minutia_r

So last night as I was going to sleep I was thinking about the similarities between Tuuri Hotakainen and Miles Vorkosigan, as one does

And I realized that if Tuuri=Miles then Ensi=Piotr

And then there was nothing for it but to work out an entire Vorkosigan Saga AU for SSSS

Ensi, of course, like Piotr, was involved in every major conflict of the previous century, terror of the Cetagandans, that’s her. Naturally she can’t have been a count, but in this AU I figure first Juha and then Onni inherited the countship pretty young. So Dowager Countess Ensi was the one in charge, everyone just accepted it, desperate times and anyway if you didn’t like it you kept quiet about it or Ensi’s Vorfemme knife would be the last thing you saw.

The only person known to defy Ensi and live is Anne-Mari, when she refused to slit Tuuri’s throat when she was born. Not sure what sort of mutation Tuuri has in this scenario.

Anyway, that’s the Vorhotakainens, but what about the rest of the main cast? I figure in this AU they should each be from a different planet in keeping with the whole international nature of canon.

So you’ve got Haut Lady Reynir, you can’t get much more sheltered than that. Plus, look at his hair. In your heart you know it to be true.

Emil should come from somewhere sophisticated, technologically advanced though maybe not quite as technologically advanced as Cetaganda, smugly convinced of their superiority to everywhere else …. so, Beta Colony. And as long as we’re introducing gender changes into this AU, I could totally get behind Honorable Herm Emil. Either way, I just want art of Emil in a sarong with Betan earrings. Breasts optional.

Now, ideally I would want to make Sigrun Barrayaran, but I can’t, because Vorhotakainens. So I was thinking, Marilcan? Escobarran? But then it occurred to me–who wouldn’t want to see Sigrun with a plasma arc in one hand, a nerve disrupter in the other, and a knife in each of the other two? So yeah. Quaddie Sigrun.

And Mikkel was such a troll that they kicked him of off Athos for the sake of peace and quiet. “Go …. find us some immigrants or something,” they said. “Don’t come back till you’ve got lots. Bye!” And then the entire planet breathed a sigh of relief.

I wanted to make a long post about the Tuuri situation, but in the end I think I’ll just confine myself to a few thoughts. Especially since when I was trying to organize my thoughts yesterday and I was like “but if I don’t write it up today what if the info page tomorrow changes everything?”

And you know I don’t think it changes everything, but I do think it changes the probabilities? Yesterday I would have said that “we’ll see Tuuri again” meaning just in flashbacks was unlikely but definitely possible, whereas today I think that’s extremely unlikely (although I really can’t rule anything out at this point). I mean, why even talk about living souls visiting Tuonela or dead souls returning from there if nothing like that is going to happen.

I want to thank @vefanyar for bringing up Lemminkäinen, because I had been thinking of Aino, which is the obvious parallel and of course it’s there, but it’s never been a straight retelling with a 1:1 correspondence. So with Aino, she (kind of maybe) drowns herself, and while it’s not the last time she takes an active role in the story or interacts with the other characters, she never returns to the land of the living (or at least mortals).

And I had been thinking that this was the most likely fate for Tuuri, and I still think it’s quite possible, and it might yet give her a chance for heroism and closure with her loved ones.

(Also, with the Aino parallels, there is a small yet distinct possibility that the mermaid au might actually become canon in some form)

But anyway, I was also thinking about the info page from last chapter, and Tuuri’s final conversation with Lalli, and how the obvious thing that they’re doing is showing the fate that Tuuri wants to avoid, and why her choice makes sense. And I think that is a thing going on, but also I think it might be pointing in a future direction of Tuuri’s story–the info page talking about how all previous attempts at recalling lost souls to themselves has failed, and Tuuri wondering if they can ever find rest and Lalli’s answer that maybe if they have someone to guide them–it might be that what they need is a guide from the other side. Instead of Tuuri’s death being unnecessary, it might be that she needs to be dead in order to accomplish this great thing.

I was also thinking, wouldn’t it confound expectations if instead of picking up with the surviving crew, the next chapter picked up with Tuuri and her underworld adventures. And actually, at this point, I wouldn’t be that surprised? I still think it’s less likely than the other way, but I wouldn’t be that surprised.

But I had been thinking that Tuuri was extremely unlikely to truly come back from the dead, and that if she did it would be hard to do it in a way that I found satisfying. And I’m less of that mind today. And I do think the Lemminkäinen parallel is relevant because he and Tuuri do share the trait of everyone around them always going “hoe don’t do it” but they go and do the thing anyway. So if he can come back from the dead maybe she can too.

