![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Yuletide 2022
Jan. 2nd, 2023 05:45 pmThis is my self-indulgent, digression-y, "how the sausage is made" reveals post for Yuletide 2022, featuring a bunch of links back to previous posts. If you're not into this kind of thing, you can just...ignore this post. It's cool.
So my recip and I matched on "Project Hail Mary." At one point, the protagonist remembers that his spaceship contains mini-spaceships that don't carry passengers, but can be launched back to Earth to send data. Because they look kind of like bugs, and there are four of them, they're obviously named "the Beatles." Later, he's talking to himself and complains "man, it's been a hard day. A hard day's night. I should be...hey, the Beatles can help me here!"
I wouldn't necessarily call myself a big Beatles fan, but I appreciate that they've done a lot for rock music as we know it. So I figured that I could use Beatles songs as a frame device to add some missing scenes and do a "5 Things" or equivalent. And when I started brainstorming ideas...it turns out there are a lot of Beatles songs that could be relevant for this book. "I Want To Hold Your Hand" for a touch-starved character? "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64" for a precarious survival mission? "Here Comes the Sun" for a book about...saving the sun? Turns out all I need to better appreciate music is a pretext for viewing it as about space travel rather than romance even when it's space travel. Who knew?
Maybe it's a coincidence, but I choose to believe that after the success of "The Martian" (whose book featured a running joke about "I hate disco and it's the only music I'm stuck with out here," and got turned into a movie with a disco soundtrack), Andy Weir just doubled down on "if this book ever gets turned into a movie, it all needs to be Beatles puns." Anyway, that was the context of this post.
And then a few days later I realized that Ryland often translates an unfamiliar word as "Amaze!" even when it doesn't necessarily make perfect grammatical sense to do so. At first I chalked this up to "eh, language barriers, communication is hard." But no. If it's being directed in response to Ryland Grace's actions, that makes him...Amazing Grace. Groan.
So when I went to post it was like...I'm using 'Across the Universe' as a title because it's a Beatles song about travelling through the galaxy. That phrase also shows up in my recip's username. I'm guessing there must have been some subconscious influence but oh well, I'm not changing it now even if it is too on-point.
Across the Universe (4k, gen, no archive warnings apply)
A couple weeks later, I was visiting extended family and arguing about what movie to watch. We eventually compromised on "Knives Out." I'd sort of osmosed some of the plot, mostly in the context of "I didn't particularly care for Rian Johnson as a director in Star Wars, it's possible that switching genres and doing something original would be a better fit for him though." And it was fine, not my favorite thing ever, but amusing. So I idly checked to see if anyone had requested it...and sure enough, my recip liked happiness, fluff, and friendships. Sometimes the stars just align! And I got to use my fun facts about Go! And sometimes Wikipedia has the exact article you need for a throwaway joke?
Anyway, in keeping with the general tendency that you have no idea which of your fics will be successful, a fluffy fix-it for a murder mystery that avoids the whole murder mystery aspect, about a canon I wasn't necessarily the most passionate about, was surprisingly successful and crossed the centikudos mark earlier today. Yuletide!!
Where There's a Will (There's A Way) (1.7k, gen, no archive warnings apply)
I started canon reviewing "Elder Race" for treat purposes because it was short, I had enjoyed it, and the prompts were neat. A day later, it went out on the PH list. Again, sometimes the stars just align! This gave me an excuse to nerd out about linguistics, and also there is a terrible pun (that I can't take credit for but did think was very fitting in the context of language change and communication issues.)
Tree of Changes (1.6k, gen, no archive warnings apply)
And then "Steerswoman" came out on the PH list, so I was like, I definitely need an excuse for rereading "The Outskirter's Secret." (And fiddling around with how to send it to my e-reader, sigh, long story.) Anyway, I have a lot of feelings about all the Outskirters--the contrast between the Face People and Kammeryn's people and the raiders near the Inner Lands, how they can be extremely sophisticated and astute in some ways but not others. (Just like everyone else, tbh.) Having revisited it and Elder Race back-to-back, I saw some parallels between the Lyn/Esha and Rowan/Bel relationships. Maybe a stretch. (Does that mean Nyr==Fletcher? I kind of hope not.)
The Map and the Territory (2k, gen, no archive warnings apply)
Sometimes when I'm fighting headaches (which is often) I'm in the mood for self-indulgent darkfic. And FTL is a great fandom for "rocks fall, everyone dies, in many different ways." Roguelikes are hard. So I figured at some point in time I'd write a story about a woobie Rock person who just can't catch a break, even fire and/or boarders won't put them out of their misery. Except I kind of played myself here because, you know when I really have no energy to type? When I'm in bed with a migraine. And then once I started "canon review" I didn't want to write, I just wanted to play more of the game. So the fact that the treat came together was kind of a last-minute surprise, and it went in a slightly different direction than I'd planned on to be more about a specific character on a player ship, rather than a background NPC. I'll probably keep the alternate version as a "daydream for when I don't want to look at the screen." Also, the title was just too perfect.
Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies (3k, gen, major character death)
Watching the World Cup this past month or so, I, like zillions of other people around the world, got caught up in the narrative of "let's see Leo Messi win a championship! There's no doubt that he's a phenomenally, prodigiously gifted player who's tiny and kind of alien-like, but he's never won a World Cup with Argentina so critics say he can't really be the Greatest of All Time...and that's not fair, nationalism and countries are arbitrary and made-up anyway. Haters gonna hate. But let's see Messi shut them up." And somehow he actually did???
And then I remembered that Borges didn't like football and resented how popular it was in Argentina. And with the current situation of "inflation is out of control, the economy is in crisis, why are all these people losing it about football," it's like...what would Borges say. That, together with the surreal sports worldbuilding stuff I do on NationStates, provided the impetus for "Tlön Uqbar Orbis Tertius" fic!
