Ok, ok, ok, soo – I’m a great fan of your writing, especially the way you write the drabbles and how much you’re able to pack into each of them, so I’m afraid I won’t be able to offer much in terms of the actual criticism. Which is probably the nicest possible disappointment, but still.
I love your drabbles, so I decided to use this exchange as an excuse to do some quick comparison and interpretation of them, and this is why I write here, not under each of them separately, as you asked.
For me, the main themes in your works – drabble or otherwise, actually – are: a) Family, above all – blood relatives and found family both, and how complicated, fragile and painful these relationships could be, but also, ultimately, how much strength, love and safety they bring (sometimes it is a found family, or more distant relatives, which give this to the characters instead of their closest relatives, like e.g. in your Vader-Leia fics, or in Natsume’s ones); family is IMHO more important than romantic love in your works in general, although I didn’t read them all, so feel free to disregard this point.
b) Water – pantha rei, everything flows, drowns, swims and finds itself mirrored and mesmerized by streams, waves, rives, lakes, seas. Water appears in your fics as a part of a scenery, of course, but also as a great metaphor for life in a metaphysical or sometimes (depends on the canon) religious sense. The Force, The Life, that great, deep feeling of connection to others, not only people, but the whole world, and readiness to being lost in this feeling and in this universe, in the meaning which tries material with metaphysical – from dust to dust, from atoms to atoms, constant circle of life and smallest particles of the matter. So, it’s the life which has death in itself, of which death is a central part, and readiness to truly accept life – and therefore ability to live it – lies in one’s readiness to accept the death, getting melt in the stream of life, becoming one with nature, again, losing individuality. Which is a crux of many philosophical and religious concepts and, accidentally or not, you tend to write for canons which uses these. ;) And of course, writing this, I already started the third theme, so going back to water – when you write about The Life in this meaning, you almost always use water imaginary, more verbs than nouns, which makes sense, because Life (and a lot of other beings/things when they’re given divine-ish importance) is better described by what it does than what it is.
BTW, do you the song “Waters of March/ Aguas de Março”? Because if not, I think you might love it.
c) So, life as something which contains Death, and it’s Right and Good, and how it should be, life as countless small being parts of big things which are parts of even bigger things; the constant change; life as polyphony of voices and death (but also enlightenment, true understanding and acceptance) as losing one’s individuality and this being OK, too, this being a great secret and ultimate wisdom to be learnt by the characters sooner or later – to let go of “I/me/ego” aka accept Death and Ceasing of I as Right, not “the metaphysical scandal”, to accept that having a good, which means: fulfilling life – to fulfil one’s sense and purpose in life – is more than enough and there’s no need to ask for eternity different than being part of the great, ever-changing symphony of life. “What-Exists/The Being is God, ‘I’ is a sin”, as Theologia Germanica says (btw, I don’t know if you read it, but if you didn’t, you should, you sooo should, I think you will like it and find a very good source of quotes for your titles). So, classic mysticism, even in the most pro-individuality religions! I love mysticism, even if makes me cry, so, ekhm, I totally love this layer of your fics, too, although I cry on them like a kid, because I’m far from this level of acceptance. ;)
d) Ah, good life as fulfilling life and fulfilling life as meaningful life, life which fulfils its purpose, mission, duty, sense, meaning, adventure – I’m multiplying words not only because we both like enumerations and syntax parallels (oops, that should be the next point), but because these aspects are connected and mixed into one in your works; or rather, they play the same narrative and philosophical role, function, in your fics, I think – or a very similar one – and whichever one is used depends mostly on the canon, I think. And even when one of these aspects dominates the other, at least a couple of others is present, too. And from them, the most surprising is probably “adventure”, but I mean it like in folklore- anthropology- and similar studies, mostly, so as a part of the “quest”, an adventure which marks the rites of passage and is a liminal space, sacred quest/adventure, tied to the mission, and via mission tied to duty and via liminal space, tied to finding meaning and true purpose.
