Hmpf does embarrassing insta-fic!
Apr. 16th, 2007 04:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hmpfTo celebrate this rare, nay, completely singular occurrence, here's the result, right away - unbeta'd, unpolished, un-whatevered. Usually I don't release fics into the wild before they've been rewritten at least ten times, then put in a drawer for at least a month, then beta'd, then revised a couple of times, then beta'd again, then put back into the drawer for another fortnight... you get the picture. But then, usually I don't write fics in three hours, either. Of course, the fact that this took only three hours probably shows, and I'll be mortally embarrassed tomorrow, but, you know... what the hell. This is the first time in my life I've finished a first draft in less than *weeks* (and weeks is *good*, even); have to mark the occasion somehow.
ETA: This was very much a first draft. A second draft can be found here. Third draft here. Fourth (and best, so far) draft here. This fic is very much a Work in Progress. I don't usually do this in public, but I felt I needed to get *some* version of this fic out there, and so I decided, subsequently, to get *all* of them out there. I suggest you always pick the latest version, but then, people liked the first version, too, so that can't have been too bad... *g*
ETA 2: Final version here: http://hmpf.livejournal.com/166515.html#cutid1"
Fandom is Life On Mars (what else would it be at the moment?), characters are Sam, Ruth, Maya (sort of), and it's gory, melodramatic and generally unpleasant. Spoilers for 2.08, obviously.
Oh yeah, and you probably know that I'm not a native speaker, and since this hasn't been beta'd, there may be weirdness...
****
And then it's all suddenly very simple:
his feet slapping on concrete, the last step, the last ever,
pushing off with all his power,
sky high and wide,
and then there's only the great blue,
and gravity,
and it's all right, it's all right,
no space for anything but joy in this sky,
and it's too late now,
(a relief),
too late for regrets,
too late for a change of mind,
and it's such a relief, a relief
to feel the air rush past,
to see the ground come up,
to know this is it,
it's over it's done he's done what he could he's done his best
and that's all he can do,
and his mum will understand, she understands,
she will -
[Ruth Tyler understands: that she's failed him; that she failed to see the sky waiting at the back of his eyes; understands that she doesn't matter; and she'll go on, of course, she's done it before, once, twice, she can do it again, pick herself up another time and go on, she needs to believe that, and sometimes she does believe that, sometimes – and then she stands by a mound of earth that's still fresh and she knows that this time is different, and she straightens her back, raises her chin, and there's no place to go, no place to go at all.]
- and he's falling,
too late now,
falling,
too late,
and it's so good
to be going, going, gone,
almost gone already,
too late to do anything,
it's over already,
it's over,
(so good),
the sky gone,
only the ground now,
jumping up,
rushing up,
coming to meet him,
fractions of seconds now,
(such a relief),
and there's nothing here for him,
nothing, nobody -
[Maya has had a lunch date, another pointless exercise in rebound, and of course anyone should be better than Sam, Sam was unsalvageable from the first, and yet, and yet - and there's an ambulance in front of the building, a small crowd, a colleague turns, sees her, moves to apprehend her, and she knows, she just knows; she trips, runs, pushes through the cluster and reaches the centre just as someone says 'it's over', sinks to her knees as frantic activity is replaced by a stillness that radiates outwards, takes his hand and feels a hand on her shoulder and says, to no one in particular, 'I'm his girlfriend', surprised.]
- and there's
no way to turn back,
no reason,
this is liberation,
this is -
and the last millisecond takes forever,
a glorious, golden eternity,
but then
the ground's there and
things burst, tear and break
and his blood's free to fill spaces inside him
as his brain quietly gives out
and that's that.
ETA: This was very much a first draft. A second draft can be found here. Third draft here. Fourth (and best, so far) draft here. This fic is very much a Work in Progress. I don't usually do this in public, but I felt I needed to get *some* version of this fic out there, and so I decided, subsequently, to get *all* of them out there. I suggest you always pick the latest version, but then, people liked the first version, too, so that can't have been too bad... *g*
ETA 2: Final version here: http://hmpf.livejournal.com/166515.html#cutid1"
Fandom is Life On Mars (what else would it be at the moment?), characters are Sam, Ruth, Maya (sort of), and it's gory, melodramatic and generally unpleasant. Spoilers for 2.08, obviously.
Oh yeah, and you probably know that I'm not a native speaker, and since this hasn't been beta'd, there may be weirdness...
****
And then it's all suddenly very simple:
his feet slapping on concrete, the last step, the last ever,
pushing off with all his power,
sky high and wide,
and then there's only the great blue,
and gravity,
and it's all right, it's all right,
no space for anything but joy in this sky,
and it's too late now,
(a relief),
too late for regrets,
too late for a change of mind,
and it's such a relief, a relief
to feel the air rush past,
to see the ground come up,
to know this is it,
it's over it's done he's done what he could he's done his best
and that's all he can do,
and his mum will understand, she understands,
she will -
[Ruth Tyler understands: that she's failed him; that she failed to see the sky waiting at the back of his eyes; understands that she doesn't matter; and she'll go on, of course, she's done it before, once, twice, she can do it again, pick herself up another time and go on, she needs to believe that, and sometimes she does believe that, sometimes – and then she stands by a mound of earth that's still fresh and she knows that this time is different, and she straightens her back, raises her chin, and there's no place to go, no place to go at all.]
