farina | Into the Ocean

Title: Into the Ocean
Fandom: G Gundam
Words: 2,500 words
Summary: Hans reflects on the where the 13th Gundam Fight has taken him and where he'd like to be, but he is not alone. Allenby is questioning her own life, and what she will do with it.
Pairing/Character: Hans Holger & Allenby Beardsley
Extra Info: This was originally written and posted sometime around 2/15/2008. It's been almost completely rewritten.
Rating: G
Genre: Friendship, starting over, choices, taking control of your own life vibes.

Notes:

First of all, since the last time I wrote for this fandom, the "official" spellings of a lot of the names seems to have changed, so that was one change made from the original (Cecil -> Cecile). I also changed the dub's Dark Gundam to Devil Gundam since that seems to be the more popular name in fandom these days.

Whew. I've wanted to rewrite this for some years, not because the original was anything special, but because I felt like it was a unique contribution to the fandom.

I shouted out Sunoko in my author notes but they called this story "thought-provoking and sincere" in their original review back in 2008, and things like that have a habit of sitting with a writer. If I rewrote this for anyone, it was for this person (who will probably never see this, but still).

This was a pretty extensive rewrite. The structure of the story was okay, but a lot of the description was overblown and repetitive. I cut way back and lost over 580 words in the rewrite, which is rare for me! If I'm cutting back that much, you know I was right to do it.

The original ending also just sort of grated on me. I felt like there was a theme/moral to the story and that my original ending, while poetic-sounding, took the meaning and...threw it into the ocean (lol).

Hans is just a minor player in the gundam league here, but even he is more or less a pawn in a greater plan. Allenby is WAY worse off than he is, obviously, but it's not difficult to assume they (and many of the fighters, honestly) didn't have much control over the course of their lives, particularly after they were selected to fight.

In the original story I really wanted to explore how it felt to be controlled for so long only to be dumped out on your own, and thus the river-water metaphor was born. I loved water metaphors so much I used them in the original ending, but all I managed to do with it was leave both Hans and Allenby feeling adrift, like they had no purpose and no direction...when it's made clear by the end of the story that they have chosen a direction and are moving in it together.

So the ending changed to reflect my current reading of the original work: from this point forward they are in control of their own destinies; they have the option to make their own choices.

Something something the river is controlling but the ocean is too vast for that; there is a freedom there they could have never found under the control of other people.

Also Hans/Allenby was a crackship I and possibly a few others conceived on Livejournal in the old days. It never gained any traction but I thought, honestly, if nothing else, Hans seems like a good person. I imagine he'd be a good friend for Allenby to carry into her new life where she gets to experience freedoms she was never allowed to have before.

Thanks for reading!

Into the Ocean | G Gundam