FIC: was Re: [LMB] Re: Slash (was OT) now Bujold Romance/Slash Meta

[quietann]

On 1/4/07, Azalais Aranxta <tiamat at tsoft.com > wrote:
>
> On Wed, 3 Jan 2007, quietann wrote:
>
> > On 1/3/07, Azalais Aranxta <tiamat at tsoft.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Wed, 3 Jan 2007, quietann wrote:
> > Same here, largely.  I've woken up in the morning with my head
> > full of stories, and I've gone to bed at night with Gregor or
> > Aral or Ges (!) talking to me.  And if it's strong enough, I'll
> > write down what they have to say.
>
> And yet, you must on some level feel, if they're talking to you
> the way your own characters would (assuming you write original
> fiction), that there is something that needs to be said that
> wasn't said in canon and isn't likely to be.


First, I don't write original fiction... I am just not quite *that*
creative.

And actually in my Vorkosiverse fic, I try to be *very* consistent with
canon (or whatever AU I'm following though with the Vorkosiverse there's
really only one well-developed AU).  It is really a matter of filling in
blanks, that don't have to be filled in, but for some reason my imagination
fills them in anyway and then I go write it all down.

> Maybe it's just that Lois's readers tend to be a pretty mature lot.
>
> Yes, but is everyone who writes "Evil has the best costumes" fic
> immature?  A lot of them are--they're the same people who walk
> around in black with inverted pentagrams to p*ss off their
> parents and annoy serious left-hand-path occultists *no end*--but
> I doubt that they all are.


Oh no, I didn't mean that *everyone* who writes this stuff is immature.
It's just that there are not many folks writing Vorkosiverse fic to start
with, and because it's a fandom based on non-Young Adult books, not a lot of
young, immature people are attracted to it.

(I am not willing to go into the specifics of this on this list
> or in any other public place; I refuse to serve as a chewtoy for
> Rowling's reason-impervious drooling fanpoodles any longer.  Nor
> do I wish to rehash this in private email--if you really want my
> versions of the arguments, my livejournal archive would be the
> place to look, because I'm DONE with that.)


Oh, don't worry.  I haven't even read the HP books or seen the movies (for
personal reasons).  The most I do with that fandom is read the occasional
piece of smut :) either written by someone I know or Snape/Hermione (which
for some reason I like), or both.

> Ges isn't just this sociopathic, manipulative
> > hedonist; he's also *smart* and dare I say it a bit sensitive.
>
> You can dare say it.  I might even admit that one has to be a bit
> sensitive to hurt people that efficiently.  I don't think he's
> less bad than Lois makes him out to be, though; probably because
> Lois doesn't try to tell me what to think of him (unlike Rowling)
> but shows me his appalling behaviour and lets me decide for
> myself that he's a manipulative sociopath.


Oh, by the time we meet him in canon, he is utterly and completely depraved,
and I don't like him at all!  But at the same time it's apparent that
whatever he did with Aral however many years ago wasn't casual (or why would
he be so excited about getting revenge on Aral after 18 years?)

As I recall, Aral has an argument with himself over whether he got involved
with Ges because he (Aral) had exceptionally bad taste in men, or whether
Ges changed.  I prefer the latter explanation.

> And Aral (especially as a young man) isn't all heroic; he's
> > also anxious and perhaps a wee bit insane, especially after his
> > first wife dies.
>
> Well, yes :)


And hell, at that point Aral's still very conservative, has a huge need to
prove himself (thanks to that martyred  perfect older brother)... and (I
surmise) he's got this one very-very bad trait -- he likes boyz more than
girls "in that way."  Can we say neurotic?

And so he does a lot of Really Stupid Stuff.

> I take mostly the latter position -- that no one is All Good or
> > All Bad, or even Mostly Good or Mostly Bad;
>
> Ges strikes me as mostly bad.  There may be very
> good reasons why he is mostly bad, and he may be a sad example of
> a human being who has led a painful life, but his effect on the
> people around him, which is what matters, is mostly bad.


Agreed.

He starts out, in my world, as a 17 year old second son of a count.  He's a
bit lazy, and he already knows his sexuality is more than a bit deviant for
Barrayar, though he hasn't really had any partnered sexual experiences.

In my world, he's got this "thing" with his sister that borders on incest.
Seeing her married off to Aral gives him a lot to anticipate and a lot to
worry about, too.

(And yeah, I squicked myself pretty badly with that "thing" he has with her
-- but it propelled the story in all sorts of interesting directions that
were very compelling.)

> Very odd.  I found it extremely easy to humanize Ges, but I
> > can't imagine doing that with Cavilo.  Maybe it's just a
> > failure of imagination.
>
> I would actually guess you as being somewhere on the continuum
> between Devil's Advocate and Redeemer with Ges, though if you
> were really a Redeemer you'd write a Ges fic where Ges found True
> Love with one of Our Heroes and his entire personality changed
> for the better.


ewwww!  I can't imagine doing that.  I can't imagine that ever happening to
Ges. Even if he'd never met Aral, even if the sweetest most desirable Vor
Bud on the planet fell in love with *him*.

What I started with was just a flash in my head of a young Ges who's a bit
of a voyeur.  At first I thought I'd have him convince Aral to join him in
these pursuits, but that just didn't feel like something Aral would do.

He does not end up redeemed; he ends up angry and hurt and *broken* by Aral,
and that sends him in some pretty unpleasant directions, including,
eventually, right into Serg's arms (and I chose to make Serg pretty awful
even before he met Ges.)

> > Reading Lois may leave me with a lot of ideas racing through
> > > my mind and the urge to go Write Something, but it doesn't
> > > leave me feeling that there's something more that needs to be
> > > said that the author will never say because s/he is unwilling
> > > or unable to acknowledge it.  None of her characters ever
> > > take up residence in my brain and refuse to shut up till I
> > > tell their side, or the whole truth, because Lois is already
> > > doing that.
> >
> > Absolutely.  In my case, I'll write it anyway, but it's mostly for my
> own
> > satisfaction.
>
> Do you really feel that way, after everything you've said about
> Ges?  Just curious.


Hm.  Writing from Ges's POV doesn't mean that I'm taking his side.  Though
readers have told me I made them think more sympathetically of him, it's a
very different "him" than the one in the books.  Aral's a lot harder to
write, too.

-- 
quietann at gmail.com

aka "The Accidental Jewess"