MGS: In the Folds
May. 8th, 2011 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
what_we_dreamTitle: In the Folds
Series: MGS
Pairing: Really mild Snake/Otacon
Rating: So much G
Notes: There's a great documentary out called Between the Folds about really high level origami used as Hal uses it here. I haven't actually seen it, but I just heard a great review of it and had to run out and write this before my "this is too stupid" filter kicked in.
Summary: Hal embarks on a new project.
Dave’s watching some action flick with Bruce Willis in it – they all look the same after a while – when Hal comes in with an expectant look that means the TV is about to be forfeit.
“I wanted to watch something,” he says, glancing at the screen; an explosion is reflected as a brief fiery blast in his glasses. “I can tape this,” he adds in a probing voice which Dave has no problem interpreting as If you want me to tape this I’m going to schedule you for a psych review.
Dave shrugs. “That’s okay; once you’ve seen one Die Hard you’ve seen them all. What’s on?”
“A documentary about origami,” says Hal, absolutely straightforwardly. Dave stares at him.
“You want to watch a movie about paper folding.”
“It’s a documentary, but yes. It’s fascinating, really, it explores the use of paper to depict all sorts of geometric and …” Dave tunes out for a while as the engineer babbles on happily about math and physics to watch someone on screen get shot with a ridiculously wasteful amount of ammunition, returning to the conversation when he finishes up, “think you might really enjoy it.”
“This is about the Japanese obsession, isn’t it?”
“No, Dave, like I just said it’s about the physical three dimensional representation of concepts which otherwise –”
“Okay, okay, fine, here.” Dave stands and hands over the remote.
“You don’t want to watch it?”
“Unbelievable as it is, no. Go ahead. Enjoy.” He troops out of the tiny room to find something to read. Hal shrugs, takes his seat, and changes the channel.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Dave gets up from his book a couple of times to make trips to the kitchen. The first time he passes the TV room, Hal’s staring intently at the screen, currently depicting some geek bending over a table with a huge piece of paper set out in front of him. When he goes by the second time, Hal’s got a piece of paper on his knee, and is taking notes. Dave rolls his eyes, and goes back to reading about the Cambridge Five.
When he comes back through the kitchen several hours later, the TV is off and Hal’s gone to bed. On the table are a couple of print-outs of simple origami bases, and some amateurish attempts at folding simple animals from torn receipts.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Over the next couple of days, their little apartment becomes increasingly cluttered with tiny folded creatures made of cheap dollar-store paper. Hal is a quick learner and a perfectionist when it comes to his work, and the quality of the things increases from something resembling a victim of an industrial accident to miniature copies of real life. Dave tries folding a penguin, to appease Hal more than anything else, and ends up with what looks like a cross between a piano and a ladle.
“I guess it’s as good a hobby as anything else, but you’ve already got plenty of them,” he tells Hal, tossing out his failed attempt.
“This?” Hal looks up from folding a piece of paper the size of a place mat at the menagerie he’s surrounded by. “This is just practice, working on the folds.”
“Practice for what?” asks Dave.
“I told you. The potential for three-dimensional representation of modelling all kinds of concepts that people just can’t appreciate in two dimensions is huge. Origami has been used to create folding models that were then applied in the solar panels of satellites. The detail – especially in compression and expansion – it allows you to demonstrate is practically endless.”
“Right,” says Dave, who can recognize conversations which are about to become much more technical than he’s interested in before they gain inescapable momentum, and wanders off to make some modifications to his newest SOCOM.
-------------------------------------------------------
By the end of the week, Hal’s buying special paper online and beginning to “fold wet,” which in Dave’s world only means the table is now completely unusable for several hours of the day. The model animals are gone, swept away by the tide of complex geometric shapes now lining all available surfaces. The precision down to the tiniest folds is amazing, but what is really striking is the beauty of even simple shapes like polyhedra. All their surfaces are exactly symmetrical, their folds crisp and the corners sharp. When folded from monochrome paper the detail evident is astounding, but when folded from patterned sheets the play of the design and shadows holds the eye captive.
They make Dave nervous in a way. He suddenly finds himself surrounded by tiny models of perfection, which Hal turns out without even seeming to think about. More than that, which Hal turns out after hours of effort, and forgets about entirely as soon as they leave his fingertips. As if they are nothing but shells to be grown out of and abandoned as soon as they’ve served their purpose.
