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Jul. 3rd, 2006 12:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunshine_queenI am just on a roll! And procrastinating writing my ficathon fic. Doooom, y'all.
And so, commentary #4, for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
non_horation.
This fic is completely unfinished, and probably never will be. I had very high hopes for it, of course, and it just... never happened. And it's very heavily based on Margaret Atwood's 'A Handmaid's Tale,' which you should be able to tell. Because I'm lame like that.
Camp 47 will never be investigated. Ooh, dramatic opening. And bang, Alias reference.
There will never be trials for the crimes committed against humanity there, nor will these atrocities be remembered. Those who were responsible will find new subjects, new grounds to test on, and their work will go on. The few survivors will live quietly, gratefully and say nothing. This is how it always has been, and this is how it always will be. Blah, blah, blah. Big, fancy words and purple prose. Is that the right term? Whatever.
The liberation I kind of love that word a lot. And not because of that deleted scene from season three. of Camp 47 occurred without gunfire or triumphant rescues. Which is really sad. I love those. There was infiltration, obvious enough to be seen by the Shepherds oooh, the Shepherds. What a title! A "the" in front and everything, how Alias, who began the protocol to be followed when the Camp was deemed a failure by their superiors. All four hundred and seventy 470! Get it? of the girls were given small, slick red pills I like that wording. I like the word "slick" a lot. that the Shepherds said would make their eyes brighter. Siiiiiick. The few who hesitated were the same who always hesitated. Like, perhaps, our band of heroines?
When the liberators reached the living quarters of the Agnelli plural for "lambs" in Italian, I believe. I used snapfish, so who knows, they found four hundred and sixty-six 470 - 4 = 466! Yay! girls in their beds, their eyes bright see? and unseeing and their lips and tongues cherry-red. The podere Um, pasture in Italian? was empty, harddrives wiped clean and no evidence of who had been there or where they would go. Other than all those dead girls, huh? Noooo evidence. Oh, I guess I meant the people who were in charge. Heh.
There were four survivors, the girls who were able to reclaim their names and lives. Yay them! They keep in touch, barely noting the names they write on envelopes, relying on the names they used before, on the ties that kept them alive.
There are the four: Liberty, Verdad, Quill and Starbuck. Guess! Guess who's who, y'all! Guess!
Their letters start the same, always, do you remember?
And no one does.
I really hate those two sentences with a burning passion, because they would so not start their letters the same way everytime, and for the love of god, they probably wouldn't keep in touch. And they would too remember. DUH. Hate.
~*~
When the girl awoke for the first time, there was an unfamiliar face bent towards her, holding her hand. Hee. Prize for guessing who the girl is!
“My name is Quill,” the woman said when she saw her eyes. “Don’t tell me yours.” Quill helped eased her up and gave her a glass of water to sip at.
“My sister,” she said first, not raising her eyes from the glass, “I was… taken with my sister-” I am so mysterious. Watch me go!
Quill took the glass from her hand and said briskly, “You won’t see her again. No one ever does.” That's sad.
The girl toyed with the ends of her hair and looked up. “Why are you Quill?”
“I wrote, once,” she said without passion. “‘Quill’ was a romantic way of remembering.”
“And no one uses their real names?”
“The ones who use their names, they break first.” What world do we live in, huh?
“Where are we?”
“Barrack Nineteen.”
The girl shook her head. “I mean location.”
Quill shrugged. “Camp 47.” Oh, behold the cleverness of me. Anvil, anvil, anvil.
The girl’s eyes widened. “You don’t know where it is, do you?” She waited for an answer, but Quill was quiet.
“Someone will come looking for us,” the girl said with a great certainty. “My sister and me. They’ll find this place.” Like... your family? And boyfriend? Huh?
Quill laughed sympathetically. “If you only knew how many said that.”
The girl lifted her chin. “Liberty. I choose Liberty.” Oh, defiance.
“A brave name to pick. You won’t even remember what it means, soon.”
Liberty takes this as a challenge. “I will,” she says defiantly, Ha! See, I told you she was defiant. “Because I’m getting out of here.”
Quill looks at her appraisingly. “You’ll survive. You just won’t want to.” Ooh. Dread.
~*~ <- That is so smurfy.
