wherein Liz thinks about her NFE assignment

[edenfalling]

NFE assignments are out, and having looked at my recipient's prompts and letter, I have to say, my biggest question here is not, "Can I work with this?" (the answer is YES, by the way; thank you, snacky!) but rather, "Is it even worth trying to be anonymous?"

Well, I could easily be anonymous on one of the prompts, because I have never written anything about that particular part of canon (and everyone can just wonder for several weeks whether I am using 'part' to mean book, era, character, location, or something else), but the others... um. Let's just say that they would be VERY EASY to write, and they would give me away in half a heartbeat.

Unless I go AU to my personal headcanons. Which could be really interesting! But I hate unnecessarily reinventing the wheel, and it's oddly frustrating to create something that would fit into my Lost Chronicles timeline except for Thing X, whatever Thing X may be.

Heh. You know what? This is where I wish I were rthstewart and had other people writing fanfic of my fanfic, because then I would have at least a little built-in plausible deniability. *wry*

...

Or wait. It suddenly occurs to me that this is the perfect excuse to explore certain OTHER vague notions that I haven't had any excuse to work into stories, but have kind of idly speculated about over the years. My recipient's prompts are very broad and forgiving in that fashion. Oooh. Yes. Okay, I think I have a plan...

*disappears in a flurry of evil laughter*

Comments

[heliopausa]

:) It sounds like you'll have a lot of fun, juggling! (as for me - fairly flummoxed at this stage.)

[edenfalling]

I am going to have so much fun, oh yes. *rubs hands gleefully*

And don't worry! It's early days yet -- plenty of time to brainstorm a way through!

[marmota_b]

I have a similar problem - not that my style and stories are that known, but that I immediately got an idea that would, however, give away a faraway plot point for my story in progress! So I will have to work around that idea somehow. Thankfully, there isn't much of a plot idea yet, so I think working around it will be quite easy...

[edenfalling]

Yeah, it's like, I immediately had about twelve perfect ideas... but every single one of them relied inextricably on worldbuilding I've done in previous stories. And worldbuilding, unlike character interpretations, is a fairly distinctive 'fingerprint' as it were, since Lewis left so many gaps and we all fill them in our own unique ways. *sigh*

I think I may still wind up being a little obvious, but at least my new plan is much less so than if I'd... oh, let's say written a story about Shezan and Ilgamuth visiting Narnia as part of a diplomatic mission. Because that was about the level of obviousness I was dealing with at the start. *wry*

Best of luck with your writing!

[marmota_b]

And to you!

[rthstewart]

Eh. SO WHAT. If you know that your recipient would love more about Shezan and Ilgamuth, I say GO FOR IT -- mostly because I'd love another story of them. Yes, it's bad form to ask for specific things like that -- people asking for stories in someone's verse are a nightmare to match. But if you know your recipient is someone who would love a story like that hint hint, I think they would be delighted to receive such a story. I know I would.

[edenfalling]

Shezan and Ilgamuth would actually be completely irrelevant to... eh, no, I lie; there ARE ways I could logically use them to answer one of the prompts, but that would result in a story somewhat diagonal to the intent of the prompt in that it would answer the right question but from a counter-intuitive direction. Anyway, I mentioned them mostly to calibrate the level of obviousness I'd be indulging in if I went with any of my initial fic ideas.

But hey, if Snacky does open the prompt list early for extra Madness fic writing time, I am more than willing to write a Shezan/Ilgamuth snippet for you. :-)

[transposable_element]

You know what? This is where I wish I were rthstewart and had other people writing fanfic of my fanfic, because then I would have at least a little built-in plausible deniability.

You vant I should write some Shezan & Ilgamuth fanfic?

(I don't know what the Yiddish accent is about here...)

[edenfalling]

Heh. Well, I certainly wouldn't say no if you felt so inclined!

(Actually, I admit to casually wondering what god(dess) Shezan would serve in your version of Calormen, because she would be a priestess if at all possible; she is the kind of person for whom religion is a central aspect of life. She wouldn't follow Zardeenah -- our takes on her are similar enough that I can say that with certainty -- but I'm not familiar enough with the rest of your pantheon to guess.)

[transposable_element]

That's an interesting question.

In the Eastern pantheon it would probably be Zirit, the Destroyer, who is dangerous, but rarely deliberately cruel. She destroys, but not wantonly. She is the sister of Tash, and to some degree his antagonist. But I haven't thought as much about that pantheon, so I'm not sure. [ETA: the priesthood of Tash is all male, so definitely not Tash.]

In the Southern pantheon I think it would have to be either Azaroth or Hahatoth. Hahatoth is the sky goddess, very cerebral, the goddess of judgment, patron of scholars. She's a lot like Athena, except for not being a virgin (she's the chief wife of her brother, Azaroth). Azaroth is the creator god, and he exists at the crossroads of sky, earth, and sea, so he's not really part of any realm. He maintains balance, partly by mediating among his three wives/sisters, who don't get along very well. He intervenes in human affairs only rarely, at times of great crisis. So when Kidrash swears by the Hand of Azaroth, he's swearing by the hand that rests on the fulcrum of existence.

Agnath and Sussureth are Azaroth's other two sisters/wives. I can't see Shezan being simpatico with Agnath, who is an earth/agriculture goddess. Sussureth might be a little undignified for Shezan, though her behavior in The Little Sea is partly a reflection of her relationship with Veledis, who is being a little disingenuous about how easy Sussureth is to call upon (they know each other quite well because Tanadar is a coastal province, basically a narrow strip of land between the coast range and the sea).

As you say, Zardeenah would be out; she's an absolutist, and her priestesses tend to be fanatics. On the other hand, she's also the most widely worshipped deity in the empire, even more than Tash, whose worship (at the time of HHB) is growing because the Tisrocs actively promote it. The other gods of the Southern pantheon are more minor gods, mostly the children of Agnath or Sussureth, both of whom sleep around and have a lot of offspring. Hahatoth has only two children, Zardeenah and Ishtelah. Nobody worships Ishtelah because she finds prayers and sacrifices tiresome and really just wants to be left alone with the souls of the virtuous dead, but she is the subject of a great deal of sacred art, most of it in Hahatoth's temples.

There's no single pantheon in the west. They've adopted some of the gods of the other regions of the empire, piecemeal, but their local gods are all nature spirits, sort of like the ones in Narnia. The islands are very diverse, and I haven't thought much about them. But anyway, Shezan, with her family connections, would certainly be a priestess of one of the "big" gods. She would have been brought up with the Eastern pantheon, but the pantheons are no longer fully separate by the time of HHB, so there wouldn't be anything scandalous about her becoming a priestess of Azaroth.

[edenfalling]

Thank you for the information! Zirit does sound like the best match, both in because of what she stands for and because of temporal political considerations... probably with Hahatoth the next best.

I really like the idea of a goddess everybody knows and respects, but whom they don't actively worship because she dislikes the bother of the system. :D