Dear All in the Family creator:

Thank you so much for signing up to write or draw me a thing about a fictional family relationship I love! I am ridiculously easy to please when it comes to people writing or drawing me things. Seriously, just make me something based on any of my requests and I’m sure I’ll love it. So--aside from the Do Not Wants--please feel free to ignore the rest of this letter. It’s really only here to give you inspiration if you don’t know what to write or draw, but if you have your own ideas already, please go wild with them. One of the fun parts about somebody making things for my prompts is when they come up with things I would never have thought of myself. ( Read more... )

Chapter 1, scene 1: How to communicate, Hotakainen-style (pt 1 of probably 3?)
So the other day, in answer to a question about unpopular fandom opinions, I had the following to say: I am kind of tempted to go through the comic and find every time Tuuri translates something, and see if her translations are really as inaccurate as some people say, because I suspect they’re not. I haven’t done this yet, though, so I can’t be sure.

And then @worldsentwined had her own unpopular opinions about Tuuri, and then we talked for a bit, which led to me deciding that I was just going to do it, I was totally going to make an annotated list of all of Tuuri’s translations and settle this question once and for all. So, naturally, I went to the start of Chapter 1 and started a reread of the comic, because how else am I going to accomplish this? I mean, obviously, I was just going to skim with an eye to translations, and not actually do a full reread, but …

Okay, here’s the thing. If you are trying to understand the dynamics between Onni, Tuuri, and Lalli, and you reread their introduction in the light of subsequent events in the comic, there are a number of interesting things going on.

(Cut because this is getting pretty long. And it’s just part one, and all this is before I get to the translations, which I haven’t even started yet.)

First thing: as is eventually established, Lalli does not understand what’s going on even a little. He doesn’t know what the mission is; he doesn’t realize that getting on the boat means going to a far-away foreign country and not coming back to Keuruu until spring. Tuuri, on the other hand, is surprised (though not very surprised, and more exasperated than distressed) that he doesn’t know these things. She tried to explain them to him, and he seemed to be indicating that he understood. (Although, as Tuuri probably has some inkling of by now, Lalli’s “okay” is not a very good indication of anything, except possibly “I acknowledge that you just said something.”)

Now, there is a widespread impression in fandom that Onni is better at communicating with Lalli than Tuuri is. It’s not hard to see how this impression arose; there are a number of factors, but the main one is that Tuuri says so herself.

However, it’s hard to take Tuuri’s statement at face value when the very next thing we see after she makes it is a flashback Onni being frankly terrible at communicating with Lalli–yes, he finds him and talks to him, which Tuuri doesn’t manage to do, but what he says is the single worst piece of advice that he could have given him, and something that has demonstrably messed Lalli up to this day. So I can’t believe that we are meant to take this as an example of Onni’s great communication skills.

Getting back to the introduction, so Kiraly and I were talking, and she wondered–if Onni is actually better at communicating with Lalli than Tuuri is, why didn’t he realize that Lalli didn’t know what the job being offered to him was, and explain it? After all, Onni understood perfectly well what was going on, and if he wanted to discourage Lalli from going, surely a helpful first step might have been explaining what going actually meant.

So I see a number of possible answers to that question.

Onni actually believed, the same as Tuuri did, that Lalli had a basic grasp of what was going on.
Onni thought that explaining what was going on would have made Lalli more likely to want to go, and not less. (This does not seem to be the case, but Onni might have believed it anyway.)
Onni felt no need to explain to Lalli what was going on, because he said that Tuuri and Lalli weren’t going and that ought to be the end of it, and he was absolutely counting on Lalli simply not showing up for the boat.
Now personally, my money’s on number 3, although none of these things are mutually exclusive exactly, and it could be a combination of all three. But the thing is, this illustrates a major principle of communication among Hotakainens–and it goes for all Hotakainens: Never engage in a direct confrontation if you think you can get your way without it.

And he would have gotten away with it, too, if Tuuri hadn’t left Lalli a note.

Continued from here. This one is less about communication styles and more about Hotakainen family dynamics in general, and Tuuri’s issues in particular, but it’s all to do with unpacking what’s going on in that first scene, anyway.

So. When we first meet the Hotakainens, Tuuri wants Lalli to come on the mission with her, and Onni wants Lalli to stay in Keuruu. Here’s the thing, though–why?

It’s pretty obvious that Tuuri wants to get the hell out of Keuruu. But why is she so insistent on Lalli coming with her? Is she just convinced that everyone wants the same thing that she wants, or at least that since she wants to get out of Keuruu, it would necessarily be a good thing for Lalli too? Is she, despite her longing for adventure, reluctant to go out into the world all alone, without any of her family with her?

I do think that both of these things are factors. But I also think there’s a third, more critical factor, which–I’ll get to it.

On the face of it, it seems obvious why Onni wants Lalli to stay in Keuruu. Keuruu is safe, Onni wants Lalli to be safe, pretty simple, right? Yeah, Tuuri might be determined to go, and maybe Onni can’t stop her, but while protecting one out of two of his young relatives that he raised from children is not great, it’s got to be better than zero out of two.

Only … not necessarily. Because as important as it is to Onni to protect Lalli, he’s more focused on protecting Tuuri. (This has been the subject of some discussion on the forum, mostly about how unfair this is to Lalli. Which it is! But what gets missed out is how unfair it is to Tuuri. More on that later.) In his conversation with Lalli and Reynir in the dreamworld, Onni even says that he’s glad that there are two mages traveling with his sister–so if Onni is glad that Lalli is there, why did he try to stop him from going?

