A small thing I did today:

As part of tidying my apartment in preparation for Susan's visit this weekend, I typed up a bunch of my paper notes into proper electronic files. This means that A) they won't be clutter anymore, and B) I will actually be able to find their contents when I need them instead of losing them at the bottom of a several inch thick stack of paper scraps.

Some of them I don't have any context for anymore, while others are pretty straightforward background worldbuilding or story outlining. And others are scraps of actual stories.

I have a lot more random story snippets than I remember actually writing.

Here are a few that I am pretty sure aren't going anywhere anymore:

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( Harry Potter - untitled Hermione and Ginny fragment )


(I have no idea where I was going with that.)

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( Homestuck - untitled Rose Lalonde fragment )


(Again, I have no idea where this was going.)

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( Daredevil - untitled post-Season 1 fragment )


(I think I abandoned this because it was more didactic than I wanted.)

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( Daredevil - miscellaneous fragments whose context I have lost )


(I think the first was an attempt at a Black Jewels crossover/fusion thing. The second is clearly a divergence post-Season 1, but beyond that, I got nothing. *shrug*)

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( Riddlemaster Trilogy - Not Compassion (Those from the Sea) )


(This was clearly an attempt to give the nameless Earthmaster woman some backstory (and also assign her a name that seems plausible, given the "Those from the sea. Edolen. Sec," line that... I think one of the dead kids under the mountain says to Morgon?) and try to make sense of the inherent tension of a society where everyone has that kind of unfettered power even if they haven't quite realized it yet. But I never really had a plot, so it stalled out here.)

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( Original - untitled fairy-tale fragment )


(This is one of the seeds of Sunbright and Shadowfall, even though I think it originally started as some kind of sideways Homestuck AU? By which I mean, IIRC this was loosely drawn from a dream, in which the lonely witch was Jade Harley, but I dunno exactly; it was a long time ago and I never wrote the details down.)

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And that's that for my brain-dump. Everything else is either too fragmentary to be comprehensible, or is something I actually do still mean to finish someday.

Over on Tumblr, somebody suggested that for April Fools, fan writers should make art and fan artist should write stories -- a sort of conceptual bodyswap. I thought this sounded fun, and dug out my art supply box. At first I couldn't think of any fanart that I both wanted to draw and thought I had any chance in hell of pulling off, so I drew a random freehand mandala instead:



This is the kind of thing I used to doodle all over notebooks during lectures, only usually in a single color of ballpoint pen rather than multicolored Crayola markers.

Then I had the notion of making another mandala, only out of various Homestuck symbols. But before I started on that, I wanted to do something with the little strip of paper I tore off a printer sheet to make a square for my first mandala. So I folded it into quarters and drew four scribbled pictures of a tree over the course of an imaginary year. (I dislike waste. *shrug*)



After that, I got started on the Homestuck mandala. I'm using Beta kid god tier symbols only, because A) I didn't feel like trying to draw Hope or Rage, and B) more than four symbols in a single work starts to get conceptually overcrowded.



I'm still working out how to add Breath to this WIP, since it's not circular like Space, Time, and Light. Possibly four smaller diagonal versions in the corners of the page?

If anyone has suggestions, I am all ears! (And I'm setting this aside for the night, so you have time to make suggestions, should you wish. *grin*)

rthstewart requested: Narnia, Cor and Aravis meeting Ilgamuth and Shezan

This is not really a proper response to the prompt, since I never reached the actual meeting, but I like this scene and may do something more with it someday.

Aravis and Cor return to Tashbaan. Fragment. (475 words)

( Ancient Lands )

I really need to write "A Change of Season" in 2014; there are so many other Narnia fics I cannot work on until I finish that and thus pin down my post-HHB headcanon for Calormen!

From the department of Things I Am Not Writing Now, So Please Stop Trying To Get My Attention, Dammit: the opening scene of "A Change of Season," which is the probably-novel-length sequel to "Out of Season" and "To Every Thing There Is a Season."