e) Ok, now when I mentioned it, of course rites of passage, usually the two classic two: the moment of death and start one’s adventure/quest, with all the anthropological and psychoanalytical (in literary theory sense more than current psychological school, to be honest) meanings and layers. Going on a quest to become independent from the family and find one’s “I”, finding one’s purpose and role in life, in both inner (what I am, what I like, what I dislike, recognising one needs and wishes…) and outer (what my family, my time, my community and the world needs me to be, recognising one duties and obligations) sense, starting this great adventure called life… And then, when the death comes, as the death comes, learning to de-learn all of this, accepting the death, learning to letting go of our youth, our visions of ourselves and our “I”, to find our meaning in giving back to The Life and the life in non-metaphysical sense (other people, community) what we got from it – and, in the moment of death, the one you often describe in your drabbles, just letting go, not trying to hold on to life or to self, letting go, contented with the knowledge that stream of life is eternal and will go on – without us.
Sniff, sniff, I got teary-eyed writing this and above, but it’s a good thing, it’s a very good thing when 100 words fics makes the reader(s) so moved! But yes, rites of passages and sometimes that liminal space which comes just after/before (like in Leia-Vader fic, this long one, where she saves Luke – it’s one long liminal space, triangle of liminal space, Luke is between life and death, Vader is between dying and going further, letting go of self/ghost, Leia goes into Luke’s liminal space with Vader as her guide – classic antro- and cultural themes are piling, I know – but she’s also the one starting this fic’s adventure and finding her – new, post-defeating the Empire – sense/purpose in life, and learning to accept her legacy and family – which parts of the family she wants to keep and which don’t quite deserve it – so she’s in her inner liminal space, between choices, and because these are choices of the Force- and blood-family weight, so the biggest caliber in traditional communities, it’s fitting it calls narratively for the proper liminal space, life-death, Dante’s Inferno and all that jizz, too) it’s a very constant theme in your fics, drabble or not, for me.
f) Btw, because – theme sixth! – you often write your drabbles about older than fanfiction’s average characters, characters middle-aged or older, that adventure might come to your characters after their youth, too; the best example, for me, is your Natsume’s “a ribbon at a time” drabble, in which it’s Fujiwara Touko who is getting drawn into an adventure and magical world of spirits and “talking cats”. Like a young boy or girl in most of the kids’ stories! The very, very, very same trope! And she goes to save her boy, not her father or mother, or the romantic interest! :D I loved this little twist and turning of traditional roles for older characters, especially women – supportive and/or mentoring.
g) You pick the very best titles, which often add layers and layers to the interpretations!
h) That one drabble about Luke and Leia you wrote for me, the one with “the world is unfair, but not unkind” still makes me cry even when I think about it, which is why I couldn’t check the quote and had to pull it out of my head. But oh my, it’s incredible, incredible, how perfect and good this drabble is, you know? I just find it unfair and like I said, I have no acceptance of the life world the death Star Wars sequel trilogy, either existentially, psychologically or philosophically. ;)
i) A bunch of stylistic quirks – you like repetitions and enumerations, especially the ones based on three and pretty often based on “two-three things following the same theme, and then the last one, contrasting” (I’d stick to my opinion both are three-based, the two-one obviously, and three-contrasting one because of the first part ;)). You tend to use strong rhythm and a rhythm which adds to the meaning of the text, e.g. adds the sense of motion – like, again, in “a ribbon at a time” (again? Again, it’s such a good drabble, so light and funny, and gives one all “ahoy, adventure” fuzzy feelings) – “and rising up, and up, and up” – it not only tells us how high Touko feels they are rising, it also suggests us the way they’re flying, these little waves of air she’s feeling, and that the motion for her isn’t smooth, but more jump-like. And of course alliterations, a lot of them. Also, you like to use pauses/n-dashes to emphasise the punchline, the last line, just before a few last words (I love this).
