All right, so I said I was going to post about where my very first all lower case letter-titled fic came from. Not that, as I said before, I explain my writing, but this one's a good candidate for some consideration of source material.
I told![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
penwiper26 that I'd written this fic before, which is an exaggeration mounted in truth. I was writing about language dancing in the air more than ten years ago:
The words shifted, tumbled about, formed themselves into hoops and dived through each other, hung in glittering chains in the air like Christmas lights, made towers and poems and sentences that burned themselves into Snape's brain: profound, eternal truths that he was certain he would never forget and that he knew quite well would soon vanish without trace, like that perfect moment in a dream that can never be recalled afterwards, leaving you longing for it the rest of your life. (from "No Great Magic")
And, a little more profoundly, in "In Time of Pestilence":
"To the bonds of kinship," said her father, "that yoke us one to the other, no matter how many the years that fall between." Again, he let the Dutch color the tone of the translation, though now it was neither heavy nor fishy, but liquid-sweet and charming as the blue-and-white of Delft pottery, and the ties he evoked seemed light enough to carry. All experience to the contrary.
"How do you do that?" Snape blurted out.
"How do I do what?" said Hieronymus, winking. "We shall discuss it when next you visit. When you will have fewer worries and all the time one could wish." Snape nodded, trusting for the moment in the divination of hope.
Before he could turn to go, Artemis slipped ahead and fetched his coat, a last act of service. She put it around his shoulders and whispered a Latin phrase in his ear. And when he spoke in response, in thanks and in farewell, he could hear the words in Dutch and in English and in a language that was older than both and as new as syllables meeting the air for the first time; and they went up like a cloud lifting darkness from the heart, and they came down like the snow swirling around the towers of Hogwarts, brightness falling from the air, to settle silently in the soft, drifting, joyful deeps of winter.
That story's a crossover with my original universe, in which language doesn't do magical tricks; it is, however, an essential part of the interactions my characters engage in around the world. Someday, someone will ask me if my novels are wish-fulfillment, in that snarky way that means "and you really want to fuck George Merrill, don't you?" and I will say that yes, they are, and what they're giving me that I can't have in real life is, most deeply, the ability to run a learning program and come out of it speaking another language, which is something I don't do, though I have studied several.
It took me a while to settle on what are really commonly-used techniques for writing the parts where people are actually speaking another language than English but I have to put down the words in English, the complication being that sometimes they're speaking an archaic version of the non-English language, which influences the English words I choose (the OED comes in handy, there). I've got large sections where characters are speaking really-17th-century-Dutch-but-English or really-20th-century-French-but-English, and bits of German and Russian and Chinese, too, and I just try to clue in to what's really being said and select the correct representative yet understandable phrases, which is easier when I have some small notion of the language in question (French is the most familiar of these, though I can't say I speak it; German and Russian I studied briefly but don't recall much of; Dutch I wish I had an ancestral instinct for, but alas no, though German and English help a little with it). And you throw in occasional sentences in the original language, trying not to make them the predictable ones but either translating or choosing words that self-translate. And then you try not to worry too much about it.
Anyway. Language obsession, check. Where this fic got started was when![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
raven posted about a possible resonance between French (in "L'oiseau qui vole"!) and Hindi, and this is not a question I can answer in any way, but it got me thinking. And then there was the song, which grabbed my brain and tossed it, unexpectedly, into a state dinner. This is not a songfic, because I don't write those, but it's the closest I've ever been to one, and the influence is there beyond the (used by other fic writers before me) title: "the grand days of great men, and the smallest of gestures," etc. The earbug thing came, obviously, out of the ambassadorial banquet in Brothers in Arms. (And need I note the origin of all this in Bujold's actual books? Goes without saying.)
I don't write in differing universes very easily, and you will note that Simon in this fic has a French-speaking mother (and presumably a Russian-speaking father), as he did in "L'oiseau," though clearly this Simon has never heard of Jules Duval or there'd be some sign of him in all that soul-baring. The French thing made sense to me (others create Simon's background differently and there's a lot of wiggle room) but it's also convenience, because I have little Russian and less Greek (read: practically none and none) and French I can at least play with a bit. Wikipedia has a very convenient list of English words with French origin that I could select from for the cascade of etymology. I really did mean to do something with Cyrillic script at some point, but I forgot; it got frozen out by the chill in Aral's heart, I guess.
Recently I've been thinking about fic clusters, the groups of stories that resonate with each other, and I hope I'm not flattering myself to think that I've been resonating withphilomytha and raven a good deal recently. Their fics were certainly a huge influence on me here, both the older ones and the ones that came out of the tropefic meme, the still-comment-fic gendha phool (Simon and Alys Pretend to be Married on the Planet of the Indians) in particular, and Reflections. Most of what I think about Simon and Aral derives from philomytha's works, and I think I got Simon's birth in a cold place from her as well. I love fanon and I love clusters and I'm not ashamed to be derivative as long as I'm original too. So thank you.
