Fic ask meme from tumblr

[kawuli]

I officially fail at productivity today, so let's try this instead:

Pic a fic/series/thing and some numbers:

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?
2: What scene did you first put down?
3: What's your favorite line of narration?
4: What's your favorite line of dialogue?
5: What part was hardest to write?
6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?
7: Where did the title come from?
8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?
9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?
10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?
11: What do you like best about this fic?
12: What do you like least about this fic?
13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn't listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?
14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?
15: What did you learn from writing this fic?

Comments

[kawuli.livejournal.com]

mildred_of_midgard asked on Dreamwidth:
My favorite: Can you hear me right now?
5, 7, 8, 11

5: What part was hardest to write?
Ha well it started as a random short thing off a tumblr gif, so it came pretty easily. The hardest thing about writing Johanna fic in general is that it's a very tricky brainspace to get into and more importantly OUT OF when I'm done. It pulls all my own impulsive tendencies up closer to the surface than I generally like them to be, so I have to spend some time walking that back afterwards.

7: Where did the title come from?
An Against Me! song, "Because of the shame"
It starts "We used to get high together, instead of getting high alone."
and the title is from the chorus:
"Because of the shame I associate with vulnerability
I am numbing myself completely.
Can you hear me right now?"
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vke4CXEu9NA)

A lot of the Johanna fic titles are Against Me! lyrics ("Still 22 days left till the end of the world," the one right after this, is from "Walking is still honest").

8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?
Not really. I did some babysitting of people who took drugs they weren't familiar with and ended up more fucked up than they really meant to get when I was in college, so I have done the sighing and SERIOUSLY dude? and okay fine let's go someplace quiet, no you may not pet me, yes everything is fine, etc. So that... informs things, I guess.

11: What do you like best about this fic?
I like Johanna's "dammit don't make me have feelings" attitude, in general but it's prominent here. And just the "yep just another day in their fucked up life" of it all. I stuck the Quell card fic in after it because why not, but there's nothing about this part that's anything remarkable, unfortunately.

[kawuli.livejournal.com]

@hrovitnir​ on tumblr asked for #15 for this fic meme for whichever fic I wanted to talk about
So I’m going with the D9-centric Hunger Games rebellion series (These are truly the last days: Panem’s rebellion from below) because it’s my favorite.

15: What did you learn from writing this fic?
So this fic actually started because I was thinking about how the Capitol would organize grain production. A lot of people look at D12 in the books and the movies and assume the districts are all technologically backward (maybe with exceptions for places like D3). So, when I’ve seen mentions of D9 in fic before (and that’s like…twice?) it’s usually low-tech small-scale farming. Horses and scythes and whatnot.

The thing is, small-scale farmers are really hard to control, because they’re relatively self-sufficient. There’ve been rebellious peasants since peasants existed. And farm tools are weapons.

So I figured what you really need is mechanized, automated, intensively managed commercial agriculture. Monsanto, but with the full enforcement power of an autocratic state.

When he was 18 or so my dad worked on a custom cutting crew: a bunch of guys, trucks, and combines that followed the wheat harvest north from Texas to Montana. So that became the basis for Zea, the main character, who’s on a crew of 6 who spend summers harvesting, and fall/spring planting, wheat. They move up and down the district hauling their machinery with them. Every so often there are Depots, where stuff gets stored (harvested grain, fuel, etc), and the people who live there manage the other farm activities (mainly some spraying during the season, herbicides and pesticides and whatnot, plus transporting grain and fuel between the Depots and the district capital). The general rule is that families run depots, and folks on crews tend to be single or at least not to have kids. Because when crews are out they’re working sunup to sundown at least, any day it’s not raining. And agricultural equipment is dangerous. There’s probably exceptions to both of these, but it’s how things usually go.

