Entry tags:

festathons, fic, navel-gazing, sga, thinky, writing

my two remixes, and a little meta on them
When the sga_remix fest started, I couldn't sign up for it as I had not yet written three SGA stories. But I love remixes, so I volunteered to pick up stories if anyone dropped out - and I got to do two of them! This is the best situation ever: I get to rewrite other people's stories, and I don't have to worry about anybody else rewriting mine in a way I don't like!

Before reading below the cut, you should go read my stories (unless you don't mind being spoiled for their plots), which are both McKay/Sheppard:

Semper Fi (R for language), a remix of Fisticuffs (NC17) by Zeelee (ficbyzee)
Seeing Heightmeyer (NC17), a remix of Epiphany by Karen McFadyyon (no longer on the web), which itself was inspired by an IM dialogue written by Karen and Leah.

If you're not planning to read these stories at all, my nattering about remix philosophy is probably still understandable but a little less interesting.

The general rule for remixes is that you are supposed to rewrite someone else's story in another way - the plot, pairing, and setting need to remain the same, but everything else is variable. In practice, many people seem to approach remixes as though they are writing about the same actual event: they vary the POV character, possibly the POV and tense, but keep the timing of events and any dialogue the same, and frequently this results in a boringly similar story. (Not that it results in a bad story, necessarily - but the reader feels as though she is re-reading the original.)

For my two remixes, I used two different approaches. I wrote Semper Fi as though describing the same actual events that occurred in Zeelee's Fisticuffs, but using a minor character as viewpoint character. This worked (or at least, I think it did) because her viewpoint character (John) is not present for the first event (Rodney punching the Marine, Sorenson), and mine (Sorenson) is not present for the second event (John and Rodney's discussion and subsequent sex). Our characters only interect for a few moments at two points in the timeline - just after the punch, and just after the sex. This meant I didn't have to worry about the dialogue, although I kept my implied dialogue consistent with her scenario, and that I could focus on what was important to my tangential character (which I gleefully invented!), rather than what was important in her story.

Writing Sorenson was fun, because I came up with his story first and then let it inhabit me - it just poured out easily and quickly, once I knew where he was coming from and why he was baiting McKay. The line about the sister in the whorehouse, I should add, comes from my high school boyfriend, who aspired to (and eventually did) join the Marines.

If, for example, I had remixed this story by switching it to Rodney's POV, in this "true to event" style, it would basically be the same story. Incidentally, the decision to write in first person present tense - which I normally dislike - was very deliberate. (This is only my second story in first person [out of 50 or so], and my first in first person present tense!) It gives the story a feel of real-time narration, and cements the characterization, which is important because the narrator is an original character. I think that the choices I made make it a story that complements the original, so that the reader can enjoy either by itself or both together.

I used a completely different approach to remix Karen McFadyyon's Epiphany as Seeing Heightmeyer, by keeping the same basic plot but telling a completely different story. The plot (of both stories) follows from the incident in the episode The Gift where Rodney tells Teyla he and Kate Heightmeyer are seeing each other, because he is embarrassed to admit he's getting counseling from her. In both stories, Teyla tells John that McKay is romantically involved with Heightmeyer, John goes ballistic, confronts Rodney, talks to Heightmeyer and in doing so realizes that the reason he's so upset is because he is in love with Rodney. Then he confesses to Rodney, Rodney confesses to him that it's mutual, and they agree to have a relationship once this nasty business with the approaching Wraith hive ships is sorted out.

Karen's story is written for the angst. The misunderstanding - that Rodney is seeing Heightmeyer for counseling, not romantically - is resolved relatively early in the story, and the John/Rodney interaction is all about the jealousy and emotion. Much of the story is about John trying to resolve his own emotions and understand his strong feelings, then come to grips with the idea that he might be in love with a man, as he'd always thought he was straight. In other words, lots of angst.

But me, I go for humor. When I first read Karen's story, I thought, "Oh, what a brilliant setup for a comedy of errors." I was thrilled to get her as an author to remix, because I wanted to milk the misinterpretation for all it was worth. So instead of trying to write as though she had recorded the actual events, and I was just writing another perspective, I pretty much started from scratch. I threw Bates in at the beginning, because I needed to give Teyla a reason to say what she did. Then I got to use the Bates incident in the first John/Rodney conversation where they are totally talking about different things. That was the only one I had figured out when I started to write, but the direction it ended up taking led me to the second (where John thinks Rodney thinks John's slept with Kate), which led me to the third (which I only get away with by having Rodney not speak in complete sentences and flip out over John's apparent obsession). And then I get the Heightmeyer scene, and only then does John twig to the misunderstanding.

I decided to make John already aware of his bisexuality, rather than just now coming to the realization, because it seemed to me that otherwise would require too much introspection and angst - which I didn't want to focus on, because Karen had already done that story. Besides, it made it easier for me to get a sex scene in there - something I did want! I retained several of Karen's minor plot points and themes, such as the argument over Chaya, and John's epiphany (where I took one line straight from her story, because I liked it so much!) I also kept Karen's choice of John as viewpoint character, because that's obviously necessary for the whole misinterpretation thing to work. And because I like punch lines, and circular structures, I tie the whole thing together at the end.

So the result is really an entirely different story, albeit with essentially the same plot. Again, I would hope that a reader could read both versions and not feel bored with the repetition. Which, to me, is the whole point of a remix!