Marie Brennan's Blog, page 185
April 19, 2013
two links
Time for a post up at BVC, on spells and folklore.
Also, I'm participating in "Women in SF&F" month at Fantasy Book Cafe, along with a great many other people: Courtney Shafer, Jan DeLima, Mur Lafferty, Patricia McKillip, Angie (of Angieville), Deborah Coates, Rachel Neumeier, Julie Czerneda, Janice (of SpecFic Romantic), Lois McMaster Bujold, Sue (of Coffee, Cookies, and Chili Peppers), Lane Robins, Ana and Thea (of Book Smugglers), Sherwood Smith, Karin Lowachee, Jacqueline Carey, and Renay (of Lady Business) -- and that's just the roster so far. My contribution is a discussion of why I chose to include sexism in the world of Lady Trent's memoirs.
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/586118.html. Comment here or there.
Also, I'm participating in "Women in SF&F" month at Fantasy Book Cafe, along with a great many other people: Courtney Shafer, Jan DeLima, Mur Lafferty, Patricia McKillip, Angie (of Angieville), Deborah Coates, Rachel Neumeier, Julie Czerneda, Janice (of SpecFic Romantic), Lois McMaster Bujold, Sue (of Coffee, Cookies, and Chili Peppers), Lane Robins, Ana and Thea (of Book Smugglers), Sherwood Smith, Karin Lowachee, Jacqueline Carey, and Renay (of Lady Business) -- and that's just the roster so far. My contribution is a discussion of why I chose to include sexism in the world of Lady Trent's memoirs.
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/586118.html. Comment here or there.
April 18, 2013
celebrity gossip, nineteenth-century edition
I don't suppose anybody can tell me the location of the party on the fifth of June, 1833, at which Ada Byron first met Charles Babbage? Passages doesn't say, nor does The Enchantress of Numbers, but I'd like to know so I can properly set this scene. I know Babbage invited her to see the Difference Engine a few weeks later, and that was at his house, but I doubt that's where they met.
Edit: Looks like it was at Mary Somerville's house in Chelsea -- but if anybody can tell me where in Chelsea, that would be fantastic.
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/585816.html. Comment here or there.
Edit: Looks like it was at Mary Somerville's house in Chelsea -- but if anybody can tell me where in Chelsea, that would be fantastic.
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/585816.html. Comment here or there.
Dear NPT Writer
Oh lord, this got long. Please forgive me. It's because this year I decided to really let my inner fan off the leash, and ended up squeeing all over the page. There are lots of suggestions in here, but if reading them makes you think of something else entirely you suspect I'd enjoy, then go for it! At this point I have a decent number of fics posted on AO3, plus gifts I've received in the past, so you can divine from their entrails if you need more clues. (And I have some more general notes at the end.)
Fandom: Dragon Age
Characters: Alistair, Anders, Fenris, Flemeth
As far as I'm concerned, companions are one of the great strengths of Bioware's games: they're awesome people, and richly enough characterized that I want to know more about them.
If you matched with me on this, you probably offered "any," since my four are kind of a random assortment. That's because my prompts are individual to the characters, but I couldn't come up with suggestions for every single one of the nineteen (!) people nominated, which meant I couldn't just request "any" like I did last year. Ergo, I narrowed it down to the four I'm the most excited about, and crossed my fingers that somebody would offer "any" so I wouldn't be unmatchable. (Yes, this means you don't have to fit all four of them into one story. Any one of the four on their own is just fine.) I don't mind the inclusion of other canon characters, nominated or otherwise, but given that what I'm interested in is mostly backstory, there may not be much opening for that.
(Regarding the Warden and Hawke: I've found a better way than last year's post to explain my feelings regarding them. I'm generally uninterested in reading about "the Warden" or "Hawke" as such, because they are invariably not my Warden or my Hawke -- but I don't mind reading about some OC, tangentially connected at best to canon. Last year I got a treat with Solona Amell in it, which was totally fine, because she was a Circle apprentice who hadn't yet become the Warden. If you happen to pick an option that might involve one of those figures, then the more you treat them like OCs rather than the canon protagonists, the happier I will probably be.)
Alistair -- I adore Alistair. He's like Joscelin Verreuil (from Jacqueline Carey's first Kushiel trilogy), with a much better sense of humour. I'm apparently a sucker for the semi-fallen religious warrior? I would love a story about Alistair in his Templar-and-Chantry days. He doesn't show terribly strong faith in the game -- not like Leliana -- so was he more religious before, and lost it somehow, or did the Maker never mean much to him? Or does he have his own personal take on those things, that he doesn't talk about much? This makes it sound like I want a deep meditation on faith. I'm not averse to that, but I tend to assume any story about Alistair would be light-hearted along with its depth. Hijinks and/or the events that led to him becoming a Grey Warden; both would be awesome, separately or together.
