[Meme] DVD fic commentary

[edenfalling]

What the heck, on the off chance anyone is interested:

Pick any passage of 500 words or less from anything I've written and paste it into a comment to this post. Then I'll flail, flounder and provide the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, and anything else that you’d expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

All my stories are listed in my master fic post. (Which is also available on LJ.)

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Responses!

--from the final chapter of "Tides", for branchandroot

--from "Do not stand at my grave and weep", for rthstewart

--from "Any Sentry from His Post", for lady_songsmith

--from "Sasuke and the Seven Leaves", for hungrytiger11

Comments

[edenfalling]

Well, partly this was to fulfil a prompt, of course! :-) But on a more serious note, I was trying to work my world-building into canon events, to give an explanation for why the Calormenes were so sure Susan would marry Rabadash that didn't paint them as misogynistic stock villains. I like culture clashes, and after a hundred years of winter and isolation so thorough that Tumnus could have books doubting the existence of humans, it seemed reasonable that Narnians would not know all the details of foreign customs. In the case of Calormen, there seems to be a mutual disdain and dislike between the two lands, so aside from trade and military issues there might be an active disinclination to learn the softer sides of their respective cultures. (Or just a lack of time, in the Pevensies' specific cases.) And the courting dance in particular is a thing Calormenes would probably not think to explain because of course everyone grows up knowing how it's done. So that's the overt purpose.

Otherwise...

Ilgamuth glanced along the hallway behind him and closed the door to Shezan's rooms. "That would be true if she were a daughter of Calormen. But she is a barbarian, and the more I speak to her retinue, the more I suspect she opened the dance unaware." He sank onto the sofa and gestured as if opening a book and preparing to share the knowledge it contained. "Consider that Narnia lay prisoned in sorcerous winter for a century, and that the tetrarchs, to all reports, come from a land beyond the edge of the world -- as our ancestors did, nigh a thousand years ago. The queen had no reason to know our customs. Even the humans among her counselors might have remained purposefully ignorant, out of ancient spite and resentment."

Here I wanted to show the trust between Ilgamuth and Shezan -- they are discussing deep secrets of grave political import -- and also that neither thinks there is anything inappropriate about them being in a room alone together behind a closed door. Shezan's social position would probably protect her in any case, but they are also far enough along in their own courting that it would be VERY costly for either of them to back out and so they are already a sort of social unit.

"You believe that she thinks she is still in the space before the first step?" Shezan said slowly. "Still considering whether to stake a claim?"

Ilgamuth nodded. "It would make sense of her behavior of late. In Narnia, she was warm to counter the land's chill -- even in spring, the nights are cold and frost is far from unknown on the fields. Here in Tashbaan, she grows cold to counter the heat of summer and Rabadash's growing passion. But she speaks gently and smiles when he declaims his love, rather than sliding her words around to reparations. That is the way of a woman weighing her choices and choosing to withdraw, not one who has already chosen and is having second thoughts."

I like the way Ilgamuth metaphorically assigns Susan's responses a temperature, and sets them counter to the ambient temperatures of Narnia in spring and Tashbaan in high summer. It makes things sound very... fated, I guess, as if her turn against Rabadash was related solely to climate and had nothing to do with the prince himself. Which is a tactful way of not mentioning that Rabadash has some unpleasant character traits -- I think Ilgamuth has gotten fairly skilled at that over the years. Shezan probably knows more or less what he's not mentioning, but may not even notice the euphemistic turn of phrase since she's so used to hearing people talk around Rabadash's faults and flaws instead of talking about them. (Even Axartha tended to... hmm... focus on his rashness rather than his cruelty.)