"Bee Dance"
Jul. 28th, 2013 07:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflydreamingWell, time to see if the fandom is receptive to kaiju-centric, poetic fic.
Title: Bee Dance
Link: On Archive of Our Own. There is a typo (missing/extra word that I have to find again)
Fandom: Pacific Rim
Length: 3200+ words
Summary: The kaiju were not "great beasts" following a hunting-and-gathering instinct. They were an invading army following orders. Armies are made of soldiers.
Otachi was going in to battle, she had an unborn child growing inside her, and she still had a connection to a foreign mind somewhere in the new world.
. . .
Before our mad scientist drifted with the remnant of Multivore's secondary brain, Otachi had not questioned the swarming. She was a soldier, and like her compatriots, bred with specialized biology to effectively exterminate the vermin of the frontier. A place had to be made ready. Then the Queen would come into this savage new world to reign over the wet and the dry places. Otachi, and the one called Leatherback, and all of the soldiers who had gone before to fight and die in this place did so because it was bred into their blood and bone.
Those-that-came-before directed the swarm. In the drift, Newt understood them as, "Precursors."
Newt Geisler had dubbed them "overlords," but his influence in word choice came subconsciously from an early diet of classic science fiction. Someone of different experience might have suggested "masters." Had Raleigh Becket, after his time in construction, been the one to name them, he might have designated them "foremen," a term that for him held a mix of resentment and resignation. English-born Stacker Pentacost, in spite of his time in the military, might have chosen "liege." Plural and singular were not a distinction in the meander. Mako Mori, if she could have parsed such a connection to the enemy of her fierce heart, might have struggled during the drift against the desire to name them "sempai."
Yet none of these terms encapsulated the dynamic of obedience between Otachi and those that commanded her. It was not that she and her legion could not disobey orders. Such a thought would not occur to them. No such thought had ever incubated in the meander. It was the touch of the foreign mind that brought Otachi the idea that she might instigate an action of her own desires. The caress of the other against the common mind lingered, and it drew her toward it.
. . .
I think this fic should be pretty accessible without having seen the movie, but it is one great big spoiler. If you don't care and you want to read it, let me know if you can follow without the movie context. This is primarily the POV of one of the movie's monster antagonists.
Also, here is a 20 minute .wav file of me reading it aloud. Since I read aloud at final draft, I may as well record it! But if I'm going to keep sharing the recordings, I need to figure out a process.
Title: Bee Dance
Link: On Archive of Our Own. There is a typo (missing/extra word that I have to find again)
Fandom: Pacific Rim
Length: 3200+ words
Summary: The kaiju were not "great beasts" following a hunting-and-gathering instinct. They were an invading army following orders. Armies are made of soldiers.
Otachi was going in to battle, she had an unborn child growing inside her, and she still had a connection to a foreign mind somewhere in the new world.
. . .
Before our mad scientist drifted with the remnant of Multivore's secondary brain, Otachi had not questioned the swarming. She was a soldier, and like her compatriots, bred with specialized biology to effectively exterminate the vermin of the frontier. A place had to be made ready. Then the Queen would come into this savage new world to reign over the wet and the dry places. Otachi, and the one called Leatherback, and all of the soldiers who had gone before to fight and die in this place did so because it was bred into their blood and bone.
Those-that-came-before directed the swarm. In the drift, Newt understood them as, "Precursors."
Newt Geisler had dubbed them "overlords," but his influence in word choice came subconsciously from an early diet of classic science fiction. Someone of different experience might have suggested "masters." Had Raleigh Becket, after his time in construction, been the one to name them, he might have designated them "foremen," a term that for him held a mix of resentment and resignation. English-born Stacker Pentacost, in spite of his time in the military, might have chosen "liege." Plural and singular were not a distinction in the meander. Mako Mori, if she could have parsed such a connection to the enemy of her fierce heart, might have struggled during the drift against the desire to name them "sempai."
Yet none of these terms encapsulated the dynamic of obedience between Otachi and those that commanded her. It was not that she and her legion could not disobey orders. Such a thought would not occur to them. No such thought had ever incubated in the meander. It was the touch of the foreign mind that brought Otachi the idea that she might instigate an action of her own desires. The caress of the other against the common mind lingered, and it drew her toward it.
. . .
I think this fic should be pretty accessible without having seen the movie, but it is one great big spoiler. If you don't care and you want to read it, let me know if you can follow without the movie context. This is primarily the POV of one of the movie's monster antagonists.
Also, here is a 20 minute .wav file of me reading it aloud. Since I read aloud at final draft, I may as well record it! But if I'm going to keep sharing the recordings, I need to figure out a process.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-30 08:46 am (UTC)I love the recording, too. You have a lovely, lyrical tone.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-01 03:37 am (UTC)