And something which is probably connected to being ESL, because I and a lot of people from EE writing in English (ekhm, Conrad) do it too, but it seems that native speakers almost never – putting All The Things into the middle of the sentence. Small digressions, descriptions, adjective groups, the whole additional stories within stories – ha, as 1001 Nights’ tales proves, every single sentence can be a thousand stories within a story, if you try hard enough! – all of them. Which is nice, imho, because it gives me the feeling of getting the information… organically? synchronically? in a way which suggests me they’re all organic part of the e.g. describe character, I get to know them before I go to the end of the grammar sentence, so they’re a part of the story told to me by this sentence; if something is told after, then I assume it’s done on a purpose. But English does it differently, of course… Which is not to say it sounds unnaturally in your writing – I’d not be able to tell either way! I just I notice it now, after being told about it, and so I notice it in your writing, too.
j) Two interesting – not so much exceptions as variants – of the above themes are in the “but they’re not yours, they are my own” (aka Criminal Minds’ drabble) and “captivate the sweet machine” (the Jupiter Ascending drabble), perhaps because these are one of your earliest ones. In “but they’re not yours…” we have water, yup, and liminal space, yup the second, but not in starting adventure or dying situation – JJ’s liminal space is connected to death, absolutely, but in the worlds of traditions and archetypes she would be more of a guide, guiding the troubled souls to the afterlife via finding their murderer (and stopping them for hurting others – and here, a role of an angel, saving victims from a certain death, pulling them from liminal space back to life). Her adventure started long before drabble and is a circular one – the charm of episodic TV series. So, in this drabble, for her, the water and the liminal space it symbolises, it’s more like a ritual of cleansing, again, connected to death – ritually, she’d be cleansing herself after and because of the contact with the dead – but not in terms of her dying. In the case of Jupiter Ascending, the water being a symbol of re-birth is already present in the canon and the drabble isn’t about it, in theory… But Jupiter, even if her hero journey was done in the canon, tries some new things and chooses her next steps, here, tastes the family ties (and I love that it’s not specified who exactly she meant as “Mom”), and the water of rebirth – being cursed in the canon – is still the cursed thing in the drabble, too. The pool is a luminal space, but a luminal space of the dark queen, buying her long life with the deaths of young peasants, and buying it because she can’t accept her own death. The stream of life being absorbed instead of absorbing, the image of a sin or unnatural monstrosity across the (pop)culture (Lifestream in FFVII and Shinra, and Sephiroth!). It’s all canon and this is probably you wrote it this way, but still, an interesting variation.
no subject
I love your drabbles, so I decided to use this exchange as an excuse to do some quick comparison and interpretation of them, and this is why I write here, not under each of them separately, as you asked.
For me, the main themes in your works – drabble or otherwise, actually – are:
a) Family, above all – blood relatives and found family both, and how complicated, fragile and painful these relationships could be, but also, ultimately, how much strength, love and safety they bring (sometimes it is a found family, or more distant relatives, which give this to the characters instead of their closest relatives, like e.g. in your Vader-Leia fics, or in Natsume’s ones); family is IMHO more important than romantic love in your works in general, although I didn’t read them all, so feel free to disregard this point.
b) Water – pantha rei, everything flows, drowns, swims and finds itself mirrored and mesmerized by streams, waves, rives, lakes, seas. Water appears in your fics as a part of a scenery, of course, but also as a great metaphor for life in a metaphysical or sometimes (depends on the canon) religious sense. The Force, The Life, that great, deep feeling of connection to others, not only people, but the whole world, and readiness to being lost in this feeling and in this universe, in the meaning which tries material with metaphysical – from dust to dust, from atoms to atoms, constant circle of life and smallest particles of the matter. So, it’s the life which has death in itself, of which death is a central part, and readiness to truly accept life – and therefore ability to live it – lies in one’s readiness to accept the death, getting melt in the stream of life, becoming one with nature, again, losing individuality. Which is a crux of many philosophical and religious concepts and, accidentally or not, you tend to write for canons which uses these. ;) And of course, writing this, I already started the third theme, so going back to water – when you write about The Life in this meaning, you almost always use water imaginary, more verbs than nouns, which makes sense, because Life (and a lot of other beings/things when they’re given divine-ish importance) is better described by what it does than what it is.