The first shape Hal makes out of double-sided paper, using the second shade to represent depth and shadow, makes Dave’s breath catch in his throat. It’s a tiny model of a cresting wave, the water of the wave dark blue with white foam lapping at its edges. It has so many folds he can’t count them, and he can hold it in the palm of his hand. Hal puts it down on the counter and promptly forgets about it. Dave takes it away and tucks it safely in his ammunition cabinet. He has never had much to do with art, but he knows beauty when he sees it and has seen enough of it destroyed to value it all the more highly.
-------------------------------------------------------
Hal moves out of geometric concepts and into objects two days later, starting with complex models of cars and planes. Dave still has no idea what Hal’s driving at, but he’s abandoned the kitchen table and taken to eating at the counter, plate and glass bumping up against a tractor and a Sopwith Camel.
“Where are you going with all this?” he asks late that night, when Hal finally pushes aside a model telescope and turns out the light.
“If you can’t guess, you’ll just have to wait until I get there.”
----------------------------------------------------------
As it happens, Dave has a meeting with a contact about some possibly suspicious materials buying going on through underground channels, and has to fly out for a couple of days. He leaves the fridge well stocked, and tells Hal not to put any paper near the stove. He knows the engineer too well to believe he’s listening when he hums assent.
----------------------------------------------------------
Dave gets back late at night, tired but sure of two things: nothing being sold on the underground market is indicative of Metal Gear activities, and their contact is an idiot. He lets himself into the apartment, kicks off his shoes, and goes into the kitchen to get a drink before bed. The lights here are off too, and after considering the merits of looking for a glass in the dark he remembers Hal’s budding folding habit and turns them on lest he accidentally crush a perfect reproduction of the leaning tower of Pisa.
Dave gets a glass out of the cabinet, and turns to the fridge. An odd shape on the kitchen table makes him turn; only years of soldiering keeps him from dropping the glass.
Standing in full solitary glory on the table is a perfect model of Metal Gear Rex. It has been folded out of two sided paper, the predominant side light grey with the other dark blue to represent shadows, and stands barely two feet tall. Dave sets the glass down carefully, and walks over to it.
He can’t begin to estimate how many folds there must be in it – thousands, surely. And on top of them, Hal has somehow managed to give further definition to the paper, allowing him to wrinkle and bow it outwards without precisely folding it – Dave has a vague idea it has something to do with the wetness.
In real life, towering over him, the thing had seemed monstrous and somehow ugly. A fat, bulging body on stick legs, with uneven arms and a stocky head. But here, on the table before him, he can see it as he suddenly knows Hal must have seen it. Hunched low and cautious to protect, with a strong back and wide feet to keep vital balance. A right arm that was hand and sword in one, with what visually at least represented a shield on the left.
Even in the poor light he knows it's a masterpiece - just as Rex was. Not as a weapon but as an ideal and, he can see now, built with so much thought and love and hope that it makes Dave’s chest hurt just a little to realise only now what it must have meant to Hal to pledge to destroy it.
In the shadows, something moves, and he looks up to see Hal standing there watching him.
“I never knew,” he says, softly. And then corrects, “Never understood.”
“But now you do.”
Dave looks back to the model on the table, exquisite in its detail. “It wasn’t just a thing – or a creation. It was what you hoped. For yourself.” Flawed now, but not forever. A fighter who, despite his gawky awkwardness, would have a strong self to grow into. A prophesy, of a sort.
Hal smiles. “You see now? Origami depicts things people can’t see otherwise. Things blueprints, or computer representations, can’t communicate.”
“You could have just told me.”
“And you would feel the same thing you do now, looking at him?”
Dave stares at it, at the incredible thought and effort that is apparent in every tiny fold. And feels not just awe and appreciation, but protectiveness. Looking at it, he can see just how much of Hal’s soul is in the tiny creation – and how much must have been in the metal hulk lying frozen in Alaska – and knows he can’t see it damaged. Knows that what he understands when he looks at it almost certainly isn’t the same as what Hal does, but what he feels is damn well near identical.
“Maybe not,” he admits, slowly.
Hal steps over to put his arm around Dave’s shoulder. “Then I was successful.”
“You did all this work and made this, just to show me how you see Rex?” He turns out the light, and steers them towards the bedroom, hip to hip.
“Well.” Hal pauses, and Dave can hear the smile in his voice when he adds, “I also thought it would be pretty cool.”
