the deep moans round with many voices

some random thoughts on Andre Norton

2021-01-25T06:15:45Z

I have been on a minor Andre Norton kick these past few months -- I have read some books that are new to me, and some that were childhood favorites I haven't read in about 30 years.

I think I mentioned at some point that my childhood hometown library had a surprisingly large selection of Andre Norton's books, most of which they kept in the children's section of the library whether that made much sense or not -- probably because they have no sex and are not overtly gory. So I read an, in retrospect, frankly bizarre combination of fantasy, science fiction, and Norton's own peculiar blend between the two (neither blue nor red but distinctly purple, to misquote Ursula Le Guin).

A year or two back I dug up a copy of Knave of Dreams, which is a "modern American is transported to a fantasy/sci-fi alternate world and must impersonate their dead double" story. Last year I bought a Kindle copy of Wraiths of Time, which is another iteration of that exact same plot. (I am apparently kind of a sucker for that plot, which I blame entirely on Norton.)

This fall I read Operation Time Search, which has a modern American dumped into... it's unclear, but I think, based on the ending, the distant past of our own world? Where Atlantis and Mu and such are real places, and then also randomly there's a place in Brazil-ish called Mayax and a place in Central Asia-ish called Uighur, which is just downright weird set against basically cavemen in Ohio and an apparently Northwest European population in Mu which is located a bit east of Japan. Also I think it may have been written before the widespread knowledge of plate tectonics, because WOW that is not how geology works.

In December I found an anthology version of two books called Flight in Yiktor and Dare To Go A-Hunting, which I remember seeing noted as "other things Andre Norton has written" but had never realized were sequels to Moon of Three Rings and Exiles of the Stars, two books I enjoyed a lot as a child and teenager. Flight in Yiktor resolves some loose plot threads from the first two books, as well as introduces a new POV character who is a Norton stock type -- the boy with a physical difference raised in a spaceport slum who stumbles into adventure in space/on a new planet -- but Dare To Go A-Hunting is kind of shapeless and would have been much better if Norton hadn't tried to shoehorn in all the Celtic mythology and demonology at once. Also there are some awful typos in the Kindle edition. Someone clearly did a global search-and-replace on the "tle" combo for some reason and didn't catch all the resulting glitches, which mainly creates confusion over the name of a particular animal species ("bartle," ends up written as "barde" half the time, which became obvious to me when "castle" suddenly turned into "casde"), and there's also a horrible spellcheck-gone-wrong error in the name of Maelen's god: Molaster, which is a perfectly reasonable alien deity name, spent the entire two volumes misspelled as Molester. *headdesk*

Now I am rereading the Zero Stone duology -- The Zero Stone and Uncharted Stars -- in which Murdoc Jern, an apprentice gemologist, winds up in a lot of trouble due to a mysterious ring his father was investigating, and is also partners with a telepathic mutant alien cat named Eet. I had forgotten just how episodic the first volume was, and also how there are literally no female characters except for brief cameos from Murdoc's mother and sister, and the resident cat on one of the spaceships.

Norton is, in general, kind of weird about female characters. On the one hand, she can write female characters with both great power and unquestioned agency. I don't recall her ever writing a female character who exists solely to be a love interest -- they tend always to be figures of political importance who are actively doing things and have goals of their own. On the other hand, there are almost never female characters just around in the background. All the background characters -- the random traders, the random people in spaceports, the random people in taverns, the random ship crews, the random scientists -- are invariably male unless they're ladies maids and have to be female for gender propriety reasons. That lack of women in the background gets to me after a while, and no number of main or secondary female characters with agency can really make up for that lack.

It's also fascinating reading stock science fiction tropes from the 50s, 60s, and 70s -- the technology Norton assumes is obviously still beyond us in some ways (spaceships, interstellar empires, etc) and astonishingly dated in others (everything is on tapes -- presumably magnetic data storage tapes -- and there are hardly any non-psychic portable communication devices to be found, not even radio). Norton also has a characteristic tendency to blend all kinds of pseudo-science (telepathy, clairvoyance, prophecy, unknown energies, Lovecraftian monsters, fairies, mythical continents, past-life regression, dream communication, lost empires with ultra-high tech that might as well be magic, etc.) in with more properly sciencey science as if they're all the same thing, which I think is somewhat related to various ESP experiments going on in the 1960s when people still thought there might be something there.

I think I may either reread some Witch World or Time Traders novels next... or possibly explore some of the Forerunner books or the Warlock books, neither of which my childhood library had so they will be new to me.

comments

2020 writing roundup and analysis

2021-01-20T22:08:42Z

2019 version // 2018 version // 2017 version // 2016 version // 2015 version // 2014 version // 2013 version // 2012 version // 2011 version // 2010 version // 2009 version // 2005 version

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A Year in Writing: 2020
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( January )

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( February )

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( March )

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( April )

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( May )

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( June )

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( July )

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( August )

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( September )

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( October )

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( November )

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( December )

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2020 Fanfiction: 69,725
2020 Original: 4,975
2020 Total: 74,700

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( Analysis )

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And that is that for the year. :)

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The Distortion and the Worker of Clay

2020-11-15T22:54:28Z

A Magnus Archives thought:

( cut for spoilers about Episode 187 and the Distortion )

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daily update, Thursday April 16

2020-04-17T01:27:14Z

Events of the day:

1. We had a brief, intense storm last night, which dropped up to two inches of snow. About half of that had melted by the time I left for work this morning, and the rest was gone by evening down in the lake valley, though I suspect some lingered up in the hills.