That means that apart from whoever is living in the district capitol, people in D9 are incredibly isolated. If you’re in a Depot, you see crews come through a couple times a year and that’s it. If you’re ON a crew, you only see people other than your crew when you’re in the city to swap equipment, and in winter. I put crews in barracks during the off-season, and assumed some level of animosity between city people and country people (because trust me, that’s believable). So that makes it much harder to organize a rebellion, because people don’t know each other. And Depots aren’t self-sufficient, because they aren’t allowed to produce anything for themselves (they still do, but it’s all under the table, and not enough to live on).

Now, that’s pretty much all I needed for the purposes of writing plausible fic. But I’m a nerd, so I kept poking. The USDA has maps of crop distributions, which are in large part due to soil types and the rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Best soils + more rainfall (e.g. Iowa) = corn/maize. OK soils + less rainfall (e.g. Kansas) = wheat. Those aren’t going to change in a post-apocalyptic future (unless…idk some seriously weird shit). Zea was on a wheat crew, so I wanted to know where she’d be going. So I made some maps and some guesses. Similarly for timing, there’s USDA information by state–who knows what Panem climate looks like, but for the sake of not making myself TOO crazy I left planting and harvesting times more or less where they were. Assume plant breeders have compensated for climate change so that it works out, I guess.

For the as-yet-unfinished 3rd installment I also had to learn about explosives and railroads, but that gets spoilery so I’ll save it for another time.

[lorata.livejournal.com]

1, 2, 5, 14 (bonus 9 :D) for the Rokia in the Arena!

[kawuli.livejournal.com]

1. What inspired you to write the fic this way?
Ha, well I basically had written backstory and post-arena stuff and went “WELP I guess I really should write the actual Games part.” Plus I think you’d just written the part of the Alec one where Creed dies and I was like ….oooookay time to do the thing

2. What scene did you first put down?
I wrote the part with Phillips and Brutus after she wins on my phone on a long car ride with annoying people in Mali, actually! Ha I think that was one of the evaluation trips I had to do with USAID people @_@ I think I wrote the Creed bit early too, after you wrote that part of the Alec fic. Other than that I pretty much wrote it in order.

5. What part was hardest to write?
The Arena parts in general, because it’s such a weird mix of “literally nothing happens” and “oh shit gotta kill a child now” and like…that’s a weird mix? And writing from the POV of someone who’s basically trying not to die of starvation and/or exposure while completely isolated from other people for a couple of weeks and then also having to kill people when the worst she’s ever done is get into fistfights…..that’s not easy to do. Not sure how well I did at that tbh but oh well.

14. Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?
I mean, mostly it’s the introduction to Rokia and Phillips as characters, I think? The Arena in itself is definitely not the most important thing about their stories, except in that it’s the catalyst for everything that comes after. So I mostly wanted the important character bits to come through, Rokia’s wary tough practical stubbornness and Phillips being in over his head and still determined to do right by his girl.

9. Were there any alternate versions of this fic?
Well there’s the one where she wins in 68, but this one is better :) And the Sara-POV one was fun, because Sara’s perspective is so outside the Games Industrial Complex—she doesn’t keep track of who wins or what happens, doesn’t watch gossip or analysis or anything, so she’s really coming at things without knowing how they’re supposed to go. And it was interesting to think about what’d happen in Six while Rokia was away, and from that for Sara to realize just how much Rokia’s juggling constantly up to that point (poor kid).

[penfold-x.livejournal.com]

OOOOOOOH

The Line Between Hunger and Anger: 2, 5, 8, 11, 13

[kawuli.livejournal.com]

2. What scene did you first put down?
I wrote this one in order, pretty much. I knew I wanted to bring Sara into this one more, but I didn't want you to have to already have read all the Rokia stuff for it to make sense, so I tried to write the D6 tour scene as an introduction to Sara, who she was and her connection to Rokia and at least enough to go on from there.

