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edenfallingGood morning! Yesterday the last NFE fic was posted, and today the master list of stories is up. I can now tell you about the story I wrote. (And you can laugh at me for my anon!fail, for truly, it is full of fail on that front. Especially after the most recent chapter of "The Courting Dance," which went up just a couple days before my NFE fic. *headdesk*)
Anyway. I wrote Out of Season: In the fourteenth year of Rishti Tisroc's reign, a demon in the shape of a beaver is captured and brought to Tashbaan. Shezan Tolkheera, high priestess of the goddess Achadith, is given the responsibility of guarding the demon until its sacrifice at the Spring Festival. Complications ensue. (26,000 words, background presence of slavery, discussion of and planning for something equivalent to human sacrifice.) The first third was beta-checked by the ever-amazingtheodosia21, and the remaining two thirds are entirely my fault.
[ETA: The revised and slightly extended version is now up in three pseudo-chapters on ff.net or as a single file on the AO3.]
There is also a character list for those who want one, since this is a story almost entirely about original characters, and the canon characters who exist are minor side-players or antagonists from The Horse and His Boy rather than the more familiar Narnian cast.
(Actually, "Out of Season" might be more accessible for people not familiar with Narnia than most Narnia fanfiction is -- you can treat it pretty much as an original story that just happens to be set in a world that someone else made up.)
So.
Now I am going to talk about writing!
---------------
My recipient was![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lady_songsmith, who asked for the following:
What I want:
any of:
-moral/ethical dilemmas: doing the wrong thing for the right reasons
-Susan solves a major national/international problem with her wits/words
-the first time (any of) the Pevensies leave Narnia-the-country or the first time they meet someone from another country.
-a crisis at Cair Paravel told from a non-Pevensie perspective
Prompt words/objects/quotes/whatever:
home, allegiance, discovery, secrecy, oath, perception
What I definitely don't want in my fic:
I don't like the preachy, convert-to-Christianity-today! tone found in a large subset of Narnia fic (no problem with religious themes; just over the top tone). I don't like the infantilization of the female characters - Lucy always a naive child whatever her age, Susan helpless and weepy, Jill confused and lost. That's about it, I think.
Given that, my initial idea was always to explain why on earth Rabadash was courting Susan, since the Calormenes look down on Narnia to such extreme degrees and probably view the Pevensies as jumped-up barbarian commoners, not at all suitable for marrying their crown prince who is also supposedly of divine descent. I figured I needed some kind of diplomatic crisis that Susan would solve (with her wits and words), which would mark her out as someone who might be able to stand up to Rabadash. This is how the Marigold Beaver plot was born.
Shezan came later. Initially I thought I would more directly answer the "crisis at Cair Paravel told from a non-Pevensie perspective" aspect by writing an exchange of letters between a Calormene ambassador and his wife back in Tashbaan, but that foundered on logistical issues -- namely, while Narnians with intelligent birds can easily send messages hither and yon, it's a bit harder for people relying on trained pigeons, ships, and fast riders. Also, there is a point where someone talks about the Calormene ambassadors arriving in Narnia to open negotiations for the marriage, which implies that none were there beforehand.
Then I got tangled in my distaste for Lewis's portrayal of Calormene culture and religion -- because Lewis is an ethnocentric Christian apologist, and if you read the scene where Aravis and Lasaraleen hide behind the couch, it is impossible NOT to see that Lewis thinks of the Calormenes as intrinsically less than the Narnians -- and some of my own world-building about the history of Calormen, and ended up at the logical conclusion that of course you needed religious authority to guard a demon. Since I already had a goddess (Achadith) whose domain included things out of joint, it made sense for her servants to be the ones imprisoning Marigold Beaver; also, I like to default to creating female characters unless there is a pressing reason to make an OC male.
I don't quite remember when Rabadash's plot entered the picture. I suspect it was early on, with the notion that it was yet another reason to get him out of Calormen -- to send him somewhere, anywhere, why not Narnia!
