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edenfallingToday is Betapalooza reveal day! I did not write any treats, alas, but I did complete my assigned story and I think it's pretty good. :-)
The Snow Queen: A Story in Six Parts: Back in the days when meteors still fell from the sky in dozens at a time, a girl and a boy grew up next door to each other in the shadow of a fallen city. They were as close as sister and brother (And maybe they were! It's hard to say, since so many people lost their families back then and were taken in by strangers), and in three seasons of the year they played together every day in the garden around the girl's house, where nothing grew but roses and even they were mostly thorns.
Of course, it couldn't last. (6,650 words, for![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
light_rises)
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So, thoughts!
My recipient,light_rises, made the following prompt: Fairy tale crossovers? Fairy tale crossovers. This time featuring our kids in "The Snow Queen", with Jade filling Gerda's role and John Kai's. I'm not firm on Rose and Dave, and in fact I'd love to see what you come up with there! I’m DEF cool with looseness to the retelling - e.g. combine a couple characters? HELL yes, go for it - just so long as the core plot of TSQ remains more or less intact. Bonus points for: working in some Homestuck canon mythos where appropriate; making some other sweet role matches with other HS characters; ending it with all the kids together (John not being able to meet the others is too /sad/, dammit).
People who haven't been following me long may not be aware of this, but fairy-tales are one of my oldest, deepest, and most abiding loves. I overdosed on them as a child, I write retellings of them for fun, I write original fairy-tales of my own, and I love excuses to work fairy-tale elements into fanfiction. (Check the fable/fairy-tale tag on my journal if you want proof.) OBVIOUSLY this was the prompt I picked to work with!
I spent a week or so rereading Anderson's story and figuring out how to fit Rose and Dave into roles that would be both thematically relevant and also get them to the Snow Queen's palace along with Jade, the latter being trickier since Gerda's helpers tend to remain in their own sub-stories rather than accompany her. Rose was relatively easy, mostly because of her name: you see, the way Gerda recovers her memories while living with the old woman learned in magic is by spotting a fake rose on the woman's hat, which she forgot to hide, and which reminds Gerda of her own rosebushes and thus of Kai. Clearly this time the spell would break when Jade learned Rose's name. I decided not to make Rose a witch herself, but to make her the witch's daughter; Mom Lalonde therefore enchants Jade because she wants to give Rose a friend. (That's mostly there because of Rose's canonical family issues.)
Dave was trickier. I knew immediately that the robber girl had to be a combination of Vriska and Terezi (though the exact way they split the role didn't come clear until I wrote the section in question), which meant Dave was narratively equivalent to the captive reindeer. Which is. Um. Kind of structurally awkward? But there was really no other way to fit him in, so I had to do some logistical juggling around their transportation from that point onward.
Anyway, I had a basic rough outline several weeks before the due date, but I had the damndest time actually making myself sit down and write. (Depression sucks like that.) Fortunately I got an extension and at least for me, the adrenaline of deadline pressure does a lot to mitigate any lack of spoons and concentration I am otherwise experiencing, plus I was on the tail end upswing of that particular blue funk so I was able to meet my revised deadline and then make useful edits -- sticking more rose-and-crow foreshadowing into the second scene, tidying logistical loose ends, adding some vague gestures toward emotional character arcs, etc. -- before the stories went live.
There are some further notes about structural choices and character cameos in the endnotes of the story itself, which I won't reproduce here on account of spoilers. I will say, though, that I am tickled pink that AO3 has a 'Friendship Is Magic' tag and that I got to use it, because in this fic that statement is absolutely literally true. :-D
The Snow Queen: A Story in Six Parts: Back in the days when meteors still fell from the sky in dozens at a time, a girl and a boy grew up next door to each other in the shadow of a fallen city. They were as close as sister and brother (And maybe they were! It's hard to say, since so many people lost their families back then and were taken in by strangers), and in three seasons of the year they played together every day in the garden around the girl's house, where nothing grew but roses and even they were mostly thorns.
Of course, it couldn't last. (6,650 words, for
-----
So, thoughts!
