So without further ado, here's Minisinoo, in her own words...

"A picture is worth a thousand words."

Or in the case of "Micky Blue Eyes" and "Body Memory" it's worth about 9,500 words, total.

Because I'm a visual person, I like to illustrate fanfic stories with images. And so, in the process of tracking down pictures of Cyclops from X-Men: the Movie, I visited several fansites for the actor who portrayed him. Before renting the film, I'd never seen nor heard of James Marsden, and didn't really care who he was. I just wanted my Cyclops pictures. But the first time I saw him without the glasses, I about fell off my chair.

"My God, he's a kid!" I thought.

Now before you laugh too hard, keep three things in mind. First, I'm about the same age as Famke Janssen (who played Jean in the movie):  that is, mid-thirties. Second, James Marsden looks very different without the glasses, and younger than his chronological age. Third, those eyes could give anyone a heart attack.  (Sure I'm married; that doesn't mean I'm dead.)

Seeing him 'visorless' and learning that he was, in fact, almost nine years younger than Janssen, I was intrigued, and decided to preserve that real-life age difference for the characters of Scott and Jean, even though in the comics, they were age contemporaries. At that point, most moviefic I'd read did have Scott slightly younger, but only by a few years. No one had tackled a generation gap -­ and anything over six is considered generational ­- yet it fascinated me. In my previous experience, most relationships with that kind of difference were either very strong or rather unhealthy, not much in between. So with Scott and Jean, my primary question became:  Why are they together, and why does it work?  (Or not work, in the case of stories like Heyoka.)

Yet "Micky Blue Eyes" is the only story I've written directly in response to an image of Marsden. The picture at left, in fact. The thing that leapt into my head was, "What would I -­ a woman in her mid-thirties -­ feel, if the man I'd been sleeping with for the past several years, yet whose eyes I had never seen, was suddenly able to loose the glasses . . . and turned out looking like that?"

My answer wasn't quite the one you'd expect.

Scott's visor is not infrequently treated as his symbolic 'mask of command' -­ in the comics, in fanfic, and even in the film. If you notice on the Statue of Liberty, he falls apart when Magneto takes away the visor -­ seems unable to command effectively, gives foolish orders (telling Storm to 'blast' Mageneto), freezes up, etcetera.  He's blinded in more than the physical. I'd like to think that the screenwriters did that on purpose, though the cynic in me doubts it. Still, it can be used by an author. The visor hides Scott's uncertainties and insecurities, those things which we associate with youth and inexperience. Scott in his visor is Cyclops, field-leader and living embodiment of Xavier's dream. But Scott without the visor? IS there a Scott without the visor? Is there a man who exists separately from the X-Men and Xavier? Yet typically, fanfic that describes Scott as being able finally to ditch the glasses portrays it as a good thing. At last he is free of his curse, his handicap.

But I kept looking at that picture of Marsden, and I wondered.

Real historic commanders have always constructed a mask in order to lead. It shows the man (or woman) whom the soldiers need to see, in order to follow at the risk of their lives. Scott's is just a little more physical than most. Take it away, and he must learn all over again how to command. And the people he commands must learn again how to follow him. Who is Cyclops with two eyes?

And, for Jean, who is this boy in her bed? Who is Scott?

The visor became not just a metaphor for Scott as leader (an idea that I treat more fully in Heyoka mentioned above), but for a boy who had hidden his own dreams and desires behind those of others in order to please (because the need not to let others down is as essential to Scott's personality as is his need for control). Visored Scott was a Scott who never quite grew up. And when Jean finally sees him truly visorless, she realizes how young he is, and not only physically. He's still a boy, and she can't love a boy.

So that's where I started the story: "The day I saw Scott's eyes for the first time, is the day I fell out of love with him." I figured if nothing else, it would get people's attention. But it also defines the tale. Perceptions versus realities, anticipation versus fulfillment. It's a coming-of-age story, with a twist.

But it's not a tragedy. Yes, Jean and Scott do break up. For a while. Mostly, that happens off stage. The focus is on why Jean ends it. And what must change so that they can re-approach their relationship as two adults. The story doesn't end with them back together quite, though it's clearly implied that they'll get there. It ends on the cusp of their reunion because they still have work to do. At least now, they can do it as grown-ups.