( which I am now going to post because putting it out in public will remind me that I need to write it SOMEDAY. just not today )

Then we jump to Anvard the next morning, shortly before the Narnian attack, rather than follow Ilgamuth across the desert. (I am trying to write about events in Calormen that occur in HHB's aftermath, you see, not to recapitulate the entire book.) And then after the battle itself, I think we'd jump to Calormen and Shezan getting news of the catastrophe (but probably not the curse, just yet; Archenland and Narnia will try to keep that secret as long as possible)... but that is a story for another day. *wry*

Random fic scraps I've written at work. I don't have dates for these -- I am not always as scrupulous about dating pages as I'd like to be -- so they go from shortest to longest.

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Homestuck Fanfiction Scrapheap
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( Jade, isolated )

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( Davesprite and wing repair )

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( In a Purple Wood - aka, Terezi meets Nepeta )

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I have no idea where I was going with the first fragment.

The second fragment was going to be another "Tales from the Yellow Yard" fic, but it never really clicked and I abandoned it unfinished.

"In a Purple Wood" is canon for my "Alternian Nights" sequence of fics. It's just disproportionately shorter than the other three stories and I couldn't figure out where to go after the initial meeting -- what happens is Nepeta takes Terezi back to her cave for the day and then Terezi cautiously allows Nepeta to visit her own hive in return, but I couldn't make that narratively interesting, alas. :-(

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And that's pretty much it for fic scraps, aside from some original fiction which is too short to contain any useful contextual information, and I don't feel like writing ten paragraphs of non-fiction to explain two paragraphs of actual fiction. Somehow that doesn't feel like a good use of my time. *wry*

In any case, I should get back to writing the epilogue of "Secrets," which has been giving me absolute fits of frothing frustration. I think I have been approaching it all wrong and should start over with a different scene at a different time and place (though the same three characters) which will hopefully be more conducive to making them have the conversation I want them to have. *resolve face*

Also known as the scene where Shezan talks to the gods.

I thought I'd deleted this! It turns out I just saved it in a completely unrelated folder that I'd had open for some reason. Then I had no reason to go looking for Narnia fic there, so I only stumbled across this scene tonight.

It is from late in "Out of Season," the night before the Spring Festival. I cut it because it was a little too divine intervention-y. I like characters to make their choices for internal reasons, not because some deity said "Do this OR ELSE." And since Shezan mostly forgot the dream anyway, it seemed weird to keep the scene when it had no practical effect on the plot.

But I like the interaction between Shezan, Achadith, and Aslan, so I am posting this for the sake of completeness. *grin* (1,100 words)

[ETA: The AO3 crosspost is now up!]

( Out of Season: Shezan's Dream [cut scene] )

In other news, I am doing my best to force myself to write despite the blue funk. I think it is helping. I still feel monumentally uninspired and without motivation, but the act of creation is in itself a weapon against emptiness. It is just incredibly difficult at times like these. I have one fic that's about 2,000 words now (this is after a week of effort like pulling teeth) and I have been staring at it all afternoon and evening trying to figure out what happens next, but I just cannot get my brain to cough up basic dialogue. Very frustrating!

Nevertheless, I will persevere. *resolve face*

aka pieces of "Five Things That Never Happened to Rex and Ana Lewis (And One That Still Might)" except I am only posting the opening snippets from four of the five AUs, since I haven't started writing the final two sections yet.