They took Liberty out soon and she returned like every other girl there. Without hair, Why would they shave their heads? The psychological thing, I guess. Disheartening. her eyes were almost too large, and she blinked too quickly. She would still nervously tucked phantom strands behind her ears. Awww, her big ears.
She was spared the first operation, because she already had the halfmoon under her right hipbone. Clue! Ding ding ding! The second left her with a bruise on the inside of her elbow the size of a grapefruit; the third made her unable to eat for three meals. I actually had no idea as what was going on, but those things sound important, don't they?
After these operations, Quill would watch after her as she slept fitfully and talked in her sleep. Quill tried, unsuccessfully, to break her of this habit. Yeah, she's a talker. Idiot. What a dumb plot device.
“You say names,” she said after she had shaken her awake, I always do that. Neglect to use names, so I wind up with a bunch of confusing 'she's or whatevers and it's real lame. “You know you can’t say them.”
Liberty took pride in being strong, but her desire to hear names broke her. Poor Libby. “Tell me, tell me what I said,” she all but begged, “Please, Quill.”
“A name, you said it often. I will not say it. You mustn’t say it.” Ooh. Mustn't.
She swallowed sharply. “That’s all?”
“Occasionally phrases. Sometimes you ask for your father.” Okay, seriously. You must know it's Syd by now.
Liberty looked at Quill miserably. “What do you miss the most?”
Quill felt badly for Liberty, because Liberty still remembered her life before. “I don’t miss anything.” I'm really interested by Quill, mostly because she was an original character, and I don't even have a mental backstory, so, I'm now interested. I wonder what she did.
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t remember. You won’t either, soon.”
Quill went back to her own bed after that promise of sweet dreams. Ominous! Excellent.
~*~
Most of the girls there refused to form attachments. Good idea. Making friends gave them a weakness, because nothing would stop the Shepherds from performing their experiments and nothing would stop death. There were always exactly four-hundred and seventy girls there, and girls died weekly, being replaced as their bodies are burnt. Oh, Holocaust reference. No one knew what those girls died of- chemicals, they guessed, either shot into the veins, or dripped into the water or sprinkled onto the food, or in the variety of brightly colored pills that had been shoved down their throats by the placid Shepherds and their security. That last bit sounded pretty cool and mysterious and good.
Liberty attempted to make friends, Poor silly Syd. and found that those willing were few and far between. Most girls wanted talking companions and nothing more, Very Atwood. and were resentful at the kinder women who would hold them as they jerked in spasms or became feverish. Quill was one of those- ready to comfort, but not to risk herself.
Quill composed letters in her head to no one in particular, cataloguing events and practices because she felt that no one would remember the atrocities committed there if she didn’t. Quill remembers stories of women long dead, with exotic names of things they cherished: Saffron, Phalarope, Halcyon, Camellia, Cerastes, all gone. Those names are so crazy and interesting and they were very important to me at the time. And I wish I could remember what a 'phalarope' was.
When they went to meals, all four hundred and seventy crammed into a cafeteria, Liberty peered over heads and into faces, searching, as was her habit, for her sister. Oh, Nadia. Quill told her every time to stop, but Liberty refused to accept that she was alone. When they went outside to work the fields, or to get their exercise, or a breath of fresh air, she would look up as if she expected rescue planes to appear the minute she stepped out. “They’ll come,” she said resolutely when Quill looked at her. Poor delusioned darling.
Liberty had been in Camp 47 for three months before Verdad ! Español! arrived in their barracks after a transfer- Columbia for Verdad, and Liberty had been lying on her back, facing away, when Verdad had opened her mouth to introduce herself. Oh, the luck of those girls.
Liberty had sat up very straight, a spine of iron, and turned to face her. “Sister,” she had mouthed, knowing what a danger it would be for them to know, and Verdad’s face as she had exhaled was pure light. Oh, pretty Nadia. The two had leapt at one another, eager to explain their absence from the other, and they reaffirmed their beliefs that help would soon come. When next to one another, Liberty and Verdad looked somewhat similar. Huh. Picture Jen Garner and Mia Maestro bald and next to one another. It's a weird thought.
And that's where I stopped. I never got Dana in there like I intended- she was Starbuck, duh, poor lamb. I have no idea how I was going to introduce her, or how they were going to escape, or any idea of where I was going with this. Yaaay planning!
