You know, when I am done with my RemixRedux fic, I wonder if anyone will be able to distinguish the parts I wrote while tipsy and sleep-deprived, the parts I wrote out of sequence at work while being interrupted by customers every two sentences, and the parts I wrote chronologically and uninterrupted while sober.

...

If my allergies act up again this week, perhaps I can add sections written while stoned on Benadryl. It will be for SCIENCE!

*is mercifully shot*

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On a slightly more rational note, I am intrigued by the way my story relates to the original which it's based on. The first year I did Remix, I simply expanded my remixee's story -- taking a short scene and giving it context, so to speak. The second year, I went pretentious, non-chronological, and meta with fairy tale elements on my remixee's more straightforward tragedy. The third time, I started with a simple POV-flip and then had to add three connecting scenes to make any sense of why my new POV character was even in the scene that ended my remixee's story.

This time, I am taking the basic plot of my remixee's story and writing it as if I had independently dreamed up a story with that plot and cast of characters, while ignoring huge swathes of the details and dialogue of the original version. The same general sequence of events occurs, but the things I think are most important and/or interesting in this scenario are not always the things my remixee thought were most important and/or interesting, so the stories have noticeably different focuses.

...

Remixing is weird. Fun, but weird. *grin*

Remix reveal day!

Here is my story: Seasons of Cloud and Shadow (Like the Deserts Miss the Rain) [Cross-posted here on ff.net]

[A fragmentary draft that went nowhere -- Seasons of Cloud and Shadow (In a Dry and Thirsty Land) -- is also available for comparison purposes.]

Summary: Many waters cannot quench love; neither can the floods drown it. Love is as strong as death. Shikamaru/Temari, PG-13, light lime, death.

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I remixed Seasons of Cloud and Shadow, by everysecondtues, also known as manicjoy. Her story is beautiful, and also linear and single-POV, whereas mine kind of jumps around in time, switches POV and tense from section to section, and is weirdly thematic rather than a straight-up narrative.

I found remixing interesting, for the same reason I found it interesting in 2006 -- I was assigned a person whose fic-writing tastes don't really overlap mine at all. This is not to say that I dislike any of everysecondtues's stories -- they're well written, and the crackfic is a lot of fun -- just that I'm not particularly interested in the characters, pairings, and situations that seem to interest her... at least not enough to write about them.

I kind of latched onto Seasons of Cloud and Shadow with both hands and said "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" because it hit me like a punch to the gut and the imagery is so beautiful, and I actually have thoughts about Temari as a character, and the second I read the story I wanted to pull it apart and see if I could put the pieces back together into something that would do it justice.

(In retrospect, I think I could also have worked quite happily with one of her short Hikaru no Go fics -- Like Sharpened Feathers, It Falls -- but while I've read some of the manga, and a fair amount of fic, I didn't trust my grasp of canon for that series. And it probably would have been an interesting challenge to rewrite a fic more out of my comfort range -- say, Gai/Kakashi, which is a pairing whose attraction I have never understood -- but I am lazy and went for the path of least resistance.)

As soon as I finished the rough draft of my remix, I looked at it and thought that I'd essentially smashed together two of my previous stories -- Drought, for the Temari characterization, and Samsara, for the non-linear portrayal of a doomed relationship (the second is a Saiyuki fic) -- and I winced a bit. So I went back, pulled it apart a little more... and what I ended up doing was weaving in a lot of stuff about storytelling and the nature of truth, which is one of my little obsessions that creeps into a lot of my work. There are reasons I like fairy-tales a lot, and why they echo through my stories.

Also, I put in Biblical quotations. The Ecclesiastes quote I used at the end sort of jumped into my mind and screamed "Use me, you idiot!" After that, I spent a couple hours combing through the internet and my Bible (yes, I own a Bible, and have read at least two thirds of it, which seems, oddly enough, to be more than many self-professed Christians have done) in search of similar water-related Biblical verses, thinking that I might use one to head each section, but that didn't pan out. They didn't feel thematically differentiated enough, mostly, and I grew uncomfortable with the religious overtones that would have produced.

Instead, I used a couple lines from Song of Songs as the summary -- which actually works really well, I think! -- and put the Ecclesiastes verses at the end, to sort of sum up the idea of Shikamaru and Temari as one iteration of a greater story that's always playing out around us, until the end of the universe. Or something like that. It felt right, but I'm never completely sure what my motives are for most of my writing -- I can give you an educated guess, but it's hard to see your own subconscious mind with complete clarity. :-)

The remixredux08 stories are up!!!

I can't point you to the one I wrote, since they're all anonymous for another week, but let me point you to the remix somebody did of one of my old stories:


Title: Prison Keys (And of Course There Is No Key Remix)
Summary: Hyuuga Hinata has never understood her sister.


This is Hinata's side of Prison Keys, in which she fails to understand Hanabi's issues, though she sees and worries about some of the effects. What I really love -- aside from the wonderfully written and characterized Hinata POV -- is that the author has fleshed out the two points I've always vaguely regretted skimming over in the original. S/he explains when, how, and why Hinata is reinstated as heir, and how and why Hinata and Neji ended up together. S/he also gives a good portrait of what Hinata was doing during the time she was disinherited.