Series: MGS
Pairing: Really mild Snake/Otacon
Rating: So much G
Notes: There's a great documentary out called Between the Folds about really high level origami used as Hal uses it here. I haven't actually seen it, but I just heard a great review of it and had to run out and write this before my "this is too stupid" filter kicked in.
Summary: Hal embarks on a new project.
Dave’s watching some action flick with Bruce Willis in it – they all look the same after a while – when Hal comes in with an expectant look that means the TV is about to be forfeit.
“I wanted to watch something,” he says, glancing at the screen; an explosion is reflected as a brief fiery blast in his glasses. “I can tape this,” he adds in a probing voice which Dave has no problem interpreting as If you want me to tape this I’m going to schedule you for a psych review.
Dave shrugs. “That’s okay; once you’ve seen one Die Hard you’ve seen them all. What’s on?”
“A documentary about origami,” says Hal, absolutely straightforwardly. Dave stares at him.
“You want to watch a movie about paper folding.”
“It’s a documentary, but yes. It’s fascinating, really, it explores the use of paper to depict all sorts of geometric and …” Dave tunes out for a while as the engineer babbles on happily about math and physics to watch someone on screen get shot with a ridiculously wasteful amount of ammunition, returning to the conversation when he finishes up, “think you might really enjoy it.”
“This is about the Japanese obsession, isn’t it?”
“No, Dave, like I just said it’s about the physical three dimensional representation of concepts which otherwise –”
“Okay, okay, fine, here.” Dave stands and hands over the remote.
“You don’t want to watch it?”
“Unbelievable as it is, no. Go ahead. Enjoy.” He troops out of the tiny room to find something to read. Hal shrugs, takes his seat, and changes the channel.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Dave gets up from his book a couple of times to make trips to the kitchen. The first time he passes the TV room, Hal’s staring intently at the screen, currently depicting some geek bending over a table with a huge piece of paper set out in front of him. When he goes by the second time, Hal’s got a piece of paper on his knee, and is taking notes. Dave rolls his eyes, and goes back to reading about the Cambridge Five.
When he comes back through the kitchen several hours later, the TV is off and Hal’s gone to bed. On the table are a couple of print-outs of simple origami bases, and some amateurish attempts at folding simple animals from torn receipts.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Over the next couple of days, their little apartment becomes increasingly cluttered with tiny folded creatures made of cheap dollar-store paper. Hal is a quick learner and a perfectionist when it comes to his work, and the quality of the things increases from something resembling a victim of an industrial accident to miniature copies of real life. Dave tries folding a penguin, to appease Hal more than anything else, and ends up with what looks like a cross between a piano and a ladle.
“I guess it’s as good a hobby as anything else, but you’ve already got plenty of them,” he tells Hal, tossing out his failed attempt.
“This?” Hal looks up from folding a piece of paper the size of a place mat at the menagerie he’s surrounded by. “This is just practice, working on the folds.”
“Practice for what?” asks Dave.
“I told you. The potential for three-dimensional representation of modelling all kinds of concepts that people just can’t appreciate in two dimensions is huge. Origami has been used to create folding models that were then applied in the solar panels of satellites. The detail – especially in compression and expansion – it allows you to demonstrate is practically endless.”
“Right,” says Dave, who can recognize conversations which are about to become much more technical than he’s interested in before they gain inescapable momentum, and wanders off to make some modifications to his newest SOCOM.
-------------------------------------------------------
By the end of the week, Hal’s buying special paper online and beginning to “fold wet,” which in Dave’s world only means the table is now completely unusable for several hours of the day. The model animals are gone, swept away by the tide of complex geometric shapes now lining all available surfaces. The precision down to the tiniest folds is amazing, but what is really striking is the beauty of even simple shapes like polyhedra. All their surfaces are exactly symmetrical, their folds crisp and the corners sharp. When folded from monochrome paper the detail evident is astounding, but when folded from patterned sheets the play of the design and shadows holds the eye captive.
They make Dave nervous in a way. He suddenly finds himself surrounded by tiny models of perfection, which Hal turns out without even seeming to think about. More than that, which Hal turns out after hours of effort, and forgets about entirely as soon as they leave his fingertips. As if they are nothing but shells to be grown out of and abandoned as soon as they’ve served their purpose.
