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edenfallingToday is NFE reveal day! I wrote three stories this year: one assignment, one pinch hit, and one tiny Madness ficlet. I will talk about each in a separate post.
The Mystery of Mount Pire: Aravis joins Lucy and Susan on a winter exploration of Archenland. (2,600 words, written for![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
Heliopause)
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Then I wrote a pinch hit!
I jumped on this one because I desperately wanted to write Susan and Lucy having an adventure. It is an idea which is near and dear to my heart, but which I had only treated glancingly in the past. Alas, events conspired against me -- the day after I claimed the pinch hit I was laid low by a nasty cold, slept thirteen hours a day until the weekend and was afflicted by sludge-brain while awake, and thus had only Saturday afternoon and evening to write -- and so I have still only treated the idea in a glancing fashion... but dammit, before this year is over I am going to pick up the loose threads I laid out and do something with them. Or else!
To partially make up for ending before the actual adventure part of this adventure tale, I threw in a nod to one of Heliopause's other prompts, about characters who are only mentioned in passing in canon, such as the Lady Liln. I have long been of the opinion that a giant turning into a mountain makes no logistical sense whatsoever, and also that Olvin 'winning' Liln as a prize for killing Pire is a horrible and sexist trope, so I gave Liln a bit of actual background as a half-dryad Narnian judge and am going to give Olvin and Pire similar treatment once I get my explorers up on top of that mysterious frozen waterfall.
The theme of Aravis adjusting to life in Archenland was not a conscious choice on my part; it happened organically as I wrote. But I am glad that it gave the fic a coherent character arc to make up for the way I chopped the plot arc off just as it was getting started.
I did not try very hard to be anonymous in this story, given that I reused both the idea of Susan and Lucy being trouble magnets when they're together anywhere but Cair Paravel (that is from Interesting Times), and the character of Catchlight the Raven (who appears in an unfinished fragment about Cor and Aravis going to Narnia for the Summer Festival). I did make a token stab toward passing those off as a reference to 'someone else's work' by making a genuine (and heartfelt) tip of the hat towardrthstewart's work in Susan's line about Llamas not being the most reliable storytellers, and Otters and Hummingbirds not using very polite language, but by that point in the writing process I was more concerned with getting the thing done than anything else.
(I ran too close to the deadline to get this beta-read. Again. One of these years I really must learn better time management skills.)
The Mystery of Mount Pire: Aravis joins Lucy and Susan on a winter exploration of Archenland. (2,600 words, written for
-----
Then I wrote a pinch hit!
I jumped on this one because I desperately wanted to write Susan and Lucy having an adventure. It is an idea which is near and dear to my heart, but which I had only treated glancingly in the past. Alas, events conspired against me -- the day after I claimed the pinch hit I was laid low by a nasty cold, slept thirteen hours a day until the weekend and was afflicted by sludge-brain while awake, and thus had only Saturday afternoon and evening to write -- and so I have still only treated the idea in a glancing fashion... but dammit, before this year is over I am going to pick up the loose threads I laid out and do something with them. Or else!
To partially make up for ending before the actual adventure part of this adventure tale, I threw in a nod to one of Heliopause's other prompts, about characters who are only mentioned in passing in canon, such as the Lady Liln. I have long been of the opinion that a giant turning into a mountain makes no logistical sense whatsoever, and also that Olvin 'winning' Liln as a prize for killing Pire is a horrible and sexist trope, so I gave Liln a bit of actual background as a half-dryad Narnian judge and am going to give Olvin and Pire similar treatment once I get my explorers up on top of that mysterious frozen waterfall.
The theme of Aravis adjusting to life in Archenland was not a conscious choice on my part; it happened organically as I wrote. But I am glad that it gave the fic a coherent character arc to make up for the way I chopped the plot arc off just as it was getting started.
I did not try very hard to be anonymous in this story, given that I reused both the idea of Susan and Lucy being trouble magnets when they're together anywhere but Cair Paravel (that is from Interesting Times), and the character of Catchlight the Raven (who appears in an unfinished fragment about Cor and Aravis going to Narnia for the Summer Festival). I did make a token stab toward passing those off as a reference to 'someone else's work' by making a genuine (and heartfelt) tip of the hat toward
rthstewart's work in Susan's line about Llamas not being the most reliable storytellers, and Otters and Hummingbirds not using very polite language, but by that point in the writing process I was more concerned with getting the thing done than anything else.(I ran too close to the deadline to get this beta-read. Again. One of these years I really must learn better time management skills.)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-07 03:59 am (UTC)(No pressure! The story is great as it stands, as being about learning to begin to love a land so alien.)
The whole Liln story has bothered me, too, though for different reasons. I wrote this this as a starting point for my thinking about it (that was possibly going to be the starting point for an adventure too!). Yes, the damsel-in-distress is tedious and sexist - I'm glad that in canon it's only reported, and reworked into a ballad at that, so we can assume unreliable narrator to the nth degree. (I assume unreliable narrator reasonably often in Narnian canon).
I didn't pick you as the writer! :) I did pick "White Lady", but I supposed your other two were Madnesses.
Thank you again for nobly coming to the rescue (talk about damsels in distress!) with a pinch-hit. I loved the wintry feel of it, paralleling Aravis's lostness in the castle, and then swinging around so beautifully at the waterfall. The two sisters knowing each other so well was gorgeously warm and funny, too. I'm smiling right now in recollection!
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-07 04:29 am (UTC)That would be telling! ;-)
I had always assumed that Pire turning into Mount Pire had to be poetic embellishment, if only because of size and shape discrepancies, and so the comparison to Jadis's petrifactions didn't occur to me until it occurred to Lucy in the middle of the story. I suspect Lewis was thinking in terms of medieval Arthurian tales, which are full of random giants, and completely missed the implications because continuity of world-building was never his strength.
Yeah, in retrospect I wasn't very anonymous with "White Lady," was I? I grumbled on here about switching prompts, the reference to interpreting the writing on the World-Ash tree (not to mention its location) is taken directly from "The Corners of the World," and I think my admiration for Jadis shows through rather a lot. sigh* I just... I really love her. I loved her even when I was a child. She's a horrible person and I'd never want to meet her in real life, but she's such a wonderful character: vivid, strong, and determined to take charge of her own destiny. She beats God for a hundred years! How can you not respect that?