Meme / RL

[deelaundry]

Here is a meme what I stole from Sabine and Topaz:

Pick a paragraph (or any passage less than 500 words) from anything I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

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Real-Life: Last night's fun things included a live concert of an awesome singer/guitarist, enjoyed with an even more awesome friend. \o/ The chairs in the venue left a little to be desired, but on the other hands, the manager gave me free chips. \o/ \o/ \o/

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DVD for "Looking Out" - Part 1

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

Epilogue – Looking Out

I called this “Looking Out” because the two POV characters are in their cage, quite literally looking out at House & Wilson.

They’re annoyingly noisy, aren’t they, Chirp? Yours especially.

C’mon, Whiskers, leave Fuzzy alone. He’s been away for a long time; he’s just happy to be home.

So, this epilogue is from the point of view of two rats who are now pets of House and Wilson. Chirp is who we know as Steve McQueen, the rat House adopted back in Season Two. Whiskers is who we know as Tuco, the rat Wilson adopted during the fic. Throughout the fic, they go by the names their mamas gave them: Chirp and Whiskers.

From House & Wilson’s point of view, when they got their pet rats, they gave them names. So from Chirp and Whiskers’ point of view, when they adopted their humans, they gave the humans names. Chirp gave his human the name “Fuzzy” on account of his fuzzy face.

Chirp and Whiskers, being rats, don’t understand human language. To them it’s just noise, and House and Wilson yammering in the kitchen is just being noisy. They’ve only had Wilson around up until this point, so they’re more used to it being quiet.

Are you sure? Don’t humans usually do that weird upward thing with their mouths when they’re happy?

It’s called a smile. Fuzzy does it sometimes, but most times, he’s got his own special ways of showing happiness. They’re subtle. You’ve got to watch his eyes, and the way he holds his stick.

I enjoyed the thought of Chirp noticing that House expresses happiness in ways other than smiling.

He’s damaged, isn’t he? I’m surprised my person hasn’t killed him yet.

He’s damaged, but he’s tough. And people don’t kill their weak, anyway. You’re thinking of hamsters, I bet. Easy mistake to make, seeing as how yours kind of looks like a giant hamster. Hey, I forgot to ask: what’d you name him?

Whiskers hasn’t seen House until the day of this fic, but he can tell there’s something wrong with House’s leg. Chirp explains that the leg damage doesn’t mean that House is weak.

I had originally thought that rats killed their weak/diseased the way that some animal species do, but my rat beta fallen_arazil set me straight. She said I was thinking of hamsters... so I put that in Chirp’s dialogue. Anti-hamster prejudice or fact? For the purpose of the story, it didn’t really matter.

You need to remember that this story is set in mid-Season Three, when Wilson had gained weight from Season One and was looking, well, pudgy. Not fat, and I doubt he was actually overweight, but he had more flesh on his bones than before. And with the soft brown hair and brown eyes and round face, under certain lighting, he rather did look like a hamster.

Her name is Pudge, and I like how she looks. Warm and cuddly.

Wait a minute, it’s not a “her.” You’ve got a male person there.

She’s not male! You’re trying to arureomorphize her, give her rat qualities. You’ve got to use human characteristics to judge. See: soft, smooth skin, kind eyes, and wide hips to pass out those giant pups they have.

“Warm and cuddly” – hee. Of course first impressions can be deceiving, as Wilson isn’t particularly cuddly or touch-feely in his actions in canon. But hee.

“Anthropomorphize” means to ascribe human characteristics to non-human items. I wanted the rats to have an equivalent term, for giving rat qualities to non-rat things, so I did a little language digging. “Anthropo-“ comes from the Greek word anthrōpos, which means “human being.” “Arureos” is the Greek word for “rat,” so that lead me to “arureomorphize.”

The “wide hips” reference was because, well, in Season Three particularly Wilson seemed to have “birthin’ hips,” as my friend called them.

Is your nose broken? Sniff! That’s testosterone coming off Pudge. Not as much as my Fuzzy, but still –

Rats have a keener sense of smell than humans so they’d use scent evidence as much as visual evidence. Whether they actually can smell testosterone, eh, I don’t know. It was just funny. (Also, Fuzzy/House has more testosterone because he’s the dommiest of the dom.)

Re: DVD for "Looking Out" - Part 1

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

Actually I sort of like the idea of rats being somewhat prejudiced against hamsters.
I LOVE "arureomorphize". Big linguistics geek here. I did call my first House fic "Iatroeco-oxyglossophilia", after all.