![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oiranBecause she's my friend and my muffin, and she referred to it as "Beez," which reminded me of this old Scritti Politti song I hadn't even considered in a dozen years at least, I offer, at the request of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rhiannonhero,
I wanted to explore the possibilities of a post-Shattered rescue scenario where Clark and Lex end up together, but maybe it's not for the best. And I didn't want it to be a negative situation because of some direct effect on the two of them, per se--because I do think the characters need one another, regardless of the level of intimacy in the relationship. I wanted it to have potentially devastating impact on everyone else.
I started thinking along these lines because Clark has shown such poor, i.e., teenage, inexperienced judgment thus far on the show. He's just a kid and, while a lot of the stupid things he does I think are probably more a function of sloppy writing than of actual characterization decisions, the fact is that he does stupid things onscreen almost every week.
I definitely do not think we've heard the last of Jor-El. At least, I really hope we haven't. When Clark is leaving Smallville at the end of S2, Jor-El is still harping at him, even though Shippy Sue is dead. Not only was that an incredibly bad decision on Clark's part, it didn't have the results he desired, and the repercussions were, of course, devastating. I thought that saving Lex could turn out equally "bad," despite Clark's best intentions.
I had just been on a fairy tale rampage, and I re-read The Snow Queen, which has always been a favorite of mine. I had these weird picture books when I was a little girl that had photographs of dolls posed on elaborate sets for the illustrations, and a version of The Snow Queen was one of them. The version of the story I knew as a child had the Snow Queen coming for the little boy specifically, so I was surprised to read the version I cited and to find a different scenario. However, I loved the "white bees" and I loved the flower dreams. I put great stock in dreams and dreaming as just this wonderful present from one's own psyche, and I also have a very sensual, murky relationship with flowers. The dreams that HCA wrote strike me as being extremely creepy and erotic, especially considering the Jesus-y, moralizing stance taken elsewhere in the piece.
Bees. Snow. Swarms. Flowers and sunflowers. The images came together really quickly. I am not one of those who can quote a lot of mythology, though I wish I could. I remember bits and pieces of things, and I make my own connections or almost-connections, and they get me very excited. I love the image of the Minotaur, and the devil/satyr idea of Lionel, which I've used in a tiny way before. I liked Lex with a spotty memory as the boy stolen away by the Snow Queen. Since Clark might be plenty gay, but I never see him as a "queen," I let the Fortress be the palace from the story. It's a place for learning and forgetting, just as dreams are, and it has lessons that can be learned, or you can just play games all day long.
Clark's in over his head from the moment he takes Lex into the Fortress. I hope it's clear that he's "negotiated" with Jor-El by basically saying "yes" to anything and everything, just to keep Lex safe. He's not going to have thought it over. And a worst-case-scenario Jor-El is going to have wanted Clark to rule our flawed race. But Clark is a 17-year-old boy, and he's really a sweetie at heart. He's not in any way prepared to rule anything.
Lillian and the AI are both telling Lex as much truth as they can stand. She's dead, the AI is a machine, so they've got limitations. And while I know that Lillian is coming to Lex in dreams, I tend to think of her as an actual character and not so much an aspect of Lex. Lionel is a figment here, though, I think.
Rhi wanted a commentary on this one, and I just have to say: in person, ask me anything you want, and I'll explain it. But I'm not writing down details on the specific meanings of the images. What was wonderful, and what is always wonderful when I write stuff like this, is that I write it and then it turns out to be even more apt than I'd thought…and I build off of that, and then I find another reference that makes sense out of something I'd thought I put in arbitrarily. None of it is hard to find if you care all that much because I'm just sort of drifting along absorbing information and making my little connections and squeeing with glee when they work out pretty.
For instance, the owl in Primary: I wrote the thing about Clark flying with owls because I love birds in general, and owls are just kind of amazing, and I always wanted to hold one of the birds of prey at the zoo but of course they don't let you just walk up and do that. You can get close, but you can't get contact. And there's no convincing a zoo employee that you won't mind if you get clawed or blinded because it would be a sort of honor because, frankly, that sounds crazy and they wouldn't believe you (even if it is true). And then right after I wrote that, I became instantly curious about owl symbolism and did a Google search and that's when I found out that owls are associated with Athena and that an owl flying overhead is a sign that an army will be successful in battle. So I put it in the story.
