4 unrelated things: Yuletide, health insurance, "Secrets," and free ficlet offers!

[edenfalling]

Random things of interest:

1. Yuletide nominations are closed. Presumably the nominated fandoms will now be winnowed and/or corrected, and sometime soonish signups will open. I did not nominate any new fandoms, but I did renominate a few from previous years, and I expanded the character lists while I was at it. So that is my tiny little contribution.

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2. My current health insurance plan will cease to exist at the end of the year. Fortunately, my company has two new plans to offer. I am yet not sure which to choose, especially because it appears, based on the monthly premium figures vs. the deductions from my paychecks, that I have been getting a $23-per-week discount on my current plan (which I nonetheless cannot afford on my own), and I have to call the office to figure out how and why that is happening, and whether it will happen again for whatever new plan I choose.

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3. I wrote 250 words of "Secrets" ch. 14 tonight. Ginny and Daphne are meant to be arranging a truce, complete (perhaps) with grudging half-complete apologies on both sides. Getting them to be civil to each other is like pulling teeth. And yet, it is thematically important, and I laid this damn plot thread all the way back in chapters 2 and 3, so here I am, with my metaphorical pliers. *resolve face* I am going to finish this story if it kills me.

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4. Tangentially to point 3, I hate all my current WIPs. Distract me, people! Give me a fandom and a prompt, and I will write a ficlet for you. First five comments (on either LJ or Dreamwidth) get fics.

A) As Love from Lies, or Truth from Art -- 600 words, Chronicles of Narnia, for silverblade219.

B) A Certain Point of View -- 550 words, Harry Potter, for alchymie.

C) Health Insurance -- 675 words, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for yggidee.

D) Compatibility -- 1,500 words, Naruto, for lynati_1.

E) Sons and Daughters -- 150 words, Naruto, for theodosia21.

F) Some Work of Noble Note -- 850 words, Star Trek: AOS, for valles_uf.

Comments

[silverblade219.livejournal.com]

Prompt: Narnia, Susan after the last book?

[edenfalling]

Er, I kind of already wrote that: Endurance. But looking at that story again, I realize I was writing more about why Susan turned away from Narnia and her refusal to let catastrophe destroy her, so... do you want something immediately post-TLB or something later in her life? Also, what is your preference vis-a-vis Susan and reconciliation to Aslan/Narnia? Because my headcanon is very flexible (I love honorh's The Queen's Return and gisho's Went Forth Unconquered equally passionately, and they are very different in their attitudes toward canon themes) so I am a little at sea here.

[silverblade219.livejournal.com]

Sorry for being so vague, and think I missed that fic when you first posted it. I was thinking something later in her life, with her trying to continue living an ordinary life. Regarding Aslan, I tend to think that she would probably continue rejecting Narnia and yet I also kind of hope that at the end of her life she will be able to see her family again. However, I'm sort of curious how her day to day life is, which is not complete connected to Narnia, if that makes sense?

If this is still too vague, feel free to give my spot to someone else or I can try to come up with another prompt.

As Love from Lies, or Truth from Art

[edenfalling]

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As Love from Lies, or Truth from Art
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Susan left England, after. The last summer she'd been happy -- before her family soured, before she turned all her fierce concentration onto seizing the frothy illusion of the present and letting the past and future fade -- she had toured America with her parents.

She went back across the ocean, chasing the sunset over frigid waves. It was better to be alone in a foreign land; she could pretend she had chosen to be apart, that her old life wasn't gone but simply tucked away in a corner, waiting for her to return.

She could never bear to do nothing, and frivolity hurt like knives through her feet and lungs now, hurt like Lucy's bewildered tears and earnest pleas. She needed to be useful, needed a purpose, a cause to distract herself. She went to college, became a teacher. Susan was good with children; she remembered managing Edmund and Lucy, and even Peter in his moods. She was strict but fair, and sometimes -- if her students had been particularly good -- she would tell incidents from history, dressed up as if they were fairy-tales. But she never told made-up stories. She never lied.

