“Queen’s Gambit”, End notes

[aadler]

[ Endnotes posted 22 Jan 2017 ]

Authorial preface: Since this story was a collaboration, sroni and I are doing back-and-forth in answering the customary questions. Should make for a few little differences from normal.

Where did the idea for the story come from?

Aadler: This one was really a natural follow-up to “God Save the Queen”, by which I mean that this one needed to follow GSQ to make things right. The shape of the story came about from several years of discussion between me and sroni. We didn’t always agree on things, but I usually managed to get my way … or, possibly, came to agree with her and only thought it was my idea

SRoni: I knew one of the last lines from the get-go and it was just a matter of getting there. Honestly, I had to write through GSQ just to get to QG, in a lot of ways.

Is there any particular significance to the title?

SRoni: It’s the Queenverse. I listed out a lot of Queen’s Something and I think aadler suggested Gambit and explained it in terms of chess, because while I have an extensive vocabulary, I hear “Gambit” and automatically think of the guy from X-Men with exploding cards and a Creole accent.

Aadler: Additionally, Cordelia really is taking a strong set of risks in the story. She starts with an insoluble problem — how to put right what went wrong through her prior actions — and sees a way that might be done, but she has to put different elements together in just the right way, while needing the help of people who don’t regard her with overmuch affection.

What is the thing I like most about this story? the thing I like least, or about which I feel most doubtful?

SRoni: Like Most: Oz and Cordelia. I like them, their interactions, and that they understand each other in their own way.

Like Least: I … don’t actually know. I’m pretty sure the things I liked least didn’t make it into the final draft, thanks entirely to aadler.

Aadler: I most liked the sheer will that Cordelia put into making things right again. She felt responsible … and was, but carried much more of the load than was really justified. Her blistering determination, her willingness to pay whatever it cost (which is exactly what she wound up doing) … I can see those in the original Cordelia, but they really were made to show here. Also, Oz’s and Cordelia’s unexpected tentative partnership; I’m with sroni there, that worked out feeling pretty right.

Liked least: well, when it comes down to it, Cordelia got into the fix she was in because she kept secrets, took action without letting anyone else know what was going on. She recognized what a mistake that had been, resolved not to let it happen again … and at the end of the story, she was still doing it. Even if it seems true to character, it’s annoying.

Is there anything I think I could have done better, or might do differently if I had it to do over?

SRoni: Pretty much the same answer I gave with GSQ, honestly: give aadler a better base story to work with. I was around 20 when I finished QG and it’s been roughly ten years. I could do much better preliminary work now.

Aadler: I’ll make a caveat to what she just said. “God Save the Queen” was sroni’s story, which I then re-worked for ‘our’ purposes. With the memory of that, I wanted to make more of a contribution on “Queen’s Gambit”, so the draft sroni gave me was simply that, never really meant to be more than that: her telling the story so I could add my own input for a consolidated product. It was much rougher than what she’d done with GSQ, but that was what I had requested, and she gave me what I needed.

Do I have any plans to follow up on this story, or to use the character(s) or situation in a subsequent fic?

SRoni: I have had a series planned out for twelve years. At least three chapters written and rewritten and rewritten some more. Deaths of computers, lost notebooks … The grief is real, y’all. And somewhere along the way, I started focusing more on Original Fiction. I still love fanfic, but if I’m going to tackle a large project, I kind of want to get paid for it. Will it get written? … You know what? I think it will. Maybe even this year.

Aadler: That would be a relief, since we’ve been talking about possibilities for so long. The Queenverse is … adequate … with just the two stories we have so far, but there are so many things that could be done with the material there, and I’d love to see it happen.

I just hope sroni’s “maybe even this year” is more reliable than mine. I’ve been saying that on one particular story for close to ten years now.

Any observations to add at the end?

SRoni: Again, I am really bad at doing things in anything resembling a reasonable time frame. And aadler makes anything better, much like bacon.

Aadler: This was a more emotional story than I had really expected when we started it. Cordelia’s agonized sense of responsibility, her unwilling realization that she really couldn’t do everything herself … those really came across, I think, and it pleases me that we were able to make it work.

As I said before: sroni and I have different ways of doing things, and that leads to conflicts, but we do bring out things from each other than might not appear otherwise.