Subject: Earth's Children, huh?
Author:
Posted on: 2025-09-10 14:34:00 UTC
I read some of those years ago. I really enjoyed the first book, but I didn't get past the second or third one (not sure). Ayla and her boyfriend just got a bit too Suvian for my taste, including some fairly speshul sex. Is the fourth any better?
~Neshomeh supports going in there and facing the peril!
To quote from my end notes: I sat on this piece for absolute ages. My first-draft doc was created December 31, 2017, and the GDoc for beta-reading was created August 29, 2018. And then... I debated, and waffled, and second-guessed, and chickened out for, uh, seven years almost exactly, wow.
Because this is rated M/R for adult content, and this is my first venture into that territory without the buffer of my Badfic Games alter-ego, and it's not a typical PPC story—nor should it be. It's a story I wanted to write for these characters specifically, but that doesn't make it a good idea generally. Just so that's clear.
However, using a nifty CSS trick, I have hidden the naughties with an expandable/collapsible box, so you can skip 'em if you'd rather. I can't replicate that on AO3, so this one is only available on my site.
Without further ado: "Reveille," in which Derik gets his groove back again and Gall gets what she's always wanted.
~Neshomeh
I'll be in the corner panicking now.
Thank goodness someone pointed it out. I was afraid my horrible pun was going unsufferedappreciated by anyone but me.
I couldn't have the post be ALL serious business. 😄
~Neshomeh
Well, I’m glad both Derik and Gall are seeing some forward progress on their emotional development! And now their professional partnership will have a bit more “partner” in it . . . and come to think about it, a bit more “ship” as well! I’m amused that even before Derik started to notice any physical feelings towards Gall, he was subconsciously recognizing both her interest in himself (through dismissing the attempted dancer as “wasn’t Gall’s type”), and some jealousy (through his mental dialogue consistently referring to the dude through snake metaphors.)
And hey: the characters need to be free to live their story as it naturally unfolds. There’s nothing wrong with letting them have an “action” scene if it’s true to their feelings and growth. : )
You have taught me THREE new words with this story! “Debride,” “bandeau,” and “velar.” “Debride” in particular made for an excellent metaphor here, and I hope to keep it in the back of my mind to use someday myself!
—doctorlit flirted intensely with three naps this weekend
As well as respect for the general PPC rating limit, I had you specifically in mind with the toggle box. Wasn't sure you'd want to brave it!
By this time, Derik could hardly have missed the fact that Gall was jonesing for him hard, haha. He'll have put together her general type based on that plus characters she likes (and she hit on Thoth, too, before it became apparent that was a non-starter).
The jealousy is new, though, and he's going to have to reckon with where that comes from and how he feels about all this after the fact, but That's Another Story. Which I am actually working on, because I found a fic to mission that makes a good backdrop for it. ^_^
You're welcome for the words! ... On review, I think I actually wanted "palatal" (nn) rather than "velar" (k/g), but it works. Maybe he was going to say her name and just went "guh" instead. Oh well!
Thanks again!
~Neshomeh
(Three naps? You player, you!)
Nah, if I can get myself four books deep into Earth's Children, I think I can handle one of your interludes. : ) It is the price I pay to enjoy nice things, like Neshomeh's character development, and Jean Auel's portrayal of pre-currency communal societies!
—doctorlit is not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways, brave brave brave brave Sir—
I read some of those years ago. I really enjoyed the first book, but I didn't get past the second or third one (not sure). Ayla and her boyfriend just got a bit too Suvian for my taste, including some fairly speshul sex. Is the fourth any better?
~Neshomeh supports going in there and facing the peril!
