Gacked from all over

[tree_and_leaf]

Pick any story I've written, or, in the case of my longer, chaptered works, any chapter from any story I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you’d expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

My fic is here.

Comments

[grondfic]

This section of The Blue Flower:

The dragon-lover was located at his pension the next morning, and proved happy to take his official visitors out to his favourite spot opposite the Loreley. Phineas attempted to engage him in conversation, the better to find out what sort of man they were dealing with. But it was difficult: the man, one Georg Lindner, was uneducated, a shop-keeper and dealer in magical stain-removers from Munich, and somewhat taciturn. He had been in the Rhineland on holiday since, since,…

"You have been here two months, at least!" said von Schwartzerde, his voice slightly startled: the implication had never occurred to him till now. Phineas raised an eyebrow; if this cousin of his was viewed by the Prussian ministry as a high-flier, they must be even more desperate than their English counterparts.

Lindner looked indifferent when asked what was happening to his business in his absence. "Ach, my boy can look after it well enough. My wife can manage the house. She makes no objection to my going on holiday."

There was a pause, in which Phineas and Phillip looked awkwardly at their feet, and Lindner continued to look unconcerned.

"And when did you first see dragons here?" asked Phineas.

"But Herr Professor, I have told all this to the Herr Landrat!" protested Linder.

"And the Herr Landrat would be obliged if you would tell it again to the Herr Professor" said von Schwartzerde, a bite of impatience in his voice. "It may be that you will recall some new detail."

"That would have been a month and a half ago, then, Herr Professor. I was walking along the river, and decided to stop to eat my lunch."

"Why there? The view? Did you hope to see dragons?"

"No. The Herr Professor must know that they are very rare hereabouts. It just looked like a comfortable spot. And there were many pretty flowers. I am fond of flowers, though I don't know much about them, and of course they are not dragons. There was a little blue one, in particular… Anyway, no sooner had I sat down than I saw the first dragon. It was a female Horntail – I have always wished to see one of those, but I have never been able to afford to travel to see them. And since then I have been back every day. Look, I have quite filled a sketchbook!"

Phineas looked at the drawings attentively. He was no expert on dragons, but as far as he could see, they were the fruit of accurate observation, though they did seem rather large in comparison to the landscape in the background, and were all extraordinarily good specimens. "You have been fortunate."

"Yes, indeed!" said Lindner; there was a strange, enthusiastic glow in his eyes. "Always, always have I wished to see such things. Let us not waste any of the daylight!"

"Has anyone else seen these dragons?" Phineas asked von Schwartzerde in a low voice, and in English. The latter shook his head. "No, though that spot is not much frequented. But we certainly have found no traces of the activity of dragons elsewhere in the area. I have had men out looking – though to be sure, in the circumstances I do not like to send them too close to the Loreleyfelsen."

"It doesn't do to be squeamish, man" said Phineas, irritated. "You need data. And it's no good talking about not risking people. You're risking every passer-by as it is."

"I suppose so" said von Schwartzerde, reluctantly. "But what would really interest me is to know why Lindner was not affected."

"Yes, that's a point. Did you sense anything from this bank when he rescued you?"

"No. But look, we are nearly here."

It was, indeed, a pretty spot: a little cove with a stony beach fringed by flowery grass and then a line of trees. From the beach one looked over to the steep grey cliff of the Loreleyfelsen, stark against the green leaves of the trees surrounding it.

""What exquisite flowers!" said Phillip, who hadn't realized, in the shock of being saved from drowning, quite how lovely the spot really was. "I don't think I have ever seen anything quite like that. So delicate, and such a subtle shade of blue… Now, what does that remind me of? Perhaps it was a poem, or a song?... Nigellus, do you hear that music? Like birdsong, only more complex, purer… Nigellus? Lindner?"

The music was clear, inhuman, and more beautiful than any music Phillip had ever heard; his companions did not answer him. Lindner was beginning to sketch another dragon – and yet there was no dragon – and Phineas was gazing into the distance. His lips moved as if in prayer, and his eyes were abstracted. At length he said "You, I assume, see no dragon?"

"No."

"But you have heard music?"

"Yes."

"And saw the flowers?"

"Of course!" said Phillip, beginning to be angry that he was being distracted. What did anything matter, but listening?

"I begin to see…" Phineas said slowly. "Come, cousin. I have calculations to make. And we'd better bring some of those little blue flowers along, too."

[aris_tgd]

How about some part of PUSH? I remember that one from a while ago, and I was always charmed by it (as someone who grew up atheist and would probably have had a hard time not laughing in the main character's face.)

[tree_and_leaf]

Done!

I ended up liking Amy a lot, despite her dogmatic silliness.

[molniya]

Can I pick something from Dominic the Vampire Killer? :D

So we only started to take notice after the Sunday I dragged Angela and him along to Mass in the Catholic – “Roman”, Dominic always insisted – church, Our Lady of Perpetual Surprises. Everything went perfectly normally, until we got to the sermon. I waited long enough to find out which of Fr. MacCartney’s two homilies we were getting this week before dozing off. I knew them pretty much by heart. The first, and commonest, was an impassioned plea for all single members of the congregation to abandon the lay life and become priests, monks or nuns. The fact that he has been preaching exactly the same appeal for at least twenty years, without a single member of the congregation discovering a vocation, does not dismay him. However, he was obviously in a good mood, because he gave the second version, in which surprising correspondences between the lectionary readings for the day and whatever episode of his favourite television programme he'd most recently seen were discovered. It was called, as he kindly informed any visitors who had no knowledge of popular culture, Buffy the Vampire Killer.

I happened to glance at Dom. His face was suddenly wooden and his long, sensitive fingers were clenched desperately round the edges of his hymnbook. His knuckles were white. Now, Dominic made no secret of the fact that he disliked sermons, but he had a highly developed coping strategy: flicking thorough the hymnbook looking for heresy, bad grammar, unfortunate phraseology – or decent poetry. Odd, I thought, and worried about him for all of three minutes before lapsing into a state of torpor. Which is a long time in the context of Fr MacCartney’s detailed exegesis of Buffy. Personally, I wished he would try Doctor Who for a change.

[shewhostaples]

Girl in Every Port?