[Fic] "Weregild," part 7 -- Inception/Anita Blake

I have decided, for simplicity's sake, that while natural dreams will continue to be in present tense and italics, shared dreams (a la Inception) will be written in normal font and past tense, as if they were reality.

Anyway. Here we are in Arthur's dream. Since it started out naturally and Ariadne entered later, he is both the dreamer and the subject; she is simply an interloper. (It is not directly stated in the movie that this can occur, but it's implied in the scene with Dom's memory layer trap.) [1,625 words]

( Weregild, part 7 )

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I am not thrilled with this section, but whatever, it's finished.

Question: whose POV are you most interested in seeing next? Ariadne reacting to this new twist on her ability (and what Arthur did to her), or Arthur quietly flipping out and wondering how he'll need to adjust his and Dom's plans?

3 things: smart phones; family visit; the annoyance of Anita Blake

1. My new phone arrived Friday evening, and I have been cautiously playing around with it a little. I was perfectly happy with a phone that was just a phone (okay, and occasionally a camera), but now that I have the ability to check email whenever I want -- even when my computer is unusable due to summer heat -- I don't ever want to give it up.

Weird how that works. *wry*

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2. Shortly before the accidental phone deactivation screwup, my mom called and said, out of the blue, "Hey, you said you're not working on the 4th. Would you mind if we come visit?"

And I was like, "Um... okay. But what will we do? Everywhere will be closed, on account of it being, you know, the 4th of July."

"Not the wineries!" said my mom.

And so she, my dad, and their dog are driving up tomorrow morning. They should arrive sometime between 11am and noon, depending on traffic, after which we will leave the dog in my apartment and drive north along the west side of Cayuga Lake to various vineyards, stopping somewhere along the way for a picnic lunch. Then we will find a restaurant for dinner, and on Tuesday they will drive me to one of the local Verizon outlets so I can get my data transfered from the old phone to the new one.

...

Well, it beats sitting around stewing in the heat all day. :-)

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3. I have been rereading various Anita Blake books so as to have the world-building fixed in my mind while writing "Weregild." And you know, even before they descended into endless dubcon porn, they weren't especially well written. For example, the narration is full of small non sequitur jumps, such as paragraphs that change subject halfway through, and for all Hamilton's interest in describing people's outfits, I am often not sure what anything actually looks like in practice.

It is also obvious that Hamilton is writing straight from her id -- the number of men with long hair, blue eyes, and hairless chests is very telling, as is the constant undercurrent of coercion and sex behind almost every interaction. There is, of course, nothing wrong with id!fic. It's just that Hamilton's kinks are not my kinks, and it's frustrating to slog through endless repetitions of them to get to the ancillary world-building stuff I am actually interested in... particularly since she often tosses world-building nuggets into scenes I would otherwise skim right over.

Nrgh.

*faffs off to read about Genghis Khan instead*