Origin Stories notes
According to Google Docs' revision history, I started writing this story January 31, the day this article came out in the wake of the Keys and Gray scandal. I remembered the article; I'd completely forgotten it had anything to do with the fic. As a matter of fact, I told someone the other day that the story wasn't in response to anything in particular, because until I realized the date of its inception I'd thought of it as a character study, not Issue Fic. But of course the issues in question are integral to Zaida's character, and to her relationship with her father. The more I wrote (and researched), the more that became clear within the story, if still not to its author. You know what they say about forests and trees.
The interview I posted last week obviously had a particular impact; it's essentially what inspired the creation of a Real Madrid women's side in the fic, complete with appropriate market incentives. And of course to Zaida it would be incredibly annoying, but to me as a Madridista it's kind of like wish fulfillment. (In my head Mery Ruiz is their coach. And Zaida's teammate wasn't intentionally named after her, but clearly the subconscious was at work there, ha.) That was Jordi Codina's daughter in defense at the end, in sort of a reverse of Zaida's situation -- she's playing for the team her father couldn't break into.
As for the international team, the imaginary background is all there (implied) in the same paragraph as Real: an imaginary year in which the WNT qualifies for the World Cup and reaches the semis, which serves as the breakthrough re: media attention. Which is not really all that out of the question, looking at the performance of the younger sides, once you get rid of the manager (see links below). The crowd interest is potentially there; the U-17 girls won an AS award determined by popular vote earlier this fall, beating the U-19 boys. In a country as nationally competitive and football-crazed as Spain, of course if the team started doing well they'd start paying attention. (How much that would affect the state of the women's game overall, particularly in comparison to the men's game, is a different question entirely.)
Here's a handful of resources on Spanish women's football for anyone interested:
futfem.com - the place to go for league and NT news/info. (es)
Podemos Jugar - think From A Left Wing, but in Spanish. (es)
Nosotras - Women's sports coverage at AS. Isabel Roldán reports on the Primera Division as well as a fair amount on the national team and women in football at large (e.g. as directors). I've also seen Maite Martín's byline on several articles. (es)
From A Left Wing's Jennifer Doyle on the Spanish WNT, with a pretty convincing hypothesis for exactly why there is such a difference between the junior and senior teams, including a short interview with Laura del Rio. (en)
Interview with Veronica Boquete, touching on several of the above issues. (en)
FIFA write up of a national community side tournament, focusing especially on the players' families.
I started writing this story almost a year before David Villa broke his leg for the second time. That was in the end one of the strongest impressions to take away from the writing process: the sharp reminder of the ways, in RPF fandoms, that the canon affects the reading of the fic as much as fic affects the reading of the canon. In this case it was the bolding of a theme -- of the parellelism between David and Zaida, and the different ways they respond (are able to respond) to the same situation. Beforehand I was hoping the comparison would be relatively subtle, because the callback to DV's childhood injury (and his father's help) is something that not everyone would be familiar with -- it's not immediately present, if you know what I mean. But then his more recent injury added another parallel incident, as well as calling that association up to immediate memory. aka it was about as subtle as a neon sign. XD; The hope is that it wasn't too heavy-handed as a result.
The actual writing experience was totally different from usual. I didn't feel I had to work hard at all. It just... happened. Almost all of it was written in concentrated bursts, with only a small amount of revision or editing. The one scene I did have to work at was Zaida and David's fight near the end, partly to figure out what exactly they were fighting about and partly because there was enough material there for uh a lot more conflict and it took some work to keep it within the parameters of the fic, in terms of length and scope.
Zaida is the closest to an original character POV I've written -- essentially she is an original character, though her similarity to DV makes that more complicated -- and I don't feel at all like I had any say in the process? She just happened that way. Speaking of which, this also gave me a sudden empathy for how pro authors could get so defensive over fanfiction. It's not (I think) intellectual possessiveness or territorialism, it's, like... too much affection. No, see, you don't understand what she's really like. You have to treat her right because she's THE MOST AMAZING. Like, oh my god, I love this version of Zaida and want her to win the World Cup and everyone to appreciate her and... yeah. ^^; (It's sparked one of those conundrums -- does she play for Rayo because I like them, or do I like them because she plays there?) Which probably sounds weird and narcissistic but it doesn't have anything to do with me, it's not like I'm thinking in terms of "this person I wrote is so amazing." It's transcription, see.
(Recently I've been thinking about original fiction as a possible end goal. The stumbling block is always character -- inasmuch as I think of original fiction, instinct has so far provided scenarios or conflicts, not people. In other words, the basics of AU creation. XD And you can tell, too, because the characters that come later are never quite right -- to me, they're too consciously "created". So how could one replicate these circumstances, where the person is I guess created on a subconscious level, and brings the conflict with her. Or him.)