And so, commentary #4, for
non_horation.This fic is completely unfinished, and probably never will be. I had very high hopes for it, of course, and it just... never happened. And it's very heavily based on Margaret Atwood's 'A Handmaid's Tale,' which you should be able to tell. Because I'm lame like that.
Camp 47 will never be investigated. Ooh, dramatic opening. And bang, Alias reference.
There will never be trials for the crimes committed against humanity there, nor will these atrocities be remembered. Those who were responsible will find new subjects, new grounds to test on, and their work will go on. The few survivors will live quietly, gratefully and say nothing. This is how it always has been, and this is how it always will be. Blah, blah, blah. Big, fancy words and purple prose. Is that the right term? Whatever.
The liberation I kind of love that word a lot. And not because of that deleted scene from season three. of Camp 47 occurred without gunfire or triumphant rescues. Which is really sad. I love those. There was infiltration, obvious enough to be seen by the Shepherds oooh, the Shepherds. What a title! A "the" in front and everything, how Alias, who began the protocol to be followed when the Camp was deemed a failure by their superiors. All four hundred and seventy 470! Get it? of the girls were given small, slick red pills I like that wording. I like the word "slick" a lot. that the Shepherds said would make their eyes brighter. Siiiiiick. The few who hesitated were the same who always hesitated. Like, perhaps, our band of heroines?
When the liberators reached the living quarters of the Agnelli plural for "lambs" in Italian, I believe. I used snapfish, so who knows, they found four hundred and sixty-six 470 - 4 = 466! Yay! girls in their beds, their eyes bright see? and unseeing and their lips and tongues cherry-red. The podere Um, pasture in Italian? was empty, harddrives wiped clean and no evidence of who had been there or where they would go. Other than all those dead girls, huh? Noooo evidence. Oh, I guess I meant the people who were in charge. Heh.
There were four survivors, the girls who were able to reclaim their names and lives. Yay them! They keep in touch, barely noting the names they write on envelopes, relying on the names they used before, on the ties that kept them alive.
There are the four: Liberty, Verdad, Quill and Starbuck. Guess! Guess who's who, y'all! Guess!
Their letters start the same, always, do you remember?
And no one does.
I really hate those two sentences with a burning passion, because they would so not start their letters the same way everytime, and for the love of god, they probably wouldn't keep in touch. And they would too remember. DUH. Hate.
~*~
When the girl awoke for the first time, there was an unfamiliar face bent towards her, holding her hand. Hee. Prize for guessing who the girl is!
“My name is Quill,” the woman said when she saw her eyes. “Don’t tell me yours.” Quill helped eased her up and gave her a glass of water to sip at.
“My sister,” she said first, not raising her eyes from the glass, “I was… taken with my sister-” I am so mysterious. Watch me go!
Quill took the glass from her hand and said briskly, “You won’t see her again. No one ever does.” That's sad.
The girl toyed with the ends of her hair and looked up. “Why are you Quill?”
“I wrote, once,” she said without passion. “‘Quill’ was a romantic way of remembering.”
“And no one uses their real names?”
“The ones who use their names, they break first.” What world do we live in, huh?
“Where are we?”
“Barrack Nineteen.”
The girl shook her head. “I mean location.”
Quill shrugged. “Camp 47.” Oh, behold the cleverness of me. Anvil, anvil, anvil.
The girl’s eyes widened. “You don’t know where it is, do you?” She waited for an answer, but Quill was quiet.
“Someone will come looking for us,” the girl said with a great certainty. “My sister and me. They’ll find this place.” Like... your family? And boyfriend? Huh?
Quill laughed sympathetically. “If you only knew how many said that.”
The girl lifted her chin. “Liberty. I choose Liberty.” Oh, defiance.
“A brave name to pick. You won’t even remember what it means, soon.”
Liberty takes this as a challenge. “I will,” she says defiantly, Ha! See, I told you she was defiant. “Because I’m getting out of here.”
Quill looks at her appraisingly. “You’ll survive. You just won’t want to.” Ooh. Dread.
~*~ <- That is so smurfy.