I never intended to write a duology. Not all stories need a sequel, and one of the keys to telling a story is to know where to enter it, and when to leave so that the climax of the story isn't deflated by its own denouement. I'd told the story that I'd intended to tell in "Micky Blue Eyes." It didn't need anything else. Several people did ask for a sequel that showed them getting back together, but my reaction was, "No, no, no!" :-)  The point wasn't that they'd get back together, but why they broke up in the first place and what needed to happen to make the relationship strong enough to withstand the age gap. Scott made a choice to do something that he loved for himself, not for Jean, or for Xavier. And in so choosing, he became someone with whom Jean could share her life, not someone who lived his life to please her. End of story.

But sometimes your brain, and a story, doesn't let go. A few weeks later, I was chatting on the phone with a friend whose husband was finishing graduate studies, and invariably the discussion wandered around to all those little anxieties, and charms, of being a grad student. (Been there, done that, got my piece of pigskin and got out.) And of course, returning to grad school was where I'd left Scott, in "Micky Blue Eyes."

It caused a small random firing of synapses.

It helped that the very next day, another friend returned a book called Body and Soul, by Frank Conroy. (Beautiful story, highly recommended.)  The book dealt with the connection between art and physicality, among other things.

More random firing of synapses.

The day after that, I sat down at my computer, opened my word processor and wrote, "Scott remembers with his body." I looked at that sentence for a while, and pondered. Then the rest of the story flowed out of it. Like Scott remembering how to get 'home' again to his grandparent's house, I felt my way through writing that piece.

It's not a sequel in any traditional sense. It simply takes place in the same universe as "Micky Blue Eyes," beginning about two years later. It can be read on its own if a reader doesn't mind not knowing how Scott lost the glasses.  (But I do recommend reading MBB first.)  I say it's not a sequel because "Body Memory" addresses a completely different set of questions.

How does Scott experience his power? How can a man who is the epitome of "Think First," a man who prizes self-control, also be a man who so lives in his body that he remembers by touch and placement and physical space? Where does the mind stop and the body begin? Or is there more continuity between them than we commonly admit? How are the emotions and the body related? Scott describes himself at one point thus:  "Body's a bull, brain's a lion . . . Kill one to feed the other." Although 'killing' is not actually what he had in mind, or what he needed Jean's participation for. "Body Memory" is also a story about sex, if not a sex story any more than it's a food story because Jean brought him bagels.

Of all the X-Men stories I've written, "Body Memory" is probably my personal favorite, first, because it's written in the voice of my X-Men alter ego, Jean ­- a character I've felt is too often demonized in movieverse fiction, alas. Maybe it's the 'professional women in her mid-thirties' thing that makes me connect with her, but I do. Jean is more complex that she's given credit for. I hope "Body Memory" shows that.

Second, I was proud of the story for the sheer poetic nature of the narrative. I don't often write stories with such a deeply internal monologue; it's too easy for it to become esoteric and abstract without the specificity and grounding that makes fiction powerful. Fiction needs to make a reader feel, see, taste and smell ­- and it can't do that if it's all happening in the head (even though it is all happening in the head). Writing is about the power of words to move the body via the mind.

And that, of course, is the theme of the story itself. Not so much words, but the body and the mind, and where they intersect ­- the thing with which most writers, almost by the definition of being writers, are concerned. And that, I guess, is the third and last reason why "Body Memory" is my personal favorite. It deals with questions about our physicality and incarnation. How does the heart and soul live inside the body, and how can the body express an emotional abstract like love? More, can we remember into ourselves? The most powerful memories are ones evoked by the senses, especially smell and touch and taste. They're the physical triggers of the unconscious mind, and all are extremely important in sex.

So "Body Memory" let me explore these universal aspects of being human, through the specificity of one woman's observations about the man she loves, cleans up after, and occasionally fucks.

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So there you have it -- Minisinoo, in her own words...

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You can read what other authors have had to say at From the Desk of...

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