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Jan. 1st, 2021 08:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretFor Yuletide this year I wrote This Is How You Lose The Time War fic. When I got the assignment I worried I'd made the same mistake I'd made a few years back when I got assigned to write Imperial Radch fic and then I realized how intricately plotted and detailed the original was and defaulted when I decided I wasn't capable of living up to the canon. Time War is similarly brilliant and it scared me but I decided the solution wasn't to be a quitter, the solution was to write something sufficiently far away from canon in style and content to not have to compare myself to canon. Something in my own voice rather than some sort of inevitably mediocre pastiche.
So instead of directly telling a story about Red and Blue, I told a story about one of the lives of the people altered as Red and Blue waged their endless battle amidst the timelines. A random unnamed doctor whose life turns out one way and not another because Red and Blue got involved. Of course, all of us are the way we are because people have influenced us, and all of us are also the way we are because of decisions we made. My story is, I think, both a meditation on that obvious dynamic, and a story about a woman trying to survive an annoying but routine day in her life and trying to have it mean something more than the mundane... not knowing all the ways that to other people down the timestream, her day does mean more than just the mundane. Not knowing that for people who don't even exist in her timeline, her choices are life and death.
Also I checked every fic on AO3 to be sure, but I am somehow the first person in the fandom to colorcode Red and Blue's actions. This is bizarre to me, but I am glad to be in this small and inconsequential way an innovator.
Thus We Braid Strand 6 to Strand 9 (2308 words) by seekingferret
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Red (This is How You Lose the Time War), Blue (This is How You Lose the Time War), Original Characters
Summary:
So instead of directly telling a story about Red and Blue, I told a story about one of the lives of the people altered as Red and Blue waged their endless battle amidst the timelines. A random unnamed doctor whose life turns out one way and not another because Red and Blue got involved. Of course, all of us are the way we are because people have influenced us, and all of us are also the way we are because of decisions we made. My story is, I think, both a meditation on that obvious dynamic, and a story about a woman trying to survive an annoying but routine day in her life and trying to have it mean something more than the mundane... not knowing all the ways that to other people down the timestream, her day does mean more than just the mundane. Not knowing that for people who don't even exist in her timeline, her choices are life and death.
Also I checked every fic on AO3 to be sure, but I am somehow the first person in the fandom to colorcode Red and Blue's actions. This is bizarre to me, but I am glad to be in this small and inconsequential way an innovator.
Thus We Braid Strand 6 to Strand 9 (2308 words) by seekingferret
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Red (This is How You Lose the Time War), Blue (This is How You Lose the Time War), Original Characters
Summary:
and our glorious crystal future shines so bright I gotta wear shades, as the prophets say
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Date: 2021-01-01 07:57 pm (UTC)