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0denseUlana Khomyuk voice: I'm sorry. But it depends who’s asking.
Written largely over the week of 3-8 june, when it was too hot to sleep and my room in LA didn’t have internet. Now, it's still too hot to sleep but I can write and post online. As such, the only references I’m pulling from are the primary sources of the scripts (found at https://johnaugust.com/library) and the podcast transcripts I pulled off of youtube.
I think the conversation about people being disappointed in or confused by the last episode of Chernobyl has largely dissipated, and I’m certainly not straying back into tumblr with this because no one asked for more fuel on that fire, but I put together a good long ramble of meta and I’m not throwing it aside:
So, I talked about this in the tags of a few tumblr posts already, but in the interest of having everything a) in one place and b) actually tied together, here's a more organized presentation on my take coming out of the chernobyl miniseries. I accidentally sorta started something on the htp server, so that was my reminder to express myself in a more concrete way.
First up, I'm going to say all of this in the most charitable of fashions, because I think this is a great miniseries.
In lieu of making a list that will inevitably become a blow-by-blow gushing recount of the series, I'll limit myself: My favorite parts are certainly from episodes 2-4 and involving our three leads trying to make the world work again, because they're heroes and that's what we take out of stories. Legasov standing up on page three because if no one else will, he has to. Shcherbina, resolute, setting out to deliver five thousand tons of sand and boron, and never wavering again. The two of them standing on the roof, watching the evacuation pull away. Khomyuk's interviews, split into piles of the dead and not yet dead. Wiping the blood from Toptunov's nose. The attention to historical detail is great, but it's how they're delivered that makes me care.
But, what's stayed behind my eyes, haunting me, has really been the shots of Pripyat in episode 5:
502 EXT. PRIPYAT - VARIOUS - DAY
Even a planned Soviet city can look beautiful on a day like
this. Alive. Someone's dream of home...
SITNIKOV (who went to the roof) takes a stroll with his
wife. They hold hands. Their DAUGHTER, 4, toddles along in
front of them with their DOG.
OLD WOMEN sit together on a bench, gossiping and arguing as
they do each day.
YUVCHENKO (who held the reactor door open) - pulls his 2-
year old SON along in a little WAGON.
CITIZENS swim slowly across the community pool.
LYUDMILLA is in a shop with OKSANA. She looks out through
the shop window to the street, where she sees VASILY
standing with MIKHAIL, who holds his baby.
Mikhail offers to let Vasily hold the baby, and he does.
Lyudmilla watches her husband cradling the infant. Vasily
turns and sees her watching. He smiles at her. Pure love.
And she smiles back. Her husband. Her life. One day it will
be their baby. One day.
It's a simple, beautiful reintroduction to the city. The azure pool is such an infamous picture of Pripyat’s decay, but here it's bright and clean, and families are walking with their dogs and babies in the park. It's really so idyllic. Knowing what's about to happen made these sweet scenes heartbreaking, and there's really no more powerful takeaway. I literally take classes and write papers about the value of truth, Mazin my dude you're preaching to the choir on that. But hitting empathy so hard is the special step. That connection is why I won't forget this show.
But, I also feel like at the end of the day the tone shifted strongly in the last episode and really tipped Mazin's hand.
Ever since I started hearing people talk about this show, there were people who actually live in and come from eastern europe and russia saying that Legasov and Khomyuk's naivete, specifically regarding thee KGB in particular, was unrealistic. Even Shcherbina, who was the most ardently party-line of the leads, wasn't believable in his expectations.
SHCHERBINA
We can make a deal with the KGB. You
leave this information out in Vienna,
and they quietly allow us to fix the
remaining reactors.
KHOMYUK
A deal. With the KGB. And I'm
naive...
The possibility of anyone getting to their age and positions without having informed on their peers is ludicrous. No one is above backstabbing and putting ego above what's fair. Certainly not Bryukhanov, Fomin, and Dyatlov, who don't share a redeeming feature between one another. But Legasov, our hero, is no better, as we finally see:
566 INT. FACILITY KITCHEN - LATER
The door opens. CHARKOV enters. He closes the door behind
him, and takes a seat across from Legasov.
He reaches into his coat pocket. Removes a piece of paper.
Unfolds it. Puts on his glasses to read.
CHARKOV
Valery Alexeyevich Legasov. Son of
Alexei Legasov, Head of Ideological
Compliance, Central Committee.
(looks up)
You know what your father did there?
LEGASOV
Yes.
CHARKOV
(continues reading)
As a student, you had a leadership
position in Komsomol. Communist
Youth. Correct?
LEGASOV
You already know--
CHARKOV
Answer the question.
LEGASOV
Yes.
CHARKOV
At the Kurchatov Institute, you were
the Communist Party secretary. In
that position, you limited the
promotion of Jewish scientists.
A long pause.
LEGASOV
Yes.
CHARKOV
To curry favor with Kremlin
officials?
Yes.
This is how they break you. With the sins of your father.
With your own.
But this acknowledgement of his previous failures towards truth and fairness makes his blatant disrespect for Charkov back at the Kremlin all the more confusing - IFF we hold story-Legasov accountable for historical-Legasov's experience, and claim that story-Legasov doesn't play the role as Mazin's voice of conflicted anger. Having happening-truth, story-truth, and Mazin's story coexisting isn't a problem. As ever, it's a question of balance.
Clarity: I'm cribbing the terms on truth from The Things They Carried, which is a memoir and a collection of short stories all at once, because telling what happened means shaping it to fit someone else's brain. The communicated version is story-truth, versus the nitty-gritty of happening-truth, and because one actually contains the experience, story-truth can, in some ways, be more ‘real’ than happening-truth. I'm not saying the story-truth of the miniseries is more factual than the historical documents, but the messages delivered are, even while effective to convey the impression of the same event, fundamentally different. It's why Mazin gave us a miniseries, instead of homework, as he called it in the first podcast.
The miniseries has every right to hold up story-truth, and that means combining all the other scientists into Khomyuk. It means letting Shcherbina and Legasov name the three roofs, when Mazin did acknowledge in the podcast that Katya, Nina, and Masha were Tarakanov's idea. We need to be presented with a certain conception of our leads, or the story fractures. It gets a point across, and that is every storyteller's prerogative.
The problem sneaks up when the characters become Mazin's avatars. Of course, to an extent, this is also expected. But in the interest of trying to pin down exactly why the last episode felt so different from 2-4, I think that Mazin's words got into their mouths a bit too clearly. Sagal heard this as well -
40:25 PETER: We're at the end of-- of five hours of-- of television and five podcast episodes, and the worst question, I feel, to ask a writer is, "What do you wanna say?" Because you just said it for five hours.