Fenris -- I adore Fenris, too, in a totally different way. (Much of it centering on the voice. <siiiiiigh>) He's angsty without being a dick to Hawke, which is a balancing act few writers manage. But I'd love to see who he was before the tattoos, i.e. the Leto that is now gone. Varania says he competed to win the tattoos (and her freedom). What did he have to do? Was he acting out of love for his family, or some other motivation? Did he know exactly what he was in for? (Up to and including the memory loss; I could see that going either way.) The details never get fleshed out in canon, but I'd love your take on them. If that doesn't excite you, then maybe tell me: what the heck does Fenris do in his spare time, other than play Wicked Grace with Varric at the Hanged Man? The other characters seem to have social lives and things they do to earn a living, but Fenris is a cipher in that regard. I'd like to know what he does besides brood.
Anders -- Last year’s treat was a FANTABULOUS story about his escape attempts from the Circle pre-DA:A, so this year I’m back with a totally different Anders request. I used to say that he had a personality transplant between DA:A and DA2, but I've come to realize it's more accurate to say your companion in DA2 is really Justice, not Anders at all. Which could have been really cool if his writer had shown the transition or the conflict more clearly; unfortunately, I feel like most of that has to be filled in by the player. So I'd love to see something exploring the transition from the guy who mostly ran away from his problems with the Circle to the monomaniacal crusader we get in the second game. Why did he take on Justice after Kristoff’s body began to fall apart? What did it feel like, becoming an abomination? How did the downhill slide into Vengeance happen, and how consciously aware was Anders of the process? I have a headcanon where anyone possessed by a spirit will eventually end up like Anders did; Wynne, for example, would have eventually morphed from “vessel for Faith” to “avatar of Zealotry” or something in that vein, simply because the human soul can’t handle the purity of a Fade spirit, regardless of what impulse that purity represents. In Anders’ case, it’s clearly his only partially-buried anger against the Circle that sends him off-balance; I’d love a story that digs into that rage, the causes behind it, and how it eventually spins out of control. And though I normally prefer things to adhere to canon, in this case I don't mind at all if the two personalities are presented as starting out separate and in conflict, contrary to what he says about it onscreen, or if the Justice takeover is a slower process than in canon. (Since I'm less keen on seeing canonical!Hawke in fic, you're welcome to write a Kirkwall AU in which everything's falling apart without Hawke there.)
Flemeth -- pretty much anything you care to write about Flemeth. :-D I'm convinced her appearance in DA2 is mostly to explain how she survives DA:O/remind players she exists, because Bioware has something big in mind for her later. Either way, she is clearly a hell of a lot more than just a Witch of the Wilds. If you have ideas for what that "more" is, then share! Old God? Fade spirit? High dragon in human form? Stories about her with her daughters are cool (I've read the comics, so I know about Yavana and the scheme there), or something explaining why Flemeth decided to play "ugly old witch in the swamp" when she's clearly far more than that, or whatever.
I'm sort of paranoid that I've managed to land on the four you're the least interested in writing, so quick notes on a few others: I'd also be keen on a story about Merrill making that deal with the demon to cleanse the eluvian; Isabela having pirate ship adventures; Morrigan growing up with Flemeth, or where she goes after passing through the eluvian in Witch Hunt; Shale becoming a golem (grim) or squishing pigeons (silly); or Varric wheeling and dealing in Kirkwall, especially if it's early days, when he and Bartrand are just establishing themselves. I won't report you to the Exchange Police if you go with one of those options; it's more important to me that you have fun with the character you choose to write. (I promise this isn't me trying to get around the limit on character requests, either. I just get nervous any time "any" comes into play, because let's face it, you probably aren't equally excited by every character in that list, and maybe I picked the ones you like least.)
Fandom: Highlander
Character: Methos
True story: back in the Stone Age of Compuserve et al, when I had only seen a few episodes of Highlander, I was nosing around on internet fansites and came across references to Methos: the Oldest Immortal Alive! He’s Five Thousand Years Old!!! And I rolled my eyes because my god did that sound like a terrible idea.
Then I saw an episode with Methos in it, and realized he’s the best character in the show.
So, um. The tl;dr version is METHOS YES PLEASE. The rest of this is me fangirling about why I like him, followed by some vague nods to what I'm keen on seeing.