(I didn't write those things for two reasons -- first, Hanabi didn't particularly care about Hinata's love life, and second, "Prison Keys" was a 15-minute fic, which meant I didn't have time, while writing, to go into great detail about much of anything. In retrospect, I probably should have revised it more before cross-posting to ff-net, but only hindsight is 20-20. *sigh*)

Anyway, I absolutely LOVE this view into the other side of my little ficlet! *is gleeful*

Remind me next year that if I sign up for a ficathon, I should arrange a beta-reader beforehand and set a due date for her/him to start kicking my ass and saying, "You're supposed to send me the rough draft today." If I set that deadline at least a week before the ficathon's deadline, I should be okay.

...

I got the story done and posted, and even edited (thank you so much to the wonderful person who shall remain officially nameless until the 26th!), but the corrollary to working well under pressure is that you're working under pressure, which is, you know, STRESSFUL.

(I am skilled at stating the obvious, oh yes.)

Anyway, now I should really get back to "An Ounce of Prevention," which I have been shamefully neglecting. (Except not right at this very moment, because I am tired and slightly tipsy, and I don't think I can manage complete coherence for more than a few minutes at a time. *wanders off in search of more wine*)

On the writing front, I finished the rough draft of my remixredux08 story Thursday night and did some preliminary revisions tonight.

If anyone is willing to do a lightning-fast read-through tomorrow, please tell me, and I'll email it to you Saturday morning. (If not, that's okay. I should be able to strip out the most egregious stupidity on my own -- I just worry about the second-most egregious bits of stupidity, and the places where I'm beating a theme into the ground, making logical jumps without explaining how I got from point A to point L, or failing to tie one section of the story into another section.)

I have the oddest feeling that I've written this story before, and I know exactly why I have that feeling despite the significant differences between the two stories in question (starting with them not even sharing a fandom!), but saying anything more would be too revealing.

(ETA, 4/12/08: Have tweaked the remix so it's not such an obvious echo of my previous story. Of course, this involved adding echoes of a second story, but those echoes are things that tend to turn up in half of everything I write anyway -- you may not always notice them, because I do try to prune them back when they're superfluous -- and so I'm kind of resigned to them.)

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In other news, my mom is visiting. She drove up this afternoon, did my laundry while I was at work (my mom is weird like that), and then we had dinner at the Lost Dog Cafe, which was quite nice. Tomorrow we plan to run some errands (including shoe shopping for Cat's wedding), have a picnic lunch (which will probably end up being indoors, since it looks like rain), and just generally catch up.

I do like seeing my parents every couple months. It's nice to keep in touch. (And on the same note, it's nice that I don't have to see them every week -- that would be far too much of a good thing!)

One thing I hate about work is that on slow nights, even when I'm productive and proactive, I always feel like I should be getting more done. I wanted to do this week's statement as well (I'm kind of unofficially in charge of making sure the statement we get from the office matches our invoices and return credits), but I kept forgetting. And then I did the instant lottery ticket order, except we need a book of Millionaire's Club, and for some reason that game (code #532) has gone missing from the order page on the machine, and GTech (the company that runs the lottery for the state) is closed on Sundays so I couldn't phone in and figure out the problem, and...

ARGH.

The petty little things always get me the most.

...

In brighter news, I do have 825 words written toward my remix. I'd say at least 300 of them suck and will need to be rewritten, but still, I'm getting a framework. And I have a funky remix subtitle, which is good because last time I utterly blanked on that. Occasionally, the random flotsam and jetsam floating around in the back of my head coughs up a useful phrase. :-)

And now I am off to sleep, because I have work again tomorrow.

1) I'm still bashing my head against the wall with regard to my remixredux08 fic. Which is due on April 12, one week and one day from now. Realistically, that gives me about five days to write the thing (or to give up on my current attempt and dash off some really stupid elaboration of one of my remixee's many drabbles), two days to get it beta'ed, and one day for final revisions.

Well, I do work well under time crunches. I used to manufacture them on purpose back when I was in school -- I was a master at whipping out a 3-5 page essay in two to six hours. And I usually got at least an A- (ie, at least 90% of 100%) on them, too. *is retroactively smug*

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2) In other ficathon news, femgenficathon is open again! Signups close April 16th, and posting is from July 15-October 1 (which seems like a rather ridiculous amount of leeway, especially since I think the main reason posting dates were extended last year was because DH was published right in the middle of the ficathon, but whatever). There are still several prompts available, so go sign up! The world needs more gen fic about women and girls!

I would totally start plotting a story right now... except, you know, I'm trying to work on a remix.

*sigh*

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3) In real life news, the local recycling organization is running a formal dress exchange Friday and Saturday. Since I have at least one dress that doesn't fit me anymore (it was a damn tight squeeze when I was 18, and I tend to average about 5 pounds heavier these days), and since I need a dress for Cat's wedding, I'm thinking of checking this out. Especially since I want to go to the mall soon anyway, for bookstore reasons.

We shall see how that goes. :-)

This is a little Hanabi and Hinata story, written during my lunch break. Introspective, dark, and mostly plotless. (The revised and improved ff.net version is here.)

ETA, 4/19/08: riko remixed this story for Remix_Redux VI: Prison Keys (And of Course There Is No Key). If you're wondering about Hinata's side of the story, go read it -- it's brilliant!

( Prison Keys )