Remix Navel-Gazing
Apr. 30th, 2007 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhI always love to read about the processes other writers went through to produce their remix stories, so I thought I'd write up my own.
This year, my assignment was![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ranalore. On the one hand, I was incredibly pleased; I'd been in the mood to write a Yami no Matsuei story, and had been hoping to be assigned to someone in the fandom. Not to mention that I love Rana's writing, and our views on characters are often close enough that I find her stories to be very inspiring for new ideas and perspectives. On the other hand, I wrote Rana's remix last year. It wouldn't be hard to find a different story to remix, as she's been a very productive writer in YnM (as well as in many other fandoms), but part of the fun of the remix challenge is seeing what someone else would do in your sandbox. And she'd already seen my take on her ideas. I thought of asking for a reassignment, so she could have someone new, but in the end I decided that I'd just have to write something extra special.
As I said, I really wanted to write a YnM story. As I was reading through her site, I got to The Nightingale and it occurred to me that I had never read the original Hans Christian Andersen fairytale. I googled up a translation and found myself struck by how very much not a "happily ever after" fairy tale it is. It is, on the surface, about how 'true love conquers all', but there's also the confusion between the preference for the real nightingale or the false one, and that strange ending. The nightingale promises to love and comfort the emperor, but refuses to always stay with him or to be bound in any way. It's such a adult, unflinching, almost dark portrayal of love, and I decided that I really wanted to bring that into my remix: this image of a relationship where the participants do love and comfort one another, but are still living utterly separate lives, and all the shiny jewels and silken threads of Twu Luv would only be an unhappy illusion.
I wanted to write a remix that took elements of both Rana's story and Anderson's fairy tale, and so I knew I'd call it a 'mash-up' (A mash-up is a musical track formed by combining two or more songs; the best known example is probably DJ Danger Mouse's The Grey Album, which put the vocals from Jay-Z's The Black Album to samples from the Beatles' White Album). I kept Rana's title, and picked "tiny glass bells" out of a quote from the fairy tale, because I like the delicate imagery of it, which I wanted to keep in my story.
In Rana's story, Tsuzuki is linked with the nightingale; I decided to switch the symbolism to Hisoka (which is why the paper ones Tsuzuki makes are colored green and gold), and move the POV to a tightly-linked Tsuzuki. What I wanted, to match the fairy tale, was a story in which Hisoka was there to comfort Tsuzuki, but wasn't willing to sacrifice his entire existence to do so. I also really wanted to see how much of the two original stories I could keep in my version; I always think it's neat when people retain original dialouge in their remixes.
I didn't manage much of that, unfortunately. There's a few phrases from Rana's story that survived to mine ("but he has no gift for words"; the nightingale-fuda has "a mellow voice"; "to pull him down into a firm kiss"; "in the dark his eyes gleam"), but they're all so small as to be unnoticeable. I also tried to keep some things from Anderson's fairy tale: "it seemed like a lie, or a story made up for a book" comes from "Your imperial majesty," said he, "cannot believe everything contained in books; sometimes they are only fiction", and "Tsuzuki's heart beat so wildly that his fingers shook with the flow of blood in his veins" is from the blood in the emperor's veins flowed more rapidly, and gave life to his weak limbs, and ""Hisoka, stay with me, please. I'd give you anything, I'd-" Tsuzuki swallows. But Hisoka only frowned. "You've already given me everything I need."" is from "You must always remain with me," said the emperor. / "How can I reward you?" "You have already rewarded me," said the nightingale. But again, all of those ended up almost unrecognizable in my remix.
