For Yuletide this year, I gamed the system so hard (something I've never done before) so I could write one of
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bond_girl 's prompts for the 2007 movie
Sunshine, starring Cillian Murphy and Chris Evans as a "science ice prince and competent military hothead" fighting with each other across the solar system, among an incredible cast that includes Michelle Yeoh, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rose Byrne, and Benedict Wong.
The Sun Was the First Star We Knew (12720 words) by
gwyneth rhysChapters: 1/1
Fandom:
Sunshine (2007)Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Robert Capa/Mace
Characters: Mace (Sunshine), Robert Capa, Kaneda (Sunshine), Corazon (Sunshine), Searle (Sunshine), Cassie (Sunshine), Harvey (Sunshine), Trey (Sunshine)
Additional Tags: Slow Burn, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everybody Lives, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Always Listen to Captain America, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt, Touch-Starved
Summary:
Capa was only five years older than him, but Mace felt like some middle-school dipshit who’d been suddenly, inexplicably befriended by the star high school quarterback.
I never really talk about my Yuletide reveals, like, that didn't occur to me, but apparently it's a thing some people do, and
minim_calibre wants me to do it. I've written longer stories for the exchange (last year, for instance, my Push/Political Animals crossover was 14.5k), but this was definitely the one with the most world-building I've ever done, and I guess I do have some things to say about that.
My writing always starts super late, because of the damn birthday at end of November, and this year I had multiple rush editing projects through November and December, and then there was the whole thing with getting pieces of me cut and burned off and the fucking infection in my face, so the fact that I got 12.7k done with extensive world- and relationship-building kind of boggles my mind. Plus, I felt like I could write this forever, but I knew I needed to bring it to a close so it felt like a standalone story, bring it to a natural conclusion. But man, I didn't want to give up Mace and Capa at all. There were multiple prompts I could do, too, so who knows, maybe I will do them, even though this is one of the smallest, least active fandoms I've ever written in.
A couple years ago,
bond_girl guessed my Gifted story, so I was constantly afraid she'd know it was me, and also, she mentioned my Sunshine vid of a few years back, Havoc in Heaven, as her mood board for her prompts, which added a whole other layer to
OMG how do I keep this secret. I thought for sure she'd guess me, especially with all the world-building in this thing, because I do go on.
It helped enormously that HBO was showing Chernobyl again, because I realized that was the tone I wanted: elegiac, a little haunted, tense, where two guys start out as enemies, become friends trying to save their world, and in this case, fall in love. I also had just watched The Terror, and that had the similar tone: "Are we brothers, Francis? Because I would like that very much." Ugh, swoon. I live for that kind of shit.
( Building, and fixing, a post-apocalyptic solar winter world )Okay, that's almost as long as the story itself, yikes. All in all, despite my doubts, I think I achieved what I set out to, and this is maybe one of my favorite things I've ever written, one of the best things I've done, too, and judging from the long and excited comment from my recipient, it succeeded.
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