2. Rental company office 9am-5pm. No data entry today -- that got superseded by the more urgent project of sending lease guarantee reminder emails to all incoming tenants whose families hadn't yet returned a signed copy of that form. (This is what we do in lieu of a credit check, since credit-checking college students is not going to get you much useful information.) And then I processed the forms that a whole bunch of families sent in, and sent out "yo, the email you gave us for your parents is no good; please provide a functional email address" emails, and did some other stuff associated with that general project. Also some package stuff, because there's always package stuff. *sigh*

3. My bridesmaid dress for Susan's wedding arrived today! I have tried it on and it fits pretty well. I mean, I have to sort of squish my boobs flat to get the waistline down over my chest, but whatever. Boobs are extremely squishable. We aren't sure if the wedding is still on, given the state of the world, but so far as I know it's still scheduled for this August.

4. Boiled eight eggs for future breakfasts.

5. Steamed broccoli for tonight's dinner and the next couple days.

6. Put away the shirts that air-dried overnight. The rest of the laundry can wait for Friday and Saturday, because ugh.

7. Listened to episode 163 of The Magnus Archives ("In the Trenches"), which... I found it more grotesque than scary, honestly. I am sure the experiences described would be terrifying if they were happening to me, but as a secondhand report, my reaction is mostly just a visceral sort of "ICK GROSS NO." It's just... aha! I have found the correct analogy. The volume knob is broken; everything is at fortissimo and top speed all the time with no contrast, and ( spoilers start here )

...

I'm going to go write more of Jon Sims and Rose Tyler getting chased by killer mannequins now. :)

comments

2019 writing roundup and analysis

2020-01-02T04:14:53Z

2018 version // 2017 version // 2016 version // 2015 version // 2014 version // 2013 version // 2012 version // 2011 version // 2010 version // 2009 version // 2005 version

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A Year in Writing: 2019
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( January )

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( February )

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( March )

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( April )

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( May )

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( June )

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( July )

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( August )

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( September )

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( October )

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( November )

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( December )

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2019 Fanfiction: 30,725
2019 Original: 325
2019 Total: 31,050

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( Analysis )

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And that is that for the year. :)

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[Fic] "and wish her joy in the knowledge that her child will live" - Children of the Star

2020-01-01T18:19:21Z

Today is Yuletide reveal day! Here is the story I wrote this year:

and wish her joy in the knowledge that her child will live (1745 words) by Elizabeth Culmer
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Children of the Star - Sylvia Louise Engdahl
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Noren/Talyra
Characters: Noren (Children of the Star), Beris (Children of the Star), Brek (Children of the Star)
Additional Tags: Childbirth, Medical Trauma, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fictional Religion & Theology, Physical Disability (discussed)

Summary: Talyra and the baby live. This changes nothing and everything.

(Written for primeideal)

-----

So, first of all this story will make approximately -5% sense if you don't know the canon, since it's a canon-divergence AU of the opening scene of book 3 in a trilogy. And the canon is pretty obscure, so, you know, not a big audience here. *wry* But that is what Yuletide is about!

I am a little annoyed at myself for not being able to run the AU further forward to show how the changes snowball, and also to get Talyra interacting with Lianne -- both because that would have let me hit more of primeideal's prompt seeds and because it would have been more accessible to the general fannish public -- but that would have required a minimum of 15,000 more words once I got the plot rolling so I left off at the proof-of-concept stage.

( cut for length )

...

Someday I want to come back and write the novella I couldn't get to this year. It will have an audience of about three people on the planet, but I don't care. I think it's something that needs saying, and I want to say it.

We'll see if I can make good on that. :)

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how to steal an apartment

2019-12-10T21:08:08Z

Apropos of nothing in particular:

So I was reading a fic yesterday (which I will not be naming or linking to, because it's relevant only as the spark of this ramble) in which (as a minor backstory point) two skilled hackers essentially steal an apartment by making it vanish off all electronic records so they won't have to pay rent.

Something struck me a little weird about that, but the sense of wrongness didn't crystallize until later on, when the hackers get into more serious crimes and one tells the other to stop bringing one-night stands back to where they have evidence lying around. Because they don't want to get found out.

The thing is, they would have been found out LONG before that. You flat out CANNOT make an apartment vanish that way. Not if the rental company/property management company is remotely on top of things.

Like, okay, you disappear an apartment off electronic records. You steal electricity and whatever other utilities you require. There are still people who know the unit is physically there. If the rental company keeps paper records, they REALLY know it's there. There are going to be paper floor plans and architectural diagrams floating around. And sooner or later somebody is going to notice that they don't have a lease or a tenant listed for Unit X, and also that Unit X has vanished from their electronic records, which is a big red flag that something fishy is going on. This will likely take one year maximum, given that apartments tend to rent on one-year leases (which then have to be manually extended/renewed each year).

Some buildings have regular preventative extermination treatments, and in those cases the exterminator will go to every unit; that doesn't rely on electronic records. The exterminator will have a master key and will see all your criminal paraphernalia, and if they're remotely competent will report that to the rental company or property management company. And if you change your lock so the master key won't work? That gets reported even faster.

You're also going to have trouble if there are general maintenance projects, like a burst water pipe or a problem with the heating pipes/vents. It doesn't matter how well you maintain your own apartment -- you can't control what other tenants do in their spaces, and believe me, somebody will break something major sooner or later. Then maintenance will have to notify the tenants that they're coming in to do Project Y, and if nobody has a record of the tenants in Unit X? That's a problem. If maintenance can't work the lock? That's a problem. And so on.

If you want to disappear a property, you're much better off with something you own in full rather than something you rent. And not a condo, either -- then you'd be stuck with the condo association, which is just as nosy as a rental company or property management company. You want a freestanding house. This of course means you'll have to fuck around with tax rolls, and probably intercept tax assessments now and then, but that's much less of an ongoing problem than trying to Jedi mind trick a whole rental company.

But really, you don't want to make the apartment vanish. If you're going to steal an apartment, what you want to do is lease it as a perfectly normal tenant (possibly under a fake ID) and then pay your rent promptly and in full with money you've stolen from somewhere else. Much simpler and less stressful! And if you want to be all "yay computers!" about the thing, you can do leases entirely by email these days, and pay electronically; most rental companies are quite happy to facilitate that sort of thing.