In the first podcast, Mazin talked about the irony of using narrative to tell an anti-narrative story, and that intention, which he puts behind each scene, gives body to the tale as presented. What I mean by Mazin's story as opposed to the character arcs on the page and screen is his own priorities, as opposed to either truth or the narrative expressing it:
7:32 ...The reason that I was compelled to write about Chernobyl was... I mean, in part because it was filling in these large gaps of a story that we all knew and yet didn't know, but primarily... it's because it is a story about the cost of lies. This is the first line of the whole show, and this is the theme that we are going to continue with as people watch these episodes: that when people choose to lie, and when people choose to believe the lie and when everyone engages in a very... kind of passive conspiracy to promote the lie over the truth, we can get away with it for a very long time, but the truth just doesn't care. And it will get you in the end. And the people that suffer, ultimately, are not the people that are telling the lie.
8:23 PETER: Right.
8:23 CRAIG: It's everyone else. And that is where we start to see real truth: in the behavior of human beings who are motivated to save their fellow men, their fellow women, their loved ones, that's where truth is. And so, for me - and this, by the way, was before our entire planet seemed to become engulfed in a war on truth - for me, this was an important kind of story to tell about the value of truth versus narrative.
So, which one is being presented? Not, in fact, the happening-truth itself. Ostensibly a narrative, the story-truth, should come first. Vying with Mazin's own priorities is fair, but the ratio between the two should just be consistent across the series.
It should be, at least.
Especially in such a high-realism show, we can suspend our disbelief and lend credence to the events as they are presented, as having some solid aspects. If even I, as an American with no formal prior knowledge of the USSR other than what CA can give you through public high school, could feel like something was off, then it has to be much further off the mark than anything before.
And the fact of the matter is, everyone's instincts at something wrong in the 5th episode were right. Legasov was never actually at the trial, and the trial even had nothing like the procedure we saw in the episode, as Mazin says in the last podcast:
11:58 PETER: Before we get into the trial scenes, I wanna talk about Khomyuk's challenge to Legasov. Basically saying, "If you stand up at this trial and tell the truth, it will make a difference, because of the audience of the trial," which he refers to as "the real jury."
12:10 CRAIG: The real jury, right.
12:11 PETER: Is that based in fact or was that invented by you as a dramatist to make-- to motivate Legasov's ultimate choice?
12:18 CRAIG: It's inspired by factual circumstances because he was not there, and... scientists-- there was no, like, little jury there that you could convince.
[...]
19:17 PETER: ...I know that we could get totally lost at this point in trying to parse the differences between what happened here in the episode and what was reality, because of the dramatic necessity. But I do want to ask one more question about that, which is that the trial happens in a way that we're not used to, in that these characters do presentations as part of the prosecution. Without getting into who those people were, is that generally accurate? Was that how this kind of trial was done?
19:44 CRAIG: No. No. Generally speaking, these show trials were very interrogative, and a huge part of the show trial was the defendants explaining to everyone how guilty they were, sometimes trying to out-guilt themselves like-- almost a contest. "No, no, no, you don't know how guilty I am." All this-- this strange kabuki theater to try and avoid the bullet.
And while every storyteller has the native right to creativity, the loss of happening-truth and substitution with Mazin's own story as underpinning to the scene changes the color of it entirely. The foundational elements we became so familiar with are turned on their heads. It feels weird because we're right, it is a different style in the show than anything before. There's a discontinuity.
Mazin's kept up his end of what we've come to expect on the jargon Stepashin uses, on the decoration of the room that the trial is held in, even down to the minute of the events of the catastrophe when Shcherbina, Khomyuk, and Legasov give their testimonies. But all of these details are set dressings for the fact that the entire scene is a fabrication.
21:12 PETER: ...You made a very different choice. You were like, "I want the people who've been with us for four hours so far to..." And I'm not gonna use the word "endure," but "enjoy."
21:25 CRAIG: Yes.
21:25 PETER: Be interested in a general scientific lecture...
21:27 CRAIG: Yes.
21:29 PETER: ...that accurately depicts what happened. Why was that important to you?
21:32 CRAIG: Because it's the truth. And at this point, after portraying this scientist, who was a scientist, and-- and all the things they went through, and to portray an inquisition into who is to blame and what went wrong, it was incredibly important to me to share the truth. Also, for me, I find this fascinating. Why it blew up... is that question, you know, the very first podcast we did. That's my question. "I knew it blew up, but why?" The actual why is fascinating, and, in and of itself, is a small drama...
22:08 PETER: Yeah.
22:10 CRAIG: ...about people and decisions. And I understand it. And I wanted people to understand it with me. And I hope that they do. I-- I mean it helps when you have world class actors giving the lecture, but I tried really hard to frame everything within the context of dramatic moments based on human decisions and human motivations.
[...]
31:14 PETER: When did you hit upon that, the red and blue cards as a way of depicting this very complex technical explanation?
31:21 CRAIG: Well I never wrote any of that without something like that in place. I think initially, I was thinking about red marbles and blue marbles, but I knew that the only way to explain this was the way I had been able to absorb it myself. So I did speak with nuclear physicists, and I read about the operation of nuclear reactors, and what it came down to for me was, "Okay I understand this is a system of balance. I now have to show people how this all works. This goes up, this goes down." So, some sort of binary representation.
I don't want to sound like I'm claiming Mazin had an easy task. I'll defend him later, but here, for the sake of argument, we have clear examples Mazin putting something above the historical integrity of the trial, and that something is his own lens of understanding events. Infodumping is what he was trying to avoid in the first place, by giving us a narrative instead of another documentary. There's something in the integrity of a show that comes from a consistent foundation, and jumping from one to the other at the 11th hour is certainly jarring.
33:48 PETER: Right. Legasov, because of Shcherbina's interruption, encouraging him to continue the trial, he's able to finally make the revelation.
34:00 LEGASOV: Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how... an RBMK reactor core explodes. Lies.
34:16 PETER: Which is, uh, a wonderful-- as we say in the business-- button.
34:17 CRAIG: Yeah.
34:20 PETER: On-- on a dramatic theme.
34:20 CRAIG: Yeah.
Mazin's angle has been to use the Chernobyl catastrophe as a mouthpiece for his own concerns about the use of epistemic power. That's his story, and it’s extraordinarily relevant, and he picked an immensely compelling historical event to couch it in, but it leads to digressions from the narrative he's putting forward. In such a tight script, the variations in presence of the metanarrative is tripping us all up.
So, though, these issues come from the way it was either trying or expected to be too many things. Hear me out.