This story was like that, except I already knew what everything meant, but it just kept falling together in different, pretty patterns. Frankly, I could have kept writing dream sequences for a thousand pages (okay, maybe that's an exaggeration), but I thought I'd done enough to make a point.
My stance on the symbolism in this story right now is: if you like it enough, you'll look it up and maybe you'll find the same things I had in my head, or the ones I found online or in books. And if you meet me, you can ask and I'll talk about it until you're bored. But if I write it down, that ruins it completely and draws it to a close. Especially, because I can keep looking for more connections and more meanings and more surprises this way, too, and I'll have to stop if I tell you what it "means."
Right now, this is my favorite of my own stories. I insisted and insisted that Mr. Glove read it and he became instantly bored, which wasn't entirely a surprise. He doesn't give a shit about Clark and Lex, and that does color his experience of any story I'm trying to interest him in, of course. So he didn't finish it, and said, "I'm sorry, but I hated it." Maybe that makes me even more fiercely fond of it.
And now I'm going to yoga. I wish they did chanting at this studio. To make up for it, I've been alternating between singing along with Lucinda Williams and singing in Sanskrit all day long. I don't know a lot of Sanskrit, to put it mildly, but it's so pretty...
rhiannonhero, I wanted to explore the possibilities of a post-Shattered rescue scenario where Clark and Lex end up together, but maybe it's not for the best. And I didn't want it to be a negative situation because of some direct effect on the two of them, per se--because I do think the characters need one another, regardless of the level of intimacy in the relationship. I wanted it to have potentially devastating impact on everyone else.
I started thinking along these lines because Clark has shown such poor, i.e., teenage, inexperienced judgment thus far on the show. He's just a kid and, while a lot of the stupid things he does I think are probably more a function of sloppy writing than of actual characterization decisions, the fact is that he does stupid things onscreen almost every week.
I definitely do not think we've heard the last of Jor-El. At least, I really hope we haven't. When Clark is leaving Smallville at the end of S2, Jor-El is still harping at him, even though Shippy Sue is dead. Not only was that an incredibly bad decision on Clark's part, it didn't have the results he desired, and the repercussions were, of course, devastating. I thought that saving Lex could turn out equally "bad," despite Clark's best intentions.
I had just been on a fairy tale rampage, and I re-read The Snow Queen, which has always been a favorite of mine. I had these weird picture books when I was a little girl that had photographs of dolls posed on elaborate sets for the illustrations, and a version of The Snow Queen was one of them. The version of the story I knew as a child had the Snow Queen coming for the little boy specifically, so I was surprised to read the version I cited and to find a different scenario. However, I loved the "white bees" and I loved the flower dreams. I put great stock in dreams and dreaming as just this wonderful present from one's own psyche, and I also have a very sensual, murky relationship with flowers. The dreams that HCA wrote strike me as being extremely creepy and erotic, especially considering the Jesus-y, moralizing stance taken elsewhere in the piece.
Bees. Snow. Swarms. Flowers and sunflowers. The images came together really quickly. I am not one of those who can quote a lot of mythology, though I wish I could. I remember bits and pieces of things, and I make my own connections or almost-connections, and they get me very excited. I love the image of the Minotaur, and the devil/satyr idea of Lionel, which I've used in a tiny way before. I liked Lex with a spotty memory as the boy stolen away by the Snow Queen. Since Clark might be plenty gay, but I never see him as a "queen," I let the Fortress be the palace from the story. It's a place for learning and forgetting, just as dreams are, and it has lessons that can be learned, or you can just play games all day long.
Clark's in over his head from the moment he takes Lex into the Fortress. I hope it's clear that he's "negotiated" with Jor-El by basically saying "yes" to anything and everything, just to keep Lex safe. He's not going to have thought it over. And a worst-case-scenario Jor-El is going to have wanted Clark to rule our flawed race. But Clark is a 17-year-old boy, and he's really a sweetie at heart. He's not in any way prepared to rule anything.