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( from part 1 - The Best of All Possible Worlds )

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( from part 2 - Be All That You Can Be )

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( from part 3 - At the Thought of His Immolation )

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( from part 4 - The Line Dividing Good and Evil )

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Sections 1 and 2 are now finished in rough draft and the whole story is a hair over 8,000 words so far. That is pretty much the only thing I worked on today. *sigh*

Well, I did also read the canon for one of my Yuletide recipient's requested fandoms that we did not match on, just in case, since rereading the canon we did match on has been like pulling teeth. I'd forgotten how badly written that canon is on a words-on-the-page level. Also, ye gods, I did not realize at the time I first read it (I was eighteen, what did I know?), but it is the purest, most ridiculously overwrought distillation of manpain that ever manpained, and I have the terrible feeling that the author agrees with the main character that an awesome sex life is genuinely the most important thing that makes a good marriage. Communication? Trust? Laughter and affection and shared values and goals? Pssh, no. It's all about the orgasms. Which, can I just say, "Ick, no, thanks ever so but I think I'll be over here completely and utterly disagreeing with you."

Bleh.

I can still see why I liked the story underneath the manpain and clunky writing, but I am less able to blithely brush past those aspects these days, especially when I am trying to read with an eye to writing fic and thus have to actually pay attention to the fine details of setting and character. *deeper sigh*

Gacked from askerian

Instructions:
1. Write down the names of 10 characters.
2. Write a fic of fifteen words or more for every prompt, using the characters determined by the numbers. DO NOT read the prompts before you do step 1.

...I feel like making extra work for myself (or indulging in crack, whichever), so I am going crossover-happy. *bright smile*

Characters:
1. Zuko (exiled prince of the Fire Nation; Avatar: The Last Airbender)
2. Sokka (companion of the Avatar; Avatar: The Last Airbender)
3. Mazikeen (Lucifer's lover and war leader of the Lillim; Lucifer)
4. Belial (chief among the seven Satans; Angel Sanctuary)
5. Kurai (princess and dragon master of the Evils; Angel Sanctuary)
6. Nyota Uhura (communications officer on the Enterprise; Star Trek: AOS)
7. Spock (first officer and science officer on the Enterprise; Star Trek: AOS)
8. Morwen (no-nonsense witch; The Enchanted Forest Chronicles)
9. Irrylath (prince of Avaric and former winged vampire; The Darkangel)
10. Kazul (king of the dragons; The Enchanted Forest Chronicles)

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Ficlets:

Collective Warnings: implied dubious consent, implied death, and implied dragons eating other sentient beings. Also a lot of crack.

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( One )

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( Two )

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( Three )

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( Four )

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( Five )

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( Six )

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( Seven )

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( Eight )

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( Nine )

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( Ten )

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( Eleven )

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...I don't know about you, but I am slightly worried about my brain.

Joining 15_minute_fic was clearly one of my better recent ideas, because look! I wrote something, and it's finished. I grant you, it's clearly part of a much longer story, but still. Writing is good.

( Harvest: Island Dreams )

I am editing ch. 12 of "Secrets" and attempting to structure my Yuletide story, both of which are delayed-gratification projects, so I won't have anything to post for a while. :-( Also, I was organizing my files and stumbled across this fragment.

This spring, I remixed everysecondtues's brilliant Shikamaru/Temari story, Seasons of Cloud and Shadow. The remix I posted was not actually the first one I tried to write. What I ended up writing, in Seasons of Cloud and Shadow (Like the Deserts Miss the Rain), is kind of a nonlinear fairy-tale mashup with extra symbolism and biblical quotes. What I started writing in my first attempt was a straightforward third-person Temari POV... still with extra symbolism, but much more linear and somewhat less pretentious.

This early draft is a fragment, but it's different enough from the final version that I want to post it individually, if only for the sake of completeness. So.

( Seasons of Cloud and Shadow (In a Dry and Thirsty Land) )

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And that's as far as I got.

I'm not quite sure where I was going with this version. It might have worked out; it might not have. But I got stuck at this point, and when I spent a couple days tossing story structure around in my head like a metaphorical game of pick-up sticks, the elements of everysecondtuesday's story hit some of my own preoccupations, came down into a notably different configuration, and held my imagination hostage. So I let "In a Dry and Thirsty Land" lie fallow and wrote "Like the Deserts Miss the Rain" instead.