Chernobyl holds itself to a very high standard, but is not a documentary, and never set out to be one. Legasov was an important figure in the cleanup, this is not to be denied, but he was also not the sole voice of reason onsite, as he is generally made out to be as the hero of this narrative. Yuri Samoilenko and Viktor Golubev were the ones in the office with the lunokhod remote controls and leading the bio-robots with Tarakanov. Khomyuk is a character of convenience to fill in for several hundred scientists who do deserve to have their names remembered, but except for the outro that clarified this, they are not part of this story.
I repeat, the miniseries is a story, and as such has the right to make modifications to streamline the events as they did happen.
I said that the most important parts of watching this, for me, weren't even the parts where Mazin was flexing on research. I love the podcast and the dedication to detail, but the reason we were hooked was the human element. We could recognise something in the characters. If we were to ask something that is so character-driven to forget why we come back and sat down to watch for the last month, it would've been a disaster. Instead, watching Legasov take his own turn at counting lives and balance himself versus the thousands of millions of people who were exposed to radiation because of this disaster is impressive, but a foregone conclusion. It's only still striking because we've watched his friendships with Shcherbina and Khomyuk develop, and they're what he's losing.
In my book, emotional climax of episode 5 wasn't Legasov finishing his testimony, or Shcherbina insisting that he could do it, or even Dyatlov, defiant to the end, making his last stab at discrediting such an obviously anxious man. The testimony and flashbacks to the night in reactor 4 were denouement, to satisfy our questions and deliver on what the plot promised and needed. The real closure was between Legasov and Shcherbina in the recess from the trial.
Two dying men with five minutes to find a last measure of peace. It's around two pages long in the script, and either as it is there or what ended up being shot is beautiful:
SHCHERBINA
I am an inconsequential man, Valera.
That's all I've ever been. I hoped
one day that I would matter. But I
didn't.
(turns to Legasov)
I just stood next to people who did.
Legasov stares back in disbelief.
LEGASOV
There are other scientists like me.
Any one of them could have done what
I did. But you--
(beat)
LEGASOV (cont'd)
Everything we asked for, everything
we needed. Men. Material. Lunar
rovers? Who else could have done
these things? They heard me, but
they listened to you. Of all the
ministers and all the deputies-- the
entire congregation of obedient
fools-- they mistakenly sent us the
one good man.
(beat)
For god's sake, Boris-- you were the
one who mattered the most.
Shcherbina is overwhelmed. And here and now, in a forgotten
park, in a dead city... absolution.
He looks back through tears at the land. The sky. His
country. The air fills his lungs.
SHCHERBINA
It is beautiful...
And now with the last podcast, it turns out I'm not even so far off the mark - Mazin and Sagal placed it a few scenes later, but regarding the same dynamic:
32:11 PETER: ...Obviously, the explanation takes a lot of the time of the episode, so I won't go over it here, but let's talk about the climax, really, of the whole series...
32:22 CRAIG: Yeah.
32:24 PETER: ...where the trial is about to end, he's about to reveal the deepest secret of why-- ultimately, the last and most significant reason why this happened. The trial is about to end, and then Shcherbina gets up and insists.
[the podcast then plays the audioclip of this scene in the screenplay, which I have substituted in the name of additional detail. the only difference in the youtube transcript and the script itself is that Shcherbina's last line is given an exclamation point:]
JUDGE KADNIKOV
We've heard enough for today. The
defendants will be remanded to
custody. Court will--
Legasov finds his voice.
LEGASOV
I haven't finished.
Stepashin turns his dark gaze on Legasov. How dare he?
LEGASOV
I have more evidence to give.
Shcherbina leans forward. Impossible for us to tell what
he's thinking...
STEPASHIN
It is not necessary. Your testimony
is concluded.
(to Kadnikov)
Your honor.
Legasov deflates. Turns back to Khomyuk. He tried. He tried
to do the right thing.
JUDGE KADNIKOV
Court is now adjourned. We will
resume tomorrow with--
Shcherbina rises. That wonderful, terrible look in his
eyes. The last stand of the stubborn, impossible Ukrainian.
SHCHERBINA
The trial continues.
Judge Kadnikov begins to sweat. This is different. He looks
at Stepashin, who falters.
JUDGE KADNIKOV
Comrade Shcherbina--
SHCHERBINA
Let him finish.
32:59 PETER: Now, this was so dramatic and so reflective of their character choices that I'm assuming this is entirely fictional. Life is not that good.
33:05 CRAIG: Correct.
[...]
33:48 PETER: Right. Legasov, because of Shcherbina's interruption, encouraging him to continue the trial, he's able to finally make the revelation.
The difference in points of climax is in exactly which story we are asking to be told. I can do research, and I can track the development of a friendship onscreen. Legasov will speak the truth and be punished, and Shcherbina has his back to the greatest extent he can substantiate. Shcherbina himself died two years after Legasov. He had four of the five years Legasov promised. I don't need Mazin to tell me what I can find on my own, but the characters are unique to this miniseries, and their specific resolution is what I need. Absolution will not come to Shcherbina from the thousands of people suffering from Chernobyl, but there is a measure to be granted from his brother-in-arms.What’s more, the scene in the courthouse is itself directly informed by the conversation Legasov and Shcherbina got to have:
537 INT. TRIAL ROOM - LATER
The crowd filters back in, including Legasov and
Shcherbina. They return to the expert witness table, where
Khomyuk is waiting.
Khomyuk sees the change on Legasov's face. Something has
moved in him.
I’m not interpreting this as Legasov only telling the truth because of that talk. They’re friends and important to one another, but Shcherbina is absolutely not the axis on which he turns; that’s a disservice to Legasov. But it is evident that they needed this conversation, this personal closure. Their trajectories can never meet again after this afternoon, and that merits a farewell. Sharing a death sentence is nothing to be taken lightly, and so their arc is given a bow.
33:05 CRAIG: ...And this is really a product of the relationship that has formed between my characters of Shcherbina and Legasov.
33:11 PETER: Yeah.
33:13 CRAIG: There is a wonderful photo of the two of them, the actual men, together, I think, in Vienna, and they're laughing, and they're close. And it-- it-- When I looked at that, I just thought to myself, "Well, there is a friendship here." You can't fake the look on their faces. There's an actual, a real comradeship. A real friendship. And they were in the foxhole together. And the fact of the matter is that Boris Shcherbina probably never did make any grand, you know, proclamation to let Legasov speak. But I could certainly imagine that he would have supported something like that, by this point.
Mazin's giving a specific voice to the less-personal documents from history is what sets this miniseries apart from a documentary, or even docudrama. It's one thing to show us scenes of Pripyat in the spring, but the depth of caring that we achieve is based on the connections we see with the characters themselves. In this way, I watched the series while putting the narrative, the story-truth, first.
