LAST EDITED ON Mar-12-10 AT 05:21 PM (EST)
 
[24] Admittedly, it's very hard to drive like anything other than a complete idiot on Pandora.

[357] And it's a good thing he did, because if he'd flagged it as an independent quarian ship in its own right, Tali would have to go through her adult life as "Tali'Shukra vas 25 or 6 to 4".

[420] It occurred to me while I was writing this scene that "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it" doesn't make sense as something a quarian would say, because to them a bridge is the little room up top where you fly the ship. You can't cross it, it's a dead end, corridor-wise.

Okay, I promised in the annotations for The Crying of Lot 490 that I'd explain about the title, so now that you've read the story, here's the story:

Long, long ago, when I first started writing what eventually became Scrapheap City Shuffle, its working title was Starcrossed, because my plan, insofar as I had one, was that that story was going to unfold... well, rather like this one did, actually. I had in mind that it was going to be a tragic love story, in which a younger, less bitter and more shell-shocked Gryphon (it was 2290, a mere two years after Sonset) met an amnesiac cyborg on a planet of junk and, with the common ground that they were both sort of cosmic discards, they'd fall slowly in love over the months he spent hiding among the scrap and rebuilding his Valkyrie. Of course, they wouldn't be able to do anything physical, on account of her body being, well, mechanical, but I figured that would only put an edge on things. And then - presumably just as she got around to devising some way of working around that problem and they were, perhaps unknown to him, on the verge of being able to move to the next level, Kei would show up and ruin the whole thing.

As the project went on, though, that tack just didn't work. Starcrossed ended up hanging fire for a decade or more because it kept hanging fire on that point. However I tilted the screen and shook, Gally and Gryphon were just not that kind of couple together. They were great friends, and they were capable of working together to form one terrifying engine of mayhem under the right circumstances (which sadly did not arise on screen, though we saw echoes of it in what he and Sumire did to the Javkiels in Aegis Florea 2), but they just didn't click as the poles of a romance, doomed or not. When I eventually faced up to this, it all unfolded much more smoothly, Skuld got involved, and we ended up with a nice little early-Exile actioner and the basis for Alita Ironheart to appear as a Valkyrie in FI. (Scrapheap City is flagged as part one of a series, but I should probably fix that; it works oddly well as a stand-alone piece, leaving its ultimate ending to the reader's imagination.) And, since the love story plot went almost entirely out the window, the title no longer made sense, which is why it ended up being called Scrapheap City Shuffle instead. (I think the "Shuffle" part was inspired by Cowboy Bebop's episode titling style.)

Fast-forward to, well, last month, when - more or less on a whim - I dusted off the old Lot 490 fragment and set to wondering if I could make something useful out of it. Now, here I had just the opposite notion in mind. Of course, since it was an Exile story, I knew it wasn't going to have a happy ending, but I didn't want to waste everyone's time, including my own, with yet another pointless festival of angst and revenge. Perhaps a nice light fugitive caper story was in order. What G says his plan was, in The Purest Form of Democracy? That's pretty much what I had in mind - that he'd rescue a young quarian from peril, they'd have a wild adventure, and then she'd be on her way with a great story to tell and no permanent consequences, and he'd be off to, well, end up in a parallel universe. She'd be an ancestor of Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, who would appear in Future Imperfect as an aspirant IPO member, having heard the story from her grandmother of the great adventure she had "when I was about your age" and decided that she wanted a piece of that action for her own pilgrimage.

Except that as I got into it, the story just wasn't unfolding that way. In fact, though I didn't realize it until I was almost finished, it was basically following the plan I'd once had for what became Scrapheap City - right down to the impossibility, or at least inadvisability, of the protagonists' getting up to anything physical together. For most of the story, they can't even eat the same food, or eat in the same room, much less make the beast with two backs. Which was oddly refreshing, because it opened up whole new ways for me to have them show their growing affection - sort of smoothed the curve their relationship followed, as it were. (As Wedge said during the peer-review process, "It's just that we've seen Gryph get an awful lot of play over the years.")