Tsuzuki being Tsuzuki, writing a story in which the ideal of Twu Wuv is an impossibility comes out with things feeling a bit doomed, or at least difficult. He seems to want the big, redemptive, transformative kind of love, which is just what he can't have here, by the rules of the story. However, he can have Hisoka, who is sharp enough to realize that, even if he were willing to subsume their individualities for Twu Wuv, it would not cure Tsuzuki's problems of immortality, guilt, and being a shinigami. Which doesn't mean that there isn't still comfort, or support between them; the story came out as set in a terribly uncompromising world, but I'd wanted there to still be the element of compassion, or understanding, between them. I was thinking of a balance between always longing for what you can't have, and accepting what you do have. I'd had to change the story from a first-time to an established-relationship for that, because it's not the sort of thing Tsuzuki, or anyone, would think about at the beginning.
I'd been thinking about all of this, but because I'm a terrible person, I wrote it in a rush on the day Remix was due. Thankfullykessie was around on IM to tell me that it wasn't awful, as otherwise I'd have had to make a desperate post looking for someone to beta. It was really rather fun to write; I'd forgotten how much I like Tsuzuki's perspective. He's a character who lends himself to some nice sorts of poetic imagery unlike, say, Sanzo, who I always have to fight to get to mention the least detail about his surroundings or other characters.
This year, my assignment was
ranalore. On the one hand, I was incredibly pleased; I'd been in the mood to write a Yami no Matsuei story, and had been hoping to be assigned to someone in the fandom. Not to mention that I love Rana's writing, and our views on characters are often close enough that I find her stories to be very inspiring for new ideas and perspectives. On the other hand, I wrote Rana's remix last year. It wouldn't be hard to find a different story to remix, as she's been a very productive writer in YnM (as well as in many other fandoms), but part of the fun of the remix challenge is seeing what someone else would do in your sandbox. And she'd already seen my take on her ideas. I thought of asking for a reassignment, so she could have someone new, but in the end I decided that I'd just have to write something extra special.As I said, I really wanted to write a YnM story. As I was reading through her site, I got to The Nightingale and it occurred to me that I had never read the original Hans Christian Andersen fairytale. I googled up a translation and found myself struck by how very much not a "happily ever after" fairy tale it is. It is, on the surface, about how 'true love conquers all', but there's also the confusion between the preference for the real nightingale or the false one, and that strange ending. The nightingale promises to love and comfort the emperor, but refuses to always stay with him or to be bound in any way. It's such a adult, unflinching, almost dark portrayal of love, and I decided that I really wanted to bring that into my remix: this image of a relationship where the participants do love and comfort one another, but are still living utterly separate lives, and all the shiny jewels and silken threads of Twu Luv would only be an unhappy illusion.
I wanted to write a remix that took elements of both Rana's story and Anderson's fairy tale, and so I knew I'd call it a 'mash-up' (A mash-up is a musical track formed by combining two or more songs; the best known example is probably DJ Danger Mouse's The Grey Album, which put the vocals from Jay-Z's The Black Album to samples from the Beatles' White Album). I kept Rana's title, and picked "tiny glass bells" out of a quote from the fairy tale, because I like the delicate imagery of it, which I wanted to keep in my story.
In Rana's story, Tsuzuki is linked with the nightingale; I decided to switch the symbolism to Hisoka (which is why the paper ones Tsuzuki makes are colored green and gold), and move the POV to a tightly-linked Tsuzuki. What I wanted, to match the fairy tale, was a story in which Hisoka was there to comfort Tsuzuki, but wasn't willing to sacrifice his entire existence to do so. I also really wanted to see how much of the two original stories I could keep in my version; I always think it's neat when people retain original dialouge in their remixes.
I didn't manage much of that, unfortunately. There's a few phrases from Rana's story that survived to mine ("but he has no gift for words"; the nightingale-fuda has "a mellow voice"; "to pull him down into a firm kiss"; "in the dark his eyes gleam"), but they're all so small as to be unnoticeable. I also tried to keep some things from Anderson's fairy tale: "it seemed like a lie, or a story made up for a book" comes from "Your imperial majesty," said he, "cannot believe everything contained in books; sometimes they are only fiction", and "Tsuzuki's heart beat so wildly that his fingers shook with the flow of blood in his veins" is from the blood in the emperor's veins flowed more rapidly, and gave life to his weak limbs, and ""Hisoka, stay with me, please. I'd give you anything, I'd-" Tsuzuki swallows. But Hisoka only frowned. "You've already given me everything I need."" is from "You must always remain with me," said the emperor. / "How can I reward you?" "You have already rewarded me," said the nightingale. But again, all of those ended up almost unrecognizable in my remix.