ETA: and Lanna's chip-POV fic, too, of course. I was definitely thinking of that when the chip provides him with pornography. :)
Other works that are lending resonance include C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength (the entrance of Mercury in the procession of the planets, although more in original conception than in final wording) and (possibly my favorite novel ever) Michael Frayn's A Landing on the Sun, specifically Summerchild's account of the night the lights went out at his house. And my own experience of power cuts, of course, and of social anxiety.
All the stuff about Simon's relationship with his chip is likely influenced by my new experience with the iPhone (and I haven't even started using Siri yet) or the broader use of technology that has changed so much in my lifetime, allowing me to see it as an outsider and insider both. It's stretching a point to say that my migraines mean I have something in my head that changes my life as a whole and erases particular days, because it's so different from what the chip does for Simon. But I do have a pet. And I do name machines.
I should mention names here, yes, because my struggle with names amuses me, and this is a festival of reuse. Miranda Antonietti has clearly wandered in from my Lewis fic "Rich and Strange," which was based on The Tempest and featured a family with that surname. One of whom was named Simon. (I've used that name elsewhere: for a one-legged beggar in Time for Tea, and then there's the major character in books three and four, Simone Jardine, and another major character uses Simeon as one of his many aliases, though we don't actually know that at the time. And heh, speaking of resonance, there is a character named Peter (or Pieter or Pierre) in each of my books. Someone should write the fic where Cordelia explicates the Biblical meanings of Simon's name.)
Baturin is an offstage character in Time Goes By (the Neepoovrep agent who rescues Rinaldo and gets his guts glued together as a result). (This is not nearly as bad as having named one of Gregor's Armsmen "Rahula" in "The Broken Sword," believe me.) Mahdi Elmandjra is the name of a Moroccan writer I don't know anything about (just like the name). Prince Amir is a rather obvious choice ("Amir" means prince) but it's immediately derived from Laurie King. Domanova is Stephen Maturin's mother's name. I suspect Desmoulins is also out of Patrick O'Brian. I don't think I know any Vargas beyond Mario Llosa. And I carefully avoided naming all the other people.
And that's quite enough words about where this story came from for now, though I could likely blather on more.
Subject line: oh, Mr. Finch. There really should be a "Person of Interest"/Vorkosiverse crossover, impossible as it is. It is a perfect thing to be watching when I can't get Simon out of my head.
I told
penwiper26 that I'd written this fic before, which is an exaggeration mounted in truth. I was writing about language dancing in the air more than ten years ago:The words shifted, tumbled about, formed themselves into hoops and dived through each other, hung in glittering chains in the air like Christmas lights, made towers and poems and sentences that burned themselves into Snape's brain: profound, eternal truths that he was certain he would never forget and that he knew quite well would soon vanish without trace, like that perfect moment in a dream that can never be recalled afterwards, leaving you longing for it the rest of your life. (from "No Great Magic")
And, a little more profoundly, in "In Time of Pestilence":
"To the bonds of kinship," said her father, "that yoke us one to the other, no matter how many the years that fall between." Again, he let the Dutch color the tone of the translation, though now it was neither heavy nor fishy, but liquid-sweet and charming as the blue-and-white of Delft pottery, and the ties he evoked seemed light enough to carry. All experience to the contrary.
"How do you do that?" Snape blurted out.
"How do I do what?" said Hieronymus, winking. "We shall discuss it when next you visit. When you will have fewer worries and all the time one could wish." Snape nodded, trusting for the moment in the divination of hope.
Before he could turn to go, Artemis slipped ahead and fetched his coat, a last act of service. She put it around his shoulders and whispered a Latin phrase in his ear. And when he spoke in response, in thanks and in farewell, he could hear the words in Dutch and in English and in a language that was older than both and as new as syllables meeting the air for the first time; and they went up like a cloud lifting darkness from the heart, and they came down like the snow swirling around the towers of Hogwarts, brightness falling from the air, to settle silently in the soft, drifting, joyful deeps of winter.
That story's a crossover with my original universe, in which language doesn't do magical tricks; it is, however, an essential part of the interactions my characters engage in around the world. Someday, someone will ask me if my novels are wish-fulfillment, in that snarky way that means "and you really want to fuck George Merrill, don't you?" and I will say that yes, they are, and what they're giving me that I can't have in real life is, most deeply, the ability to run a learning program and come out of it speaking another language, which is something I don't do, though I have studied several.