You may recall Ayla met her boyfriend Jondalar because he had been traveling across the continent. Book three is them spending the winter with a tribe of mammoth-hunters, and book four sees the winter starting to warm, so Jondalar can finally make the trip to his original tribe. Since he's bringing Ayla and her animal friends along, this means we have a traveling party of:
-only two humans
-the only two tame horses on the planet
-the only tame wolf on the planet
Five compa— Sorry, sorry. Anyway, as much as I enjoyed reading about the social dynamics and technology of the Clan/Neanderthal in the first book, and of the mammoth-hunting Cro-Magnon in the third, book four is where prehistoric Europe itself really takes center stage in the narrative. The terrain, the weather, the water bodies, the biomes, the plants, the animals . . . Ayla and Jondalar are literally backpacking across Europe, and there are no roads or sidewalks. Book four is all about the scale of the world early humanity occupied, and how little power they wielded to survive in it. My favorite scene is when the party travels through a forest, which was a rarity in Europe during the Ice Ages. The humans and horses had spent most of their active hours in the wide open plains of the era, so even though the narrative description of this forest was recognizable as an ordinary forest, the feelings it evoked in the characters almost felt like a scene from a modern horror story: the shadows everywhere, the lack of visibility providing cover for potential predators, the subsequent lack of straightforward escape pathways if the horses needed to bolt. It was a really interesting way of communicating to the reader how this familiar landscape from modern times became an unfamiliar and terrifying threat for these early humans unused to the experience of walking between many trees.
But yeah, Ayla and Jondalar are still going at each other every two or three chapters. (Also a pair of mammoths got a turn early on, if I'm thinking of the right book.) That's what I have to power my way through to get to my cool scary forest scenes! For me, it's worth it; I just love imagining all that pristine wilderness, and the simple people and other organisms that strived and grew there and then. And no currency! (From a purely Watsonian perspective, I understand all the . . . "sharing pleasures." They're early modern man, they don't have books or computers or roller blades or tabletop role-playing modules to occupy their time. So once all the food is preserved, the tools and knapped, and the horses are brushed, what are they supposed to do for the rest of the day? I know the series is ultimately prehistory fanfiction, but the frequency of sharing pleasures is likely pretty accurate . . . but that doesn't necessarily mean that the frequency serves much of a narrative use! They just feel like they slow things down, and I would rather read about new tools being developed, and their beliefs in a spirit world, rather than have to sit through what are ultimately pretty similar scenes every time. (Except for the mammoths breeding, that was pretty different, but somehow a lot grodier than with the humans? Blech . . .))
It's funny, I'm usually ravenous to finish a series once I get into it, but I think Earth's Children is the first time I find myself not rushing to get to the last two books, just because I want to keep the feeling of exploring that ancient, untamed continent in my head longer. I still want there to be new things to discover there, and not turn the last page . . .
Anyway, there's a couple of big paragraphs to answer your five-word question. I'm sure you'll never ask me anything again! : )
—doctorlit, of the Clan of the Giant Cave Hamster Cuddlers
Apart from the very special CAFs and the gratuitous humping, anyway. >.>
Seems to me that hunting/gathering and preparing enough food to stay alive, plus maintaining sufficient clothing for protection, would take up quite a lot of time? Especially moving through territory you're not necessarily familiar with! I guess if Jondalar previously made the trip in the other direction, he might know some good places to forage, but still. I don't imagine people traveled just for the heck of it pre-agriculture for the reason of that uncertainty. Most people still didn't do it very much post-agriculture, cuz most people were busy farming and weaving and so on. (I've been enjoying A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry's essays "For World-Builders" about ancient and medieval civilizations, by the way!)
Of course, IIRC Ayla is a nigh-magical healer, so they don't have to worry too much about illness and injury far away from anyone else who could help, at least. {= D
~Neshomeh
Since Ayla and Jondalar had been staying with the Mammoth Hunters over the winter, they had time to prepare for the Journey, with their hosts pitching in materials and skills when they could. When a whole tribe is contributing to survival, no individual has to work too hard! During the actual Journey, the horses were able to graze as they walked for most of the way (though they did bring some hay along for the bad stretches), and Wolf of course kept himself fed on birds and rodents as they traveled. For the human supplies that couldn't be foraged along they way, they did encounter several other human communities along their path, and were able to trade or ask politely for necessary things at each stop. (Once they had explained that no, this wolf is friend-shaped, we promise!) One stop even gave them the opportunity to topple Earth's first fascist dictatorship, an abused woman who had killed her headman husband and took over her village, then locked all the other men in a cage. So that's neat?
