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Considering the significe the date carries in "Black Edelweiss", I was disappointed in myself not having anything to post today. I considered doing a manip, but every concept I tried out for it came off as shallow and somewhat exploitative of the tragedies involved. So, since I have no new content to post, I thought I'd explore some of the elements behind Konrad/Kevin's backstory and why I chose them for the fic.
I've acknowledged elsewhere (needlessly, I think, since the influence is so overwhelmingly apparent) that the writing of Kurt Vonnegut has been a significant influence on the story. I saw the movie Slaughterhouse Five long before I ever read the book, and liked it a lot. But while the movie was intriguing the book, which I found and read in high school, completely blew me away. I soon wound up tearing through a few of his other novels, including Breakfast of Champions, The Sirens of Titan and Mother Night.
One thing that it is interesting to note about Slaughterhouse Five and Vonnegut specifically is that the book wasn't just written about a tragedy he was aware of, but one he himself witnessed. As a young soldier in World War II, Vonnegut was captured and held as a prisoner of war in a POW camp near Dresden. He was there at the time of the bombings, and he and other prisoners were put to work aiding the mass burial of its casualties. These events are translated into the experiences of the novel's ineffectual anti-hero.
Beyond the events of the bombing being significantly tragic for Konrad, Adam's choice to hide himself and the younger immortal as British POWs was originally engineered to allow me to work in an encounter with Vonnegut himself, a scene I'm no longer certain I'll write.
By the way, one interesting pair of coincidences I've only recently become aware of is the fact that Slaughtehouse Five was published in 1969 (the year that Castle would have been born), and that its time-jumping protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, was assassinated on the anniversary of the bombings in 1976 (the year Javier would have been born).
So it goes.
An even greater influence on "Black Edelweiss" can probably be seen in Vonnegut's earlier novel, Mother Night. It explores pretty deeply a lot of the themes of muddy morality, identity, and loneliness that are essential to Konrad's character. In a lot of ways, I feel Konrad and the novel's protagonist, Howard Campbell, have a lot in common, even while in a lot of places they are opposites. Both experienced Hitler's Reich as an "insider on the outside", existing within the system while internally rejecting its ideologies. For Campbell, this takes the form of apathy—he is a man of very few concrete loyalties. For Konrad, on the other hand, it comes from very strong conflicting loyalties.
Campbell's isolation in New York City also has a very similar feel to Konrad's later life in Brooklyn, though despite it's painful events, Konrad's was not quite so grim and empty. New York is a place where anonymity allows them to try and forget their past sins with indifferent success. A place of respite and refuge, but not one where they can manage hide the truth about themselves forever...
Over all, it's the moral of the story which I feel informs on its influence to the fic. In the novel's introduction, Vonnegut says, "This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvelous moral, I just happen to know what it is..."
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
As I've mentioned in other meta-posts, the original idea which inspired the story was my sister's love of The Producers—and in particular John Barrowman's performance of the song "Springtime for Hitler"—and banter about Kevin Ryan's eyes in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
roachstar's layout for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ryanandesposito.
The idea of casting Kevin Ryan as a former Nazi was always the main focus of the plot, however, the story was originally going to be a Highlander crossover, and Konrad (then "Heinrich Stahl" in my notes, a name later altered and given to Adam) was going to have been a regular SS soldier. By accident, it was about this time I found out that Stana Katic (who plays Kate Beckett on Castle) also played Hana Gitelman on Heroes. A visit to the Heroes wiki called my attention to Hana Gitelman's family history, and Ruth's time in Auschwitz. One panel of Ruth kicking the tooth out of a German soldier (and God, it was just so Kate) was enough to inspire a "click" moment, shifting the story into a Heroes crossover instead. Konrad became a guard at the camp, and Adam's involvement (and Zimmerman's significance) followed, and out of that grew the rest of the story.
I feel his role in the Holocaust is an important part of Konrad's characterization, and the morally muddy tone of the fic. "Morally grey", as it is fashionably called in Heroes fandom. On the one hand, Konrad is at his core a good man, but on the other he is complicit in something that is wholly abominable. What I think makes him interesting is that many "grey" aligned characters try to rationalize their more immoral actions. Konrad never does. He never saw himself as different than any other German caught up in the war. He feels that good intentions are meaningless when they aren't followed by good actions, and while he doesn't always follow through, he doesn't cut himself any slack either.
I, as the author, see him as a good man, just a flawed one. Konrad doesn't give himself nearly that much credit.
In the original plan of this story, Kevin Ryan wasn't the result of a sudden event. Becoming him was a conscious choice, and the result of telepathic intervention on the part of Charles Deveaux when Konrad left the Company in 1999. I think if I had gone this route, it would change things a great deal. After all, if Kevin exists as the result of a freak occurrence, then he and Konrad are equally blameless for his existence, but if Konrad chose to become him, then not only is he just a false face, but by existing he allows Konrad to escape whatever guilt he may still feel about his past crimes.
