the deep moans round with many voices

Raise your hand if you're surprised that I wrote Narnia fanfiction. Anybody? Somehow I thought not. *sigh*

This is Lucy-centric, sort of a character study set mostly in the last chapter of Prince Caspian. My canon is bookverse, partly because I haven't seen the second movie yet, and partly because for me, film versions of novels are always an interpretation of canon rather than canon themselves -- I may make use of them, but they're not the basis of my understanding of any world. (Well, to be perfectly honest, I think I saw the old BBC film of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe before I read the books, so I'm sure that version is probably at the root of a lot of my reflex visualization of Lewis's world, but that was almost twenty years ago and I'm not a very visual person anyway, so. Let's just leave it at bookverse, shall we?)

The title is half a quote from Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light. The long version is this: "None sing hymns to breath," said Yama. "But, oh to be without it!" The original context is a fight to the death that ends with Yama drowning Rild/Sugata in a river, but I find the quote has more universal applicability. *grin*

Anyway. Story!

[ETA: The story is also posted here on AO3 and here on ff.net.]

( None Sing Hymns to Breath )

I fail horribly at writing Aslan. I think this is because he doesn't do normal dialogue; he speaks in Pronouncements From On High, and it's hard to write something that sounds profound and wise on such short notice. *sigh* Oh well, I'm sure it's good practice for something.

Also, I cheated on this. The bones of the story were done in 15 minutes, but it was very ugly and awkward, so I took another 20 minutes to cut and insert and rephrase various snippets until it matched up better with what I was trying to say. (In other words, this is now about 85% true to the Platonic story ideal in my head, instead of a measley 60%.)

Yuletide reveal day!

I wrote To Be of Use for qwerty, aka xsmoonshine. The fandom is Diana Wynne Jones's The Homeward Bounders, a YA fantasy book. (The slightly revised ff.net version is here; basically, I killed a typo and smoothed some minor narrative flow and clarity issues.)

I shall summarize the book for those of you (which is probably most of you, sadly) who have not read it: There are many, many worlds, and there is a group of demon-like beings called Them who run all the worlds as a set of giant war games, like Risk. Now and then people discover the truth and are exiled to walk the Boundaries, which means they travel from world to world trying to get Home.

Jamie Hamilton, a boy from a version of England circa 1880, is our narrator. In the course of his wanderings he meets other Homeward Bounders, most notably Helen Haras-Uquara, whose world is rather like a real-life version of Dungeons and Dragons (she's kind of a cleric equivalent), and Joris, an apprentice demon hunter who is also a slave. They realize they can direct their own travels instead of waiting for Them to fling them about, and begin to fight back.

The brilliant thing about The Homeward Bounders as a fanfiction source is that it has so many possibilities -- infinite worlds to choose as settings and a lot of interesting characters who clearly had lives before they were rudely yanked out of them and will most likely continue to have interesting lives after the end of the book. But my story deals only with Joris and his master, Konstam Khan.

Joris thinks Konstam is the most amazing person in the world (and to be fair, he's mostly right), but he hates being a slave. Fortunately, Konstam reveals during the course of the book that he plans to manumit Joris as soon as he turns eighteen; he'd do it sooner but that would be illegal. (I think Konstam thought his intentions were obvious, which, clearly, they were not to Joris; they seem to have a slight culture clash over the issue of slavery.)

To Be of Use is an explanation of how Konstam and Joris first met, and why Konstam bought a slave when he doesn't seem enamored of slavery as an institution. It's also a small demon hunting adventure, because this is Joris and Konstam. (One is a rich scion of a world-famous family! The other is his slave! Together, They Fight Demons! *grin*)

This is my femgenficathon story, posted just under the wire. Phew!

Prompt: #68 - The world is round, and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning. -- Ivy Baker Priest.

Summary: In which Morwen loses her house, meets a princess and a knight, does a favor for the king of the dragons, makes a new friend, and finds a new home, all within two days. This story uses some of my personal backstory for Morwen, but it should be perfectly comprehensible to anyone who's read Patricia C. Wrede's books... and, hopefully, even to people who haven't. Thanks to uminohikari and sirena_lune for the lightning-fast beta!

The Affairs of Dragons, Part 1

The Affairs of Dragons, Part 2

(Or you could read the ff.net version, which is slightly tidied-up.)

...

I think I'm going to go edit a few more commas out. I always go overboard with them when I'm writing, and they always make me wince later on.

This story is set about ten years before main mercverse canon, insofar as this AU can be said to have any canon. :-) So. "Two Guys and a Girl," in which I bend, staple, and otherwise mutilate normal game canon involving trips to Nibelheim, because seriously, what's the point of crack AUs if you can't play around like this?

Edited 2/4/08, because the version first posted was the rough draft, which I put up mostly so I wouldn't have to eat my scarf for delaying yet another day. *grin* The new version still isn't great literature, but it's a bit less embarrassingly awkward.

( Two Guys and a Girl, Part 10 )

Back to Part 9

crosspost at mercverse community

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I may write a brief epilogue set a few years later, but then again, I have a lot of other things to work on, so don't hold your breath. Julian Silverberg is a reference to chofi's fic here; I know nothing of Suikoden or how she intended to use him, but this seemed reasonable to me. Zack's issues with duels (and the trouble they caused at court) are mentioned in several other fics.

This story is set about ten years before main mercverse canon, insofar as this AU can be said to have any canon. :-) So. "Two Guys and a Girl," in which I bend, staple, and otherwise mutilate normal game canon involving trips to Nibelheim, because seriously, what's the point of crack AUs if you can't play around like this?

( Two Guys and a Girl, Part 9 )

Back to Part 8

Continue to Part 10

crosspost at mercverse community

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Chapter 10 should be done Wednesday or Thursday... Friday at the latest.