Mazin's story has the climax in his own polemic, the story gives us character satisfaction, and history is given a nod in the closing title cards. After a certain point, they can’t be reconciled, and anyone with questions should aim them at the appropriate sources:
If you want happening-truth, there’s the IAEA reports and books and documentaries; the last one I’ve watched was Chernobyl 3828, on youtube by Telecon Studio. The podcast has Mazin’s story straight from the horse’s mouth. But the miniseries has set out to tell its own story, and if we accept it as it is, we can find something to enjoy. Mazin gave himself the high bar of respect in which to create a piece of fiction. The fact that he achieved such standards is to be commended, not grounds for claiming the story shouldn’t be being told. He went to HBO and Sky, not Eyewitness.
Asking entertainment to prioritize facts is an exercise in frustration, and we shouldn’t be surprised when storytellers put that first. It does a disservice to everyone.
...Which I think is the struggle of writing anything based on matters of historical account.
This is a broad statement and I mean it. It’s also more related to what the htp thing was about, so that’s why it goes in this discussion as well.
When Mazin or LMM write a script or a student has homework to write a conversation between two historical figures or the hockey fandom writes RPS, that sounds a lot more like difference of degree than kind; the extent of the matter at hand, not what exactly is being done. Mazin and LMM obviously get more credit, and bandom is persona non grata in the mainstream of fandom, but at the end of the day, authors are inspired by real events, and turn them into something that they can personally identify with. They create narratives and emphasise certain players to promote that vision. Reinterpreting the same material as has been previously addressed is cause for the audience’s curiosity, not blacklisting. Connie Willis giving another perspective on the Battle of Britain gets reprints and a sequel, and everyone and their dog has put Shane and Ryan on a road trip because it brings in the hits. They’re really in the same wheelhouse. Obviously, though, that’s not how they’re perceived. The ingrained fear of legal backlash aside, fandom at large seems to feel like there’s something distasteful about RPF, while being delighted by the published materials.
The difference is respect, or perceived respect. An author whose primary job is to be published and sold has a livelihood to lose, while a fic author can put out a chapter as creative stress relief after a day in the office. A published author is going to hold themselves to a higher standard because they cannot afford backlash. They need to pay respects to the source materials, enough to be seen as doing so. Their research is, to an extent, in order for the audience to appreciate what’s being done. Mazin wants people in Ukraine and Belarus to feel like someone cared enough to get the locale right; the story is his own but he’s doing the work for them.
However, neither author is putting out or even pretending to put out an expression of true reality. Of happening-truth. They’re both writing characters, not actual people, and however similar their voices may sound, none is more real than the other. Writing about public personas is different from the reality of them as people, because public figures have a narrative built around them. Magazines can ask BTS about ‘the real Jungkook’ because there’s a mask everyone has a right to, to keep their personal lives personal, and that’s the character that is known and written about.
What’s more, derivative works based on a previous piece of fiction are themselves entirely removed from reality. LMM’s Alexander Hamilton and Mazin’s Valery Legasov are characters founded on history; fic inspired by either are further interpretations of those fictionalized people. Published authors and fic authors can refer back to the same primary sources, but the narratives just move further and further from reflecting reality. What’s more, they’re not meant to. Their obligations to reliability don't put historical record first.
This extends to RPS, as well, infamous as it may be. It is, however, moreso a matter now of perceived respect. It’s not nice to daydream about stranger’s dicks. Someone doesn’t lose the right to privacy regarding their sex life according to how popular they are, that’s reprehensible. However, athletes pose for Sports Illustrated posters to be hung over dorm beds because the fact is that their audiences are buying fantasies about them. In fic, the relationship that the words on the page have to reality isn’t really changed from RPF, as RPS falls under its umbrella, but now it’s become rude. I would never break the bubble between rpfandom and the actual people in question, especially with regards to their imagined sexualities, but at the end of the day, it’s still fake as anything else. I’m not putting it on top of my to-read list, but I really don’t think accusations of immorality on behalf of RPF/S writers have as much weight of impact as vitriol of delivery.
What does carry weight, then? What, if any, are the baseline standards that RPF should hold itself to, to be as respectable as published historical fiction? Well, that has to depend on the audience in question, and limiting readership is going to take some hard calls on behalf of the writer, to determine how widely read they want to be at all.
The answer I can come down to comes back to respect regarding degree, not kind. Sincerity and good-faith are as necessary in writing Mei Changsu’s disabilities as writing Hu Ge’s recovery from the car crash. If someone’s putting in the due diligence, I think it comes out the same.
When someone doesn’t put in the effort and we get the Harry Turtledoves of the world, that’s a different issue. He’s an asshole and disgusting, but that’s different from the genre of alternative fiction being universally disgusting as well, or we lose out on the Temeraire series as well. Bad writing and bad authors are a different issue and why read any of it.
In either case - high production values or uncomfortable subject matter - I’ve got nothing new to add. As readers, the back button exists. Archive’s given us a block-tag function, hallelujah. I don’t like everything out there, but then I don’t read it. And I don’t haul people out in public to make accusations regarding their character, either. Some things aren’t anyone’s business, and then it’s just time to move on.
Radical freedom, guys. I can leave parts of Sarte himself, but it’s great stuff. Published historical fiction, fic, RPF, RPS, it’s all in a continuity. And all of it’s fake and no one is forcing it on anyone, so I really don’t find an issue.
Also, a personal aside.
So, I wrote, researched, and posted >22.1% in one evening, because I got a bee in my bonnet. The bee did not abate, and I thought I should do something longer and more involved than that, so I currently have drafts for things based on the 6 May press conference and then Legasov's refusal to use his dosimeter properly, and a good chunk of research begun to fill in the Vienna conference. Now, I dig how they elided it, but I had been looking forward to it, somehow.
But the two drafts don't have much plot as much as they’re developing and cementing their friendship, and recognising they're going to die, and acknowledging their relationship with and obligation to honesty itself. And I thought I would be going too far, for Shcherbina to step up to the effect that making sure Legasov has what he needs to function is the same genre of responsibility as the sand, boron, lead, and liquid nitrogen. But no:
I wrote that one the first week of june and got a first-pass beta over the first weekend weekend, and only then came episode 5 where, quoting the screenplay again, Shcherbina is "His brother. His friend. His rock." so oh buddy I'm telling you I'll finish it. The connection between actual historical Legasov and Shcherbina is out of my hands, but my take is even more within the realm of characterizations that Mazin put out than I had worried, and it was so great to see that friendship grow and be appreciated by each party.
The closer fic gets to real events, the more responsibilities authors have, I’ve come to grips with that. But it’s still entertainment at the end of the day, and it and my research timeline have their own goals. I aim to have it up before my next trip, at the end of the month.