- and he's falling,
too late now,
falling,
too late,
and it's so good
to be going, going, gone,
almost gone already,
too late to do anything,
it's over already,
it's over,
(so good),
the sky gone,
only the ground now,
jumping up,
rushing up,
coming to meet him,
fractions of seconds now,
(such a relief),
and there's nothing here for him,
nothing, nobody -
[Maya has had a lunch date, another pointless exercise in rebound, and of course anyone should be better than Sam, Sam was unsalvageable from the first, and yet, and yet - and there's an ambulance in front of the building, a small crowd, a colleague turns, sees her, moves to apprehend her, and she knows, she just knows; she trips, runs, pushes through the cluster and reaches the centre just as someone says 'it's over', sinks to her knees as frantic activity is replaced by a stillness that radiates outwards, takes his hand and feels a hand on her shoulder and says, to no one in particular, 'I'm his girlfriend', surprised.]
- and there's
no way to turn back,
no reason,
this is liberation,
this is -
and the last millisecond takes forever,
a glorious, golden eternity,
but then
the ground's there and
things burst, tear and break
and his blood's free to fill spaces inside him
as his brain quietly gives out
and that's that.
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Totally shameless self-pimpage
Date: 2007-04-17 12:48 am (UTC)http://www.allabouthmpf.com/normal.htm
I don't usually pimp my own stuff this shamelessly, but I'm inordinately proud of "Normal", and I've been talking about my slowfic so much in this fandom that I feel like a fraud now that my first fic here is such an unusually fast one. *g* So, the above's to prove how slow I can be. ;-)
The bulk of that was written in 'just' two years, btw, but it took another year to find its final form.
A note: You absolutely do not have to read the story if you don't want to, and you don't have to comment on it, either. I'm completely serious. Also, if you do want to read it and comment on it, *anything* goes - negative, positive, indifferent. I'm dreaming of a fanfic culture that *really* values honest feedback, and that starts with me. But, as I said, no comment's fine, too. I've received enough feedback on that fic to last me a lifetime, so it's not like I urgently *need* another opinion on it. *g*
Re: Totally shameless self-pimpage
Date: 2007-04-17 01:07 pm (UTC)Absolutely fabulous piece. Seriously. The pace is amazing, you can feel the ebb and flow of Crichton's thoughts and feelings as you read.
Very thought provoking as well. It rarely seems to be addressed in TV. TV shows are the modern fairy stories in a way - everything stops at happily ever after. The prodigal son returns home to a hero's welcome, the displaced work out where they want to be, get the girl and drive off into the sunset. There's no "and what then?" We bring terror and awe when we return home from a place no-one else has been, how does that interact on the "happily ever after" (and you answered that one perfectly). In a similar vein, when the afterlife is eternal, exactly how is one supposed to exist? Either we have something to struggle against or we give up. If you can't die, what happens then?
Re: Totally shameless self-pimpage
Date: 2007-04-17 06:39 pm (UTC)Thanks. :-)
>Very thought provoking as well. It rarely seems to be addressed in TV. TV shows are the modern fairy stories in a way - everything stops at happily ever after. The prodigal son returns home to a hero's welcome, the displaced work out where they want to be, get the girl and drive off into the sunset.
Didn't you mean 'under the rainbow'? ;-) (Naaaaah. We hate rainbows! Down with rainbows!)
>There's no "and what then?" We bring terror and awe when we return home from a place no-one else has been, how does that interact on the "happily ever after" (and you answered that one perfectly).
One reason for which I love Farscape is that it actually addressed this *in canon*. Not quite as thoroughly as I would have liked, but still to a far greater extent than I would have expected to see in *any* tv show. The ending of "Kansas" and nearly all of "Terra Firma" just about broke my heart... in a good way. John's diary, the scenes with his dad, the fact that he can't talk openly to *anyone*, and that the closest he comes to admitting he's become - literally - 'alienated' is doing an E.T. impression in a talk with his sister... Season four had its flaws (most of "Kansas" being one, for example!), but *that* was something they did right.
That's another example of a show taking the fanfic route, btw! Farscape's "Terra Firma" is 100% fanfic (and the ending of "Kansas", with John pulling the gun on Jack, too)... but it's really well done fanfic, and, what's even more important - it's not 'implausible wishful thinking fanfic' but rather, the kind of fanfic that's always been less popular but just as important, namely, the kind that asks questions like 'what does this *really* do to the hero's psyche?' The questions we're dying to know the answers to, but which don't usually get addressed on tv.
>In a similar vein, when the afterlife is eternal, exactly how is one supposed to exist? Either we have something to struggle against or we give up. If you can't die, what happens then?
Well... Nirvana. Heaven. Pure being. The afterlife's called afterlife for a reason. It's *not* life. *Life* is struggle, change. Nirvana, heaven, whatever you call it, is permanence, a completely static form of existence. Which is a happy thought if you assume that it's a state of perfection. But I don't buy that Sam had reached that mental state of perfection. If they meant to imply that, they would have had to show me how he got there, how he resolved all his issues and made his peace.