5. What part was hardest to write?
Man, this one was just hard. I had the bones of the story by the time I'd finished Tractors, but figuring out the details of all the scenes and the logistics and stuff, idk it just took a lot of thinking, at a time when I didn't have a lot of spare brainpower to devote to it. So it really dragged on. I probably should have done some more work revising before I posted but by that point I just wanted it to be DONE. It'll do.

8. Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?
Noooooot really? The background stuff from Tractors still (er, i did these out of order, whoops), but not much other than that.

11. What do you like best about this fic?
That I finished it? XD okay, I like how... tight?... it ended up. There's not a lot of words but a lot of stuff happens. It makes for an interesting contrast with Tractors, which feels very slow by comparison, although they're about the same length and Tractors actually covers a longer time span. There's a lot more urgency to this installment, which makes sense given what's happening.

13. What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn't listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?
Oh hey this is the one case where I actually do have a specific album. For the series, really, F#A#∞ by Godspeed! You Black Emperor ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKIFMVLfmdg ). It's precisely the right thing for post-apocalyptic agrarian cyberpunk dystopia. And apart from the beginning there's no words so it's good for writing.

The series title is from the first track, and actually the other title option I was thinking about for "The line between hunger and anger" was "The skyline was beautiful on fire" from here, but I decided to stick with Grapes of Wrath quotes.

[penfold-x.livejournal.com]

Tractors turning the multiple furrows in the vacant land (if I can have two): 1, 3, 8, 11, 15

[kawuli.livejournal.com]

Sure, you can have two :)

1. What inspired you to write the fic this way?
Oh man... I mean the D9 stuff was generally percolating for a while, the agrarian cyberpunk dystopia themes and the idea of the D9 combine driver out on the plains and what have you, but I didn't have any actual idea what the story was. And then randomly in Holland I had the idea about the Grapes of Wrath connection and went !!!! and wrote the first 200 words or so. No idea where the connection came from beyond "my brain flings stuff at me and sometimes it sticks" but I like it.

3. What's your favorite line of narration?
The beginning, probably:

Wheat country, west of the river, long past even the summer sunset. It's been raining, they're behind in cutting, supposed to head north last week, the schedule's all blown to hell because somehow they still can't control the clouds.
It's tricky land out here, rocky outcrops hiding beneath the tall grass field margins--soon they'll be up and out onto the real plains, but just Zea's luck she's assigned this strip, on the western edge of the Flint Hills, wild grass stretching east till the land smooths back out near the City.

I did a thing once that asked for first lines of fic and I noticed I usually start with characters. This one starts with setting, which I don't usually do beyond maybe a sentence of context. Saying it's because the land is a character sounds pretentious and douchey but it's kind of true. Or at least setting is way more important to this one than most stuff I write.

8. Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?
A lot of the names come from family of mine who come from out that way, and I tried to model the way the characters talk and some of the mannerisms on the midwestern farmers and rural folks I know. The Ag stuff is mostly picked up from various real life situations but most of that's background and nonspecific.

Unfortunately I don't know anyone actively trying to overthrow the government, that part is made up.

11. What do you like best about this fic?
I really like how the tone worked out. It's fairly slow-paced and thoughtful I think? This means that Zea POV is absolutely the slowest for me to write, but it's worth it because I think it ends up being a pretty distinctive voice. I like to think there's also a pretty strong sense of place running through the whole thing, too. That's something I don't think the sequel(s) do quite as well, but part of that is because they're more plot-driven, there's more stuff happening so they speed up in a way.

15. What did you learn from writing this fic?
I learned a lot about crop distributions! And Sonja helped me with getting the Ag tech stuff right, which was super helpful. And just a lot of worldbuilding type stuff went into it, in terms of how the crews would work, where they'd be when, what materials they'd be able to get their hands on, how their world runs, really. Some of that you see directly but most of it is not really visible in the fic itself. Which I think is how it should be, I'm not writing a textbook, but i want it to have a sense that there's something coherent behind it.