She married late. She'd always thought she ought to, since no one else was left to carry on, but she had gone cold, after. She had lost the knack of charming men. But no skill grows so rusty it cannot be dusted off and put to use again, and one day she found herself in conversation with a fellow teacher, then going out for coffee, then cooking him dinner, then meeting his parents, then holding his hands in a church and exchanging vows. His name was Thomas Hart. Susan took his name, severing her last tie to the past.

They had one child, a girl with mouse-brown hair, a narrow face, and a mind made to solve puzzles. Thomas named her Jane. She was nothing like Lucy. Susan was grateful, both for the lack of reminders, and because raising a child was something new, something she had never done in either before. Jane and Thomas were her anchors.

Jane grew, as children were wont to do, and proved both like and unlike Susan. She was never frivolous; she always thought of the future. She studied physics. It was an unusual choice for a woman. Thomas made skeptical noises, but Susan shushed him. She respected science. It played fair. And she had raised Jane to be practical; if her daughter thought she could be successful in her chosen field, Susan believed her.

Eventually, Susan retired from teaching. Her students (and their parents, and her colleagues) threw her a party. She gathered the children around her one last time and looked at their eager faces. They were so ready to believe, so ready to trust. Life had not betrayed them yet.

If she told them about four children who found a whole country inside a wardrobe, what would it hurt? What was the harm in a small fantasy to color the darkness they would slog through over the years? Susan closed her eyes. She pictured Jane, ensconced at a laboratory in California, hapiness bubbling in her voice every time she called. She pictured Thomas, solid and warm, waiting at home for her that night. She pictured a life -- small and contained, perhaps, nothing glorious, nothing rare -- and set that against the weight of loss and promises unfulfilled.

Not yet, she told Lucy in her head. Not yet, and maybe not ever. She had her own life now, her own truth. It was good, and it was enough.

She told the children about Eleanor of Aquitaine instead.

Then she went home.

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End of Story

Re: As Love from Lies, or Truth from Art

[silverblade219.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love this version of Susan you have painted. I like that she was able ground herself with her students and later her daughter, and how that while she tried to break all ties to the past, she would always remember it in the back of her mind.

And I find it interesting how she treated Narnia as if it was a lie, while she disguised stories of history as fairy tales.

Thank you for this :)

Re: As Love from Lies, or Truth from Art

[edenfalling]

Thank you! I think Susan does remember Narnia in canon; she just pretends not to, for various reasons. And... well, I have tended to write Susan talking with Edmund, but when I was rewatching the Disney filmization of LWW the other day, it occurred to me that much was made of Peter and Edmund's sibling relationship, but while Susan and Lucy were together much more often, their relationship was hardly developed at all beyond one conversation about their mother's dresses. So I wanted to have Susan thinking about Lucy, here, which is why I gave her a daughter instead of a son. (I don't think that came across very well, though. *sigh*)

Re: As Love from Lies, or Truth from Art

[rianax.livejournal.com]

She lived long and loved well, and that might not be an exciting life, it is a good one by any definition.

Susan ruled as royalty, walked by the side of her god, and suffered exile twice over. The loss of her entire family was simply the last paving stone on her path. She never forgot but to speak would break her heart in two.

So she lived instead.

Lovely. You get that Susan's enduring gift has been forbearance as much a Lucy's was unwavering faith.

Re: As Love from Lies, or Truth from Art

[edenfalling]

Susan is (as much as I hate to use elemental symbolism) like water: she adapts. She accepts what she's given and doesn't worry too much about might-have-been. And while I think she went a little overboard in immersing herself back in everyday life in England (one can, after all, live in the now without totally renouncing the past), I do not think she deserves the condemnation Eustace, Jill, and Polly gave her.

Nor did I ever think Lewis betrayed, her, really, though he definitely gave her a raw deal by killing her entire family. After all, while she didn't get to the true Narnia with her siblings, she's still alive. She can be good and do good, and Lewis never says anything that (to me) implies she has no hope of getting to the true Narnia in her own time.