...

I think too much about logistics sometimes.

Also, it's a lot easier to suspend disbelief over things I am unfamiliar with, as you can tell by the fact that I'm writing this post now instead of several years ago, when I first read the fic in question, but had not yet started working for a rental company. *wry*

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audiobook list, November and December 2019

2019-11-30T03:58:58Z

The following is a list of the 4 audiobooks (for varying definitions of "book") that I have listened to in November and December, 2019. They are in chronological order by initial listening date.

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35. War and World History, by Jonathan P. Roth (Great Courses, 25 hours 1 minutes)
-----Basically a history of war and related issues (politics, culture, economics, religion, technology, etc.) from a global perspective, focusing mostly on the "core" (western/southern Europe and western/northern Africa east through China and Japan) as a unified area where military technology and ideas traveled easily from culture to culture, and glancing less frequently at the "marginal" areas outside that unified geographic region (which then obviously shifts after Columbus et al). I think this course works best if you have a decent grounding in general world history to start with, so you have a solid foundation to stick any new information on top of, but it's fascinating and I really like Prof. Roth's unifying approach and refusal to treat Europe, India, China, the Middle East, and so on as walled-off areas, and instead his interest in tracing the back-and-forth flow of influences from one region to another and the reasons why various regions adopted or failed to adopt various innovations over the millennia. I would also be really interested in a few supplemental lectures to get his perspective on military history developments since 2008, which is the stop date/publication date for this course.

36. The Early Middle Ages, by Philip Daileader (Great Courses, 12 hours 32 minutes)
-----I actually listened to this series on CD about... two years ago now? That sounds about right. Anyway, Prof. Daileader did a trilogy of courses about the Middle Ages, but he started with the High Middle Ages because that seemed most likely to be of general interest. I believe this was the second series he recorded. The first part is about Late Antiquity, i.e., the slow alteration of the western Roman Empire into a very different form of society, with some attention paid to the related changes going on in the eastern half of the Empire, and then moves into developments in the new "barbarian" kingdoms of western Europe and the growth of the Carolingian Empire, with tangents on the growth of the Islamic world, the British Isles, and the Balkans and other Slavic lands. (The Vikings get salted in to a handful of lectures.) Very interesting, engaging, and informative.

37. Sleep Better, by Jade Alexis (Aaptiv free Audible member offer, 1 hour 58 minutes)
-----This is a series of seven guided meditations to aid in falling asleep. They start about 10 minutes long, and gradually lengthen until the seventh is about 30 minutes long. I play them at 75% speed because that's more restful for me. I found the third meditation less than useless for idiosyncratic visualization reasons, but the others are very relaxing. In fact, I have not yet managed to hear the end of the sixth and seventh meditations, because I fall asleep before then... which I guess is a pretty good anecdotal recommendation. *wry*

38. The High Middle Ages, by Philip Daileader (Great Courses, 12 hours 25 minutes)
-----Again, I previously listened to this series on CD a year or two ago. This course takes a more thematic approach than Prof. Daileader's lectures on the Early Middle Ages, with the first third being social history, the next third being mostly religious and intellectual history, and the final third being events and politics.

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In non-audiobook but still audio media news, I have picked up another podcast and am working my way through its... um... back catalog? *wry* Namely, The Magnus Archives, which is sort of a supernatural horror anthology with a unifying plot that starts sneaking in around the edges after a few episodes, and which apparently comes more and more to the fore over the seasons. I'm still in season one, but it's quite enjoyable despite my usual issues with listening to people read written fiction. I think that's partly because these episodes were written specifically to be heard rather than to be read visually, but partly also because the conceit of a lot of the initial episodes is a person reading other people's personal statements of paranormal/horror encounters aloud so the Magnus Archives will have an audio record as well as a written record, for accessibility reasons. And then there are some episodes that are actually structured as in-person recorded interviews, so overall the whole effect is more like a radio play than an audiobook.

Anyway, I like this series very much so far. (The fandom is also pretty cool, fyi.)

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[Fic] "In Death's Garden" -- The Nightingale

2019-09-24T17:28:36Z

Authors have been revealed for the main Remix archive, and since events conspired against my attempt to write a Madness ficlet, I only have the one fic to announce. So!

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In Death's Garden (1693 words)
Fandom: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Nattergalen | The Nightingale - Hans Christian Andersen
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Remix

Summary: Death's garden is not a place one can normally reach by looking for it, though all find their way there in the end. However, sometimes when one begins to travel with no clear destination, one finds oneself in strange places. So it was with the nightingale when she slipped from the Emperor's palace in the confusion of her mechanical copy's first performance.

[Remixed from The Nightingale at Dawn by Quillori]

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This is a slightly unusual remix for me, in that it's as much in conversation with the original canon as with the work I'm remixing. I think the only other time I did that was in 2017, when I remixed gramarye's Haroun and the Sea of Stories fic The Monster at the End of This Book into Turn the Page (Don't Fear the Ending). Haroun and the Sea of Stories is an awfully fairy-tale/folktale influenced canon in its own right, so possibly it's just something about fairy-tales influencing the paths my mind turns down. *hands* Look, brains are weird and I overdosed on fairy-tales as a child; these are not new developments.

( cut for length )

Also, as I said in my author's note on AO3, I did a smidge of linguistic research in regard to pronouns, because the translations of Andersen's story I found online used different ones for the nightingale. To summarize, "it" would probably be the most grammatically faithful to the original, but I went with "she" for personal reasons.

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[Meme] If fandoms were lovers

2019-08-14T03:31:12Z

Found via rthstewart

So, first of all, I am not entirely sure what is meant by "fandoms" in this context. Ones I write fic for? Ones I read fic for? Ones I read fic for without ever consuming the canon? Ones where I consume the canon and have no further interest? Interpretation is hard.

