DVD commentary: 'The Circle at the Centre'

[regshoe]

[DVD commentary meme]

For phantomtomato, a DVD commentary of my The Longest Journey fic 'The Circle at the Centre'.

The Circle at the Centre

This was my assignment for RMSE 2023, and it was not an easy story to write (despite having such a good request to work from). My first fic in a fandom usually isn't, but this was my first fic for a book I'd loved dearly for years (which perhaps increased the pressure a little) while never really being able to explain very clearly why (which is as true in fic as anywhere else). Looking through my notes document, this was the third vague idea I thought about trying before settling on it. In any case, it's a good thing phantomtomato—who had recently written a beautiful fix-it fic for the book—convinced me that a) fix-it fic was possible and b) I might try some too.

Title is paraphrased from canon, of course: the one in the middle is, the one there's never room enough to draw.

At the end of the landing, wedged in the space between walls, doors and sloping ceiling, was a small, round, uncurtained window

Odd, irregular, homely rooms/interior design are important in this book, I think. I like them too.

To himself Stewart said that Rickie was getting more real again, and throwing off the fog of convention in which he had lived for the last two years, and naturally he himself was glad to see it—and him—as much as possible.

I commented in my planning notes for this fic that I'd forgotten just how far Rickie and Stewart are reconciled before the end of the book (it had been five years since I'd last read it, and my previous tendency was definitely to focus on the tragedy of the ending after this). But there they are, happily living together (with Stewart's family) for five months, a period which Forster skips over so terribly, and I think it's entirely sensible—I wouldn't even say to add, but to suppose that there is a getting-together in there. Anyway—

‘Oh, well enough,’ said Rickie. ‘Stephen is a little bit...’ He frowned, and tried again: ‘I gather things in Scotland are not going on as smoothly as they might be.’

Of course, in a late-fix-it AU like this Rickie will have to work things out with Stephen properly after all the damage of canon is done, which might be an interesting thing to explore also.

We went up to the wood above Eastover, you know, where the beeches are all splendid just now.

I'm sure I remember scanning around on a map and picking the name of a real place that might be near the Ansells' home, but I can't find the place I thought I had in mind now—the only vaguely plausible Eastover is part of Bridgwater in Somerset, much too far west. Oh well. I think the Ansells probably live in either Warminster or Westbury, based on the descriptions in canon (mayybe Trowbridge? I would rather like it to be Frome, but I don't think the railways quite work). The beechwood sounds a bit Lolly Willowes.

The referent of the plural pronoun had changed between his two uses of it, but the distinction was lost on his listener.

Explicitly referring to the grammar of your own sentences as a way of obliquely describing their significance is one of my favourite tricks of turn-of-the-century writers. It's delightful.

as a setting in which to read—and to develop impassioned arguments against—Plato or Hegel in the vac.

Important teenage activities for any old gay novel character, obviously. (Happily, Stewart was more interested in arguing ontology than in angst about the Symposium or the horses in the Phaedrus.)

That which has its own reality, and which still exists—in such small details as the veins on the back of a hand, which cannot be conjured out of unreality at the approach of an observer, and thus prove that they are not so conjured—when one is not there, may not be quite what one remembers when one returns.

This passage was inspired by some other things phantomtomato had written about reunions in fiction, and I'm not sure how far I really succeeded in developing those ideas, but I was rather pleased with this line linking them back to the cow.

The upper floors above the shop did not abound in spare bedrooms, and it was an odd little chamber, half an attic, which Rickie had inhabited for the last four months.

There is the 'harp room' (lol, Maud <3 ), of course, but I think the logic here was that if Rickie is staying at the house long-term he has to live somewhere other than a spare room which is 'always kept ready for Stewart's friends'. (Perhaps Widdrington comes to visit the two of them there! That would be nice.)

An old quilt, the work of a fabled great-aunt from the time of George III or thereabouts, lay across the bed, and age and the firelight combined to cast a soft indefiniteness over the intricate colours and patterns of its hexagonal patches. Rickie, who was in shirtsleeves, had thrown his coat across it at the end of the bed.

Fun things in historical slash fic: 1) referring to earlier periods of history as being in the past of the historical-setting present (the description of this quilt was inspired by a real old quilt in my family, though that one was made within living memory), 2) the intimacy of characters being in their shirtsleeves.

‘These are my letters from Cambridge, the June two years ago.’

One of my original ideas for this assignment was to try an AU branching off from the exchange of letters in chapter 9, but I couldn't make it work (poor Rickie is simply too oblivious at that point). So I was pleased to find another way to bring them in!

‘My dear Stewart, I don’t value your advice so little as all that. Even then I didn’t.’

A few moments’ silence followed. Stewart was thinking of that last letter of Rickie’s, written in response to these: the one to which he had never replied—the one which had, in fact, met the same fate to which he had just incorrectly consigned his own letters.

But despite the difficulty of figuring out something actually set then, there is some potential in the almost total lack of explicit reaction to that exchange of letters on both sides. The things this book doesn't say...

But it had not been fair to Rickie to leave it unanswered.

Stewart may be right about everything, and I love him, but I think he could maybe stand to be a little bit clearer. Sometimes.

