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Nov. 4th, 2012 07:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretWe got power back this morning for the first time since Monday night. :) Work still doesn't have power. Since Wednesday we've been working at an alternate site, all of the engineers crammed into a tiny conference room whose temperature builds and builds throughout the day as a result of computer and human waste heat.
We're all doing okay, though it's been cold at night. I have some books to blog about, too. Worst hit is my uncle out on the Rockaways, whose basement and cars flooded, but thankfully nobody I know was injured.
I imagine there are things that'll take me time to catch up with on the 'nets. Apparently I got my Yuletide assignment. I think there's a lot to like about it. I've given up on doing NaNo- the power outage sapped all energy with regard to that.
I guess Kaleidoscope stories were just revealed.
My main story was "The Basket of Invisibility", a post-book Midnight's Children fic. It uses Aadam, who has big ears instead of a big nose, to tell a story about modern India, which doesn't have a story. I was trying to do a lot of complicated and post-modern things and I feel like I was pretty successful, though with a story like this it's always hard to tell if the feel of incompleteness it leaves you with is effective.
I also, obviously, wrote two Truth: Red, White, and Black fics forsanguinity. Well, at least one of them was obvious. I kinda hoped she might think the other one wasn't me. I hadn't quite planned to write any for Kaleidoscope, but all the conversation we'd had sparked my brain and I started poking at a story that I didn't think I'd finish in time for Kaleidoscope. And then I saw that she was put out for pinch hit, and I contacted the people running Kaleidoscope and told them that I didn't know if I'd finish the story in time so I didn't want to commit to grabbing the pinch hit, but I was working on a story. And then when I finished my Nick Fury meets Isaiah story, I kept reading comics and discovered Crew and Josiah X, and then Ihad to write another story, because holy fuck Exodus/comic book parallels!
FUBARs is Nick Fury meets Isaiah Bradley, shortly before the disastrous raid on Schwarzebitte.sanguinity has managed to explain it better than I could. Nick Fury of the Sgt. Fury days believes in America's aspirational narrative. He knows that America isn't perfect, and he knows that people die and people hate other people, but he believes that if we keep fighting for it we can make it better. Isaiah Bradley just knows that there are evil things in the world, full stop.
By the way, Sang? That conversation we had about how first lines are never actually the first line? The original first line of "FUBARs" was "Nick Fury is an authentic American badass, eight feet tall and all of it swagger. So when a nine foot tall authentic American badass walks into his office it's a banner headline day." which would have made a great first line for a Nick Fury story about meeting Isaiah Bradley, but wasn't so great for a story about Isaiah Bradley meeting Nick Fury. I quickly realized that I needed to set up Isaiah's feelings before introducing Fury.
Jocheved is Faith's recollections of the night she gave up Josiah X, her cloned son. Because sometimes you pay a price and it turns out it's worth it, but you still paid the price.
We're all doing okay, though it's been cold at night. I have some books to blog about, too. Worst hit is my uncle out on the Rockaways, whose basement and cars flooded, but thankfully nobody I know was injured.
I imagine there are things that'll take me time to catch up with on the 'nets. Apparently I got my Yuletide assignment. I think there's a lot to like about it. I've given up on doing NaNo- the power outage sapped all energy with regard to that.
I guess Kaleidoscope stories were just revealed.
My main story was "The Basket of Invisibility", a post-book Midnight's Children fic. It uses Aadam, who has big ears instead of a big nose, to tell a story about modern India, which doesn't have a story. I was trying to do a lot of complicated and post-modern things and I feel like I was pretty successful, though with a story like this it's always hard to tell if the feel of incompleteness it leaves you with is effective.
I also, obviously, wrote two Truth: Red, White, and Black fics for
sanguinity. Well, at least one of them was obvious. I kinda hoped she might think the other one wasn't me. I hadn't quite planned to write any for Kaleidoscope, but all the conversation we'd had sparked my brain and I started poking at a story that I didn't think I'd finish in time for Kaleidoscope. And then I saw that she was put out for pinch hit, and I contacted the people running Kaleidoscope and told them that I didn't know if I'd finish the story in time so I didn't want to commit to grabbing the pinch hit, but I was working on a story. And then when I finished my Nick Fury meets Isaiah story, I kept reading comics and discovered Crew and Josiah X, and then Ihad to write another story, because holy fuck Exodus/comic book parallels! FUBARs is Nick Fury meets Isaiah Bradley, shortly before the disastrous raid on Schwarzebitte.
sanguinity has managed to explain it better than I could. Nick Fury of the Sgt. Fury days believes in America's aspirational narrative. He knows that America isn't perfect, and he knows that people die and people hate other people, but he believes that if we keep fighting for it we can make it better. Isaiah Bradley just knows that there are evil things in the world, full stop.By the way, Sang? That conversation we had about how first lines are never actually the first line? The original first line of "FUBARs" was "Nick Fury is an authentic American badass, eight feet tall and all of it swagger. So when a nine foot tall authentic American badass walks into his office it's a banner headline day." which would have made a great first line for a Nick Fury story about meeting Isaiah Bradley, but wasn't so great for a story about Isaiah Bradley meeting Nick Fury. I quickly realized that I needed to set up Isaiah's feelings before introducing Fury.
Jocheved is Faith's recollections of the night she gave up Josiah X, her cloned son. Because sometimes you pay a price and it turns out it's worth it, but you still paid the price.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-04 02:06 pm (UTC)Yeah, they were both very obviously you. :-D You *might* have been able to pass off "FUBARs" as not-you if you hadn't shown your work earlier (although if you hadn't shown your work, I wouldn't have had enough context to understand it properly, I don't think). Most people I talked to didn't seem to realize it was yours. However, you never had a prayer of passing off Jocheved as someone else's piece: everyone who knows much about you knows that you would say, "holy fuck Exodus/comic book parallels!" (The usual convo was, "Seekingferret wrote Jocheved, of course, but who wrote the Nick Fury story?")
It was tough trying to write about your piece without linking back to your breadcrumbs post! I hoped that you wouldn't mind that I was cribbing from it without attribution. (BTW, hahaha, I was totally right, that WAS a breadcrumbs post!)
Oh, and totally yes about first lines there. But you went the right way with that, and the chunk of the story where you're initializing Bradley's pov is so much fun. (And that is the bit that would have been my tell-tale that you were the author, I think, if we hadn't already been talking about this piece, and these themes, for aeons -- it's very much got your sense of play in it.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-04 02:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-04 02:26 pm (UTC)Okay, but even if you didn't mean for it to be full of breadcrumbs, it had the super-convenient property of being full of breadcrumbs anyhow.