When I realized that the shape the A-plot was taking was familiar, well, there was only one thing I could call it. I hyphenated it in order to set it apart from the old working title for Scrapheap, but in a lot of ways, Star-Crossed is the story I was trying to make Scrapheap be for most of the time it was unfinished. Why did it work with Tali when it didn't work with Gally? Why did it work in 2356 and not in 2290? Dunno, really, but I can speculate.

Maybe Gryphon was (literarily speaking) ready to be part of such a story then, and not before. When we see him at the beginning of Star-Crossed, he's been on the run for 67 years. He's been chased out of Mega Tokyo, Cheltopolis, Olympus, Ishiyama, and who knows how many other ports of call besides. He's grown bitter and jaded, so much so that he can successfully play the villain well enough to attend a criminal auction as the Butcher and get out alive (if not entirely unmolested). He can no longer tell whether what he really wants to find is justice, revenge, or just someplace to lay his weary head to rest and cry no more.

He's not even really sure who he is any longer, but he's pretty sure that whoever he is, it's not anybody very nice. He abandoned Reika on New Japan (still the nadir of his personal history if you ask me); he and Sumire passed within an inch or two of each other one foggy night on Ishiyama, but never made the connection (which was just as well for professional reasons). Maybe his capacity for that kind of thing has just been burned out of him by life.

Besides, things have a habit of blowing up around him. He has his own personal angel of death who's constantly on his trail, willing to kill anybody who takes his side. It wouldn't be safe for anyone to get close to him even if they were inclined to, and it would be a hard, hard life for anyone who tried. He's damaged goods and an actuarial nightmare. Life with him is a bet that nobody would take, except possibly a machine intelligence with a questionable grasp of the risk/reward principle, and machine intelligences are notoriously poor at spending lazy afternoons cuddling on the couch.

And then, quite by accident, along comes a young woman who is quite well aware of all that, regards the situation with her eyes wide open... and chooses him anyway. She's what our French friends call tout le paquet*: a brilliant technical mind, a dry, slightly dark wit, a fantastic capacity for loyalty (giving and receiving), and the heart of a lion, all wrapped up in, let's face it, a pretty high-class chassis. So he can't see her face. There are worse things. The man's 382 years old. If he hasn't learned by then that there's more to life than Tab A and Slot B, he has bigger problems than the Exile.

(Mind you, A->B is nice, don't get me wrong. But it's not a reason to opt for or against everything else.)

Ahem. Anyway. Without her brief but incandescent cometary trajectory through his life, I doubt he'd have been in position to do what he did with himself once he arrived in the Split Infinitive universe. Here is the place he told her he wished he could find. The place where a man can catch his breath. And without that, would anything like Manhunt ever have happened?

Well, maybe. Part of me is sad that I'll never get the chance to develop the wild adventures they didn't get to have as the galaxy's most wanted cross-species couple, the Butcher of Musashi and his quarian moll, as I'm sure the galaxy at large would have perceived them. That would have been good times. Under the right circumstances, I could see them attracting a few of the survivors of the Normandy crew to their banner and, after much difficulty and many madcap capers, forcing a different but equally valid conclusion to the Exile. And if I were doing the UF universe in chronological order, that's probably where I'd go with this. Crossroads and all of Future Imperfect would be incredibly, almost totally, different.

But I'm not doing the UF universe in chronological order, and I can't chuck out three-quarters of the canon now. Hell, if I could do that, Tali'Zorah would probably be the original bass player in the Art of Noise, and where would that leave poor Moose MacEchearn?

And anyway, they'll meet again. It's inevitable. It'd be more than a little weird if it hadn't already happened, actually; the man's been back from Manhunt for 30 years by the Symphony No. 5 era, and most of that time he's been in the White Pages.

Anyway, little insight into the creative process there; it sort of turned into a ramble about characters' destiny and might just be a bunch of pseudophilosophical crap, but there it is, for whatever you think it's worth. Fifteen years ago I set out to write a love story and failed; a month ago I set out to write a wacky adventure and got a love story instead. Go figure that...

