This fanfic frightens me badly. It always did.
It's also one of the two best things I've ever written. Possibly the best, although the other contender for the title is so different that there's no real way to compare the two things. (Said other contender would have to be 'Power Is'. Fuckin' hell, that fic scares me too.)
Let me tell you how it happened. When I started the fic, I thought -- I really thought -- that it was going to be just another of those five-to-ten-page parody fics that I used to do all the time (and have sadly not been inspired to do lately. Have not, in fact, really been inspired to do since Go Wyverns!). I mean, come on. The Vagrant Story characters in a 1980s-era Texas high school. How stupid is that? Surely nothing serious could come of such an idea!
So I sat down and wrote the first page. The first page is just a bunch of stuff in parentheses, putting all the characters in place and describing what they looked like and what they were wearing. Big nostalgia trip. Half of them are wearing things that I personally wore in high school.
And I found myself going back and putting in little extra fangirlish touches to each description. It was no big deal to envision them in their classroom, sitting in their various places, like little icons in my mind; I could see the jewelry, I could see the clothing, I could see the little touches. That's no big deal. I can do that with most of my fic; most of my writing consists of describing the little pictures in my head.
And I got to the end of the descriptions, to the end of that one single page. And I sat there for a moment, re-reading them, and thinking, yeah, I like that. That's good. Now, I have very powerful memories of high school, good and bad alike. Some things you cannot forget. And a lot of them were there, sitting in that classroom: I had a theater geek (big memories) and a new kid (older memories) and some real assholes (oh, the memories) and some fakey Texas 'popular kids' (oh god the memories) and now let's make them interact.
And just like that, right then and there, the rest of the 120-some-odd-page plot fell out of the sky and exploded into my head, complete and entire.
It felt like a silent explosion inside my head. It sounded like me choking on Dr Pepper. I know my vision went black and swimmy for a moment. Every single detail was in place, every location was visible in my mind. I knew everything that was going to happen, I knew how it was going to end, I knew... I knew it all. At once. It was the single most frightening thing that's ever happened to me, and god I hope it happens again.
Boy. Whoever said 'write what you know' wasn't such a dumbass after all, I guess.
'Autobiographical' is not a good word to describe the fic, because I am female, and furthermore never had a same-sex relationship in that suburban Texas high school, and further yet am not a Vagrant Story character; but so much about the fic was personal and angry and... well... true, somehow. So much of that stuff sort of happened to me (or is, at least, set in surroundings so eerily evilly familiar to my memories) that I'm still half-convinced that the damn fic really happened. Go Wyverns is my own personal fugue state, a clearly remembered nightmare, and that's all it is: dream turned nightmare. Nightmares seem so real when you're in the middle of having them, don't they?
But we all know I'm evil and insane, right? Right.
The next two weeks consisted almost entirely of getting the idea out of my head and into my word processor before any of that screaming reverberating idea could fade and vanish. It'd been a long time since I worked that flat-out hard. Seldom have I written so fast.
Every day I would read back over what I had written so far and, amazed, say to myself, look. Look. You're getting it down. You're doing it. You're taking what's in your mind and putting it to paper and it's working. It's working.
And, you know, all that aside, some of it really doesn't work. I thoroughly neglected some of my favorite characters (that would be Tieger and Neesa), I radically reinvented the personalities of a couple of others in order to mash them into the fic (that would be poor Duane and Grissom), all of the adult characters were cardboard, more or less.
But, at the same time, somehow in the back of my mind they do work, if you consider Go Wyverns to be a prequel to Vagrant Story. Ten years earlier, or something. Look at the ending. Look who's standing with who around that bonfire. Now fast-forward all those kids ten years... it works for me, anyway. ... evil and insane. Keep reminding yourself of that. Evil and insane.
The fic all makes sense if you're me, and makes less sense the farther away you get from me and from 1980s-era Texas high schools. I guess that in the grand scheme of things, that's the best you can hope for from a piece of writing, that it all work for you and continue to work as best it can for as long as it can, spreading out and losing potency like ripples in a pond the farther it goes.
... well, that was pretentious as hell, wasn't it? Ugh. Sorry. Too much caffeine.
And the parts with the main players, god, those... are all so real, at least to me. I swear I know those people. I swear that's how we talked, back then. I like writing dialogue; I have a knack for it, I guess. That's why I think Go Wyverns works better as a screenplay than as anything else. Anyway.
I'm starting to lose my point here. Just one more note: I have many favorite scenes from Go Wyverns, but the one that stands out, in my mind, is Callo dropping in on Duane and Grissom in Part Four and asking for a favor. That vicious little self-serving scene, right there, sums up my experiences with the popular crowd in high school more aptly than anything else I could say.
It still scares me, Go Wyverns does. But at the same time, I'm very proud of it. Maybe because it scares me so very badly.
Replies: add your comment: currently 13 comments
.....WHOAH! I LOVED Go Wyverns because it was long. And yeah, I saw it as some sort of prequel, except that in that one (Go Wyverns):
Sydney: I think...Rosencrantz...is DEAD
Yeah,I know-- sorry, I didn't mean to. It just happened.
Goodbye, Mater Luna Bova!
Posted by Nagia @ 05/24/2002 07:34 AM EST
Rrg...now I REALLY have to go out and buy that copy of Vagrant Story, if only to know who the characters in Go Wyverns are...damn you and bless you at the same time!!
Posted by Duo Maxwell @ 05/24/2002 09:31 AM EST
*dies* Glad to know you don't think I'm a dumbass anymore.
