Cupidity Q&A

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

This is a slightly shamefaced post. Some people might remember back in the mists of time that they asked us questions about the process of writing Cupidity and about our ideas. Well, we did answer them fairly promptly at the time... we just never posted the answers. *face meets palm*

So here they are, in all their glory! A bit late. Yes. But still lovely. We hope you enjoy!

whymzycal: 1. I'm just curious if there were any particular faerie myths (specific versions of tales) that you worked from or if you just took a more generic approach and used faerie myths in general. And the bit with the faerie world being more modern when Rose first takes over? Brilliant. Any particular reason for that, or did it just happen in your heads that way?

And, of course, any insights that you want to share would be appreciated like whoa.

Louise: The bit where the world becomes more modern when Rose takes over came from somewhere in either mine or Eli's subconcious and it's part of Rose's character that never came through particularly in any other way, that she wanted to modernise fairyland and make it more rational. My main source for interesting myths and legends, apart from general background absorption of fairy tales, was 'Fairies and Fairy stories- a history' by Jane Purkiss. I recommend it, its fascinating. I also read Shakespeare and rather a large amounts of internet information about Robin Goodfellow - his is the main myth that we used specifically, and mostly the idea that our Robin works for the Fairy Queen. One specific bit of myth that became important was that fairies could make gold and that they would reward humans with gold in return for sex. This exchange is a fundamental idea in most fairy myths and goes back many centuries. Also, fairies in the original myths are not nice and neither is Robin Goodfellow, and this is a concept that we really sunk our teeth into!

Eli: The only specific thing I had in mind was the story of Eos (Greek goddess of the dawn) and her lover, to whom she aske Zeus to grant immortality, but she forgot the part about eternal youth. He withered and shrunk through the centuries until eventually he turned into a cricket. Eos has that kind of carelessness and unintentional cruelty and almost innocence in our version of her too, I think.


orlisbunny: i'm always curious how people pick names for their characters, so i would dearly love to know the significance of the names please and thank you.

Eli: For Alberich and Eos, we based their names on Oberon and Titania. Allow me to quote smillaraaq, who left this as a comment and got it exactly right:

Oberon is the French version of Alberich, who is variously identified as the king of the elves or dwarves. "Titania" as the name for the fairy queen comes from Shakespeare, but it's also used back in Ovid as an appellation for daughters of the Titans...such as Eos.

Eos is also at times conflated in myth with Artemis the huntress. And she was noted for a habit of falling in love with handsome young mortal men...to the point of abducting the less-than-willing. Read up on some of her ill-starred lovers, and there are some details in the dream sequences that become particularly interesting...

We got Angel's name from The Utah Baby Namer. Funny how appropriate it turned out to be.

For Jenny we just wanted something very plain and pratical, because she's a plain and practical witch.

Louise will have to do Rose, because I don't remember where her name came from. Ditto Sam and Neil. Ummm. I think that's all? At least all that had any real significance. Except Robin, of course, but he's pretty obvious.

Louise: I wanted a flower name for her, because of the tradition of fairies having flower names. Roses have thorns... well, it just seemed appropriate.


andmydog and rhosyn_du: Because I'm a horrible person, I'm wondering if we'll ever see any of the Adventures of Neil and Sam.

Eli: Ahahaa. Maybe? I wouldn't mind, but they might not be as exciting and fairy-filled as Angel and Robin's were.


puddingcat: Was Alberich a variant of the Alberich in Wagner's Nibelungenungenun? En. Ung.

Eli: Only his name, really, not so much his character.


I was too caught up in the story to character spot! Who else from Saiyuki was there, and as whom?

Eli: Wellllll, that is hard to say. Sam is Kou, and Neil is Jien. Everyone else is a little hazier. I think Jenny had elements of Sanzo's character and maybe of Kanan's as well, but she's not really either of them. Alberich is closer to Ni, but that wasn't really intentional. Despite Rose and Robin's relationship, she's much too crazy to be Kanan. Really, the only ones we planned out were Sam and Neil.


smillaraaq: And aside from that, I'm very curious as to just what was behind his having to leave the boarding school -- was it the aftermath of the incident he briefly mentions where Rose injured him so badly, or something else?

Eli/; Ahaha. We never really thought that through, did we? Louise?

Louise: No, Eleanor, we did not.


wedjateye: I'd love to know more about how your collaborative process works. The nitty gritty of how it comes to pass that each of you writes certain bits.

Louise: One think I noticed is that if we can't agree on what comes next in the plot, we stop until we reach a decision. In all of the things we've written together, plotting the end of Cupidity was probably the hardest.

Eli: I think the only time either of us decided to write a specific section was if we either particularly wanted to do it (I really wanted to write the intro to Jenny's character because she was so clear in my mind) or particularly didn't want to (I made Louise write the het sex with Eos because I knew she'd do it better than me). And that didn't happen too often. Usually, we just decided what would happen, and who wrote it just depended on whose turn it was.


baka_gaijin : Did each of you write the specific parts that you posted? Or did you collaborate on each chapter and then take turns posting?

Louise: We collaborated on each chapter. I noticed that it often worked out that one of us would write the end of one chapter and the beginning of another, say about 1.5k words. So then the other would pick it up and write the end of that chapter and the beginning of the next. Sometimes one of us wrote nearly a whole chapter each in one go, but not often. We've done that in the past, on other stories, and its much slower and harder. And maybe collaborating on chapters means the writing is more seamless? We talked each day about the plot and what was going to happen, so we mostly knew what we had to write.

Eli: In my head, the writing process went something like type type type uhhhh type type, shit, I don't know what comes next. Louise! Your turn! Re: posting, please see the following dramatic reenactment:

Louise: Who's posting today?
Eli: I'm too lazyyyy. You do it!

Not all the time, mind, but on a fair few occasions.

baka_gaijin: Stories are usually posted once they are completed, giving the author a chance to edit, re-write, etc. Was there ever a point, several chapters in, where you thought "Hey, I really wish we had done something different or gone a different way back in chapter 3 or 4, but now it's too late and we're committed to this path."

Louise: YES! We absolutely did that, right at the beginning. I think we wrote about 7-10,000 words before we decided that we had gone wrong somewhere, so we backed away, plotted like mad and cut off about 4000 words, then began again. It was much much better and I'm glad we did that. Luckily we hadn’t actually begun posting by that point.

There are smaller things that I would like to have tidied up more or expanded on, but the speed of writing meant that it was impossible. I think it would be very hard to go back and change plot points once posted, because you're asking the reader to work quite hard, to go back, reread, and then remember your changes. It doesn't seem like much fun for them.

Eli: One thing specifically I wish we could've changed is Jenny's line about giving gifts the sea. It set up a whole plot line that never actually materialized. Er. Sorry about that. I did think there might be room for it at the time.

Comments

[bunnysquee.livejournal.com]

thank you so much for all these answers - i love reading about a writer's process and this was awesome.

[whymzycal.livejournal.com]

Huzzah, answers! Totally worth the wait.

Thanks so much for writing this out and posting it; it's really interesting to see how the process evolved for the two of you. And now I have a new book to look for!

[baka-gaijin.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this post. XD