Game of Worlds (650 words, gen, no archive warnings apply)
So my recip and I matched on "Project Hail Mary." At one point, the protagonist remembers that his spaceship contains mini-spaceships that don't carry passengers, but can be launched back to Earth to send data. Because they look kind of like bugs, and there are four of them, they're obviously named "the Beatles." Later, he's talking to himself and complains "man, it's been a hard day. A hard day's night. I should be...hey, the Beatles can help me here!"
I wouldn't necessarily call myself a big Beatles fan, but I appreciate that they've done a lot for rock music as we know it. So I figured that I could use Beatles songs as a frame device to add some missing scenes and do a "5 Things" or equivalent. And when I started brainstorming ideas...it turns out there are a lot of Beatles songs that could be relevant for this book. "I Want To Hold Your Hand" for a touch-starved character? "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64" for a precarious survival mission? "Here Comes the Sun" for a book about...saving the sun? Turns out all I need to better appreciate music is a pretext for viewing it as about space travel rather than romance even when it's space travel. Who knew?
Maybe it's a coincidence, but I choose to believe that after the success of "The Martian" (whose book featured a running joke about "I hate disco and it's the only music I'm stuck with out here," and got turned into a movie with a disco soundtrack), Andy Weir just doubled down on "if this book ever gets turned into a movie, it all needs to be Beatles puns." Anyway, that was the context of this post.
And then a few days later I realized that Ryland often translates an unfamiliar word as "Amaze!" even when it doesn't necessarily make perfect grammatical sense to do so. At first I chalked this up to "eh, language barriers, communication is hard." But no. If it's being directed in response to Ryland Grace's actions, that makes him...Amazing Grace. Groan.
So when I went to post it was like...I'm using 'Across the Universe' as a title because it's a Beatles song about travelling through the galaxy. That phrase also shows up in my recip's username. I'm guessing there must have been some subconscious influence but oh well, I'm not changing it now even if it is too on-point.
Across the Universe (4k, gen, no archive warnings apply)
A couple weeks later, I was visiting extended family and arguing about what movie to watch. We eventually compromised on "Knives Out." I'd sort of osmosed some of the plot, mostly in the context of "I didn't particularly care for Rian Johnson as a director in Star Wars, it's possible that switching genres and doing something original would be a better fit for him though." And it was fine, not my favorite thing ever, but amusing. So I idly checked to see if anyone had requested it...and sure enough, my recip liked happiness, fluff, and friendships. Sometimes the stars just align! And I got to use my fun facts about Go! And sometimes Wikipedia has the exact article you need for a throwaway joke?
Anyway, in keeping with the general tendency that you have no idea which of your fics will be successful, a fluffy fix-it for a murder mystery that avoids the whole murder mystery aspect, about a canon I wasn't necessarily the most passionate about, was surprisingly successful and crossed the centikudos mark earlier today. Yuletide!!
Where There's a Will (There's A Way) (1.7k, gen, no archive warnings apply)
I started canon reviewing "Elder Race" for treat purposes because it was short, I had enjoyed it, and the prompts were neat. A day later, it went out on the PH list. Again, sometimes the stars just align! This gave me an excuse to nerd out about linguistics, and also there is a terrible pun (that I can't take credit for but did think was very fitting in the context of language change and communication issues.)
Tree of Changes (1.6k, gen, no archive warnings apply)
And then "Steerswoman" came out on the PH list, so I was like, I definitely need an excuse for rereading "The Outskirter's Secret." (And fiddling around with how to send it to my e-reader, sigh, long story.) Anyway, I have a lot of feelings about all the Outskirters--the contrast between the Face People and Kammeryn's people and the raiders near the Inner Lands, how they can be extremely sophisticated and astute in some ways but not others. (Just like everyone else, tbh.) Having revisited it and Elder Race back-to-back, I saw some parallels between the Lyn/Esha and Rowan/Bel relationships. Maybe a stretch. (Does that mean Nyr==Fletcher? I kind of hope not.)
The Map and the Territory (2k, gen, no archive warnings apply)
Sometimes when I'm fighting headaches (which is often) I'm in the mood for self-indulgent darkfic. And FTL is a great fandom for "rocks fall, everyone dies, in many different ways." Roguelikes are hard. So I figured at some point in time I'd write a story about a woobie Rock person who just can't catch a break, even fire and/or boarders won't put them out of their misery. Except I kind of played myself here because, you know when I really have no energy to type? When I'm in bed with a migraine. And then once I started "canon review" I didn't want to write, I just wanted to play more of the game. So the fact that the treat came together was kind of a last-minute surprise, and it went in a slightly different direction than I'd planned on to be more about a specific character on a player ship, rather than a background NPC. I'll probably keep the alternate version as a "daydream for when I don't want to look at the screen." Also, the title was just too perfect.
Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies (3k, gen, major character death)
Watching the World Cup this past month or so, I, like zillions of other people around the world, got caught up in the narrative of "let's see Leo Messi win a championship! There's no doubt that he's a phenomenally, prodigiously gifted player who's tiny and kind of alien-like, but he's never won a World Cup with Argentina so critics say he can't really be the Greatest of All Time...and that's not fair, nationalism and countries are arbitrary and made-up anyway. Haters gonna hate. But let's see Messi shut them up." And somehow he actually did???
And then I remembered that Borges didn't like football and resented how popular it was in Argentina. And with the current situation of "inflation is out of control, the economy is in crisis, why are all these people losing it about football," it's like...what would Borges say. That, together with the surreal sports worldbuilding stuff I do on NationStates, provided the impetus for "Tlön Uqbar Orbis Tertius" fic!
Game of Worlds (650 words, gen, no archive warnings apply)