It took me a while to settle on what are really commonly-used techniques for writing the parts where people are actually speaking another language than English but I have to put down the words in English, the complication being that sometimes they're speaking an archaic version of the non-English language, which influences the English words I choose (the OED comes in handy, there). I've got large sections where characters are speaking really-17th-century-Dutch-but-English or really-20th-century-French-but-English, and bits of German and Russian and Chinese, too, and I just try to clue in to what's really being said and select the correct representative yet understandable phrases, which is easier when I have some small notion of the language in question (French is the most familiar of these, though I can't say I speak it; German and Russian I studied briefly but don't recall much of; Dutch I wish I had an ancestral instinct for, but alas no, though German and English help a little with it). And you throw in occasional sentences in the original language, trying not to make them the predictable ones but either translating or choosing words that self-translate. And then you try not to worry too much about it.
Anyway. Language obsession, check. Where this fic got started was when
raven posted about a possible resonance between French (in "L'oiseau qui vole"!) and Hindi, and this is not a question I can answer in any way, but it got me thinking. And then there was the song, which grabbed my brain and tossed it, unexpectedly, into a state dinner. This is not a songfic, because I don't write those, but it's the closest I've ever been to one, and the influence is there beyond the (used by other fic writers before me) title: "the grand days of great men, and the smallest of gestures," etc. The earbug thing came, obviously, out of the ambassadorial banquet in Brothers in Arms. (And need I note the origin of all this in Bujold's actual books? Goes without saying.)I don't write in differing universes very easily, and you will note that Simon in this fic has a French-speaking mother (and presumably a Russian-speaking father), as he did in "L'oiseau," though clearly this Simon has never heard of Jules Duval or there'd be some sign of him in all that soul-baring. The French thing made sense to me (others create Simon's background differently and there's a lot of wiggle room) but it's also convenience, because I have little Russian and less Greek (read: practically none and none) and French I can at least play with a bit. Wikipedia has a very convenient list of English words with French origin that I could select from for the cascade of etymology. I really did mean to do something with Cyrillic script at some point, but I forgot; it got frozen out by the chill in Aral's heart, I guess.
Recently I've been thinking about fic clusters, the groups of stories that resonate with each other, and I hope I'm not flattering myself to think that I've been resonating with
philomytha and raven a good deal recently. Their fics were certainly a huge influence on me here, both the older ones and the ones that came out of the tropefic meme, the still-comment-fic gendha phool (Simon and Alys Pretend to be Married on the Planet of the Indians) in particular, and Reflections. Most of what I think about Simon and Aral derives from philomytha's works, and I think I got Simon's birth in a cold place from her as well. I love fanon and I love clusters and I'm not ashamed to be derivative as long as I'm original too. So thank you.ETA: and Lanna's chip-POV fic, too, of course. I was definitely thinking of that when the chip provides him with pornography. :)
Other works that are lending resonance include C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength (the entrance of Mercury in the procession of the planets, although more in original conception than in final wording) and (possibly my favorite novel ever) Michael Frayn's A Landing on the Sun, specifically Summerchild's account of the night the lights went out at his house. And my own experience of power cuts, of course, and of social anxiety.
All the stuff about Simon's relationship with his chip is likely influenced by my new experience with the iPhone (and I haven't even started using Siri yet) or the broader use of technology that has changed so much in my lifetime, allowing me to see it as an outsider and insider both. It's stretching a point to say that my migraines mean I have something in my head that changes my life as a whole and erases particular days, because it's so different from what the chip does for Simon. But I do have a pet. And I do name machines.
I should mention names here, yes, because my struggle with names amuses me, and this is a festival of reuse. Miranda Antonietti has clearly wandered in from my Lewis fic "Rich and Strange," which was based on The Tempest and featured a family with that surname. One of whom was named Simon. (I've used that name elsewhere: for a one-legged beggar in Time for Tea, and then there's the major character in books three and four, Simone Jardine, and another major character uses Simeon as one of his many aliases, though we don't actually know that at the time. And heh, speaking of resonance, there is a character named Peter (or Pieter or Pierre) in each of my books. Someone should write the fic where Cordelia explicates the Biblical meanings of Simon's name.)
Baturin is an offstage character in Time Goes By (the Neepoovrep agent who rescues Rinaldo and gets his guts glued together as a result). (This is not nearly as bad as having named one of Gregor's Armsmen "Rahula" in "The Broken Sword," believe me.) Mahdi Elmandjra is the name of a Moroccan writer I don't know anything about (just like the name). Prince Amir is a rather obvious choice ("Amir" means prince) but it's immediately derived from Laurie King. Domanova is Stephen Maturin's mother's name. I suspect Desmoulins is also out of Patrick O'Brian. I don't think I know any Vargas beyond Mario Llosa. And I carefully avoided naming all the other people.
And that's quite enough words about where this story came from for now, though I could likely blather on more.
Subject line: oh, Mr. Finch. There really should be a "Person of Interest"/Vorkosiverse crossover, impossible as it is. It is a perfect thing to be watching when I can't get Simon out of my head.