Lillian and the AI are both telling Lex as much truth as they can stand. She's dead, the AI is a machine, so they've got limitations. And while I know that Lillian is coming to Lex in dreams, I tend to think of her as an actual character and not so much an aspect of Lex. Lionel is a figment here, though, I think.
Rhi wanted a commentary on this one, and I just have to say: in person, ask me anything you want, and I'll explain it. But I'm not writing down details on the specific meanings of the images. What was wonderful, and what is always wonderful when I write stuff like this, is that I write it and then it turns out to be even more apt than I'd thought…and I build off of that, and then I find another reference that makes sense out of something I'd thought I put in arbitrarily. None of it is hard to find if you care all that much because I'm just sort of drifting along absorbing information and making my little connections and squeeing with glee when they work out pretty.
For instance, the owl in Primary: I wrote the thing about Clark flying with owls because I love birds in general, and owls are just kind of amazing, and I always wanted to hold one of the birds of prey at the zoo but of course they don't let you just walk up and do that. You can get close, but you can't get contact. And there's no convincing a zoo employee that you won't mind if you get clawed or blinded because it would be a sort of honor because, frankly, that sounds crazy and they wouldn't believe you (even if it is true). And then right after I wrote that, I became instantly curious about owl symbolism and did a Google search and that's when I found out that owls are associated with Athena and that an owl flying overhead is a sign that an army will be successful in battle. So I put it in the story.
This story was like that, except I already knew what everything meant, but it just kept falling together in different, pretty patterns. Frankly, I could have kept writing dream sequences for a thousand pages (okay, maybe that's an exaggeration), but I thought I'd done enough to make a point.
My stance on the symbolism in this story right now is: if you like it enough, you'll look it up and maybe you'll find the same things I had in my head, or the ones I found online or in books. And if you meet me, you can ask and I'll talk about it until you're bored. But if I write it down, that ruins it completely and draws it to a close. Especially, because I can keep looking for more connections and more meanings and more surprises this way, too, and I'll have to stop if I tell you what it "means."
Right now, this is my favorite of my own stories. I insisted and insisted that Mr. Glove read it and he became instantly bored, which wasn't entirely a surprise. He doesn't give a shit about Clark and Lex, and that does color his experience of any story I'm trying to interest him in, of course. So he didn't finish it, and said, "I'm sorry, but I hated it." Maybe that makes me even more fiercely fond of it.
And now I'm going to yoga. I wish they did chanting at this studio. To make up for it, I've been alternating between singing along with Lucinda Williams and singing in Sanskrit all day long. I don't know a lot of Sanskrit, to put it mildly, but it's so pretty...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 03:10 pm (UTC)Word on owls - they're mystical, odd creatures and it's probably no coincidence they're used quite often in mythology of all types.
The Native Americans thought they were a harbinger of death (silent, stealing souls in the night) and I admit they're creepy, at least to me. The whole silence factor, and always watching, and the eerie sounds they make.
I once lived in a house that had a pair of owls living in an old dead tree out front and I was convinced the house was haunted. The owls being there didn't help.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 07:51 pm (UTC)Owls (and most birds of prey) always seem so perfectly designed for what they do, which gives me a kind of thrill. I feel so inept and designed for vagueness (big heavy head, long limbs sticking out everywhere) that sometimes I think I'd like to be precise like that.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 01:48 pm (UTC)Never mind. That's all about me and this should be about you.
This is my fave of your stories right now, too. Although, Kyoto Song is really way up there, too. Kissed like starvelings, yo. Doesn't get better than that.
Thank you for doing this one. It is really amazing and it is interesting to see how you were inspired. It is amazing what will get things going, huh?
*hugs and kisses* AND see you in two daaaaazzzzzeee!
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 01:57 pm (UTC)I tried to do the "talk-over" for other commentaries--I think that's what's expected or wanted, really. I did exerpts of Primary for that commentary, but I used all of Anticlimax because it's comparatively short. I've read what you've got of Soulquake and I like how you're doing it.
I could make it short and easy by just saying: "I had a muddle in my head, pulled a thread, and it straighted out like this, sort of."
Two daze...