A Missing Scene (Yde et Olive)

When I first read Yde et Olive, I thought it was an absolute crime that the scene where Yde reveals to their wife that they were born a woman was reduced to essentially a bullet point list and a brief response from Olive. And I continued to think about it afterward. 

Actually, my greatest issue with the story as a whole was that the poetry format, potentially combined with an unwillingness to write certain things, made many sections of the poem read more like an outline for a larger story than a complete piece. This particular scene felt the most glaring to me, because at its core, Yde et Olive is a romance. The title is the name of these characters, and their romance is central to the plot, but arguably the most important scene from their relationship is told in approximately twenty lines. I understand why, because there would not have been a way to detail this scene in the time period it was written that wouldn’t have been incredibly scandalous. Even what’s there now could have been shocking, which is likely why it immediately transitions into the king nearly having them both executed. Fortunately, here in modern day, we can write queer characters and their love stories relatively freely. So that is what I set out to do. 

Overall, I hope I did a decent job providing a scene that was essentially missing from the original. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing.

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Something I’d like to make clear, I knew I would not be able to replicate the style of the original. I find poetry difficult enough already; I didn’t even want to attempt doing that with this. Once I knew I wanted it in prose, I also knew I wanted to modernize the language enough that it would be easy to read and write, but not so much that it would prevent a suspension of disbelief that this could actually take place in that period. I had to put a lot of thought into whether or not Yde (or Ydé, I should say) should be considered as a trans man or a woman in a difficult position. I eventually decided that, since Olive has no idea, I also don’t need to know that for certain. The name Ydé is used because that is what she knows them by. It’s honestly impossible to gather how Ydé actually thinks of themself, given that their original internal monologue from the poem is totally clouded by religious guilt. However, I think the lack of time-period appropriate understanding and language helped me keep the vagueness of their gender identity. Olive’s perspective here is “I don’t care, this is my husband whom I love.” I initially tried to avoid pronoun usage after the reveal to help with the vagueness, but that ended up being far more difficult than I thought it would be, and I did not want to use the Rule of Wolves method of exclusively using the name (more on that later). I had Olive decide internally that using she/her feels incorrect and continue with he/him. I didn’t think that Olive defaulting to they/them would really make sense for the period, as bad as that feels to say, and as much as I would prefer to go that route. I am pretty happy with how it came out, for the time frame I ended up needing to write it in. 

The last thing I’d like to discuss is my inspirations and sources for this piece, which, as of yet, does not have a name. Because I am a writer myself, I wrote this in my own style that has developed slowly over many years. I cannot cite my specific style inspirations because I honestly do not know. Countless fanfiction authors, some V.E. Schwab, as she’s my favorite author, certainly some Leigh Bardugo, because I’ve read the entire Grishaverse very recently, and likely more that I’m just not thinking of right now. As for direct inspirations, the aforementioned Rule of Wolves by the aforementioned Leigh Bardugo features a romance that could arguably be read as either a sapphic romance or a romance involving a trans masculine character, which is why I read it in two days before writing this. I wanted to see how pronouns would be handled for this character after they essentially came out to their lover, because I figured it would be applicable to what I was writing for this. Bardugo ended up just avoiding pronouns altogether, using the character’s name and language that would make sense for both the idea of them being trans or the idea that they were simply disguised as a man for political gain and getting away from their father. From that description, you can probably tell how shockingly relevant this was to Yde et Olive and specifically what I was planning to write. 

Unfortunately, I found using only the name to be incredibly clunky and heavily noticeable. It is very hard, in any scene of any length, to completely avoid the use of pronouns. I ended up not using this approach for my own work. Slightly less significant influences include Kiki Rockwell’s albums Rituals On The Bank Of A Familiar River and Eldest Daughter Of An Eldest Daughter, and specifically the songs “Cup Runneth Over” from the former and “Holy Rage” from the latter, provided the soundtrack and some inspiration while I was writing this. Especially “Holy Rage”. I highly recommend checking out her music as it is absolutely incredible. And finally, the joke about Yde’s birth name was directly inspired by Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. I have always found the scene where they joke about Shaun and Shang sounding pretty much the same very funny, and the difference between the feminine Yde and masculine Ydé is similarly amusing. I couldn’t help but include it. It feels crazy for me to cite a Marvel movie as inspiration for this, but creativity works in strange ways sometimes. 

I’m happy with what I ended up with here, and I hope it was an enjoyable read for anyone who read the original and wanted more from these two, like I did. I welcome fanfiction of my fanfiction if the fancy strikes anyone.

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