But anyway, I will give it a shot!

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If fandoms were lovers...

The one who seduced you and screwed you over and broke your heart in a million pieces and laughed about it. ...I don't think I actually have a fandom this applies to. I mean, yeah, there are things I've started reading or watching and then fallen out of love with, but I can't think of anything that's broken my heart by turning to shit. Unless you're talking about out-of-canon stuff, such as revelations about authors' real-life behavior? In which case I do find it somewhat awkward to reread Marion Zimmer Bradley's books at this point, or Orson Scott Card's work, even if I still find the books themselves valuable.

If we're just talking straight-up stories that I love passionately and which broke my heart, I think the champion is still The Lions of Al-Rassan. But I'm sure that story wasn't laughing at me.

The old flame you don't see very often any more but whom you still really enjoy getting together with for a few drinks and maybe a pleasant nostalgic romp in the sheets. Harry Potter.

The mysterious dark gothy one whom you used to sit up with talking until 3a.m. at weird coffeehouses and with whom you were quite smitten until you realized they really were fucking crazy. I mean, the Black Jewels series is legit fucking crazy, but that's why I like it in the first place, so... *hands* This goes for Angel Sanctuary as well.

The one you spent a whole weekend in bed with and who drank up all your liquor, and whom you'd still really like to get together with again although you're relieved they don't actually live in town. ...Saiyuki, maybe? For which I wrote four stories once upon a time to exorcise some meta that got stuck in my head, and which I do mean to go back and read more of someday. Or maybe Gormenghast. I wrote one Gormenghast fic ages ago, and have always vaguely regretted not doing more to play around with that canon's absolutely batshit worldbuilding.

The Steady. The Chronicles of Narnia, which I have been having productive discussions and arguments with since I was eight years old. *wry*

The alluring stranger whom you've flirted with at parties but have never got really serious with. Possibly Leverage. I keep meaning to try watching that series, but never actually getting around to it.

The one you hang out with and have vague fantasies about maybe having a thing with but ultimately you're just good friends because the friendship is there but the chemistry isn't. Most of the MCU, to be honest. (Except Daredevil, because reasons. *shifty eyes*)

The one your friends keep introducing you to and who seems really cool except it's never really gone anywhere. I dunno, really. You could probably fill in any audiovisual media thing here and be relatively accurate. Oh! Wait, no, I know: Fullmetal Alchemist. Which is a wonderful manga series and I keep just not clicking with it, which annoys me because I want to love it and can't quite get there and so am stuck with admiration instead.

The one who's slept with all your friends, and you keep looking at them and thinking, "How did they land all these utterly fabulous people?" See the audiovisual media part of the previous answer. But I guess more specifically Game of Thrones. Which from the first season has sounded kind of unpleasant to me, what with the sexposition and so on, but hey. De gustibus non est disputandum. *wry*

The one who gave you the best damned summer of your life and who you measure all other potential partners against. Homestuck! ;)

The one you recently met at a party and would like to get to know better and who you think you might have a crush on. Annoyingly, the canons I've been into most recently have been book series that are all Yuletide-eligible, so. Not lots of opportunity there. (To name names: Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire series, Martha Wells's Raksura series and Murderbot series, and N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance trilogy and Dreamblood duology.)

The old flame that you wouldn't totally object to hooking up with again for a one night romp if only they cleaned themselves up a bit. Naruto. (Except we never exactly broke up. It's just a long-distance relationship and I am ignoring vast swathes of canon Because Reasons and also there is no sequel or weird anime movies, okay. Got it? Good.)

Your hot new flame. Alas, I don't have one. It is very frustrating. :(

The one who stole your people's hearts. I am interpreting this as a fandom that has swept many of my internet acquaintances off their feet, rather than something I wrote that everyone inexplicably likes best. At the moment this seems to be Good Omens, but I'm okay with that. I'm not in love myself, but it's nice to sort of vicariously experience other people's infatuation, and I am well-enough in like that I don't particularly mind not being deeply involved in this tangent.

And a bonus courtesy of syrena_of_the_lake: The one you’re embarrassed to admit you like, because your friends will all say you're too good for them. Oh, don't even get me started. The list of fandoms for which I read amazingly terrible fic is longer than both my legs put together -- and this is quite deliberate, since there are some power-kink tropes I find excruciating if I know the canon well enough to see how OOC they are, but find hot like burning if they're applied to characters with whom I'm only vaguely familiar via internet osmosis. *wry*

Also I found the Gor novels weirdly sexy when I was in high school. This is probably because the first one I read is the one where the main character gets caught and turned into a slave himself, and I do have both a power-kink and a torture-kink, so. :p

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[Meme] AO3 hit counts

2019-05-01T00:51:16Z

It's that time of year again. (Well, about a week and a half late, but pssh, details.)

Here are the results from 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012, for comparison purposes.

I currently have 539 stories posted on AO3, which is 34 more than last year. I think almost all of the new fics were genuinely written during the past year, though I might also have crossposted a few backdated things; I honestly don't remember.

Anyway, here are my top ten works on AO3, by hit count:

1. What Isn't Broken (Can Still Be Fixed) - 29,687 [Naruto, remix]
2. The Way of the Apartment Manager - 7,872 [Naruto, chaptered]
3. Definitions of Romance - 6,914 [Harry Potter]
4. With a Vengeance - 6,588 [Naruto]
5. I Must Increase My Bust - 6,289 [Homestuck]
6. More Sins than Condemnation - 6,079 [Naruto]
7. Trollstuck: Make Her Pay - 5,883 [Homestuck, chaptered, WIP]
8. Problems and Solutions (All Things in Time) - 5,867 [Chronicles of Narnia/Stargate: SG-1, remix]
9. Four by Four - 5,096 [Homestuck, chaptered, WIP]
10. The Guardian in Spite of Herself - 4,369 [Naruto, chaptered, WIP]

As in previous years, this list is slow to change. There's been a bit of internal rearrangement, "Definitions of Romance" jumped from #11 (and thus not on last year's list) to #3, and "Guardian" appeared at #10 -- probably because I added a new chapter in early 2019 -- but that's about it. :)

Moving on!

