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Apr. 29th, 2006 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabinetzinTitle: Gulliver
Summary: On servant observation.
Fandom: Amaranth
Word Count: 735
Rating/Warnings: PG
Pairing: N/A
A/N: Y hullo thar self insert! Several things about the world crop up in this one. Gulliver was already out of the world before Amaranth's transformation, which explains part of the beginning.
Gulliver stood over the stove, stirring a pot of sauce intermittently. Loki ushered the girl into the kitchen, leading her forward with a hand on her lower back. He left her with a wink to Gulliver.
“Boy needs to stay in here and eat something himself,” she said, bending to reach for a fresh pan. “Breakfast?”
She nodded mutely. Gulliver sat a coarse mug in front of her and filled it from a dingy coffee urn. “Flower girl,” she said, half rhetorically. “Mark I?” She nodded, wishing she’d drop the subject. “Scrambled or fried?”
“Scrambled,” she answered quietly. The food was fast and simple: eggs, toast, and a few strips of fried protein. Though she tried to pace herself, she found herself tearing through it as if she hadn’t eaten in a month. By the time she was finished, Gulliver was already there with more eggs and coffee.
Gulliver reached for a tin of tobacco on the far counter and began rolling herself a cigarette. There was something oddly comforting about the big woman. The girl relaxed into the chair, not realizing she’d been so tense.
“Lemme guess,” she said, offering the cigarette. She waved it away. “Running from your folks?”
“You could say that,” she replied, looking evasively into her coffee cup. “What about you? What are you running from?”
“Didn’t run.” She lit the cigarette off the burner and took a long, slow drag. “You ever heard of Bronislaw Malinowski?”
The Bank answered for her. “Polish anthropologist. Born 1884. Died 1942. Responsible for the first study of the Kula.”
“Port too,” the big woman observed, somewhat impressed. “Malinowski practically invented participant observation. It’s a way of studying tribes. You join somebody else’s culture, learn their language, become a part of their world. That way, you find out things you never would have known just showing up and asking a lot of uncomfortable questions.” Gulliver took a last drag on the cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray.
“I used to be an ethnographer, somebody who does what Malinowski did. Kinda hard when it ain’t twenty feet of the world that ain’t been bought by somebody. After the last of the big storms wiped out the community I’d been studying, I had to find a new people.”
“There’s people all through the Grid that know about this place. For a while, somebody was webcasting from here, telling the whole Grid how it really was. That’s how I found out Logos couldn’t cook worth a damn.”
She broke off her monologue to refill her mug and stir at the big pot. “So I decided to come down here. I had a new idea, was gonna revolutionize ethnography.”
“What was it?” she asked, wrapped up in the story.
“Servant observation,” she answered. “Instead of making yourself one of the tribe, make yourself lower than them. That’s the only way you can really see them.” She wiped her hands on a towel. “Works, too. Anybody will tell anything to a fat lady who feeds them. Has to do with attachment theory.” She shook her head. “But that’s another story.”
“So I left my college – this was right before they all closed, mind, and set out. Told them they wouldn’t hear from me for at least a year. Had a party, all that good stuff. I came, and I started writing. And like it does when you’re distracted, a year went right by me, then another. I didn’t leave during that time. Loki did all the buying that needed to be done, so I could just stay and work.”
“One night, Loki was sick or lazy or something, so I went out to buy,” she trailed off, thinking. She shook her head. “Ain’t important, just something I didn’t have, and I ended up logging on at my school to tell them I wasn’t dead.”
“But when I logged on, I found out that I was a few months late. I’d been declared dead, killed by dangerous separatists. My wife married some New Fundamentalist man and sold everything I owned. On top of that, the school had the damn nerve to publish a festschrift in my honor, all about the dangers of ethnography. Made me into a goddamned cautionary tale, the bastards.”
“So I stayed. This is my life now, what do I care if the rest of the world thinks I’m dead? I might as well be.”
Summary: On servant observation.
Fandom: Amaranth
Word Count: 735
Rating/Warnings: PG
Pairing: N/A
A/N: Y hullo thar self insert! Several things about the world crop up in this one. Gulliver was already out of the world before Amaranth's transformation, which explains part of the beginning.
Gulliver stood over the stove, stirring a pot of sauce intermittently. Loki ushered the girl into the kitchen, leading her forward with a hand on her lower back. He left her with a wink to Gulliver.
“Boy needs to stay in here and eat something himself,” she said, bending to reach for a fresh pan. “Breakfast?”
She nodded mutely. Gulliver sat a coarse mug in front of her and filled it from a dingy coffee urn. “Flower girl,” she said, half rhetorically. “Mark I?” She nodded, wishing she’d drop the subject. “Scrambled or fried?”
“Scrambled,” she answered quietly. The food was fast and simple: eggs, toast, and a few strips of fried protein. Though she tried to pace herself, she found herself tearing through it as if she hadn’t eaten in a month. By the time she was finished, Gulliver was already there with more eggs and coffee.
Gulliver reached for a tin of tobacco on the far counter and began rolling herself a cigarette. There was something oddly comforting about the big woman. The girl relaxed into the chair, not realizing she’d been so tense.
“Lemme guess,” she said, offering the cigarette. She waved it away. “Running from your folks?”
“You could say that,” she replied, looking evasively into her coffee cup. “What about you? What are you running from?”
“Didn’t run.” She lit the cigarette off the burner and took a long, slow drag. “You ever heard of Bronislaw Malinowski?”
The Bank answered for her. “Polish anthropologist. Born 1884. Died 1942. Responsible for the first study of the Kula.”
“Port too,” the big woman observed, somewhat impressed. “Malinowski practically invented participant observation. It’s a way of studying tribes. You join somebody else’s culture, learn their language, become a part of their world. That way, you find out things you never would have known just showing up and asking a lot of uncomfortable questions.” Gulliver took a last drag on the cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray.
“I used to be an ethnographer, somebody who does what Malinowski did. Kinda hard when it ain’t twenty feet of the world that ain’t been bought by somebody. After the last of the big storms wiped out the community I’d been studying, I had to find a new people.”
“There’s people all through the Grid that know about this place. For a while, somebody was webcasting from here, telling the whole Grid how it really was. That’s how I found out Logos couldn’t cook worth a damn.”
She broke off her monologue to refill her mug and stir at the big pot. “So I decided to come down here. I had a new idea, was gonna revolutionize ethnography.”
“What was it?” she asked, wrapped up in the story.
“Servant observation,” she answered. “Instead of making yourself one of the tribe, make yourself lower than them. That’s the only way you can really see them.” She wiped her hands on a towel. “Works, too. Anybody will tell anything to a fat lady who feeds them. Has to do with attachment theory.” She shook her head. “But that’s another story.”
“So I left my college – this was right before they all closed, mind, and set out. Told them they wouldn’t hear from me for at least a year. Had a party, all that good stuff. I came, and I started writing. And like it does when you’re distracted, a year went right by me, then another. I didn’t leave during that time. Loki did all the buying that needed to be done, so I could just stay and work.”
“One night, Loki was sick or lazy or something, so I went out to buy,” she trailed off, thinking. She shook her head. “Ain’t important, just something I didn’t have, and I ended up logging on at my school to tell them I wasn’t dead.”
“But when I logged on, I found out that I was a few months late. I’d been declared dead, killed by dangerous separatists. My wife married some New Fundamentalist man and sold everything I owned. On top of that, the school had the damn nerve to publish a festschrift in my honor, all about the dangers of ethnography. Made me into a goddamned cautionary tale, the bastards.”
“So I stayed. This is my life now, what do I care if the rest of the world thinks I’m dead? I might as well be.”