Tsuzuki being Tsuzuki, writing a story in which the ideal of Twu Wuv is an impossibility comes out with things feeling a bit doomed, or at least difficult. He seems to want the big, redemptive, transformative kind of love, which is just what he can't have here, by the rules of the story. However, he can have Hisoka, who is sharp enough to realize that, even if he were willing to subsume their individualities for Twu Wuv, it would not cure Tsuzuki's problems of immortality, guilt, and being a shinigami. Which doesn't mean that there isn't still comfort, or support between them; the story came out as set in a terribly uncompromising world, but I'd wanted there to still be the element of compassion, or understanding, between them. I was thinking of a balance between always longing for what you can't have, and accepting what you do have. I'd had to change the story from a first-time to an established-relationship for that, because it's not the sort of thing Tsuzuki, or anyone, would think about at the beginning.
I'd been thinking about all of this, but because I'm a terrible person, I wrote it in a rush on the day Remix was due. Thankfully
kessie was around on IM to tell me that it wasn't awful, as otherwise I'd have had to make a desperate post looking for someone to beta. It was really rather fun to write; I'd forgotten how much I like Tsuzuki's perspective. He's a character who lends himself to some nice sorts of poetic imagery unlike, say, Sanzo, who I always have to fight to get to mention the least detail about his surroundings or other characters. 
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-05-01 03:23 pm (UTC)The more I think about it, the more I realize I should have known it was you all along, because you get where I'm coming from with these things, and what my kinks are, and you know how to play on them, which is exactly what this remix does (and what last year's did, in a different direction). I love that you went back to the source of my own inspiration, and pulled more elements in from it. Not only did that lead to some beautiful phrasing, but the tone of the piece has that lovely balance between yearning, melancholy, and dearly-bought happiness that Andersen so often achieved.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-03 02:31 am (UTC)It has been very neat to have you as a remix assignee, for just that reason. But I'm so spoiled now. Whatever will I do when I get assigned someone with an utterly different and unknown viewpoint from my own?
no subject
Date: 2007-05-03 06:23 am (UTC)When Tsuzuki put together the origami-fuda nightingale in my piece, he chose the form of a bird partly because of the association with wildness, fitting when sending a message of love to Hisoka. I mean, it was handy that it was already canon that he creates fuda birds for tracking functions, and that helped me choose the faery tale, as well, but one of the things I love best about that particular tale is that the bird refuses to stay in the gilded cage of the palace. She'll visit, but she won't be trapped. I think it's a happy ending, but it's not conventionally happy. It's a compromise after a betrayal, and actually a quite generous one.
*blush* Think of it this way. Maybe next year you'll have my luck, and get Dorian or Phoebe. Talk about spoiled. *G*
no subject
Date: 2007-05-02 07:21 am (UTC)this image of a relationship where the participants do love and comfort one another, but are still living utterly separate lives, and all the shiny jewels and silken threads of Twu Luv would only be an unhappy illusion.
That description is close to one of my versions of a functional romance--a compromise between having enough space and intimacy.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-03 02:27 am (UTC)Mine too. I'm not a big fan of the romance narrative which says everything will be fixed and transformed by finding love, but I love to read and write about characters reaching out to one another anyway.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-03 08:15 am (UTC)I love when that happens. It makes me look at my story with fresh eyes. Also, neurotically wonder if I'm unable to get my point across.
Romance as a magic bullet leaves me cold, sometimes alienating me to varying effects.