( Here are my top ten stories by number of kudos )

A more general trend is my Naruto fics sliding back up the rankings relative to my Homestuck fics. This is probably because, as mentioned above, I posted a new chapter of "Guardian" in early 2019 and there's been some spillover to my other work in that fandom; also, Homestuck fandom in general was slowing down until the epilogues dropped just a couple weeks ago.

And now I'm going to go read a book. :)

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book list, February and March 2019

2019-04-02T01:30:03Z

It's time for the continuing adventures of Liz and her reading list! These are the books I read in February and March of 2019. Click on the cuts for summaries and reactions. I reserve the right to spoil all hell out of any book if spoilery bits are what I feel like talking about.

The Hive: The Story of the Honeybee and Us, by Bee Wilson
-----( thoughts )

Dreadful Company, by Vivian Shaw
-----( thoughts )

Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik
-----( thoughts )

The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie
-----( thoughts )

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And now onward to April!

comments

2018 writing roundup and analysis

2019-01-01T22:08:34Z

2017 version
2016 version
2015 version
2014 version
2013 version
2012 version
2011 version
2010 version
2009 version
2005 version

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A Year in Writing: 2018
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( January )

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( February )

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( March )

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( April )

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( May )

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( June )

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( July )

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( August )

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( September )

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( October )

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( November )

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( December )

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2018 Fanfiction: 29,275
2018 Original: 950
2018 Total: 30,225

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( Analysis )

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And that is that for the year! On to 2019. :)

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[Fic] "The Court of Conscience" -- Chronicles of Narnia

2018-10-08T21:32:53Z

Yesterday was NFE reveal day! I wrote The Court of Conscience for snitchnipped.

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The Court of Conscience (1782 words)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Susan Pevensie, Lucy Pevensie
Additional Tags: Character Study, Justice, Ethics, Ethical Dilemmas, Capital Punishment, Golden Age (Narnia)

Summary: With Peter and Edmund away at the wars, Susan is left to preside over Narnian justice. It's a responsibility she takes very seriously, and would give anything not to have on her shoulders.

Notes: 1. This story is book!verse rather than movie!verse, and as such includes a Susan who is not a warrior and who earned her title of "Gentle" through personality and behavior rather than have it incongruously bestowed upon her at her coronation. 2. While nobody dies on-page, this story is basically about Susan grappling with the aftermath of a murder, and also with the residual trauma of Jadis's reign.

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snitchnipped asked for a "deep character study into Susan's psyche," and I did my best to deliver. :)

As I said about my 2017 NFE fic, you can tell this is my work because it's mostly about worldbuilding (how DOES the Narnian justice system work, and how DID they do national reconciliation after Jadis's defeat?), and also all the OCs are female. Plus, you know, ethical dilemmas. It's always fun when I get to hit three of my preoccupations in a single fic. *wry*

( further thoughts and rambling )

And yes, this is part of my general Narnian timeline, set in summer of the year 1004, between In Song and Story (1003) and Commonly to the Wars (1005). :D

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[Fic] "SPNstuck (And Sit Them Down for Thanksgiving Dinner" -- Homestuck

2018-09-23T17:37:56Z

Remix reveal day! I wrote SPNstuck (And Sit Them Down for Thanksgiving Dinner) for maypop.

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SPNstuck (And Sit Them Down for Thanksgiving Dinner) (2126 words)
Fandom: Homestuck
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Roxy Lalonde, Dave Strider, Dirk Strider, Rose Lalonde, Kanaya Maryam, Karkat Vantas, Sollux Captor, Feferi Peixes, Terezi Pyrope
Additional Tags: Remix, Alternate Universe - Supernatural (TV) Fusion, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Thanksgiving Dinner, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Family Drama, Roxy Lalonde Is So Done, Rose Lalonde Gets All The Girls, Background Relationships, Background Poly, Strilondes

Summary: You still aren't entirely sure how your family got designated as hosts for the great angel/demon peace summit of 2018. The demons are obviously in it for the chaos, flames and shouting that might as well be your family's trademark. The angels make much less sense. Like, seriously, what kind of celestial morons think you and your siblings are any kind of diplomatic? And why pick Thanksgiving dinner when none of them need to eat in the first place? It's completely absurd and will only end in tears.

(Oddly, the day winds up being the most successful infernal/celestial summit anyone can ever remember.)

[Remixed from SPNstuck, by maypop]

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As maypop says, Per tumblr user isozyme: "So the theory of supernaturalstuck is to take SPN, retain all the good setting shit, scoop out all the tragic manpain, and fill the void with tragic Rose Lalonde pain. In practice it is about how hot Rose is with really short hair and a lot of magic tattoos, and making fun of Sollux's butt, and what happens when you give all eight Strider-Lalondes a lot of weapons and extra battle trauma and sit them down for Thanksgiving dinner."

I went with four Strilondes rather than eight, but otherwise, yeah, that's the basic plan for this fic. :)

( further thoughts )

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[Meme] AO3 hit counts

2018-04-20T01:58:19Z

It's that time of year again. :)

Here are the results from 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012, for comparison purposes.

I currently have 505 stories posted on AO3, which is 26 more than last year. I think almost all of the new fics were genuinely written during the past year, though I might also have crossposted a few backdated things; I honestly don't remember.

