Ideas, Conceptual Metaphors, and my Fanfic

POSTED BY: GoramMan
UPDATED: Monday, March 3, 2008 05:29
VIEWED: 4691
PAGE 1 of 1

GORAMMAN

Thursday, February 28, 2008 11:33 PM

Hello BSR,

I promised a post about my latest chapter in the fanfic I'm writing called Spinning Out. Chapter 3 took a lot of time and thought to write. It was 13+ pages of exposition for an entire arch of stories that I am in the process of loosely planning. This chapter sees Mal and Zoe going to Badger for a job after the events portrayed in Serenity. The crew of Serenity has been out in the black for three months and has little to no idea of what happened after the Miranda broadwave. Badger not only has work for Mal but he (of course) just so happens to be on top of all the latest news in the verse despite major restrictions on interplanetary communication. He is persuaded to give Mal and Zoe the lay of the land.

THE IDEA

The original idea I had for the background of this story was not going to be a fanfic at all. For the past year I would occasionally think about an original sci-fi story with original characters and the whole shebang. The background of which would be this powerful entity (not necessarily a government or even human) would use the conflict between two populations to control them. They would shift their support and alliance from one population to the other depending on several factors such as politics within the population, cost of labor, availability of resources, level of education, and level of independence. This would be referred to as a cycle (some kind of cycle, didn't ever come up with a cool name). Both populations would beware of the cycle and knew what to expect every time it happened. But they would remain oblivious to the entity behind the scheme up until a certain point which would be where the story began for the reader.

Although I really liked this idea and meditated upon it often it was entirely too tidy. Whatever scenario I would come up with to show the man behind the curtain I would eventually reject. It was too obvious, it was too subtle, or I thought nobody would really give a damn. Further more, how do I make readers empathized and sympathize with anybody in these two populations if all of them are dupes from the beginning? How do they relate? They aren't going to believe they are dupes too.

So the idea sat on the shelf for a very long time until I decided to start writing fan fic for BSR. Then it clicked. The Alliance has basically two distinct populations. The central planets and the rim planets. I refer to these as the Core and the Rim. Miranda makes for a great inciting incident. So why not do a story where the Alliance starts using the population of the Rim against the population of the Core? It is certainly powerful enough to do so and because it will be an event unprecedented in the history of the 'Verse the premise is less dubious than my original idea of it occurring over and over again. The seed was planted and with chapter 3 it germinated. I say that because it wasn't until the completion of chapter 2 that I committed to the old idea. I say it for another reason...

CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS

There became a point in my life when I realized that the human brain is really not all that great. The truth of is that it should be able to do all kinds of things but repeatedly fails. How often do you forget, miscomprehend, and wrongly apply information. All of the time! If you don't think so, you are lying to yourself.

I became very interested in how the brain works at a very convenient time. It was after I separated from the Navy in the Summer of 04 and the presidential election was in full swing that I discovered the conceptual metaphor.

A regular metaphor is defined as follows:

Quote:
1. a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our God.”

It's basically talking about something as if it were something else. We use metaphors in fiction all of the time to involve the reader and cause images to appear in their mind. But why do we do that? Because it

WYTCHCROFT

Friday, February 29, 2008 3:19 PM

i will be replying to this GM:)

TANKOBITE

Monday, March 3, 2008 3:35 AM

Well, you put a lot of work into this; keep with it, sounds like an interesting concept. Personally though, I'm not sure what you mean by the Alliance using the population of the Rim against the Core worlds. Would you mind elaborating on that?

Anyway, good luck; though I think it would be interesting to see Serenity running guns to rebels somewhere...for cash of course.

-----------------------------------------------------------
There's a widow in sleepy Chester
Who weeps for her only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River,
A grave that the Burmans shun;
And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri
Who tells how the work was done.

GORAMMAN

Monday, March 3, 2008 5:28 AM

http://www.fireflyfans.net/sunroomitem.asp?i=19755

Read the chapter if you are interested. Badger explains it all.

TANKOBITE

Monday, March 3, 2008 5:29 AM

Ah; I'd only gotten around to reading the first one. I'll check it out later.

-----------------------------------------------------------
There's a widow in sleepy Chester
Who weeps for her only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River,
A grave that the Burmans shun;
And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri
Who tells how the work was done.