The way this plan changed was kind of interesting.
In Castle, the NYPD Detective's pin is such a minor detail of wardrobe that it can be easily overlooked. Kate and Javier have each been shown wearing theirs more than once, but their costuming varies a great deal, and isn't always present. In the first three seasons, Kevin's wardrobe is far more consistent: almost always a suit and tie—often three piece, with a vest as well—and whenever he is wearing the coat, the pin is always present.
Point of fact: Kevin is also the only character on the show whose pin includes a flag.
While there may have been no significance behind this costuming choice, I decided to assign one. After all, I'd looked at a lot of historical occurrences (both real and canon), and how Konrad might have viewed them. I thought it was only fair to explore a few experiences that belonged to Kevin alone. And 9/11 is about as significant and earthshaking an event as anyone could hope to find in recent history. However, as I looked at it, it slowly occurred to me just how deeply those events would have cut him—and for Konrad, the pain would go right down to the bone.
New York's importance to Konrad can't be underscored enough, I think. If Konrad views Dresden as a symbol of everything good he was before he was drawn into the War, then New York City is the symbol of everything good he did after it.
While it wasn't the first city he lived in after his first home was destroyed (Manchester first, then Montreal), it was the first that became a home to him. The place where he allowed himself to try and create something new, to find out who he was—who he might become—in the wake of the War. It was where he built a new life with Sarah and started a family to replace the one he had lost. It was the place he began yet another life as Richard Conway, allowing himself to pursue the dreams he'd once had before they were stolen by the War.
And it was where he went after the Company turned out to be another trap of poisoned ideals, once more trying to redefine himself in the aftermath of bitter disappointment.
Konrad's grasp of personal identity is shaky enough throughout his history (there is evidence that this is genetic, but I would be forced to digress...), but in a way the events of 9/11 represented a direct assault on his psyche. It's not just an attack on the place he calls home, but on everything he has tried to build for himself ever since the War ended—everything had become. That the attack took such a similar form as the one which had destroyed his first home only made the it that much more cruel. And in the end all it took was a handful of flowers to push him into a tailspin of grief and despair that knocked his sense of self so out of orbit that he had to run away, hiding behind the safe, happy lie of the goofy, green rookie he had been pretending to be.
And when Peter finally goes looking for Konrad he has to dig deep in order to find him—and when he does, Konrad is right where Kevin left him behind: standing in the rubble at Ground Zero, covered in dust and ash and tears.
I've acknowledged elsewhere (needlessly, I think, since the influence is so overwhelmingly apparent) that the writing of Kurt Vonnegut has been a significant influence on the story. I saw the movie Slaughterhouse Five long before I ever read the book, and liked it a lot. But while the movie was intriguing the book, which I found and read in high school, completely blew me away. I soon wound up tearing through a few of his other novels, including Breakfast of Champions, The Sirens of Titan and Mother Night.
One thing that it is interesting to note about Slaughterhouse Five and Vonnegut specifically is that the book wasn't just written about a tragedy he was aware of, but one he himself witnessed. As a young soldier in World War II, Vonnegut was captured and held as a prisoner of war in a POW camp near Dresden. He was there at the time of the bombings, and he and other prisoners were put to work aiding the mass burial of its casualties. These events are translated into the experiences of the novel's ineffectual anti-hero.
Beyond the events of the bombing being significantly tragic for Konrad, Adam's choice to hide himself and the younger immortal as British POWs was originally engineered to allow me to work in an encounter with Vonnegut himself, a scene I'm no longer certain I'll write.
By the way, one interesting pair of coincidences I've only recently become aware of is the fact that Slaughtehouse Five was published in 1969 (the year that Castle would have been born), and that its time-jumping protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, was assassinated on the anniversary of the bombings in 1976 (the year Javier would have been born).
So it goes.
An even greater influence on "Black Edelweiss" can probably be seen in Vonnegut's earlier novel, Mother Night. It explores pretty deeply a lot of the themes of muddy morality, identity, and loneliness that are essential to Konrad's character. In a lot of ways, I feel Konrad and the novel's protagonist, Howard Campbell, have a lot in common, even while in a lot of places they are opposites. Both experienced Hitler's Reich as an "insider on the outside", existing within the system while internally rejecting its ideologies. For Campbell, this takes the form of apathy—he is a man of very few concrete loyalties. For Konrad, on the other hand, it comes from very strong conflicting loyalties.
Campbell's isolation in New York City also has a very similar feel to Konrad's later life in Brooklyn, though despite it's painful events, Konrad's was not quite so grim and empty. New York is a place where anonymity allows them to try and forget their past sins with indifferent success. A place of respite and refuge, but not one where they can manage hide the truth about themselves forever...