As Auel portrays these early human communities, capital-J Journeys are a part of the shared culture across the many tribes of Europe. People on a Journey are traditionally welcomed at each village they stop at, and the villagers throw a feast to celebrate the visit, more often that not. Your points about the uncertainty of long travel, and the daily demands of survival, are logical, but there's also a logical evolutionary utility in Journeys, as well, though not explicitly stated in the novels: genetic diversity! If the populations of tribes all stayed where they were born, inbreeding would eventually become a problem. But if younger members of a tribe sometimes develop a wanderlust to go exploring across the continent, and often end up staying with another tribe they encounter (or even just sharing pleasures with multiple partners along the way!), it allows different genes to travel and mix, and keep the overall human population in a more healthy state. Heck, book three had introduced a dark-skinned character whose father had traveled from Europe to Africa and fallen in love there, and book four left off introducing a character who had traveled from somewhere in Asia to . . . I'm pretty sure we were in future Spain/Portugal at that point. Such long Journeys would be extremely difficult, and likely rare . . . but not impossible, either! No imaginary borders to get stopped at! (And I'll admit the addition of those two characters tickled me immensely, purely because they fly in the face of certain modern ideas about European blood purity!)
—doctorlit apologizes for derailing the thread that was supposed to be about your story!
I've actually rather enjoyed seeing this thread become a classic PPC ramble across topics. ^_^
My impression has been that human groups certainly migrated (following their food sources, for one reason), but I should admit I don't really have the expertise to debate Stone Age culture, haha.
I have misgivings about the notion of "abused woman --> fascist dictator who must be stopped," but I mean, it could happen, I guess. Something something matriarchy isn't matriarchy if it's just inverted patriarchy? Just not sure how much I wanna trust Auel with it.
I wanna say I've heard that modern scholarship agrees that Europe has never actually been "all White," at least, and I really wish I could tell you where... Milo Rossi, a.k.a. Miniminuteman on YouTube, maybe? He makes entertaining videos snarkily debunking archeology pseudoscience. Worth a look even if he's not the source I'm thinking of.
~Neshomeh, stretching her much-atrophied conversation muscles.
Prehistoric individuals certainly travelled at times: the Amesbury Archer was an early Bronze Age person who was found near me (buried close to Stonehenge), but grew up in the Alps. According to Wikipedia, a second nearby burial was born in England, went over to central Europe, and then came back in time to die in their 20s and be buried.
But it's really hard to know how much people travelled. From what I've seen, the best evidence is adult teeth, which preserve the isotopes of the areas where they formed, IE childhood. You can see if someone is a long way from where they grew up - but you wouldn't spot, for example, a decade spent wandering before returning back home. And it's an expensive process, and bones are rare, and the most likely to be preserved are the rich and powerful, which is a bias all of its own.
Seasonal migration, especially in the Ice Age, is probably a given; the world was just too harsh to not have to move around with the herds. But the sort of thing described from the series you're discussing will probably always be speculation.
(If you want to visit heavily-realistic prehistory, "Wolf Road" by Alice Roberts is my recommendation. She's an actual archaeologist, so she knows what she's talking about - and this wolf, too, is friend-shaped.)
hS
Now I'll have to read this (though probably not the lemon scene), if only for context. I mean, I was meaning to anyway...
--Ls likes a good velar stop
But the containing sentence goes, "[Gall did something]—but before he could protest with more than a velar noise, [Gall did something else], and he understood."
~Neshomeh
I'll just note here that "velar" could be describing the sound rendered as "ng" in English (it doesn't necessarily have to describe a stop), while a "palatal" noise would (assuming it's also nasal) be closer to the Spanish ñ.
