learning. And not only learning, but learning unusual things, like how to use a hula hoop. If we don't learn, I believe we stagnate and die. If we don't learn other peoples' viewpoints and reasoning, we turn a blind eye to their dignity and worth.
Thus "In Learning", because in learning we understand. And "The Hula Hoop Remix" because it's the hula hoop that symbolizes part of learning to understand.
(Trivia: The "sagarc" mentioned was a creature in the Japanese series "Kamen Rider Kiva", and was the first thing that came to mind when I needed a fictional, obscure, kind of avian-ish monster.)
My pinch hit was "Heard the Truth of Myths and Legends (The Remix of the Knight's Daughter)", which was a remix of livii's "The History of the Kings of Britain". I saw livii's name come up and felt bad that the pinch hit had gone out, so I grabbed it. Before I'd fully figured out what I wanted to remix, of course. I had a lot of fics that I could have remixed, but that one had been a favorite for a while.
So, during the slow moments of a work meeting, I brainstormed on what to do. I knew I didn't want to do a straight POV shift to Ancelyn or to one of Bambera's family members. In fact, I was stuck on what to do until I was looking at the very last paragraph of the story, where Ancelyn breaks one of Bambera's favorite dishes while explaining things to the kids. And of course, my brain went from there. I gave them three kids, one daughter, two sons. I knew the story would be about Ancelyn and Bambera and the events of the story (or at least the last part of the story) from the girl's POV.
Now, I'm aware that according to the novelization of Battlefield (which I cannot find my own copy of, despite the fact I know I own it), the story takes place too far in the future for Nimue to be fifteen. I kind of just handwaved that, because I wanted her to be older than her brothers, and very much so. I wanted her to be old enough to be aware of how her father was changing a little bit as he became a part of our world. In my mind, she was born less than a year after their wedding.
I intended this story to be more about Ancelyn's perceptions of The Doctor/Merlin, but it didn't turn out that way, though I tried to slip a little bit in. It's more about Ancelyn and his bond with his family than anything else. I tried to make Nimue as invisible a character as possible, because while she is important to Ancelyn, she is not the important part of the story, even though it's her question that lets Ancelyn talk a little bit about things and maybe settle things in his own mind a little. And maybe give Nimue a chance to protect herself/be prepared in case the Doctor shows up in her life. After all, it's his duty to protect his family. (And maybe he knows that Nimue is a bit of a romantic, even if she wouldn't admit it to herself.)
Name-wise, I chose "Vivianna" deliberately as a name for the Doctor's companion as it was one spelling (perhaps a typo) of the name of Merlin's companion, one of several Ladies of the Lake. In fact, it was deliberate, because I could easily see "Merlin" having a companion whose name would be woven into legend. Likewise, I chose "Nimue" for my viewpoint character because it was the simplest name to spell of the bunch for that particular character. Her brothers are also named for characters in the legend. The reason I don't go too much into the myths involving Nimue is because it's only partly relevant to the story, and while the story variants are fascinating, I didn't want to spend too much time going into them.
The title reflects back on the "History" and the "Kings" of the original title, and covers the "Myths" and "Legends" that were turning out to be more than just stories in Nimue's world. (After all, who expects Merlin to try to take one's father home to his homeworld?) The part in parenthesis, the remix title, was originally "The Knight's Daughter's Remix", but I thought that looked odd, so I swapped the order around, just as I kind of swapped the order around in the story.
(Trivia: I gave Nimue more-or-less her mother's skin color - it might be lighter, I never did get the genetics straight from what I read about that - and her father's eyes. I couldn't tell what color Ancelyn's eyes were from my source, but from pictures of Marcus Gilbert, who played Ancelyn, they look like they are probably blue or grey.)
"The People on the Balcony (The Lonely Girl Remix)" is a remix of lost_spook's "Stealing A Moment", which had been posted shortly before I started looking for stories to remix for madness. It's thanks to lost_spook that I got into Sapphire and Steel (by pinch hitting for Yuletide) and I love reading Steel/Sapphire/Silver. For once, I wrote a fic that wasn't in Silver's POV!
This was a POV shift, and this time around, I decided to use an outsider's POV. So I wrote an unnamed, lonely observer watching the three of them, picking up their closeness and the idea of the three of them "dancing" around each other, while missing most of their (mostly telepathic) conversation. Like Nimue, the POV character is less important than the canon characters, or that's what I hope.
(Trivia: I used the Mio of early Fatal Frame III/post Fatal Frame II as a vague mental template for the observer. As a nod to that, the girl rubs a "scar" on her throat where Mio's mark as a Remaining would be.)
"Cute as a Lion (The Youngest Son Remix)" was my cute, light remix. I watched the anime of "Kyou Kara Maou!" a while ago and have a soft spot for quite a few of the characters. My brain just seized on Wolfram being in footie pajamas and of course I had to write the fic! It took several drafts, though, because I wanted to do a flashback and it just didn't come out right the first few times around.