Written largely over the week of 3-8 june, when it was too hot to sleep and my room in LA didn’t have internet. Now, it's still too hot to sleep but I can write and post online. As such, the only references I’m pulling from are the primary sources of the scripts (found at https://johnaugust.com/library) and the podcast transcripts I pulled off of youtube.
I think the conversation about people being disappointed in or confused by the last episode of Chernobyl has largely dissipated, and I’m certainly not straying back into tumblr with this because no one asked for more fuel on that fire, but I put together a good long ramble of meta and I’m not throwing it aside:
So, I talked about this in the tags of a few tumblr posts already, but in the interest of having everything a) in one place and b) actually tied together, here's a more organized presentation on my take coming out of the chernobyl miniseries. I accidentally sorta started something on the htp server, so that was my reminder to express myself in a more concrete way.
First up, I'm going to say all of this in the most charitable of fashions, because I think this is a great miniseries.
In lieu of making a list that will inevitably become a blow-by-blow gushing recount of the series, I'll limit myself: My favorite parts are certainly from episodes 2-4 and involving our three leads trying to make the world work again, because they're heroes and that's what we take out of stories. Legasov standing up on page three because if no one else will, he has to. Shcherbina, resolute, setting out to deliver five thousand tons of sand and boron, and never wavering again. The two of them standing on the roof, watching the evacuation pull away. Khomyuk's interviews, split into piles of the dead and not yet dead. Wiping the blood from Toptunov's nose. The attention to historical detail is great, but it's how they're delivered that makes me care.
But, what's stayed behind my eyes, haunting me, has really been the shots of Pripyat in episode 5:
502 EXT. PRIPYAT - VARIOUS - DAY
Even a planned Soviet city can look beautiful on a day like
this. Alive. Someone's dream of home...
SITNIKOV (who went to the roof) takes a stroll with his
wife. They hold hands. Their DAUGHTER, 4, toddles along in
front of them with their DOG.
OLD WOMEN sit together on a bench, gossiping and arguing as
they do each day.
YUVCHENKO (who held the reactor door open) - pulls his 2-
year old SON along in a little WAGON.
CITIZENS swim slowly across the community pool.
LYUDMILLA is in a shop with OKSANA. She looks out through
the shop window to the street, where she sees VASILY
standing with MIKHAIL, who holds his baby.
Mikhail offers to let Vasily hold the baby, and he does.
Lyudmilla watches her husband cradling the infant. Vasily
turns and sees her watching. He smiles at her. Pure love.
And she smiles back. Her husband. Her life. One day it will
be their baby. One day.
It's a simple, beautiful reintroduction to the city. The azure pool is such an infamous picture of Pripyat’s decay, but here it's bright and clean, and families are walking with their dogs and babies in the park. It's really so idyllic. Knowing what's about to happen made these sweet scenes heartbreaking, and there's really no more powerful takeaway. I literally take classes and write papers about the value of truth, Mazin my dude you're preaching to the choir on that. But hitting empathy so hard is the special step. That connection is why I won't forget this show.
But, I also feel like at the end of the day the tone shifted strongly in the last episode and really tipped Mazin's hand.
Ever since I started hearing people talk about this show, there were people who actually live in and come from eastern europe and russia saying that Legasov and Khomyuk's naivete, specifically regarding thee KGB in particular, was unrealistic. Even Shcherbina, who was the most ardently party-line of the leads, wasn't believable in his expectations.
SHCHERBINA
We can make a deal with the KGB. You
leave this information out in Vienna,
and they quietly allow us to fix the
remaining reactors.
KHOMYUK
A deal. With the KGB. And I'm
naive...
The possibility of anyone getting to their age and positions without having informed on their peers is ludicrous. No one is above backstabbing and putting ego above what's fair. Certainly not Bryukhanov, Fomin, and Dyatlov, who don't share a redeeming feature between one another. But Legasov, our hero, is no better, as we finally see:
566 INT. FACILITY KITCHEN - LATER
The door opens. CHARKOV enters. He closes the door behind
him, and takes a seat across from Legasov.
He reaches into his coat pocket. Removes a piece of paper.
Unfolds it. Puts on his glasses to read.
CHARKOV
Valery Alexeyevich Legasov. Son of
Alexei Legasov, Head of Ideological
Compliance, Central Committee.
(looks up)
You know what your father did there?
LEGASOV
Yes.
CHARKOV
(continues reading)
As a student, you had a leadership
position in Komsomol. Communist
Youth. Correct?
LEGASOV
You already know--
CHARKOV
Answer the question.
LEGASOV
Yes.
CHARKOV
At the Kurchatov Institute, you were
the Communist Party secretary. In
that position, you limited the
promotion of Jewish scientists.
A long pause.
LEGASOV
Yes.
CHARKOV
To curry favor with Kremlin
officials?
Yes.
This is how they break you. With the sins of your father.
With your own.
But this acknowledgement of his previous failures towards truth and fairness makes his blatant disrespect for Charkov back at the Kremlin all the more confusing - IFF we hold story-Legasov accountable for historical-Legasov's experience, and claim that story-Legasov doesn't play the role as Mazin's voice of conflicted anger. Having happening-truth, story-truth, and Mazin's story coexisting isn't a problem. As ever, it's a question of balance.
Clarity: I'm cribbing the terms on truth from The Things They Carried, which is a memoir and a collection of short stories all at once, because telling what happened means shaping it to fit someone else's brain. The communicated version is story-truth, versus the nitty-gritty of happening-truth, and because one actually contains the experience, story-truth can, in some ways, be more ‘real’ than happening-truth. I'm not saying the story-truth of the miniseries is more factual than the historical documents, but the messages delivered are, even while effective to convey the impression of the same event, fundamentally different. It's why Mazin gave us a miniseries, instead of homework, as he called it in the first podcast.
The miniseries has every right to hold up story-truth, and that means combining all the other scientists into Khomyuk. It means letting Shcherbina and Legasov name the three roofs, when Mazin did acknowledge in the podcast that Katya, Nina, and Masha were Tarakanov's idea. We need to be presented with a certain conception of our leads, or the story fractures. It gets a point across, and that is every storyteller's prerogative.
The problem sneaks up when the characters become Mazin's avatars. Of course, to an extent, this is also expected. But in the interest of trying to pin down exactly why the last episode felt so different from 2-4, I think that Mazin's words got into their mouths a bit too clearly. Sagal heard this as well -
40:25 PETER: We're at the end of-- of five hours of-- of television and five podcast episodes, and the worst question, I feel, to ask a writer is, "What do you wanna say?" Because you just said it for five hours.