--Ls
I think this must be one of those "if your ear's not grown up with it you can't hear it" sounds, because the palatal sound clip is just... ny. Only in the table they say it's only the -ny- sound (eg "canyon") in the Malay dialect. Interesting!
hS
An English "ny" (like the British pronunciation of "new") would have an [n] articulated with the tongue on the alveolar ridge, followed by j. Whereas an [ɲ] would have the tongue on the hard palate, slightly further back in the mouth. They do sound very similar to my ear, too, admittedly. Native Anglophone and whatnot.
--Ls likes showing off his useless knowledge of obscure subjects
I can taste the difference (though I don't know that I can ever forgive you for pointing out that I put a -y- in "new" -_-), but I'm not sure I'd be able to hear it. Fun stuff.
hS
I dunno why it's a link like that.
I think this was a good character piece, and as best as I can tell the NSFW bits work in context towards the overall goal here. I'm glad things are looking up for Derik.
So yeah, I can see why you'd waffle on posting this, and I'm glad you did anyway.
I don't have much to say on the writing front - I freely admit my head skimmed some of the longer "action" paragraphs (I've currently got the third Fourth Wing book out from the library, and the same happens there), but the emotions hit well throughout, and I really enjoyed Derik's extended metaphor on the tunnel-snake.
It's probably a good thing you wavered over it, not because of anything about the piece, but because of me. If you'd posted this in a time when I was actively writing for the PPC, I would definitely have taken it as a challenge, which is exactly what you're trying to avoid. :D
hS
As long as the emotions come through, that's the important part.
It's always good to know you appreciate the Pern-isms. ^_^ I almost missed the spot to use the simile with between (there was a cold, dark cellar instead), and I was so glad I caught that, haha.
I've heard the subsequent Fourth Wing books are not so good at the parts I liked about the first book, and I haven't gotten around to seeing for myself. The author apparently got started in the Romance genre, though, so it makes more sense to me that those scenes are there, and that (IMO) they don't suck on their own merits. I just wasn't convinced to care about Violet's love life that much. >.>
~Neshomeh
... I've actually enjoyed books 2 & 3 more, because they're less about Violet's love life, and more about the plot going on outside her bedroom. By which I mean, they acknowledge that there is plot going on that she should maybe worry a bit about, rather than being dedicated to triangling as many loves as possible.
I'm still not sure I want to reread any of them, and I don't know that I'll hunt down the fourth one if/when it comes out, but for plotline and worldbuilding I feel like they do a better job.
Also the Most Speshulest Dragon spends half of book 2 asleep, which helps.
hS
I'll circle back to them eventually. I'm currently on book 2/3 of The End and the Death, trying to close out the Siege of Terra. Wanted to read more things that aren't Warhammer this year, but it's been slow going. If I get through book 3 by the end of the year, that will be an achievement. ^_^;
~Neshomeh
I have read only part 3 of The End and the Death... in a single sitting. O.O I was stuck in a library while my car took several hours to be serviced, and it was there and I wasn't in my own library district so I couldn't borrow it so... yeah. Bit of a brain-smash experience.
hS
Everything is kinda smashing into everything else, often literally and figuratively at the same time. And while some of it is happening to characters I care about, a lot of it isn't, partly because I just can't remember who all these people are. It's a lot. Also, Dan Abnett likes using obscure words, and I can't be bothered stopping to look up all the ones I don't know. Y'all know I'm not against using obscure words occasionally, but there's a limit!
Granted, there are so many words in these books, oftentimes describing very similar scenes, I can understand the impulse to introduce new ones to keep it interesting. There are only so many ways to say "everything was awful and then it somehow got more awful."
Gah.
And yet, I persevere.
~Neshomeh
Well, this is a first I guess. While I have read myself only a small portion of PPC stories, I believe this is the first one where the "action" is onscreen?
Regardless, I think you did a good job, and it really passed the message that things weren't, and couldn't be, smooth because Derik still has his Issues (and Gall, is, well, Gall. Not the subtlest creature out there). The prose was a bit purple IMHO here and there, but it could be me - I tend to end up being a bit beige myself. And, besides, even the purpler pieces weren't purple enough to be distracting. Definitely no Urple there!
