[Meme] Ask me a question about one of my stories

[edenfalling]

I've no idea if anyone will be interested, but this has been going around LJ lately, and I thought, "Why not?"

Ask me a question about one of my stories. It can be absolutely anything in any fic and I will tell you the honest-to-god answer. Don’t hold back. Ask about my plans for future parts of my current series if you want to, but keep in mind, I may not have anything firm/definite in the works. Anything. Whatever you ask, I will try my best to answer.

I think everything I've written and posted (fanfic and original fiction) can be found through my LJ memories, one way or another.

Comments

[rianax.livejournal.com]

For your original work, you seem to gravitate to the exploration of storying telling itself: fairy tales, myth cycles, religious parables. Why and which form are you most fascinated and comfortable in?

Is it easier for you to explore world building in your fanfic or original stories? What aspect is your favorite? most difficult? most hated?

[edenfalling]

Taking that one point at a time:

1. I think I gravitate toward meta-storytelling partly because I like taking things apart and seeing how they work (I have never met a pen I have not tried to disassemble, for example), and partly because I overdosed on that sort of story when I was very young. I read Grimm, Andersen, every single one of Andrew Lang's colored fairy books, Greek myths, Norse myths, Irish folktales, two children's books of Bible stories, world myths, and so on. (This also probably explains why The Silmarillion is my favorite of Tolkien's books, btw.) That sort of storytelling -- a certain 'toldness' to the narrative -- is a deeply engraved pattern in my subconscious.

Also, I used to tell stories to myself (and later to my sister) as I went to bed at night. And I do a lot of story-reading when I teach Sunday school, and the way some sentences work on a page but fall flat when read aloud fascinates me; I often tweak phrasing on the fly as I'm 'reading' to the kids.

And then I like to play around with things, try to use the form of a fairy-tale without some of the inherent sexism... but without going cynical the way a lot of 'modern' fairy-tales go. Because the magic is the point. The wonder is the point. If you're going to puncture that, the form of the fairy-tale becomes nothing but a skin cloak you're using to hide a wolf among the flock and devour it from within.

Um. Or something like that.

[edenfalling]

2. I write a lot of stuff with religious underpinnings because I'm a religious person. I think people miss that because I don't define religion in the modern Western sense of the three Religions of the Book.

Religion is not just belief. Belief is only the smallest part.

Religion is what you do. Religion is your silly little private superstitions. Religion is community. Religion is your conscience. Religion is music, social activism, quiet comfort, conversation. Religion is rational thought and irrational gut instinct. Religion is how you come to terms with your inability to comprehend the universe, the truth that you will never have enough time or intelligence to truly understand everything, that you will never have enough power to control everything. Religion is how we process joy and loss and anger and every other emotion.

Religion is how we interface with the world.

The thing is, that's not how my society defines religion, so I'm often in an awkward place trying to explain myself.

But I am comfortable with Judeo-Christian imagery and terminology. Unlike many Unitarian Universalists, I did not come to my faith by fleeing another; I was raised UU, which means I don't have any negative associations with other religions and their words and concepts and images. So I can say 'god' and make the word mean whatever I want it to mean.

This also goes back to reading myths as a child. To me, the Bible is on the exact same level as Greek mythology and Grimm's fairy-tales. God is a symbol, and symbols can mean whatever you want them to mean.

[edenfalling]

3. In some ways, it's easier to explore world-building in fanfiction, because a lot of it is already done for you. So I can slip in little asides to deepen the world, without worrying about having to explain the basics. And it's fun to take somebody else's framework, pick it apart to find the structural supports, and try to flesh out the building around those pillars.

On the other hand, when I'm doing it all myself, I am god. I can do whatever I want, at first. Of course, once I've set down the first lines, I have to play by those rules, and each new rule contstricts me further. But the constrictions are the point -- if anything can happen, why should anyone care what does happen? And I like trying to work out my understanding of human nature by placing a few ground rules and thinking logically about their consequences.

Also, I love designing the histories and religions and languages and cultures of imaginary nations. I try to make sure the societies are believable -- that none of them are 'perfect' -- because there is no such thing as a perfect human society. You're always going to have tension between the needs of the group and the needs of the individual. But I like to play thought-experiments and advance some of my own, nebulous ideas about social patterns that I think might be more humane than modern Western culture.

I don't hate any of it; world-building is a joy. Sometimes it's frustrating, yes, when I hit a point where I really want thus-and-so to be true, but it just doesn't make any sense within my established rules, but I usually consider that a challenge rather than a crisis. It's a test to see how well I can think my way out of a box. And if I can't find a loophole, then I go back, scrap something, and try again.

I love the religions. I love the languages. I love maps. I love climates and trade patterns and wars and ethnic tensions and cosmology and ideas about education and clothing styles and ideals of beauty and gender roles and age roles and, oh, everything. I know I always miss pieces, because it's too much to hold inside any single mind, but I have such joy in trying.

...

Come to think of it, though, the most frustrating point is usually the magic. Because magic, if you do it honestly, is going to make sweeping, pervasive changes to any society. You can't just take a non-magical culture, stick magic on it like a decorative fringe, and call it a day. You have to work out how it interacts with their religion and conception of the universe. You have to work out what it does to the economy and politics. You have to work out the magic's internal rules, and then decide how accurate people's understanding of those rules really is. (Just because electricity exists, for example, doesn't mean people understood it for thousands and thousands of years.)

I often end up making magic as minimal a presence as possible, or having it be so pervasive and huge that it becomes something of a non-issue, something like gravity, which you don't ever think about until you fall off a cliff.