--G.

* "the total package"

LAST EDITED ON Mar-12-10 AT 05:55 PM (EST)
 
>420

Y'see? This whole thing here is what keeps me a loyal patron of the House of Eyrie.

There are times, Chief, where I see You (And Your Crew...) handling characters with more love than their Progenitors.

I really liked the way Star-Crossed played out. I think this format is a good groove for you.

Dammit, it's finally over!! I can get back to being productive again!

----
Now Playing:
Sonic Mayhem-- Decent into Cerberon(QUAKE II OST)

< THIS SPACE FOR RENT >

Can I just say how incredibly happy I am that you wrote this? Both <420> and also the stories as a whole. Both have me a bit misty-eyed and wistful.

It may have been intended as a good action piece - but it's a *great* love story.

Those of you familiar with the quarian backstory as it appears in the source (and is obliquely referenced early in Star-Crossed) may wish to ponder the implications of this fact:

In the end, Tali was suddenly and painfully dispossessed, her entire carefully drawn plan for what, at the time, must have seemed like the rest of her life reduced to wreckage in a single moment...

... by (the machinations of) an AI.

Somehow, I don't think the irony there will elude her forever.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

That's a really interesting read, thanks for the look behind the curtain.

The scene that popped into my head prior to reading the epilogue was a scene from the end of the most recent Dr Who, which goes back and references the Family of Blood episodes from the previous series. The Doctor, making one last round before he regenerates, finds the granddaughter of the woman he loved and ultimately abandoned during a previous adventure. He asks if she was happy. Absolutely heartwarming scene.

I can see something very similar happening between Gryphon and Tali the Younger. Because a lot of the cast of UF are for all intents and purposes immortal, it's difficult sometimes to remember just how old the protagonist is, and how many lives he's run across along the way. This series did a nice job of illustrating just that.

>And anyway, they'll meet again. It's inevitable. It'd be more than a
>little weird if it hadn't already happened, actually; the man's been
>back from Manhunt for 30 years by the Symphony No. 5
>era, and most of that time he's been in the White Pages.

I can actually see a reason they might not have. When he first got back, Tali was away/out of contact/otherwise tied up, and by the time she was able to look him up he was already back with Kei, and she didn't want to intrude.

(Insert "circumstances conspiring to keep her from having a chance after she'd waited a respectable period" here.)

Then, when Kei disappears, well... no matter how much she might want to show up and support him, there's really no good way to do that; in a situation like that, it'd be almost impossible to not feel like you're coming across like 'Hi, your wife's dead or missing, but I'm here so we can pick back up where we left off!', whether you *are* or not.

Shalon Wood

>I can actually see a reason they might not have. When he first got
>back, Tali was away/out of contact/otherwise tied up, and by the time
>she was able to look him up he was already back with Kei, and she
>didn't want to intrude.

I dunno, I mean... not to put too fine a point on it, but if I were Tali'Shukra, and I'd "met" Kei that way, and then found out 30 years later that they were back together? All things being equal, I think I would be... very inclined to intrude.

Of course, all things might not be equal, but still.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>I can actually see a reason they might not have. When he first got
>>back, Tali was away/out of contact/otherwise tied up, and by the time
>>she was able to look him up he was already back with Kei, and she
>>didn't want to intrude.
>
>I dunno, I mean... not to put too fine a point on it, but if I were
>Tali'Shukra, and I'd "met" Kei that way, and then found out 30 years
>later that they were back together? All things being equal, I think I
>would be... very inclined to intrude.
>
>Of course, all things might not be equal, but still.

Yeah, I realized after I posted that that Tali would have had to have learned what Gryphon and Kei's relationship was like back *before* Kei went bat-shit insane, and decided he deserved to have that back, or something along those lines.

