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!

[penfold-x.livejournal.com]

OOOOOOOH

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

[penfold-x.livejournal.com]

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