BTW, do you the song “Waters of March/ Aguas de Março”? Because if not, I think you might love it.
c) So, life as something which contains Death, and it’s Right and Good, and how it should be, life as countless small being parts of big things which are parts of even bigger things; the constant change; life as polyphony of voices and death (but also enlightenment, true understanding and acceptance) as losing one’s individuality and this being OK, too, this being a great secret and ultimate wisdom to be learnt by the characters sooner or later – to let go of “I/me/ego” aka accept Death and Ceasing of I as Right, not “the metaphysical scandal”, to accept that having a good, which means: fulfilling life – to fulfil one’s sense and purpose in life – is more than enough and there’s no need to ask for eternity different than being part of the great, ever-changing symphony of life. “What-Exists/The Being is God, ‘I’ is a sin”, as Theologia Germanica says (btw, I don’t know if you read it, but if you didn’t, you should, you sooo should, I think you will like it and find a very good source of quotes for your titles). So, classic mysticism, even in the most pro-individuality religions! I love mysticism, even if makes me cry, so, ekhm, I totally love this layer of your fics, too, although I cry on them like a kid, because I’m far from this level of acceptance. ;)
d) Ah, good life as fulfilling life and fulfilling life as meaningful life, life which fulfils its purpose, mission, duty, sense, meaning, adventure – I’m multiplying words not only because we both like enumerations and syntax parallels (oops, that should be the next point), but because these aspects are connected and mixed into one in your works; or rather, they play the same narrative and philosophical role, function, in your fics, I think – or a very similar one – and whichever one is used depends mostly on the canon, I think. And even when one of these aspects dominates the other, at least a couple of others is present, too. And from them, the most surprising is probably “adventure”, but I mean it like in folklore- anthropology- and similar studies, mostly, so as a part of the “quest”, an adventure which marks the rites of passage and is a liminal space, sacred quest/adventure, tied to the mission, and via mission tied to duty and via liminal space, tied to finding meaning and true purpose.
e) Ok, now when I mentioned it, of course rites of passage, usually the two classic two: the moment of death and start one’s adventure/quest, with all the anthropological and psychoanalytical (in literary theory sense more than current psychological school, to be honest) meanings and layers. Going on a quest to become independent from the family and find one’s “I”, finding one’s purpose and role in life, in both inner (what I am, what I like, what I dislike, recognising one needs and wishes…) and outer (what my family, my time, my community and the world needs me to be, recognising one duties and obligations) sense, starting this great adventure called life… And then, when the death comes, as the death comes, learning to de-learn all of this, accepting the death, learning to letting go of our youth, our visions of ourselves and our “I”, to find our meaning in giving back to The Life and the life in non-metaphysical sense (other people, community) what we got from it – and, in the moment of death, the one you often describe in your drabbles, just letting go, not trying to hold on to life or to self, letting go, contented with the knowledge that stream of life is eternal and will go on – without us.
Sniff, sniff, I got teary-eyed writing this and above, but it’s a good thing, it’s a very good thing when 100 words fics makes the reader(s) so moved! But yes, rites of passages and sometimes that liminal space which comes just after/before (like in Leia-Vader fic, this long one, where she saves Luke – it’s one long liminal space, triangle of liminal space, Luke is between life and death, Vader is between dying and going further, letting go of self/ghost, Leia goes into Luke’s liminal space with Vader as her guide – classic antro- and cultural themes are piling, I know – but she’s also the one starting this fic’s adventure and finding her – new, post-defeating the Empire – sense/purpose in life, and learning to accept her legacy and family – which parts of the family she wants to keep and which don’t quite deserve it – so she’s in her inner liminal space, between choices, and because these are choices of the Force- and blood-family weight, so the biggest caliber in traditional communities, it’s fitting it calls narratively for the proper liminal space, life-death, Dante’s Inferno and all that jizz, too) it’s a very constant theme in your fics, drabble or not, for me.
f) Btw, because – theme sixth! – you often write your drabbles about older than fanfiction’s average characters, characters middle-aged or older, that adventure might come to your characters after their youth, too; the best example, for me, is your Natsume’s “a ribbon at a time” drabble, in which it’s Fujiwara Touko who is getting drawn into an adventure and magical world of spirits and “talking cats”. Like a young boy or girl in most of the kids’ stories! The very, very, very same trope! And she goes to save her boy, not her father or mother, or the romantic interest! :D I loved this little twist and turning of traditional roles for older characters, especially women – supportive and/or mentoring.