...Or have her run into Kei again, after Kei is mostly dried out, and get a different perspective on her, I suppose. Though that meeting would be, as Rianna said in _Coming to Terms_, "exciting for the locals".

Shalon Wood

>>I dunno, I mean... not to put too fine a point on it, but if I were Tali'Shukra, and I'd "met" Kei that way, and then found out 30 years later that they were back together? All things being equal, I think I would be... very inclined to intrude.

Of course, all things might not be equal, but still.<<

Well, there's no reason why Tali and Kei can't meet up at some point in those 30 years that Gryphon is off universe.....

Craig

I have little doubt that any meeting during that time would get, as mentioned before with others, "a little exciting of the locals".

Hmm... Soldier vs Engineer. "Go for the optics Chititta, go for the optics!"

>
>[357] And it's a good thing he did, because if he'd flagged
>it as an independent quarian ship in its own right, Tali would have to
>go through her adult life as "Tali'Shukra vas 25 or 6 to 4".
>

There's probably some policy about allowing a ship to be re-named before it's flagged as an independent ship, for just such occasions.

Thank you for letting us see a bit of your creative process; it's as chaotic and random as any other I've heard of, which is encouraging.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>And anyway, they'll meet again. It's inevitable. It'd be more than a
>little weird if it hadn't already happened, actually; the man's been
>back from Manhunt for 30 years by the Symphony No. 5
>era, and most of that time he's been in the White Pages.

Well, looking into the origins of the Halo is probably quite a dangerous occupation... it could easily have gotten her side-tracked.

Besides, having Tali show up while Kei is Missing-Presumed-ExtraGalactic could be a whole lot more interesting--in the Chinese sense of the word.

Just finished listening to the audio, great job! Your accents were pretty good, actually. Or maybe I just don't have a good ear for them. But I think you nailed Rando's accent perfectly. ;)

>Just finished listening to the audio, great job! Your accents were
>pretty good, actually.

Thanks. I had a really hard time with Miranda's - she kept wanting to turn Dutch or German on me, so most of the time I just sort of omitted to try all that hard to give her any accent at all. But that worked out reasonably well, since it's mentioned in the text that she's shed most of her Concord Dawn accent by the time we meet her in Star-Crossed anyway.

>But I think you nailed Rando's accent perfectly. ;)

Heh, he wasn't hard, but a lot of fun. I just had to keep reminding myself to speak more slowly. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I was just listening to my Project 490 iTunes playlist (the one that ran most of the time while I was writing Star-Crossed), and it occurred to me that I hadn't included the rest of the lyrics to the opening title (which the epigraph comes from) in the notes for the piece anywhere. I'm pretty sure I did post this song to the Symphony of the Sword board at some point, because it's also a pretty obvious Corwin-Utena song, but it so completely became about Star-Crossed when I started reworking Lot 490 - particularly the bit I chose as the epigraph and the last verse - that it deserves to be pointed out in that context.

Somewhere there are orange trees
Somewhere skies are blue
Somewhere there's a bridge across
The world from me to you
And sometimes in the darkest hour
The sun comes shining through
And tonight it seems so far from me to you
Yeah tonight it seems so far from me to you

Some of us are safe alone
Some of us pretend
That we can always start again
The things we never end
Some of us are born to fall
Others to stay true
But tonight it seems so far from me to you
Yeah tonight it seems so far from me to you

So tell me if you hear me, come on
Tell me tell me can you hear me, come on
Yeah tell me if you hear me, come on and tell me
I'm awake for you
And sometimes in the darkest hour
Love comes shining through
And it doesn't seem so far from me to you
No it doesn't seem so far from me to you

Listening in the darkness
To a voice I call my own
Shameful that my emptiness
Is turning me to stone
In the silence of the night
Love comes shining through
And it doesn't seem so far from me to you
No it doesn't seem so far from me to you
I'm deep into my darkest hour
Love comes shining through
And it doesn't seem so far from me to you
No it doesn't seem so far from me to you

- Big Country
"Far From Me to You"
Why the Long Face (1995)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.