I believe this piece existing is good food for thought: since we mock badfics, many of which include M-rated content (I missioned a couple "action-y" badfics myself), and we counter that with our own writing... why should we stop short of making good M-rated content ourselves when we strive to make good content of everything short of it? Of cours,e we shouldn't turn the Prime multiverse in Luxury's one of origin XD! But in the PPC, we mostly deal with wish-fullfillment "action" in badfics, and in a lot of canon media is mostly there for the fanservice. But that's not the only way "action" can be used. Yours is a piece in which the "action" actually shows us things about the characters that wouldn't be as easy to show otherwise, meaning that "action" can be used as a storytelling tool!
I admit that I did that myself in The World without Authors, since Nikki doing it with Syaoron and Sergio with Ami was pretty good way to show the current mental place and issues of the three core cast characters. I stopped short of the "action", though, as the leadup and the aftermath were already passing on everything I wanted to show - no need for the reader to know which positions they used or what their naughty bits looked like, only that Nikki, Sergio and Ami were "lost" and doing mistakes.
All in all, while you broke the taboo, so to speak, I don't think we'll suddenly get a ton of PPC smut. Like all tropes, it has its specific uses, and there aren't many cases in which the "action" is the best, or only, way to tell you something about the characters. I might follow the lead someday, as one of the plotbunnies I had rejected in the past was making a part-comedy, part-hearwarming piece about Sergio and Nikki trying to figure things out due to their PPC service meaning they knew very well what not to do but had little clue about what to do in their first intimate night.
If I do, though, it will be nowhere soon as I have a lot of stuff I'm trying to finish first, and that while I'm still dealing with finishing up work in my new house while moving stuff out of the old one...
It may be a first, yeah. I can think of a couple interludes that get a bit heavy (including one I co-authored), but not without being comedically interrupted and/or faded to black before the serious "action" commences.
I will say, your choice of euphemism is very apt! At some point, I don't recall when or where, I came across the idea that sex scenes are basically just like fight scenes from a scene-crafting perspective. They're both action sequences that involve (generally) two characters doing stuff to each other's bodies, and it's not an accident that fights sometimes act as metaphors for sex, or by extension that fights sometimes turn into sex. {X D Good fight scenes can advance the plot, develop the characters, or both. So naturally, the same ought to go for sex scenes. The main difference is that one is usually antagonistic and the other usually isn't, but the distinction there is very fuzzy.
That's more or less the logic I was operating with. And it sounds like you got what I was going for character-wise, so yay!
I guess you could say this is my answer to Magical Healing Sex, haha. The sex part could only happen because the healing part had already begun, and things are not suddenly shiny and perfect afterward. As a matter of fact, It's Complicated™.
I agree that 99.9% of the time, the fact that "action" is happening is all that needs saying, and the details don't matter. Even here, I kept the "camera" relatively unfocused visually. I did relish the opportunity to subvert a couple of stereotypes about what kinds of women's bodies are considered attractive with Gall, though.
I would read that story about Sergio and Nikki, because I imagine that happens to PPC agents all the time. {X D My headcanon is that the kids who are raised in Headquarters/New Cal get a pretty robust sex-ed course precisely because it comes up so much in badfic, but that doesn't help the badfic recruits—or a lot of the World One recruits. And knowing how things work in theory doesn't necessarily translate to having an easy time of it in practice, anyway. But the characters' feelings for each other are the most important thing, IMO, and those can come through even if everything isn't perfect. Heck, maybe even moreso!
Cheers,
~Neshomeh
And yeah, that's definitely the angle I will use to approach it if I get around to writing it. Two characters whose relationship is already strong, and that are trying to take it to the next step because, even if neither of them is exactly sure about what to do, they trust each other and are trying their best to make it work. And it allows me to show some facets of them that I'm not usually able to.