g) You pick the very best titles, which often add layers and layers to the interpretations!
h) That one drabble about Luke and Leia you wrote for me, the one with “the world is unfair, but not unkind” still makes me cry even when I think about it, which is why I couldn’t check the quote and had to pull it out of my head. But oh my, it’s incredible, incredible, how perfect and good this drabble is, you know? I just find it unfair and like I said, I have no acceptance of
the life world the deathStar Wars sequel trilogy, either existentially, psychologically or philosophically. ;)i) A bunch of stylistic quirks – you like repetitions and enumerations, especially the ones based on three and pretty often based on “two-three things following the same theme, and then the last one, contrasting” (I’d stick to my opinion both are three-based, the two-one obviously, and three-contrasting one because of the first part ;)). You tend to use strong rhythm and a rhythm which adds to the meaning of the text, e.g. adds the sense of motion – like, again, in “a ribbon at a time” (again? Again, it’s such a good drabble, so light and funny, and gives one all “ahoy, adventure” fuzzy feelings) – “and rising up, and up, and up” – it not only tells us how high Touko feels they are rising, it also suggests us the way they’re flying, these little waves of air she’s feeling, and that the motion for her isn’t smooth, but more jump-like. And of course alliterations, a lot of them. Also, you like to use pauses/n-dashes to emphasise the punchline, the last line, just before a few last words (I love this).
And something which is probably connected to being ESL, because I and a lot of people from EE writing in English (ekhm, Conrad) do it too, but it seems that native speakers almost never – putting All The Things into the middle of the sentence. Small digressions, descriptions, adjective groups, the whole additional stories within stories – ha, as 1001 Nights’ tales proves, every single sentence can be a thousand stories within a story, if you try hard enough! – all of them. Which is nice, imho, because it gives me the feeling of getting the information… organically? synchronically? in a way which suggests me they’re all organic part of the e.g. describe character, I get to know them before I go to the end of the grammar sentence, so they’re a part of the story told to me by this sentence; if something is told after, then I assume it’s done on a purpose. But English does it differently, of course… Which is not to say it sounds unnaturally in your writing – I’d not be able to tell either way! I just I notice it now, after being told about it, and so I notice it in your writing, too.
j) Two interesting – not so much exceptions as variants – of the above themes are in the “but they’re not yours, they are my own” (aka Criminal Minds’ drabble) and “captivate the sweet machine” (the Jupiter Ascending drabble), perhaps because these are one of your earliest ones. In “but they’re not yours…” we have water, yup, and liminal space, yup the second, but not in starting adventure or dying situation – JJ’s liminal space is connected to death, absolutely, but in the worlds of traditions and archetypes she would be more of a guide, guiding the troubled souls to the afterlife via finding their murderer (and stopping them for hurting others – and here, a role of an angel, saving victims from a certain death, pulling them from liminal space back to life). Her adventure started long before drabble and is a circular one – the charm of episodic TV series. So, in this drabble, for her, the water and the liminal space it symbolises, it’s more like a ritual of cleansing, again, connected to death – ritually, she’d be cleansing herself after and because of the contact with the dead – but not in terms of her dying. In the case of Jupiter Ascending, the water being a symbol of re-birth is already present in the canon and the drabble isn’t about it, in theory… But Jupiter, even if her hero journey was done in the canon, tries some new things and chooses her next steps, here, tastes the family ties (and I love that it’s not specified who exactly she meant as “Mom”), and the water of rebirth – being cursed in the canon – is still the cursed thing in the drabble, too. The pool is a luminal space, but a luminal space of the dark queen, buying her long life with the deaths of young peasants, and buying it because she can’t accept her own death. The stream of life being absorbed instead of absorbing, the image of a sin or unnatural monstrosity across the (pop)culture (Lifestream in FFVII and Shinra, and Sephiroth!). It’s all canon and this is probably you wrote it this way, but still, an interesting variation.