In the first podcast, Mazin talked about the irony of using narrative to tell an anti-narrative story, and that intention, which he puts behind each scene, gives body to the tale as presented. What I mean by Mazin's story as opposed to the character arcs on the page and screen is his own priorities, as opposed to either truth or the narrative expressing it:
7:32 ...The reason that I was compelled to write about Chernobyl was... I mean, in part because it was filling in these large gaps of a story that we all knew and yet didn't know, but primarily... it's because it is a story about the cost of lies. This is the first line of the whole show, and this is the theme that we are going to continue with as people watch these episodes: that when people choose to lie, and when people choose to believe the lie and when everyone engages in a very... kind of passive conspiracy to promote the lie over the truth, we can get away with it for a very long time, but the truth just doesn't care. And it will get you in the end. And the people that suffer, ultimately, are not the people that are telling the lie.
8:23 PETER: Right.
8:23 CRAIG: It's everyone else. And that is where we start to see real truth: in the behavior of human beings who are motivated to save their fellow men, their fellow women, their loved ones, that's where truth is. And so, for me - and this, by the way, was before our entire planet seemed to become engulfed in a war on truth - for me, this was an important kind of story to tell about the value of truth versus narrative.
So, which one is being presented? Not, in fact, the happening-truth itself. Ostensibly a narrative, the story-truth, should come first. Vying with Mazin's own priorities is fair, but the ratio between the two should just be consistent across the series.
It should be, at least.
Especially in such a high-realism show, we can suspend our disbelief and lend credence to the events as they are presented, as having some solid aspects. If even I, as an American with no formal prior knowledge of the USSR other than what CA can give you through public high school, could feel like something was off, then it has to be much further off the mark than anything before.
And the fact of the matter is, everyone's instincts at something wrong in the 5th episode were right. Legasov was never actually at the trial, and the trial even had nothing like the procedure we saw in the episode, as Mazin says in the last podcast:
11:58 PETER: Before we get into the trial scenes, I wanna talk about Khomyuk's challenge to Legasov. Basically saying, "If you stand up at this trial and tell the truth, it will make a difference, because of the audience of the trial," which he refers to as "the real jury."
12:10 CRAIG: The real jury, right.
12:11 PETER: Is that based in fact or was that invented by you as a dramatist to make-- to motivate Legasov's ultimate choice?
12:18 CRAIG: It's inspired by factual circumstances because he was not there, and... scientists-- there was no, like, little jury there that you could convince.
[...]
19:17 PETER: ...I know that we could get totally lost at this point in trying to parse the differences between what happened here in the episode and what was reality, because of the dramatic necessity. But I do want to ask one more question about that, which is that the trial happens in a way that we're not used to, in that these characters do presentations as part of the prosecution. Without getting into who those people were, is that generally accurate? Was that how this kind of trial was done?
19:44 CRAIG: No. No. Generally speaking, these show trials were very interrogative, and a huge part of the show trial was the defendants explaining to everyone how guilty they were, sometimes trying to out-guilt themselves like-- almost a contest. "No, no, no, you don't know how guilty I am." All this-- this strange kabuki theater to try and avoid the bullet.
And while every storyteller has the native right to creativity, the loss of happening-truth and substitution with Mazin's own story as underpinning to the scene changes the color of it entirely. The foundational elements we became so familiar with are turned on their heads. It feels weird because we're right, it is a different style in the show than anything before. There's a discontinuity.
Mazin's kept up his end of what we've come to expect on the jargon Stepashin uses, on the decoration of the room that the trial is held in, even down to the minute of the events of the catastrophe when Shcherbina, Khomyuk, and Legasov give their testimonies. But all of these details are set dressings for the fact that the entire scene is a fabrication.
21:12 PETER: ...You made a very different choice. You were like, "I want the people who've been with us for four hours so far to..." And I'm not gonna use the word "endure," but "enjoy."
21:25 CRAIG: Yes.
21:25 PETER: Be interested in a general scientific lecture...
21:27 CRAIG: Yes.
21:29 PETER: ...that accurately depicts what happened. Why was that important to you?
21:32 CRAIG: Because it's the truth. And at this point, after portraying this scientist, who was a scientist, and-- and all the things they went through, and to portray an inquisition into who is to blame and what went wrong, it was incredibly important to me to share the truth. Also, for me, I find this fascinating. Why it blew up... is that question, you know, the very first podcast we did. That's my question. "I knew it blew up, but why?" The actual why is fascinating, and, in and of itself, is a small drama...
22:08 PETER: Yeah.
22:10 CRAIG: ...about people and decisions. And I understand it. And I wanted people to understand it with me. And I hope that they do. I-- I mean it helps when you have world class actors giving the lecture, but I tried really hard to frame everything within the context of dramatic moments based on human decisions and human motivations.
[...]
31:14 PETER: When did you hit upon that, the red and blue cards as a way of depicting this very complex technical explanation?
31:21 CRAIG: Well I never wrote any of that without something like that in place. I think initially, I was thinking about red marbles and blue marbles, but I knew that the only way to explain this was the way I had been able to absorb it myself. So I did speak with nuclear physicists, and I read about the operation of nuclear reactors, and what it came down to for me was, "Okay I understand this is a system of balance. I now have to show people how this all works. This goes up, this goes down." So, some sort of binary representation.
I don't want to sound like I'm claiming Mazin had an easy task. I'll defend him later, but here, for the sake of argument, we have clear examples Mazin putting something above the historical integrity of the trial, and that something is his own lens of understanding events. Infodumping is what he was trying to avoid in the first place, by giving us a narrative instead of another documentary. There's something in the integrity of a show that comes from a consistent foundation, and jumping from one to the other at the 11th hour is certainly jarring.
33:48 PETER: Right. Legasov, because of Shcherbina's interruption, encouraging him to continue the trial, he's able to finally make the revelation.
34:00 LEGASOV: Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how... an RBMK reactor core explodes. Lies.
34:16 PETER: Which is, uh, a wonderful-- as we say in the business-- button.
34:17 CRAIG: Yeah.
34:20 PETER: On-- on a dramatic theme.
34:20 CRAIG: Yeah.
Mazin's angle has been to use the Chernobyl catastrophe as a mouthpiece for his own concerns about the use of epistemic power. That's his story, and it’s extraordinarily relevant, and he picked an immensely compelling historical event to couch it in, but it leads to digressions from the narrative he's putting forward. In such a tight script, the variations in presence of the metanarrative is tripping us all up.
So, though, these issues come from the way it was either trying or expected to be too many things. Hear me out.