Why I like him: uh, because he’s awesome? The writers avoided the pitfalls I automatically expected when I saw “five thousand years old, world’s oldest living immortal.” He’s not some uber-powerful demigod; he’s just a guy, and not even the strongest one out there. He’s also not some wise, enlightened elder -- though they poke at that idea entertainingly in “The Messenger.” He isn’t weighted down by the angst of his life; he has a fabulous sense of humour (that extends to mocking himself), and I loved how they handled the relationship with Alexa. So often, immortal characters (vampires, etc) moan about how they can’t get attached because the people they love will die and then it’ll be grief foreeeeeever; with Alexa, Methos is all, “Let’s date! Wait, you’re dying of cancer? NO TIME TO LOSE THEN” instead of flinching away from the pain. At the same time, man does he have some trauma and angst in his past (Horsemen, anybody?), which I am very much a sucker for. He doesn’t put dignity (or sometimes even honor) ahead of his own survival; yet on the other hand he will risk himself for his friends -- and also, every so often, this sort of masochistic or even self-destructive streak rears its head. He nearly suicides to Duncan in his first appearance (which, to be fair, is mostly because the writers originally intended him to be a one-off character), and then in “Comes a Horseman,” when he’s trying to squirm out of the conversation and Duncan won’t let him, he turns around and just starts twisting the knife in himself, talking about his own past in the most blunt way possible. And yet, there are moments where the wisdom comes out. I love the exchange between him and Duncan at the end of “The Valkyrie,” about who judges whom, and his epic speech at Amanda in “Methuselah’s Gift” is sheer brilliance. (The plot of that episode is Macguffin Ahoy! from one end to the other, but it’s worth it just for that speech.)
Basically, I love every episode he’s in and everything they do with the character (though I don’t remember season six very well), so if you have a Favorite Methos Moment, odds are I like it, too. Hanging out with Byron? Shooting Duncan in the head? His confrontation with Kristin at the end of “Chivalry?” (“A man born long before the age of chivalry” -- that was a nicely chilling moment.) Awesomesauce, all of it. :-D
Now that I’ve written a mini-dissertation, what about the actual request? Well, I'm open for pretty much anything, but there are a few things I’d prefer you to avoid:
1) Anything that flat-out contradicts canon. Unless I specifically ask for an AU or crossover or fixit fic, etc, I like receiving things that fit into the world and history presented in canon. This doesn’t mean you have to drive yourself batty double-checking every last detail for fear of contradicting one (I probably wouldn’t notice the contradiction anyway), but it does mean I’m not keen on “the Horsemen team up for realz in the modern age” or whatever.
2) Shippy fic or porn. Although I like his relationship with Alexa, I’m not that interested in a fic that focuses on it, nor do I really want to see him slashed with Duncan/Joe/Richie/whoever. Which is not to say you have to avoid relationships like the plague; if it would fit your story to have Methos be involved with some character of your own devising, that’s fine. (Female or male. I read him as straight, but open-minded enough that he wouldn’t say no to other kinds of fun. Especially if he were in a time and place where that sort of thing was mainstream, e.g. ancient Greece or pre-Meiji Japan.)
3) Horsemen-era stuff. I’m not hugely averse to this, so if you have a brilliant idea for something in that time period, go for it. But Horsemen-era Methos is not yet the complex character I love, so he’s less interesting to me. Also, I’m an archaeologist, so the TV version of the Bronze Age makes me roll my eyes. Though if you can do a more realistic Bronze Age, rock on!
Since now I feel like that makes me sound choosy, let me say that beyond those three things, I really am up for just about anything! Emo fic about some tragedy in Methos’ past; hilarious fic about a ridiculous caper; introspective fic musing on immortality and being thousands of years older than everybody around you; grimdark fic about the Gathering actually coming down. If you have a time period you really like, feel free to set the story there; if it’s a time period you know a crap-ton about, yes please. I adore historical fiction full of chewy little period details.
(If it’s a historical period in which -isms become an issue: you’re welcome to address them or sweep them under the narrative rug, whichever suits you better. I kind of think that Methos, with that range of experiences under his belt, has probably learned not to make snap judgments about people based on externalities, but that doesn’t mean he’s 100% free of prejudice. I also know that the prejudices we’re familiar with are very much an inheritance of the last few centuries, and that racism and sexism in, say, republican Rome operated in different ways than ours. So basically, do whatever serves the story best/you are okay with writing; I don’t particularly need this to be issuefic, nor am I upset by characters acting in less than fully enlightened ways.)