Stewart leapt to his feet and began, as far as the small room would allow it, to pace back and forth across the floor. [...] He rubbed his eyes with his hands, as if trying to ward off an impending headache

I like the physicality of Stewart's thinking the first time we see him in canon: Now and then he would make a motion with his feet as though he were running quickly backward upstairs, and would tread on the edge of the fender, so that the fire-irons went flying and the buttered-bun dishes crashed against each other in the hearth. In fact I don't think I got it to come across quite strongly enough or weird enough here. Anyway, one of his many endearing traits.

He had not understood. So strong are the conventions that language itself is entangled in their toils, and it takes some care even to express things which lie too far outside them.

All the trouble Rickie has in recognising what is true—there's an awful lot stacked against him, really; even the word 'unconventional' itself can't be trusted in canon, as Aunt Emily points out—but he is trying. He'll get there soon!

And at this moment Stewart’s impatience could not bear that he should not be understood, so he abandoned the effort. ‘No, no, no...’ he muttered, and crossed the room in a few paces and pulled Rickie bodily to his feet.

And, combining the last few points—there :D

‘You know,’ said Rickie a little while later, ‘I don’t blame you for not writing a more honest letter.’

It is possible that I use it too much in kissing scenes, but I am fond of the device of stating that a short amount of time has passed as a way of implying without stating what happened during that time.

The dialogue and ideas in this part of the fic were broadly inspired by phantomtomato's letter saying, 'give me a Stewart who rejects conventionality and loves his friend, and a Rickie who finds the confidence to do the same', which is just the most beautiful way to describe them <3

‘Rickie, don’t go to your aunt’s next week,’ resumed Stewart presently. They lay in tangled confusion atop the quilt; Stewart supported himself with one arm bent upon Rickie’s bundled coat, with the other still firmly holding Rickie to him. ‘She’s impossible. Put her off... you can see her at Christmas, if you insist... but stop here with me now. I want you.’ They were a persuasively punctuated few sentences.

More obliquely-unspecified time, and I may be having slightly too much fun not saying things in this passage. Also, I had to get the definite fix-it in there! Original version of this line from my draft notes, paraphrasing planned dialogue: 'And at the end, S says, R, don't go to your aunt's next week, put her off and stay here and kiss me more instead...'

The use of 'stop' to mean 'stay' is in the OED (with examples from 1801 to 1901) and I do see it from other writers from this period sometimes, but I think it's an especially distinctive feature of Forster's idiolect.

It may be a single tree amid turnips and grass embankments; or as Stewart had found it, this quiet evening in the attic bedroom, with the uneven ridged seams of the quilt beneath him and his friend warm and laughing and happy in his arms.

See, this totally fits right into the themes of canon!! I especially like the way this sentence ends.

And so we leave them, things happily fixed and entirely real. :) Elsewhere in my planning notes I mentioned how much I liked another of phantomtomato's prompts, the one about Rickie's daughter surviving and Rickie and Stewart ending up raising her together, but I couldn't figure out how to make it work and in any case could only manage a much less ambitious idea at this point. However, two years later... [this segues neatly into the next of these DVD commentaries, which I am looking forward to writing]

Comments

[phantomtomato]

Regshoe! This was an absolute delight after the long holiday week. <3 I am even more glad to have requested your commentary on this fic, because I learned so much from this!! I appreciate it even more~ A few things:

Explicitly referring to the grammar of your own sentences as a way of obliquely describing their significance is one of my favourite tricks of turn-of-the-century writers. It's delightful.

I've also noticed myself picking this up from the era but hadn't put it into words! It's a wonderful trick and you used it so well. I think that self-referential cleverness just feels like the author having so much fun with their prose and inviting us, the reader, to have fun alongside them. I just really like that the wordplay is called out by the text itself.

Fun things in historical slash fic: 1) referring to earlier periods of history as being in the past of the historical-setting present (the description of this quilt was inspired by a real old quilt in my family, though that one was made within living memory), 2) the intimacy of characters being in their shirtsleeves.

Strongly co-signing both haha. I love that you put your own family's quilt into the fic! That sort of touch is so sweet and sentimental, which always gets me. But yes, I must consider more opportunities for characters to consider even older historical eras relative to their, well, relatives!

And I definitely noticed your definitive fix-it! Lines like that are such nice details in fic—they're the best kind of intertextual conversations that make fandom what it is. If reading this fic as just any story, it wouldn't matter when Rickie sees his aunt; in reading this fic as fanfiction, it matters very much indeed.

I can say now that I'm very glad you didn't manage to work out the surviving-daughter plot back when this was written, because it stands on its own as a great fix-it for the novel and a wonderful story that plays more within the canon framework for the characters. Of course I love both of my RMSE gifts from you, so I am glad that your writing block back then resulted in me eventually receiving two of them!

[regshoe]

Aww, thank you <3

I think that self-referential cleverness just feels like the author having so much fun with their prose and inviting us, the reader, to have fun alongside them.

Yes! The ability to do that sort of thing is something I especially like about omniscient narration.

Lines like that are such nice details in fic—they're the best kind of intertextual conversations that make fandom what it is.

There'd be some potential in the right kind of story for making that significant in a darker/gothic way, I think—a 'someone just walked over my grave' sort of moment for the characters, sensing the ghost of the fate they avoided? Hmm.