They took Liberty out soon and she returned like every other girl there. Without hair, Why would they shave their heads? The psychological thing, I guess. Disheartening. her eyes were almost too large, and she blinked too quickly. She would still nervously tucked phantom strands behind her ears. Awww, her big ears.
She was spared the first operation, because she already had the halfmoon under her right hipbone. Clue! Ding ding ding! The second left her with a bruise on the inside of her elbow the size of a grapefruit; the third made her unable to eat for three meals. I actually had no idea as what was going on, but those things sound important, don't they?
After these operations, Quill would watch after her as she slept fitfully and talked in her sleep. Quill tried, unsuccessfully, to break her of this habit. Yeah, she's a talker. Idiot. What a dumb plot device.
“You say names,” she said after she had shaken her awake, I always do that. Neglect to use names, so I wind up with a bunch of confusing 'she's or whatevers and it's real lame. “You know you can’t say them.”
Liberty took pride in being strong, but her desire to hear names broke her. Poor Libby. “Tell me, tell me what I said,” she all but begged, “Please, Quill.”
“A name, you said it often. I will not say it. You mustn’t say it.” Ooh. Mustn't.
She swallowed sharply. “That’s all?”
“Occasionally phrases. Sometimes you ask for your father.” Okay, seriously. You must know it's Syd by now.
Liberty looked at Quill miserably. “What do you miss the most?”
Quill felt badly for Liberty, because Liberty still remembered her life before. “I don’t miss anything.” I'm really interested by Quill, mostly because she was an original character, and I don't even have a mental backstory, so, I'm now interested. I wonder what she did.
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t remember. You won’t either, soon.”
Quill went back to her own bed after that promise of sweet dreams. Ominous! Excellent.
~*~
Most of the girls there refused to form attachments. Good idea. Making friends gave them a weakness, because nothing would stop the Shepherds from performing their experiments and nothing would stop death. There were always exactly four-hundred and seventy girls there, and girls died weekly, being replaced as their bodies are burnt. Oh, Holocaust reference. No one knew what those girls died of- chemicals, they guessed, either shot into the veins, or dripped into the water or sprinkled onto the food, or in the variety of brightly colored pills that had been shoved down their throats by the placid Shepherds and their security. That last bit sounded pretty cool and mysterious and good.
Liberty attempted to make friends, Poor silly Syd. and found that those willing were few and far between. Most girls wanted talking companions and nothing more, Very Atwood. and were resentful at the kinder women who would hold them as they jerked in spasms or became feverish. Quill was one of those- ready to comfort, but not to risk herself.
Quill composed letters in her head to no one in particular, cataloguing events and practices because she felt that no one would remember the atrocities committed there if she didn’t. Quill remembers stories of women long dead, with exotic names of things they cherished: Saffron, Phalarope, Halcyon, Camellia, Cerastes, all gone. Those names are so crazy and interesting and they were very important to me at the time. And I wish I could remember what a 'phalarope' was.
When they went to meals, all four hundred and seventy crammed into a cafeteria, Liberty peered over heads and into faces, searching, as was her habit, for her sister. Oh, Nadia. Quill told her every time to stop, but Liberty refused to accept that she was alone. When they went outside to work the fields, or to get their exercise, or a breath of fresh air, she would look up as if she expected rescue planes to appear the minute she stepped out. “They’ll come,” she said resolutely when Quill looked at her. Poor delusioned darling.
Liberty had been in Camp 47 for three months before Verdad ! Español! arrived in their barracks after a transfer- Columbia for Verdad, and Liberty had been lying on her back, facing away, when Verdad had opened her mouth to introduce herself. Oh, the luck of those girls.
Liberty had sat up very straight, a spine of iron, and turned to face her. “Sister,” she had mouthed, knowing what a danger it would be for them to know, and Verdad’s face as she had exhaled was pure light. Oh, pretty Nadia. The two had leapt at one another, eager to explain their absence from the other, and they reaffirmed their beliefs that help would soon come. When next to one another, Liberty and Verdad looked somewhat similar. Huh. Picture Jen Garner and Mia Maestro bald and next to one another. It's a weird thought.
And that's where I stopped. I never got Dana in there like I intended- she was Starbuck, duh, poor lamb. I have no idea how I was going to introduce her, or how they were going to escape, or any idea of where I was going with this. Yaaay planning!