My recipient,
People who haven't been following me long may not be aware of this, but fairy-tales are one of my oldest, deepest, and most abiding loves. I overdosed on them as a child, I write retellings of them for fun, I write original fairy-tales of my own, and I love excuses to work fairy-tale elements into fanfiction. (Check the fable/fairy-tale tag on my journal if you want proof.) OBVIOUSLY this was the prompt I picked to work with!
I spent a week or so rereading Anderson's story and figuring out how to fit Rose and Dave into roles that would be both thematically relevant and also get them to the Snow Queen's palace along with Jade, the latter being trickier since Gerda's helpers tend to remain in their own sub-stories rather than accompany her. Rose was relatively easy, mostly because of her name: you see, the way Gerda recovers her memories while living with the old woman learned in magic is by spotting a fake rose on the woman's hat, which she forgot to hide, and which reminds Gerda of her own rosebushes and thus of Kai. Clearly this time the spell would break when Jade learned Rose's name. I decided not to make Rose a witch herself, but to make her the witch's daughter; Mom Lalonde therefore enchants Jade because she wants to give Rose a friend. (That's mostly there because of Rose's canonical family issues.)
Dave was trickier. I knew immediately that the robber girl had to be a combination of Vriska and Terezi (though the exact way they split the role didn't come clear until I wrote the section in question), which meant Dave was narratively equivalent to the captive reindeer. Which is. Um. Kind of structurally awkward? But there was really no other way to fit him in, so I had to do some logistical juggling around their transportation from that point onward.
Anyway, I had a basic rough outline several weeks before the due date, but I had the damndest time actually making myself sit down and write. (Depression sucks like that.) Fortunately I got an extension and at least for me, the adrenaline of deadline pressure does a lot to mitigate any lack of spoons and concentration I am otherwise experiencing, plus I was on the tail end upswing of that particular blue funk so I was able to meet my revised deadline and then make useful edits -- sticking more rose-and-crow foreshadowing into the second scene, tidying logistical loose ends, adding some vague gestures toward emotional character arcs, etc. -- before the stories went live.
There are some further notes about structural choices and character cameos in the endnotes of the story itself, which I won't reproduce here on account of spoilers. I will say, though, that I am tickled pink that AO3 has a 'Friendship Is Magic' tag and that I got to use it, because in this fic that statement is absolutely literally true. :-D
Re: Somehow I missed reading this!
Date: 2015-06-01 06:35 pm (UTC)As I said, I LOVE fairy-tales (in all their problematic glory), and the narrative style is therefore something I've practiced a lot over the years. It's harder than it looks, but you get used to it, I think. :-)
That bit about loneliness (and Rose's reason for maintaining the memory spell despite her ethical qualms) was something I worried about a little, because I thought it might be a bit too dark, but I couldn't NOT use it, and I think it does serve to highlight the importance of friendship as a theme throughout the story. Dave was the trickiest of the kids to adapt into a fairy-tale setting, but I tried my best to strike a balance between his dialogue patterns and the narrative tone. And the final two sections of Anderson's "The Snow Queen" repeatedly stress how COLD it is up north in Lappland/Finnland, and how Gerda keeps going despite being frozen half to death, until finally the magic of love kicks in and she's able to thaw Kai back to humanity, so I wanted to echo that however I could.
Re: Somehow I missed reading this!
Date: 2015-06-01 06:36 pm (UTC)Re: Somehow I missed reading this!
Date: 2015-06-01 06:43 pm (UTC)Re: Somehow I missed reading this!
Date: 2015-06-01 06:48 pm (UTC)Re: Somehow I missed reading this!
Date: 2015-06-01 06:59 pm (UTC)Re: Somehow I missed reading this!
Date: 2015-06-01 07:01 pm (UTC)YES THIS. I can sit and wait forever to watch a movie I've bought, but if a kid comes to me and says "Let's watch X!" or "Mom, you HAVE to watch Over The Garden Wall!" that's not bad at all. Even when the stuff's on the Roku so I don't even have to walk across the room.
I've been spending too much time online of late; this is an excellent opportunity to read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which is currently airing in an excellent BBC dramatization (which I watch with husband and daughter. See above.)