![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI needed to fill up my head, so I started with the setting. Standing on a beach at night, only the white on the waves visible, stars above and tall cliffs behind. Tide going out slowly, waiting for the waves to leave the sand. One character hands another a cup of hot soup; two more report in to her. They're waiting for the right time, for the call, for the battle to start. One final defence...
... and then I thought, why defence? Why battles, for that matter. I'm standing on the edge of the sea. Everywhere connects to everywhere from here. Why is it I'm thinking of defences? Why is the dream of my own ground?
Feels like part of being British. We will fight them on the beaches. Cliffs like ramparts all around... even though the beaches I've actually been on have more of a mud flat vibe, or some shingle and a raised bit for tourists to walk around on. Why do my dream beaches have tall cliffs? Why dream I'm backed up against them?
Who is it who dreams they're on the ships, trying to come in?
There's no-one I particularly want to keep out. The people that piss me off the most live right here already. Often being the ones complaining loudest about incomers.
If I was picking a side I wouldn't pick invaders, but we haven't had those recently. Just people who think it's better here. I wouldn't want to fight them off.
So maybe my characters on the beach should be trying to hold the doors open and let the new stuff in.
I was thinking ghost stories, and how tradition and how it has always been stacks up like a weight. What if your family never really left? What if all the old defenders of these shores were still there, stacked a few layers of reality away? How would they feel about the modern world, everything we've let in here? But the old ways were stifling for so many people for entirely long enough. What if you had to storm the afterlife, to give a new way of life a chance?
What if the afterlife was having more success chucking out incomers than the louder residue of British Nationalist politics?
Ghosts seeking asylum because old England was having none of them.
But there's a whole hell of a lot more people walking around at once right now than there ever were before. Do the living outnumber the dead yet? Can we outvote them?
What would we do if the next world closed it's gates, and we had to start dealing with everything, because dead stopped meaning gone?
Ghost stories and apocalyptic battles... there's weird twisty symbolism in there. Set stories on a physical border or a border between ways of living and you've got defense and attack, preserve and destroy, your team and theirs, before you even describe the people in those sides. A battle on a beach has a different symbolism just from the setting than it would have on an inner city street, or a suburban cul de sac, or in a park, or a railway station, or on the outer ring road. Different again around a stone circle or out in a forest, even slightly different in an old oak or a new conifer wood. Who would be defending which ground? And would it line up with any particular rhetoric? Country vs City, Old vs New, Our Land vs Wider World? Could I accidentally end up making a racist argument just by the backdrop to a fantasy battle?
Reckon I could.
The imaginary has its geography already.
Haven't seen that map on the front flap of a book... or maybe I have many times and just not noticed it. North and South and East and West and Coast and Center and Island and Continent, how much can you guess about the people that live there? If you know who is writing the story?
And if we take the story into space, head out to the stars, does that erase all precedent? Or do we take too much baggage with us? I've dreamed I was the one on the ship, if that ship was Enterprise, but how many films and series is that ship out there just to defend this speck of land? Do we really dream of seeking out new life and new civilisations? Not when the writers want to grab the ratings. Looking for a boost or a quick story for the cinema, the story adds that coast again, waiting for the battle.
I find myself disturbed by that. I had not thought I imagined myself so much under attack. But there it is, threaded through a lot of stories.
I thought I wanted to get out there and tell them stories.
Now I'm wondering which set. And what they'd learn about us from them.
... and then I thought, why defence? Why battles, for that matter. I'm standing on the edge of the sea. Everywhere connects to everywhere from here. Why is it I'm thinking of defences? Why is the dream of my own ground?
Feels like part of being British. We will fight them on the beaches. Cliffs like ramparts all around... even though the beaches I've actually been on have more of a mud flat vibe, or some shingle and a raised bit for tourists to walk around on. Why do my dream beaches have tall cliffs? Why dream I'm backed up against them?
Who is it who dreams they're on the ships, trying to come in?
There's no-one I particularly want to keep out. The people that piss me off the most live right here already. Often being the ones complaining loudest about incomers.
If I was picking a side I wouldn't pick invaders, but we haven't had those recently. Just people who think it's better here. I wouldn't want to fight them off.
So maybe my characters on the beach should be trying to hold the doors open and let the new stuff in.
I was thinking ghost stories, and how tradition and how it has always been stacks up like a weight. What if your family never really left? What if all the old defenders of these shores were still there, stacked a few layers of reality away? How would they feel about the modern world, everything we've let in here? But the old ways were stifling for so many people for entirely long enough. What if you had to storm the afterlife, to give a new way of life a chance?
What if the afterlife was having more success chucking out incomers than the louder residue of British Nationalist politics?
Ghosts seeking asylum because old England was having none of them.
But there's a whole hell of a lot more people walking around at once right now than there ever were before. Do the living outnumber the dead yet? Can we outvote them?
What would we do if the next world closed it's gates, and we had to start dealing with everything, because dead stopped meaning gone?
Ghost stories and apocalyptic battles... there's weird twisty symbolism in there. Set stories on a physical border or a border between ways of living and you've got defense and attack, preserve and destroy, your team and theirs, before you even describe the people in those sides. A battle on a beach has a different symbolism just from the setting than it would have on an inner city street, or a suburban cul de sac, or in a park, or a railway station, or on the outer ring road. Different again around a stone circle or out in a forest, even slightly different in an old oak or a new conifer wood. Who would be defending which ground? And would it line up with any particular rhetoric? Country vs City, Old vs New, Our Land vs Wider World? Could I accidentally end up making a racist argument just by the backdrop to a fantasy battle?
Reckon I could.
The imaginary has its geography already.
Haven't seen that map on the front flap of a book... or maybe I have many times and just not noticed it. North and South and East and West and Coast and Center and Island and Continent, how much can you guess about the people that live there? If you know who is writing the story?
And if we take the story into space, head out to the stars, does that erase all precedent? Or do we take too much baggage with us? I've dreamed I was the one on the ship, if that ship was Enterprise, but how many films and series is that ship out there just to defend this speck of land? Do we really dream of seeking out new life and new civilisations? Not when the writers want to grab the ratings. Looking for a boost or a quick story for the cinema, the story adds that coast again, waiting for the battle.
I find myself disturbed by that. I had not thought I imagined myself so much under attack. But there it is, threaded through a lot of stories.
I thought I wanted to get out there and tell them stories.
Now I'm wondering which set. And what they'd learn about us from them.