Anyway, here are my top ten works on AO3, by hit count:

1. What Isn't Broken (Can Still Be Fixed) - 24,746 [Naruto, remix]
2. I Must Increase My Bust - 5,815 [Homestuck]
3. Trollstuck: Make Her Pay - 5,723 [Homestuck, chaptered, WIP]
4. With a Vengeance - 5,618 [Naruto]
5. The Way of the Apartment Manager - 5,292 [Naruto, chaptered]
6. More Sins than Condemnation - 5,279 [Naruto]
7. Problems and Solutions (All Things in Time) - 4,931 [Chronicles of Narnia/Stargate: SG-1, remix]
8. Four by Four - 4,833 [Homestuck, chaptered, WIP]
9. Dreamers of the Day - 4,376 [Inception]
10. Of Stone and of Sky - 4,369 [Homestuck, Ladystuck]

This is largely the same as last year, barring a few internal rearrangements -- most notably "The Way of the Apartment Manager" jumping from #10 to #5. I am pleased that my most popular story on other sites is finally picking up steam over here, too, despite its age and backdating. :D (Side note: "Definitions of Romance," another old and backdated fic, has moved to #11 on my hit count list, which is slowly bringing it into line with its performance on other sites.)

"What Isn't Broken" continues to absolutely crush everything else I've ever written, at least on this particular site. I am still unsure why, but hey, if people like it I'm not going to complain. *wry* It also drags its two companion ficlets ("With a Vengeance" and "More Sins than Condemnation") up the rankings... at least in terms of hit count. Their kudos count is more variable.

Anyway, moving on!

( Here are my top ten stories by number of kudos )

The bookmark list continues to share a lot of commonalities with the hit and kudos lists (particularly if you go by the top twenty rather than just the top ten), and the comment list continues to be noticeably different from those three, though this year that discrepancy finally seems to owe as much to comments on multi-chapter fics as to comments on fic exchange works.

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2017 writing roundup and analysis

2018-01-04T03:58:32Z

2016 version
2015 version
2014 version
2013 version
2012 version
2011 version
2010 version
2009 version
2005 version

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A Year in Writing: 2017
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( January - 6,175 )

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( February - 3,525 )

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( March - 750 )

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( April - 3,325 )

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( May - 1,800 )

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( June - 4,925 )

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( July - 6,800 )

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( August - 24,800 )

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( September - 3,325 )

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( October - 400 )

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( November - 1,300 )

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( December - 9,725 )

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2017 Fanfiction: 65,575
2017 Original: 1,275
2017 Total: 66,850

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( Analysis )

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And that is that for the year. :)

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[Fic] "Patience, Tenacity, Luck" -- Chalion

2018-01-03T16:49:11Z

Belated Yuletide reveal post!

Patience, Tenacity, Luck: Some months after Penric's Fox, Thala investigates the disappearance of a trainee shaman. (5,075 words, written for DesertVixen)

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I signed up to write for Lois McMaster Bujold's Chalion series on something of a whim, so naturally that was the only one of my recipient's fandoms I recognized. Such is the way of Yuletide! Anyway, her other fandoms seemed to lean toward female detectives and/or amateur sleuths, which the details of her Chalion prompt corroborated, so I wrote a case!fic centered on Thala, the junior locator of the Father's order we meet in Penric's Fox (and then, alas, see no more since the Penric novellas do a significant time- and location-jump immediately thereafter).

I flatter myself that these days my attempts at whodunnits are somewhat less dire than they were when I was twelve years old, but mysteries have never been my personal cup of tea (nothing against them; they just don't grab me) and they're annoying to construct on a technical level. But it's a good kind of annoying -- the sort of finicky logistical challenge that makes you say "HA!" and throw your hands up in glee when you get the last stubborn piece to click into place. :)

I did initially want this to be a longer story, with ( minor spoilers; go read the fic first ), but my time management skills have not appreciably grown less dire over the years. So I picked a logistically and thematically reasonable endpoint and called it a year. *wry*

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[Meme] AO3 fic filters (redux)

2017-11-06T20:26:41Z

(via venusmelody)

I actually did this a year ago, but what the heck, let's see if the answers have changed much since then. For reference, I currently have 486 fics on AO3.

Go to your AO3 works page, expand all the filters, and answer the following questions!

1. What's your first and second most common work ratings? Any surprises?

General Audiences (359) / Teen And Up Audiences (97) / Not Rated (14) / Mature (10) / Explicit (6)

No surprises here! I write a lot of gen, and I am skeptical of movie-style ratings' applicability to prose (plus I dislike issuing implicit judgments about what material is ~appropriate~ for people I know nothing about), so I mostly rate things in a spirit of "read the tags and decide for yourself" ('General Audiences'), with an occasional detour into "well, I guess this is a little heavier; maybe I should up the rating so people who care about ratings don't yell at me even though I have accurately tagged for the heavy stuff so what is even the point" ('Teen And Up Audiences').

I love tags. Tags are specific and therefore useful! Ratings, not so much.

The six 'Explicit' stories include actual porn, and the 'Mature' ones include sex that isn't quite porn and/or some heavy stuff. (Mostly sex, though. People get weird about sex in ways they don't tend to get weird about violence, so I usually deploy those ratings based on the presence of sex and stuff that's tangential to sex and stick to tags for everything else.) The 'Not Rated' stories are all from the same Angel Sanctuary fic series, which I CAN'T rate usefully for reasons that are probably obvious if you have any familiarity with the source manga.

(I used to have other unrated stories, but I decided this past year that I wanted to reserve that category for the Angel Sanctuary fics and slapped the others with either 'General Audiences' or 'Teen And Up' based on the ~highly scientific~ system of how I felt when I did a quick-skim reread of each story. *wry*)

( cut for length )

And that is that. :)

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[Fic] "An Outstretched Hand" -- Chronicles of Narnia

2017-09-24T21:38:33Z

Today is NFE reveal day! I wrote An Outstretched Hand for redsnake05.