Fandom: Song of the Lioness
Characters: Alexander of Tirragen, Alanna of Pirate's Swoop and Olau
Man, I love this series. I read it when I was a kid; coming back to it later, I discovered that not only had the Suck Fairy not paid a visit, it had qualities I never appreciated when I was ten. (Yes, it’s kind of stereotypical girl-disguised-as-boy wish-fulfillment, but Alanna has three lovers. And doesn’t get slut-shamed or anything. It’s kind of amazing.)
The actual canon scratches most of my itch, but there’s one thing that’s stuck in my mind like a burr, which is the focus of my request: Alex’s betrayal.
I’ve got a thing for the slender dark ones (and the good swordsmen), so I always had a real liking for Alexander of Tirragen . . . which is why it sucks that he ends up on Roger’s side. I’m not looking for fix-it fic, though. Instead, I want to know why.
There are fics out there that answer this question, but as good as some of them are, none of them really scratch the itch for me. All the ones I've found have taken one or more of the following three tacks: 1) Alex is being magically controlled, 2) Alex is in a relationship with Roger, 3) Alex is a hillman, and their history with the rest of Tortall is less than harmonious. Me, I’m looking for something more psychological. I do think magical control might have played a role (his “sparring match” with Alanna when she’s a squire is too weird to seem entirely natural), but I also think any such control worked because it leveraged things already within Alex. And by the time you get to the fourth book, it’s Alex’s own choices that bring him to that final fight.
So why does that happen? My read on him is that he’s driven by the pursuit of skill, to the point of perfection. He’s competitive not because he wants to win, or even trounce the other guy, but because he wants proof that he’s the best. And that’s why he has such an interesting relationship with Alanna; she’s more or less as good as he is, and driven in a similar but not identical way, which makes them natural rivals.
What did it mean to Alex that a boy several years younger was nearly his match? What did it mean when he found out that boy was actually a girl? How about when Alanna went off and started having adventures, covering herself in glory in distant lands without Alex ever getting to test himself against her on equal terms? He insisted on facing Alanna before she got to Roger; by that point the rivalry, and the need to find out which of them really was the best, seems to have consumed him utterly. I’m fascinated by the question of how that comes to pass. So: perfectionism, obsession, the gradual abandonment of other values in the service of those things, yes please. :-)
Other stuff I'm keen on: the physicality of a knight's training; fantasy!medieval society and the burdens it places on people; the philosophical implications of the code of chivalry, as Myles debated with the pages. I also really enjoyed the Keladry books, because that entire world of knightliness is really fascinating to me, even though I recognize that it doesn't match up with historical reality.
Regarding the other nominated characters, you're welcome to bring any or all of them into the story as you please (though of course it isn't required). I am very fond of all of them.
Fandom: Phantom of the Opera
Character: Christine Daae
This one is two requests, because the first is a crossover, and I know those are even more optional than the usual optionality of optional details. If you can't or don't want to write the crossover, the second request is for you.
The first request is born of the fact that Sarah Brightman, who originated the role of Christine in the musical, also plays the singer Blind Mag in the movie Repo! The Genetic Opera. Which is utter cracktastic silliness from one end to the other, but for whatever reason, my brain looked at it and decided that Mag is totally Christine.
Yeah, I have no idea how that works, given that Repo! takes place in the future and so it's been, what, a hundred years or more since Christine would have died? But we're talking about a movie with a character called GraveRobber. Who does, in fact, dig up graves. He does so in order to extract Zydrate from their corpses, but hey, who's to say he wouldn't have dug up a grave that was older than he thought, and for whatever reason the woman in it wasn't dead or came back to life or look, I'm not claiming this makes any more sense than the movie itself does, but whatever. Blind Mag is Christine Daae!
So the crossover request is some story in which that's true. The how and why of it are up to you; I'm not married to any specifics beyond the premise, and a general desire to see the GraveRobber play a role. (He's got a fantastic voice. Apparently that is a Thing with me, as per my comments on Fenris above.) Just have fun.
If you don't want to do that, then my Phantom-only request is for aftermath to the musical. This one is born of a brief moment in the film (which has the freedom to show a few things the stage show can't), where Raoul is at the auction, and he exchanges a glance with . . . I can't remember now whether it's Meg or Madame Giry, though I think it's the latter. That glance really got me, because it hammered home the extent to which there's a story behind the things being sold off, that almost nobody there knows about, except the two of them. (When I say "it got me," I mean I wrote an entire short story just off that moment.) And so I thought about what it would be like to be someone who was there for those events, looking back on them after the fact, when so few people understand.