The first shape Hal makes out of double-sided paper, using the second shade to represent depth and shadow, makes Dave’s breath catch in his throat. It’s a tiny model of a cresting wave, the water of the wave dark blue with white foam lapping at its edges. It has so many folds he can’t count them, and he can hold it in the palm of his hand. Hal puts it down on the counter and promptly forgets about it. Dave takes it away and tucks it safely in his ammunition cabinet. He has never had much to do with art, but he knows beauty when he sees it and has seen enough of it destroyed to value it all the more highly.
-------------------------------------------------------
Hal moves out of geometric concepts and into objects two days later, starting with complex models of cars and planes. Dave still has no idea what Hal’s driving at, but he’s abandoned the kitchen table and taken to eating at the counter, plate and glass bumping up against a tractor and a Sopwith Camel.
“Where are you going with all this?” he asks late that night, when Hal finally pushes aside a model telescope and turns out the light.
“If you can’t guess, you’ll just have to wait until I get there.”
----------------------------------------------------------
As it happens, Dave has a meeting with a contact about some possibly suspicious materials buying going on through underground channels, and has to fly out for a couple of days. He leaves the fridge well stocked, and tells Hal not to put any paper near the stove. He knows the engineer too well to believe he’s listening when he hums assent.
----------------------------------------------------------
Dave gets back late at night, tired but sure of two things: nothing being sold on the underground market is indicative of Metal Gear activities, and their contact is an idiot. He lets himself into the apartment, kicks off his shoes, and goes into the kitchen to get a drink before bed. The lights here are off too, and after considering the merits of looking for a glass in the dark he remembers Hal’s budding folding habit and turns them on lest he accidentally crush a perfect reproduction of the leaning tower of Pisa.
Dave gets a glass out of the cabinet, and turns to the fridge. An odd shape on the kitchen table makes him turn; only years of soldiering keeps him from dropping the glass.
Standing in full solitary glory on the table is a perfect model of Metal Gear Rex. It has been folded out of two sided paper, the predominant side light grey with the other dark blue to represent shadows, and stands barely two feet tall. Dave sets the glass down carefully, and walks over to it.
He can’t begin to estimate how many folds there must be in it – thousands, surely. And on top of them, Hal has somehow managed to give further definition to the paper, allowing him to wrinkle and bow it outwards without precisely folding it – Dave has a vague idea it has something to do with the wetness.
In real life, towering over him, the thing had seemed monstrous and somehow ugly. A fat, bulging body on stick legs, with uneven arms and a stocky head. But here, on the table before him, he can see it as he suddenly knows Hal must have seen it. Hunched low and cautious to protect, with a strong back and wide feet to keep vital balance. A right arm that was hand and sword in one, with what visually at least represented a shield on the left.
Even in the poor light he knows it's a masterpiece - just as Rex was. Not as a weapon but as an ideal and, he can see now, built with so much thought and love and hope that it makes Dave’s chest hurt just a little to realise only now what it must have meant to Hal to pledge to destroy it.
In the shadows, something moves, and he looks up to see Hal standing there watching him.
“I never knew,” he says, softly. And then corrects, “Never understood.”
“But now you do.”
Dave looks back to the model on the table, exquisite in its detail. “It wasn’t just a thing – or a creation. It was what you hoped. For yourself.” Flawed now, but not forever. A fighter who, despite his gawky awkwardness, would have a strong self to grow into. A prophesy, of a sort.
Hal smiles. “You see now? Origami depicts things people can’t see otherwise. Things blueprints, or computer representations, can’t communicate.”
“You could have just told me.”
“And you would feel the same thing you do now, looking at him?”
Dave stares at it, at the incredible thought and effort that is apparent in every tiny fold. And feels not just awe and appreciation, but protectiveness. Looking at it, he can see just how much of Hal’s soul is in the tiny creation – and how much must have been in the metal hulk lying frozen in Alaska – and knows he can’t see it damaged. Knows that what he understands when he looks at it almost certainly isn’t the same as what Hal does, but what he feels is damn well near identical.
“Maybe not,” he admits, slowly.
Hal steps over to put his arm around Dave’s shoulder. “Then I was successful.”
“You did all this work and made this, just to show me how you see Rex?” He turns out the light, and steers them towards the bedroom, hip to hip.
“Well.” Hal pauses, and Dave can hear the smile in his voice when he adds, “I also thought it would be pretty cool.”