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An Outstretched Hand: The giants came in the summer of the seventh year, in the long golden days between planting and harvest, when the people of Narnia worked to lay the bones of their new land: roads and wells, fords and harbors, and towers along the borders for they knew that an Evil walked abroad and their protection would not last forever. (1,825 words)

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redsnake05 asked for a story about Frank, Helen, and/or Fledge, either in England or in the early years of Narnia, and for once I managed to fill a prompt pretty much exactly as intended. *wry*

You can tell this is my work because it's mostly about worldbuilding, and also all the OCs are female. It also fits neatly into my established timeline about Jadis's actions between MN and LWW, wherein she starts by going north and messing about with various tribes/clans of giants she finds there.

Joyous Gard is a bit of headcanon that I don't think ever made it into any of my stories before. To summarize, I am a little ambivalent about Cair Paravel. See, I sort of loosely headcanon Narnia as being a semi-sentient extension of the Deep Magic, and the four thrones at Cair Paravel are a manifestation of that magic. I am less sure if the castle itself is entirely a magical creation, though I am sure parts of it were not built entirely naturally. (I have a partially-written story exploring some of that, which has stalled out mostly because I need to solidify the worldbuilding before I can write the actual people-doing-stuff elements.) Anyway, whatever Cair Paravel's exact origins, I figure Frank and Helen's castle was somewhere else, probably inland, closer to the geographic center of Narnia. And I further figure they named it after a famous magical castle from England, because why not.

Also Joyous Gard is just a really great name and I steal really great names when I can. :)

Anyway, I wanted this story to be a little longer, and maybe get into some of the actual negotiations for the giants' settlement in Narnia, and a discussion of Helen and Frank's desire for children, and some more of Frank and Helen's personal history with England's wars and colonial empire and stuff, but, you know, depression. *sigh* So it's shorter and brighter than it might otherwise have been, but I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing or just a difference between intention and result. There is, after all, just as much need for hope and light as for explorations of shadow.

And nothing says I can't write more about this area some other day...

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[Fic] "Turn the Page (Don't Fear the Ending)" -- Haroun and the Sea of Stories

2017-09-24T21:33:36Z

Remix reveal day! I wrote Turn the Page (Don't Fear the Ending) for gramarye.

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Turn the Page (Don't Fear the Ending): Sometimes, when a storyteller tries to wring every last drop of Stories out of themself before ever coming to an ending, the storyteller is not the only one squeezed dry. (1,500 words, remixed from The Monster at the End of This Book, by Gramarye)

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So, funny story: in 2015, I adjusted my "willing to write" choices near the end of the Remix Redux signup period so as to match fandoms that currently had no offers. And because of that, I got matched to Gramarye. I did the same thing this time, for the same fandom (Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence), and had a feeling this might end up generating the same match.

I was right. *wry*

I wanted to try doing something different this time, though, so while I dug up the couple drabbles I'd marked as potential remixes (but not wound up using) the last time around, I also poked through the rest of Gramarye's archive to see if we had any other fandoms in common. The answer, mostly, is no... except for a couple one-offs. And one of those was "The Monster at the End of This Book," a gorgeous Yuletide fic for Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

My remix does not have anything to do with Gramarye's story on a plot level. Instead, what I ended up doing was taking a couple of key lines and writing something completely different based around those themes: the power of storytelling, the importance of endings, and how those are both vital and dangerous channels of power and control.

I also continued what has become a bit of an accidental pattern that might be described as "taking your story and making it about women," which I swear to god is not intended in any way as criticism of the stories I keep doing it to. I just have some issues that keep expressing themselves through this particular outlet. *hands* And also Rushdie's treatment of Soraya Khalifa has always annoyed me -- it is a slightly flat/sour note in an otherwise wonderful gem of a book -- so I wanted to give her control of her own story and see what happened.

Random trivia note: I gave Soraya the maiden name of Khan both because it's a Muslim-associated name rather than a Hindu one (to go with the Khalifas' general theme), and because khans arguably outrank caliphs, or at the very least are temporally equal. So that is symbolically important and was absolutely on purpose. :)

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[Meme] 10 Favorite Characters

2017-09-18T23:22:58Z

minutia_r tagged me in the 10 characters meme: List ten of your favorite characters in ten different fandoms and then tag ten people

In no particular order:

1. Chronicles of Narnia - Still Edmund, I think, though he has never been ahead by a very large margin and it's grown smaller over the years. I am awfully fond of almost all the characters. (Jadis is my second-favorite in general, and probably my most favorite for writing.)

2. Homestuck - This is tricky! Uh. Can I say Rose, Jade, Dave, Terezi, Karkat, Aradia, Roxy, Jane, Kanaya, Meenah, and Damara all together? It is really hard to make distinctions any more finely graded than that, and anyway which one of that set I like best shifts from day to day.

3. Harry Potter - Probably Harry, giant unobservant doofus that he is. Secondarily Hermione and Ginny. I love Ron lots in canon, but find him fannishly uninteresting.

4. Naruto - Team 7. (By which I mean Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke.) You can't make me subdivide further. *resolve face*

5. Star Trek: AOS - Spock, Kirk, and Uhura.

6. Angel Sanctuary - Kira Sakuya. (Yes, this includes all incarnations.) Secondarily Setsuna and Sara.

7. Enchanted Forest Chronicles - Morwen, obviously! :DDD

8. Darkangel Trilogy - Aeriel, I think. It is her story, and I so desperately want her to be happy.

9. Daredevil (MCU) - Matt. Secondarily Karen and Elektra. (I may find a reckless disregard for one's personal safety, a possibly unhealthy level of determination, and a willingness to deal violence more attractive than I really ought to. Also, someone should write me that threesome...)

10. Dark Is Rising sequence - Blodwen Rowlands! *evil grin* For reasons that are spoilers. But after her, Will, Jane, and Bran in no particular order.