Chernobyl holds itself to a very high standard, but is not a documentary, and never set out to be one. Legasov was an important figure in the cleanup, this is not to be denied, but he was also not the sole voice of reason onsite, as he is generally made out to be as the hero of this narrative. Yuri Samoilenko and Viktor Golubev were the ones in the office with the lunokhod remote controls and leading the bio-robots with Tarakanov. Khomyuk is a character of convenience to fill in for several hundred scientists who do deserve to have their names remembered, but except for the outro that clarified this, they are not part of this story.
I repeat, the miniseries is a story, and as such has the right to make modifications to streamline the events as they did happen.
I said that the most important parts of watching this, for me, weren't even the parts where Mazin was flexing on research. I love the podcast and the dedication to detail, but the reason we were hooked was the human element. We could recognise something in the characters. If we were to ask something that is so character-driven to forget why we come back and sat down to watch for the last month, it would've been a disaster. Instead, watching Legasov take his own turn at counting lives and balance himself versus the thousands of millions of people who were exposed to radiation because of this disaster is impressive, but a foregone conclusion. It's only still striking because we've watched his friendships with Shcherbina and Khomyuk develop, and they're what he's losing.
In my book, emotional climax of episode 5 wasn't Legasov finishing his testimony, or Shcherbina insisting that he could do it, or even Dyatlov, defiant to the end, making his last stab at discrediting such an obviously anxious man. The testimony and flashbacks to the night in reactor 4 were denouement, to satisfy our questions and deliver on what the plot promised and needed. The real closure was between Legasov and Shcherbina in the recess from the trial.
Two dying men with five minutes to find a last measure of peace. It's around two pages long in the script, and either as it is there or what ended up being shot is beautiful:
SHCHERBINA
I am an inconsequential man, Valera.
That's all I've ever been. I hoped
one day that I would matter. But I
didn't.
(turns to Legasov)
I just stood next to people who did.
Legasov stares back in disbelief.
LEGASOV
There are other scientists like me.
Any one of them could have done what
I did. But you--
(beat)
LEGASOV (cont'd)
Everything we asked for, everything
we needed. Men. Material. Lunar
rovers? Who else could have done
these things? They heard me, but
they listened to you. Of all the
ministers and all the deputies-- the
entire congregation of obedient
fools-- they mistakenly sent us the
one good man.
(beat)
For god's sake, Boris-- you were the
one who mattered the most.
Shcherbina is overwhelmed. And here and now, in a forgotten
park, in a dead city... absolution.
He looks back through tears at the land. The sky. His
country. The air fills his lungs.
SHCHERBINA
It is beautiful...
And now with the last podcast, it turns out I'm not even so far off the mark - Mazin and Sagal placed it a few scenes later, but regarding the same dynamic:
32:11 PETER: ...Obviously, the explanation takes a lot of the time of the episode, so I won't go over it here, but let's talk about the climax, really, of the whole series...
32:22 CRAIG: Yeah.
32:24 PETER: ...where the trial is about to end, he's about to reveal the deepest secret of why-- ultimately, the last and most significant reason why this happened. The trial is about to end, and then Shcherbina gets up and insists.
[the podcast then plays the audioclip of this scene in the screenplay, which I have substituted in the name of additional detail. the only difference in the youtube transcript and the script itself is that Shcherbina's last line is given an exclamation point:]
JUDGE KADNIKOV
We've heard enough for today. The
defendants will be remanded to
custody. Court will--
Legasov finds his voice.
LEGASOV
I haven't finished.
Stepashin turns his dark gaze on Legasov. How dare he?
LEGASOV
I have more evidence to give.
Shcherbina leans forward. Impossible for us to tell what
he's thinking...
STEPASHIN
It is not necessary. Your testimony
is concluded.
(to Kadnikov)
Your honor.
Legasov deflates. Turns back to Khomyuk. He tried. He tried
to do the right thing.
JUDGE KADNIKOV
Court is now adjourned. We will
resume tomorrow with--
Shcherbina rises. That wonderful, terrible look in his
eyes. The last stand of the stubborn, impossible Ukrainian.
SHCHERBINA
The trial continues.
Judge Kadnikov begins to sweat. This is different. He looks
at Stepashin, who falters.
JUDGE KADNIKOV
Comrade Shcherbina--
SHCHERBINA
Let him finish.
32:59 PETER: Now, this was so dramatic and so reflective of their character choices that I'm assuming this is entirely fictional. Life is not that good.
33:05 CRAIG: Correct.
[...]
33:48 PETER: Right. Legasov, because of Shcherbina's interruption, encouraging him to continue the trial, he's able to finally make the revelation.
The difference in points of climax is in exactly which story we are asking to be told. I can do research, and I can track the development of a friendship onscreen. Legasov will speak the truth and be punished, and Shcherbina has his back to the greatest extent he can substantiate. Shcherbina himself died two years after Legasov. He had four of the five years Legasov promised. I don't need Mazin to tell me what I can find on my own, but the characters are unique to this miniseries, and their specific resolution is what I need. Absolution will not come to Shcherbina from the thousands of people suffering from Chernobyl, but there is a measure to be granted from his brother-in-arms.What’s more, the scene in the courthouse is itself directly informed by the conversation Legasov and Shcherbina got to have:
537 INT. TRIAL ROOM - LATER
The crowd filters back in, including Legasov and
Shcherbina. They return to the expert witness table, where
Khomyuk is waiting.
Khomyuk sees the change on Legasov's face. Something has
moved in him.
I’m not interpreting this as Legasov only telling the truth because of that talk. They’re friends and important to one another, but Shcherbina is absolutely not the axis on which he turns; that’s a disservice to Legasov. But it is evident that they needed this conversation, this personal closure. Their trajectories can never meet again after this afternoon, and that merits a farewell. Sharing a death sentence is nothing to be taken lightly, and so their arc is given a bow.
33:05 CRAIG: ...And this is really a product of the relationship that has formed between my characters of Shcherbina and Legasov.
33:11 PETER: Yeah.
33:13 CRAIG: There is a wonderful photo of the two of them, the actual men, together, I think, in Vienna, and they're laughing, and they're close. And it-- it-- When I looked at that, I just thought to myself, "Well, there is a friendship here." You can't fake the look on their faces. There's an actual, a real comradeship. A real friendship. And they were in the foxhole together. And the fact of the matter is that Boris Shcherbina probably never did make any grand, you know, proclamation to let Legasov speak. But I could certainly imagine that he would have supported something like that, by this point.
Mazin's giving a specific voice to the less-personal documents from history is what sets this miniseries apart from a documentary, or even docudrama. It's one thing to show us scenes of Pripyat in the spring, but the depth of caring that we achieve is based on the connections we see with the characters themselves. In this way, I watched the series while putting the narrative, the story-truth, first.