Over all, it's the moral of the story which I feel informs on its influence to the fic. In the novel's introduction, Vonnegut says, "This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvelous moral, I just happen to know what it is..."
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
As I've mentioned in other meta-posts, the original idea which inspired the story was my sister's love of The Producers—and in particular John Barrowman's performance of the song "Springtime for Hitler"—and banter about Kevin Ryan's eyes in
roachstar's layout for ryanandesposito.The idea of casting Kevin Ryan as a former Nazi was always the main focus of the plot, however, the story was originally going to be a Highlander crossover, and Konrad (then "Heinrich Stahl" in my notes, a name later altered and given to Adam) was going to have been a regular SS soldier. By accident, it was about this time I found out that Stana Katic (who plays Kate Beckett on Castle) also played Hana Gitelman on Heroes. A visit to the Heroes wiki called my attention to Hana Gitelman's family history, and Ruth's time in Auschwitz. One panel of Ruth kicking the tooth out of a German soldier (and God, it was just so Kate) was enough to inspire a "click" moment, shifting the story into a Heroes crossover instead. Konrad became a guard at the camp, and Adam's involvement (and Zimmerman's significance) followed, and out of that grew the rest of the story.
I feel his role in the Holocaust is an important part of Konrad's characterization, and the morally muddy tone of the fic. "Morally grey", as it is fashionably called in Heroes fandom. On the one hand, Konrad is at his core a good man, but on the other he is complicit in something that is wholly abominable. What I think makes him interesting is that many "grey" aligned characters try to rationalize their more immoral actions. Konrad never does. He never saw himself as different than any other German caught up in the war. He feels that good intentions are meaningless when they aren't followed by good actions, and while he doesn't always follow through, he doesn't cut himself any slack either.
I, as the author, see him as a good man, just a flawed one. Konrad doesn't give himself nearly that much credit.
In the original plan of this story, Kevin Ryan wasn't the result of a sudden event. Becoming him was a conscious choice, and the result of telepathic intervention on the part of Charles Deveaux when Konrad left the Company in 1999. I think if I had gone this route, it would change things a great deal. After all, if Kevin exists as the result of a freak occurrence, then he and Konrad are equally blameless for his existence, but if Konrad chose to become him, then not only is he just a false face, but by existing he allows Konrad to escape whatever guilt he may still feel about his past crimes.
The way this plan changed was kind of interesting.
In Castle, the NYPD Detective's pin is such a minor detail of wardrobe that it can be easily overlooked. Kate and Javier have each been shown wearing theirs more than once, but their costuming varies a great deal, and isn't always present. In the first three seasons, Kevin's wardrobe is far more consistent: almost always a suit and tie—often three piece, with a vest as well—and whenever he is wearing the coat, the pin is always present.
Point of fact: Kevin is also the only character on the show whose pin includes a flag.
While there may have been no significance behind this costuming choice, I decided to assign one. After all, I'd looked at a lot of historical occurrences (both real and canon), and how Konrad might have viewed them. I thought it was only fair to explore a few experiences that belonged to Kevin alone. And 9/11 is about as significant and earthshaking an event as anyone could hope to find in recent history. However, as I looked at it, it slowly occurred to me just how deeply those events would have cut him—and for Konrad, the pain would go right down to the bone.
New York's importance to Konrad can't be underscored enough, I think. If Konrad views Dresden as a symbol of everything good he was before he was drawn into the War, then New York City is the symbol of everything good he did after it.
While it wasn't the first city he lived in after his first home was destroyed (Manchester first, then Montreal), it was the first that became a home to him. The place where he allowed himself to try and create something new, to find out who he was—who he might become—in the wake of the War. It was where he built a new life with Sarah and started a family to replace the one he had lost. It was the place he began yet another life as Richard Conway, allowing himself to pursue the dreams he'd once had before they were stolen by the War.
And it was where he went after the Company turned out to be another trap of poisoned ideals, once more trying to redefine himself in the aftermath of bitter disappointment.
Konrad's grasp of personal identity is shaky enough throughout his history (there is evidence that this is genetic, but I would be forced to digress...), but in a way the events of 9/11 represented a direct assault on his psyche. It's not just an attack on the place he calls home, but on everything he has tried to build for himself ever since the War ended—everything had become. That the attack took such a similar form as the one which had destroyed his first home only made the it that much more cruel. And in the end all it took was a handful of flowers to push him into a tailspin of grief and despair that knocked his sense of self so out of orbit that he had to run away, hiding behind the safe, happy lie of the goofy, green rookie he had been pretending to be.
And when Peter finally goes looking for Konrad he has to dig deep in order to find him—and when he does, Konrad is right where Kevin left him behind: standing in the rubble at Ground Zero, covered in dust and ash and tears.