All these threads smashed into one another, tangled up, and grew complications like kudzu, until I was left with a story that is about four times as long as the one I'd imagined, yet probably still not quite as long as it ought to be. (The latter sections are not edited at all, you see, and do not hang together as neatly as they should.) It is also a much more indirect prompt response than I started out with, though you can still see how I got from the prompt to the end product, and I did manage to at least thematically use all the random prompt words -- home, allegiance, discovery, secrecy, oath, perception -- at some point or other, since this is a story about secrets, loyalty, and a clash of cultures and religions.
I think, in the end, that while "Out of Season" is not the story I meant to write, it is much better for the changes. And I kind of ship Shezan/Ilgamuth myself. *wry*
Anyway. I wrote Out of Season: In the fourteenth year of Rishti Tisroc's reign, a demon in the shape of a beaver is captured and brought to Tashbaan. Shezan Tolkheera, high priestess of the goddess Achadith, is given the responsibility of guarding the demon until its sacrifice at the Spring Festival. Complications ensue. (26,000 words, background presence of slavery, discussion of and planning for something equivalent to human sacrifice.) The first third was beta-checked by the ever-amazing
theodosia21, and the remaining two thirds are entirely my fault.[ETA: The revised and slightly extended version is now up in three pseudo-chapters on ff.net or as a single file on the AO3.]
There is also a character list for those who want one, since this is a story almost entirely about original characters, and the canon characters who exist are minor side-players or antagonists from The Horse and His Boy rather than the more familiar Narnian cast.
(Actually, "Out of Season" might be more accessible for people not familiar with Narnia than most Narnia fanfiction is -- you can treat it pretty much as an original story that just happens to be set in a world that someone else made up.)
So.
Now I am going to talk about writing!
---------------
My recipient was
lady_songsmith, who asked for the following:What I want:
any of:
-moral/ethical dilemmas: doing the wrong thing for the right reasons
-Susan solves a major national/international problem with her wits/words
-the first time (any of) the Pevensies leave Narnia-the-country or the first time they meet someone from another country.
-a crisis at Cair Paravel told from a non-Pevensie perspective
Prompt words/objects/quotes/whatever:
home, allegiance, discovery, secrecy, oath, perception
What I definitely don't want in my fic:
I don't like the preachy, convert-to-Christianity-today! tone found in a large subset of Narnia fic (no problem with religious themes; just over the top tone). I don't like the infantilization of the female characters - Lucy always a naive child whatever her age, Susan helpless and weepy, Jill confused and lost. That's about it, I think.
Given that, my initial idea was always to explain why on earth Rabadash was courting Susan, since the Calormenes look down on Narnia to such extreme degrees and probably view the Pevensies as jumped-up barbarian commoners, not at all suitable for marrying their crown prince who is also supposedly of divine descent. I figured I needed some kind of diplomatic crisis that Susan would solve (with her wits and words), which would mark her out as someone who might be able to stand up to Rabadash. This is how the Marigold Beaver plot was born.
Shezan came later. Initially I thought I would more directly answer the "crisis at Cair Paravel told from a non-Pevensie perspective" aspect by writing an exchange of letters between a Calormene ambassador and his wife back in Tashbaan, but that foundered on logistical issues -- namely, while Narnians with intelligent birds can easily send messages hither and yon, it's a bit harder for people relying on trained pigeons, ships, and fast riders. Also, there is a point where someone talks about the Calormene ambassadors arriving in Narnia to open negotiations for the marriage, which implies that none were there beforehand.
Then I got tangled in my distaste for Lewis's portrayal of Calormene culture and religion -- because Lewis is an ethnocentric Christian apologist, and if you read the scene where Aravis and Lasaraleen hide behind the couch, it is impossible NOT to see that Lewis thinks of the Calormenes as intrinsically less than the Narnians -- and some of my own world-building about the history of Calormen, and ended up at the logical conclusion that of course you needed religious authority to guard a demon. Since I already had a goddess (Achadith) whose domain included things out of joint, it made sense for her servants to be the ones imprisoning Marigold Beaver; also, I like to default to creating female characters unless there is a pressing reason to make an OC male.