Mazin's story has the climax in his own polemic, the story gives us character satisfaction, and history is given a nod in the closing title cards. After a certain point, they can’t be reconciled, and anyone with questions should aim them at the appropriate sources:
If you want happening-truth, there’s the IAEA reports and books and documentaries; the last one I’ve watched was Chernobyl 3828, on youtube by Telecon Studio. The podcast has Mazin’s story straight from the horse’s mouth. But the miniseries has set out to tell its own story, and if we accept it as it is, we can find something to enjoy. Mazin gave himself the high bar of respect in which to create a piece of fiction. The fact that he achieved such standards is to be commended, not grounds for claiming the story shouldn’t be being told. He went to HBO and Sky, not Eyewitness.
Asking entertainment to prioritize facts is an exercise in frustration, and we shouldn’t be surprised when storytellers put that first. It does a disservice to everyone.
...Which I think is the struggle of writing anything based on matters of historical account.
This is a broad statement and I mean it. It’s also more related to what the htp thing was about, so that’s why it goes in this discussion as well.
When Mazin or LMM write a script or a student has homework to write a conversation between two historical figures or the hockey fandom writes RPS, that sounds a lot more like difference of degree than kind; the extent of the matter at hand, not what exactly is being done. Mazin and LMM obviously get more credit, and bandom is persona non grata in the mainstream of fandom, but at the end of the day, authors are inspired by real events, and turn them into something that they can personally identify with. They create narratives and emphasise certain players to promote that vision. Reinterpreting the same material as has been previously addressed is cause for the audience’s curiosity, not blacklisting. Connie Willis giving another perspective on the Battle of Britain gets reprints and a sequel, and everyone and their dog has put Shane and Ryan on a road trip because it brings in the hits. They’re really in the same wheelhouse. Obviously, though, that’s not how they’re perceived. The ingrained fear of legal backlash aside, fandom at large seems to feel like there’s something distasteful about RPF, while being delighted by the published materials.
The difference is respect, or perceived respect. An author whose primary job is to be published and sold has a livelihood to lose, while a fic author can put out a chapter as creative stress relief after a day in the office. A published author is going to hold themselves to a higher standard because they cannot afford backlash. They need to pay respects to the source materials, enough to be seen as doing so. Their research is, to an extent, in order for the audience to appreciate what’s being done. Mazin wants people in Ukraine and Belarus to feel like someone cared enough to get the locale right; the story is his own but he’s doing the work for them.
However, neither author is putting out or even pretending to put out an expression of true reality. Of happening-truth. They’re both writing characters, not actual people, and however similar their voices may sound, none is more real than the other. Writing about public personas is different from the reality of them as people, because public figures have a narrative built around them. Magazines can ask BTS about ‘the real Jungkook’ because there’s a mask everyone has a right to, to keep their personal lives personal, and that’s the character that is known and written about.
What’s more, derivative works based on a previous piece of fiction are themselves entirely removed from reality. LMM’s Alexander Hamilton and Mazin’s Valery Legasov are characters founded on history; fic inspired by either are further interpretations of those fictionalized people. Published authors and fic authors can refer back to the same primary sources, but the narratives just move further and further from reflecting reality. What’s more, they’re not meant to. Their obligations to reliability don't put historical record first.
This extends to RPS, as well, infamous as it may be. It is, however, moreso a matter now of perceived respect. It’s not nice to daydream about stranger’s dicks. Someone doesn’t lose the right to privacy regarding their sex life according to how popular they are, that’s reprehensible. However, athletes pose for Sports Illustrated posters to be hung over dorm beds because the fact is that their audiences are buying fantasies about them. In fic, the relationship that the words on the page have to reality isn’t really changed from RPF, as RPS falls under its umbrella, but now it’s become rude. I would never break the bubble between rpfandom and the actual people in question, especially with regards to their imagined sexualities, but at the end of the day, it’s still fake as anything else. I’m not putting it on top of my to-read list, but I really don’t think accusations of immorality on behalf of RPF/S writers have as much weight of impact as vitriol of delivery.
What does carry weight, then? What, if any, are the baseline standards that RPF should hold itself to, to be as respectable as published historical fiction? Well, that has to depend on the audience in question, and limiting readership is going to take some hard calls on behalf of the writer, to determine how widely read they want to be at all.
The answer I can come down to comes back to respect regarding degree, not kind. Sincerity and good-faith are as necessary in writing Mei Changsu’s disabilities as writing Hu Ge’s recovery from the car crash. If someone’s putting in the due diligence, I think it comes out the same.
When someone doesn’t put in the effort and we get the Harry Turtledoves of the world, that’s a different issue. He’s an asshole and disgusting, but that’s different from the genre of alternative fiction being universally disgusting as well, or we lose out on the Temeraire series as well. Bad writing and bad authors are a different issue and why read any of it.
In either case - high production values or uncomfortable subject matter - I’ve got nothing new to add. As readers, the back button exists. Archive’s given us a block-tag function, hallelujah. I don’t like everything out there, but then I don’t read it. And I don’t haul people out in public to make accusations regarding their character, either. Some things aren’t anyone’s business, and then it’s just time to move on.
Radical freedom, guys. I can leave parts of Sarte himself, but it’s great stuff. Published historical fiction, fic, RPF, RPS, it’s all in a continuity. And all of it’s fake and no one is forcing it on anyone, so I really don’t find an issue.
Also, a personal aside.
So, I wrote, researched, and posted >22.1% in one evening, because I got a bee in my bonnet. The bee did not abate, and I thought I should do something longer and more involved than that, so I currently have drafts for things based on the 6 May press conference and then Legasov's refusal to use his dosimeter properly, and a good chunk of research begun to fill in the Vienna conference. Now, I dig how they elided it, but I had been looking forward to it, somehow.
But the two drafts don't have much plot as much as they’re developing and cementing their friendship, and recognising they're going to die, and acknowledging their relationship with and obligation to honesty itself. And I thought I would be going too far, for Shcherbina to step up to the effect that making sure Legasov has what he needs to function is the same genre of responsibility as the sand, boron, lead, and liquid nitrogen. But no:
I wrote that one the first week of june and got a first-pass beta over the first weekend weekend, and only then came episode 5 where, quoting the screenplay again, Shcherbina is "His brother. His friend. His rock." so oh buddy I'm telling you I'll finish it. The connection between actual historical Legasov and Shcherbina is out of my hands, but my take is even more within the realm of characterizations that Mazin put out than I had worried, and it was so great to see that friendship grow and be appreciated by each party.
The closer fic gets to real events, the more responsibilities authors have, I’ve come to grips with that. But it’s still entertainment at the end of the day, and it and my research timeline have their own goals. I aim to have it up before my next trip, at the end of the month.