It might be that Onni thinks that if Lalli doesn’t show up, Tuuri will lose her nerve and decide not to go either. If so, it just goes to show how little Onni knows Tuuri. And it’s true that the Hotakainens often don’t understand each other despite how claustrophobically close they all are. But in this case I think it’s something else–I think Onni believes that if Lalli doesn’t show up, Taru isn’t going to take Tuuri either. And that’s why Tuuri is so insistent on Lalli coming along–because she believes the same thing.

This is what Tuuri says when she’s shoving Lalli onto the boat: “I can not miss this opportunity!” But why should she miss the opportunity if Lalli doesn’t get on the boat?

Well, here’s the thing: Tuuri’s not a fighter. She’s not a mage. She’s not immune. All her life, she’s been hearing that she’s helpless, that she needs to be protected. And not just hearing it from Onni, or her parents and the rest of her family when they were still around–this is how her entire society thinks. It’s different in Iceland, or even in Sweden, but out at the fringes of human civilization, Tuuri is aware that she’s dead weight. Whatever The Event was, it can only have reinforced that. All her education, her training, her skills–they don’t matter.

But Lalli’s skills matter. And Tuuri can translate for Lalli, both language-wise, and otherwise. This, I think, is why Tuuri pushes Lalli so hard, and why she tries in so many small and not-so-small ways to sort of … render Lalli acceptable to the rest of the crew–it’s what she thinks she’s been hired to do. (And she might even be right.) That everything else she does for the mission is incidental to her ability to, as Sigrun puts it, “herd her cousin to work.”

Which–well. If Tuuri basically sees Lalli as her ticket out of Keuruu, that’s a shitty situation for Lalli, especially since he doesn’t even really want to be there. (Not that Tuuri really realizes that until it’s too late. But then, under the circumstances, is it something she’d let herself realize if she had the option of remaining in denial?) It’s also pretty bad news for their relationship. But it also really sucks for Tuuri, to be selling her own self so short, and to think that her only hope of getting the things she wants is to basically subsume her identity in someone else.

(It’s also, incidentally, a very female-coded dilemma, if I can use that word. Which ties back into some of the things that Kiraly was saying.)

So that’s where we are, I think, at the beginning of Chapter 1.

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Hello! Thank you so much for offering to write me a story in one of my favorite rare fandoms! I really will be delighted to get anything about them, so--aside from the Do Not Wants--please feel free to ignore the rest of this letter. It’s really only here to give you inspiration if you don’t know what to write, but if you have your own ideas already, please go wild with them. I am always interested in seeing new and interesting takes on my favorites, especially ones I would never have thought of myself.

( Read more... )
One more general thing I want to add--I’m not requesting any five-minute fandoms like individual songs or picture books this year, but two of the canons I’m requesting are available in their entirety (or close enough to entirety) online, for free, legally, so if you haven’t yet I really do encourage you to check out Stand Still Stay Silent and SkyWorld, they’re great.

Anyway, If for some reason you want to stalk me, I am dead easy to stalk; I'm minutia_r (or occasionally minutia-r) all over the internet: LJ/DW, AO3, tumblr, deviantart, ff.net, 8tracks, and probably one or two other places I don't recall off-hand. (Minutiar on twitter is not me, though, oddly enough.)

Thank you once again, mystery writer! I am really looking forward to reading what you write for me, and I hope you get an awesome story too!

also Reyna Avila Ramirez Arellano and Reynir Arnason are now tag twins in that when I’m trying to tag one of them in a thing tumblr will suggest the other one (for obvious reasons)

I feel they’d get along ok

Although Reyna might be a bit suspicious to have someone around who just did what he was told cheerfully and without complaining (well … let’s say 90% of the time) I imagine it’s something she’d get used to pretty quick.

(aka when you start BroTP-ing two characters from completely different canons based on the fact that their names start with the same four letters. These would work better as comics but I can’t draw, so this is what you get.)

(and by you I mean me because no one else cares with the possible exception of @bamboocounting who has, like, infinite patience for my nonsense.)

PART ONE:

Reynir: *cleaning stables*

Reyna: What’s going on here? Do you need access to the stables for your plan to sabotage the camp? Are you trying to lull me into a false sense of security so I won’t see it coming when you stab me in the back?

Reynir: No! I’m just glad to be here and happy to be able to help!

Reyna: *continues watching, glaring suspiciously*

Reynir: *shovels poop; starts whistling*

Reyna: *grudgingly* You’re all right, kid.

Reynir: Actually I’m two years older than you.

Reyna: Uh-huh.

PART TWO:

*Reyna is braiding Reynir’s hair all fancy, actually smiling and looking happy. Her hair is also in a more elaborate braid than usual, suggesting that he has recently done hers.*

PART THREE: Meet the family!

Nico: I thought I was your favorite little brother.

Reyna: Actually he’s two years older than me.

Hylla: OH HEY, I bet you’d look cute in a collar and an orange–

Reyna: NO.