In conclusion, I am kind of terrible at having favorite characters. This is not surprising -- I am terrible at having a favorite anything in any category. I like too many things and I don't want to rank them. *hands*

Secondary conclusion: I do tend to like main characters, insofar as any given canon even has a main character rather than an ensemble. They aren't always in my top tier, but if I don't like them at all, I tend to stop reading.

I am, as always, terrible at tagging so please consider yourself tagged if you want to play! :)

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DVD Commentary: The Guardian in Spite of Herself, chapter 16

2017-07-11T02:17:56Z

For jjunter, for the Fic DVD Commentary Meme (which is still open, fyi!)

The Guardian in Spite of Herself: Ayakawa Yukiko retired from being a ninja, and she's come to terms with that. Then the Third Hokage summons her for an assignment that will change her life. AU story, set six years pre-manga. (72,000 words)

Chapter 16: Chapter the Sixteenth, in which Naga and Suisen demonstrate how not to dance with a partner, Yukiko and Seichi discuss assassination and dead relatives, and, to the author's relief, Kakashi's interrogation skills end up irrelevant to the plot. (4,450 words)

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As reading your latest DVD commentary (chapter 11 of the Way of the Apartment Manager) led me to reread the whole series again (with pleasure!), I'd love a commentary on chapter 16 of the Guardian in Spite of Herself.

In the former fic, it's basically all from Yukiko's POV; in the latter, you've got multiple POVs you switch between, and in the latter chapters you're often switching between them 2-3 times within any given chapter. What are some of the challenges and opportunities having so many POVs and subgroups of people in various locations to keep moving simultaneously? Describing it like this sounds like it shouldn't work, but the effect as a reader is this sense of escalating tension, wondering if every group including a POV character will ultimately end up in the same location (and if yes, what will happen next).

To answer quickly: the main challenge is timing/pacing. I want to use each POV at least every other chapter, so they don't feel like they've fallen out of the story (this is slightly less urgent for Yukiko and Sasuke, since they're currently in the same place and thus appear in each other's POV sections), but I also don't want to drag the story out. That means I have to make sure stuff happens in every POV thread, because I can't just drop one of them for extended periods while someone else has exciting adventures.

This is why Iruka is not a POV character, incidentally, though my first tentative outline -- created way back when this story was three tiny scenelets and a vague idea -- did include a plot thread about him and a Yamanaka OC investigating the Uchiha massacre back in the village. I still think that could have interesting thematic resonance with the current plot threads, but he wound up spending a lot of time sitting and waiting (or reading archives) which was not conducive to maintaining momentum. So I cut him, though I still kind of want to write a sidefic about what he's up to during the main story.

Anyway, the advantage to multiple POVs is that I can show more events and therefore create a more intricate story, and also show different perspectives on the same events and issues -- because even though Sasuke and Yukiko are currently sharing a plot strand, the things they notice and care about are radically different, and their emotional arcs are likewise dissimilar. This is also useful for creating thematic resonance. The main theme of "Guardian" is the cost in lives and in other factors (political, economic, psychological, ethical, etc.) that the hidden village/ninja clan system imposes on the people of the Elemental Countries, as seen by both civilians and shinobi, so the more perspectives I can bring to bear, the more rounded the picture.

(The other advantage to multiple POVs, of course, is that it's easier to do cliffhangers. *wry*)

( The Guardian in Spite of Herself - Chapter 16, with commentary )

And that is that. :)

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DVD Commentary: The Way of the Apartment Manager, chapter 11

2017-07-06T16:24:10Z

For wistfulmemory, for the Fic DVD Commentary Meme (which is still open, fyi!)

The Way of the Apartment Manager: Ayakawa Yukiko retired from being a ninja, and she's come to terms with that. Then the Third Hokage summons her for an assignment that will change her life. AU story, set six years pre-manga. (72,000 words)

Chapter 11: Chapter the Eleventh, in which Yukiko plots a grand renovation project, we meet Naga's mother, Asuma makes an uncredited cameo, and the third test starts with an uneven matchup. (4,100 words)

This chapter begins the third test of the chuunin exam, and contains Yukiko's tournament match with Uchiha Akaro. A genjutsu specialist fighting an Uchiha is a terrible mismatch, which of course is why I had to go there. I probably would have gone there even if I hadn't previously used a painful chuunin exam loss against a random Uchiha as part of Yukiko's backstory reasons for retirement -- it's one of many things that convinced her she couldn't actually do anything useful as a ninja -- but since I already had that set up, obviously I needed to replay a version of that fight and let her realize she's grown strong enough (confident enough? smart enough? whatever!) to win.

(If you think it's a spoiler that Yukiko wins, you have not been paying enough attention to shonen narrative tropes. *wry*)

( The Way of the Apartment Manager - Chapter 11, with commentary )

And that is pretty much that. :)

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DVD Commentary: The Courting Dance, chapter 7

2017-07-04T03:41:43Z

For bluejayfic, for the Fic DVD Commentary Meme (which is still open, fyi!)

The Courting Dance: Marriage is a bit more complicated than quarreling and making it up again, especially for the crown prince of Archenland and an exiled Calormene Tarkheena. (21,000 words)

Chapter 7 - The Beating of Our Hearts: Running from your problems is rarely a good long-term solution, but sometimes the change in environment can be helpful -- especially now that Aravis and Cor are on the same page. (1,600 words)

As bluejayfic's ask mentioned, this chapter is the one with the wedding scene. What was I thinking, putting the wedding halfway through the story? Well, I was thinking that the plot is as much about politics and worldbuilding as it is about romance, and the wedding is a major symbol of Aravis and Cor deciding to commit to each other despite various obstacles. Also, while it resolves their interpersonal problems, it doesn't resolve their external problems at all -- in fact, it makes some of them worse. So I figured it would make a good central turning point, where we switch from Aravis and Cor being pissed off at each other to standing back-to-back against the world.

( Chapter 7 - The Beating of Our Hearts, with commentary )

And that is pretty much that. :)

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