(no subject)

For Jukebox, I wrote "He Was a Beautiful Fiction" for snowynight based on Vienna Teng's song "Blue Caravan". Demon-hunting road-tripping action-adventure. Because I could?

There were really only two moments of brainstorming inspiration for this story that came before I started writing. First, in reading songmeanings I found the theory that it was three women being described in the story, one per verse. I'd always assumed it was only one, but three made sense to me, and gave me a community to tell stories about. The other was me thinking "What if the Blue Caravan is a Dodge Caravan?" Almost immediately upon having this second brainstorm, I started to write out the 'inventory' passage, which is almost verbatim the final product. There were only a few minor edits later; by and large the story was driven by the inventory rather than the other way around.

I'm really proud of how the style works in this story. This is a sleeker narrative than I usually write. I was very conscious as I wrote of the way Teng works her phrases in the song, and I was trying to write a story that feels like the song, without tonal mismatch. I really like how my imagery works. Favorite bit in the story might be the description of rusty vats once used for heat treating steel: "They look, Joy thinks, like a mad cross between Baroque architectural relief and the work of Donald Judd. She has grown accustomed to such unmannered beauty." So proud of that metaphor, because it is at once a really present, clear, unique visual and a communication of the kind of visual language that speaks to Joy. There aren't a lot of people who see industrial wreckage and find it beautiful, let alone beautiful with reference to Baroque detail work. There are even fewer who have seen so many examples of Baroque industrial wreckage that they

Another favorite bit is what comes right after: a fight scene. I dreaded writing it, solicited advice from #yuletide that was of various utility, and I think ultimately I wrote the scene three times before I had the voice right. I wanted it to be abstracted because I wanted it to pass by as breezily as anything else in the story. I wanted it to be compatible with the sleek narration I wrote about. But I also wanted it to be visceral, immediate. Striking that balance between abstraction and immediacy was tough, but I think I reached it. This is in my opinion the best fight scene I've ever written.

Joy is my favorite character in the story, the one whose particular contradictions feel the most real to me. She's the worst shot, but the best fighter. She's not the best at academic rigor, but she loves books the most. She's overweight and teased for it, but in combat she is lithe and athletic like a cat. I feel like I did the best job with her of revealing her backstory, her history, and her motivations indirectly without infodumps. If I were to tell more stories in this world, Joy is the perspective character I would drift towards, I think.

Anyway, I really like this story and jukebox_fest was a lot of fun. And thanks again to the two authors who wrote awesome stories for me!