And I'm just going to assume that it was on my old site that you found that "write what you know" rant, because I'm an egotistical little brat...
Posted by Meriko @ 05/24/2002 10:11 AM EST
Watch while I try to chew on Meriko and apologize frantically at the same time!... eheh.
Aww, Meriko. I didn't mean it as an attack on anyone in particular; I don't actually think I've seen the rant in question. 'Write what you know' is one of the basic tenets of writing, and one that far too many fanficcers sadly ignore (including myself, most of the time).
You're not a dumbass! I promise! You never were!... or if you were, I never noticed!
Posted by Mooncalf @ 05/24/2002 07:24 PM EST
Go Wyverns is scary. But also damn good. I'm a bit afraid to read it again, even just the earlier bits, because the ending hurts -- and worse, I know there's really no fixing it. (I feel the same way about the movie The Professional, which I saw recently, although not to quite the same degree -- I didn't know those characters before the start of the movie, and it only took a couple of hours to watch, instead of the few weeks between when the first and last parts of the story were posted.)
Have you ever heard Space Dye Vest, by Dream Theater? Can't remember if I ever mentioned it -- I must have listened to it on repeat for hours after I finished reading Go Wyverns.
Posted by Thea @ 05/25/2002 03:35 AM EST
When I first read "Go Wyverns!" I was truly overawed. I never went to highschool in Texas. I was never popular, nor was I a gay teenager, but that little fic really did a number on my head. I loved Vagrant Story because of the characters and so forth, but I think Go Wyverns, if it really was indicative of highschool for you Moon, is damn scary.
Incidentally, have you ever noticed how that when people call themselves or the things they produce evil almost never are, while those who are "on the side of right" or who are doing something "just for your own good" often do some pretty evil things? Fer instance, the fic isn't evil, and I don't think you're brain is evil Moon. Although there were evil people in the fic, and some of them were seriously messed up *as most of us in highschool probably were* there were only three characters I would consider evil (come on, you guys know who you are). Of course Rosencrantz is the picture of the classic psychopath, the rest are usually just small minded and vicious, but not necesarily evil. Anyways, I still worship at the altar of Mooncalf by reading my favorite bits of Go Wyverns. Damn good fic....
Posted by Sheerly Evil @ 05/25/2002 10:24 PM EST
Um...couldn't have said it better...
*mopes in a corner*
Posted by Davey @ 05/26/2002 01:50 AM EST
I think Go Wyverns is really good. Really, really, achingly good. I just wanted to tell you. ;) Not that you didn't know that, but anyways. I just read it and ouch...good.
It just seems so damn real to me, because things very similar happened to me in high school (like you, not the gay guy thing, but similar).
And it's painful. Ugh. I'm definitely with Thea on that one. But still good! And I'm rambling.
Posted by Keri @ 05/27/2002 02:58 AM EST
'SYDNEY:(indicating ROSENCRANTZ) ... nah, I guess some girls just go for that shit. He's a total asshole, but nothing's ever boring when he's around, and he'll flirt with ANYTHING, animal, vegetable, mineral... '
Holy crap. That just about sums up one of my friends who has been known to drive me up the wall, round the bend, and stark staring crazy before.
*goes back to reading*
Posted by Rae @ 05/27/2002 04:07 PM EST
Haven't read it as VS is still too far back in the "games to play" queue, but... I will as soon as I can. ^_~ Though I always feel paradoxically bad to see a really good thread of realism wound into a fanfic. Though I enjoy the story as it is, I also wish it could have been turned into a really good *original* piece. Ehh, but that's just me. Flame away. :)
Nothing really to contribute. I get that "...okay, did I do that?" feeling, at least, but the bar is much, much, much lower. ;)
Posted by StB @ 05/27/2002 10:24 PM EST
Dear god. Having read further (part three, I think, at the moment), I just had to come and comment again. Wow.
Really. Fucking. Wow.
I can see them all in my head when I'm reading, and normally I can't do that with screenplay-fics. Heck, normally I don't even READ screenplay-fics because I find them clunky and boring, but this...
Wow.
Posted by Rae @ 05/28/2002 08:34 AM EST
Okay...bought and beat VS, read Go Wyverns, was BLOWN COMPLETELY THE FUCK AWAY. I'm sure you get this enough, but I suppose it's because I actually did go to high school in rural Texas; albeit in the '90s, which I don't think is too terribly different, since that region seems to be permanently stuck in the '50s. Right? But at least you HAD a theatre department. Yeesh.
Okay, I'll stop now.
But ah wantcha ta know that Go Wyverns rocks mah world, and ah feel yer pain. A-hyuck.
Posted by Duo Maxwell @ 06/02/2002 03:22 AM EST
I can only add my voice to the bunch of other comments you got. I read Go Wyverns in the middle of playing VS and even if it is, as you say, removed from the world and the general plot of VS, I thought your portrayal of the characters was still true and quite similar to the game, what they might have been IF they had been teenagers in this world. There was something about Go Wyverns that seemed very very personal and which I recognized from my own HS experience, maybe b/c we're the same age, but I did grew up on another continent... Maybe the experiences aren't that different even if you grow up in different parts of the world. Anyway, I just wanted to say that the story is very well written, digs its claws into you on about the 2nd page and refuses to let go from there on. Having a feeling that the story and the character takes over and that the story practically writes itself is common among writers when they stop planning and go with whatever creative flow is happening. Anyway, it's fun to hear your thoughts about the story and how it came to be. Heh and kind of comforting to hear it screwed with your head as well as with the ppl who read it.
Posted by FireCeremony @ 06/10/2002 05:53 PM EST