I don't quite remember when Rabadash's plot entered the picture. I suspect it was early on, with the notion that it was yet another reason to get him out of Calormen -- to send him somewhere, anywhere, why not Narnia!
All these threads smashed into one another, tangled up, and grew complications like kudzu, until I was left with a story that is about four times as long as the one I'd imagined, yet probably still not quite as long as it ought to be. (The latter sections are not edited at all, you see, and do not hang together as neatly as they should.) It is also a much more indirect prompt response than I started out with, though you can still see how I got from the prompt to the end product, and I did manage to at least thematically use all the random prompt words -- home, allegiance, discovery, secrecy, oath, perception -- at some point or other, since this is a story about secrets, loyalty, and a clash of cultures and religions.
I think, in the end, that while "Out of Season" is not the story I meant to write, it is much better for the changes. And I kind of ship Shezan/Ilgamuth myself. *wry*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-08 02:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-08 04:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-07 07:36 pm (UTC)I loved Out of Season. It was a terrific story and as a reader very much worth your effort.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-07 11:19 pm (UTC)Sure! I will send you all the background details and stuff on Friday when I am home again and can pull the information out of the several disparate files it's currently spread through.
Things related to Calormen and things related to the Star's Daughter seemed to be the theme of this exchange, insofar as it had one. There was much less Peter-and-Edmund than I'd expected -- when the Pevensies were the focus, they seemed to all four get into the main picture.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-08 12:47 am (UTC)The pantheon was just absolutely wonderful. I totally get what you were saying about getting frustrated with Lewis's take on Calormen; I've been struggling with that myself lately trying to keep his flavor of the culture while cutting out a lot of the blatant racism, while I was writing "Wind, Sand, Stars." You really nailed it, I'm so impressed!
It was not at all what I was expecting to get from those prompts (I figured something much more Pevensie-focused was likely) but it blew all my expectations right out of the water, and I'm just in awe. Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-08 04:54 am (UTC)The western rebellions are pretty much drawn from canon -- I just took some of Lewis's names (Teebeth, Zulindreh) and attached them to something slightly more concrete. Well, and I confess that I have a notion that when Archenlandish rebels fled south across the desert around the year 205, they didn't found Calormen; instead, they ran into the Calormenes, were pushed west, and got conquered by the expanding empire a few generations later, which is one reason the west is always restive. And the idea that Calormen has been looking inward for a long time and is now starting to focus outward again is drawn from the general idea that history goes in, if not cycles, at least spirals. The empire was growing ragged and tenuous, but now that Rishti Tisroc has established his power over all the provinces, one of the best ways to create national feeling is to direct attention against external challenges.
Anyway, I find that if I give characters clear goals at the start, all I really need to do is sit back and let them do whatever seems most likely to get them to the results they want; that will create plenty of complications and conflict without any micromanagement on my part. (It will also tend to run LONG, but that's a different issue.) Further details will pop up when I need people to talk about something, and I can backfill to foreshadow them if necessary.
My history reading is hopelessly eclectic -- I think there are bits and pieces in "Out of Season" from the history of India, the history of the Mongols, the northern Crusades in Poland and Lithuania, the "settlement" of the American west, the history of Iran, all the books of myths and legends I read as a child and teen, and so on and so forth. The part that I did the most specific research on was beavers, actually. I went to the library and checked out two natural history books to make sure I knew what I was talking about when it came to Marigold... though in the end, I was only able to find information about North American beavers. Eurasian beavers are not much reported on in comparison. *sigh*
I did mean to have the Pevensies in sharper focus, but the story just didn't work out that way. *shrug* Maybe someday I will write the tale of Rabadash's time in Narnia, or the initial weeks of Susan and Edmund's stay in Tashbaan. I am sure both would make interesting stories...