It doesn't have to be Christine's aftermath specifically, though if you want to write about her, go ahead. She is, after all, the character I requested, and I can't imagine she just waltzes away after living through those experiences and never gives it a second thought. Does she ever think maybe things could have worked out with the Phantom (despite his dysfunctional behavior), or wonder what happened to him, or have nightmares in which Raoul is strangling and she can't save him? Does she ever go back to the opera house? But if you want, feel free to write instead about the Girys, or Raoul, or Carlotta -- I'm less interested in the Phantom himself, since I like the way he vanishes at the end. That's a good conclusion for him. Meg pulling away the cloak, though, and finding nothing there . . . I love that moment. I know she's barely a character in the musical, compared with the others, but it could be really cool to get her side of things, especially with her mother having known more of what was going on than just about anybody else in the opera house. Or Carlotta could sell her story to a tabloid, in which it is All About How She Suffered. Or Raoul could struggle to cope with the questions raised by Christine's relationship with the Phantom and her decisions when his life was in danger.
Other info: I think the above gives a pretty good picture of the spectrum of things I like. Drama is good, drama mixed with humor is even better when the story suits it, I don't mind violence so long as it isn't splatterpunk gore. I adore stories with plot in. My default preference is for stories that fit in with canon -- "this could be the secret backstory/sequel you never knew about" or "if you changed X, things could totally have gone this way" -- as opposed to outright revisions, though obviously some of my specific requests deviate from that.
Above all, I hope you have fun!
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/585702.html. Comment here or there.
Fandom: Dragon Age
Characters: Alistair, Anders, Fenris, Flemeth
As far as I'm concerned, companions are one of the great strengths of Bioware's games: they're awesome people, and richly enough characterized that I want to know more about them.
If you matched with me on this, you probably offered "any," since my four are kind of a random assortment. That's because my prompts are individual to the characters, but I couldn't come up with suggestions for every single one of the nineteen (!) people nominated, which meant I couldn't just request "any" like I did last year. Ergo, I narrowed it down to the four I'm the most excited about, and crossed my fingers that somebody would offer "any" so I wouldn't be unmatchable. (Yes, this means you don't have to fit all four of them into one story. Any one of the four on their own is just fine.) I don't mind the inclusion of other canon characters, nominated or otherwise, but given that what I'm interested in is mostly backstory, there may not be much opening for that.
(Regarding the Warden and Hawke: I've found a better way than last year's post to explain my feelings regarding them. I'm generally uninterested in reading about "the Warden" or "Hawke" as such, because they are invariably not my Warden or my Hawke -- but I don't mind reading about some OC, tangentially connected at best to canon. Last year I got a treat with Solona Amell in it, which was totally fine, because she was a Circle apprentice who hadn't yet become the Warden. If you happen to pick an option that might involve one of those figures, then the more you treat them like OCs rather than the canon protagonists, the happier I will probably be.)
Alistair -- I adore Alistair. He's like Joscelin Verreuil (from Jacqueline Carey's first Kushiel trilogy), with a much better sense of humour. I'm apparently a sucker for the semi-fallen religious warrior? I would love a story about Alistair in his Templar-and-Chantry days. He doesn't show terribly strong faith in the game -- not like Leliana -- so was he more religious before, and lost it somehow, or did the Maker never mean much to him? Or does he have his own personal take on those things, that he doesn't talk about much? This makes it sound like I want a deep meditation on faith. I'm not averse to that, but I tend to assume any story about Alistair would be light-hearted along with its depth. Hijinks and/or the events that led to him becoming a Grey Warden; both would be awesome, separately or together.
Fenris -- I adore Fenris, too, in a totally different way. (Much of it centering on the voice. <siiiiiigh>) He's angsty without being a dick to Hawke, which is a balancing act few writers manage. But I'd love to see who he was before the tattoos, i.e. the Leto that is now gone. Varania says he competed to win the tattoos (and her freedom). What did he have to do? Was he acting out of love for his family, or some other motivation? Did he know exactly what he was in for? (Up to and including the memory loss; I could see that going either way.) The details never get fleshed out in canon, but I'd love your take on them. If that doesn't excite you, then maybe tell me: what the heck does Fenris do in his spare time, other than play Wicked Grace with Varric at the Hanged Man? The other characters seem to have social lives and things they do to earn a living, but Fenris is a cipher in that regard. I'd like to know what he does besides brood.
Anders -- Last year’s treat was a FANTABULOUS story about his escape attempts from the Circle pre-DA:A, so this year I’m back with a totally different Anders request. I used to say that he had a personality transplant between DA:A and DA2, but I've come to realize it's more accurate to say your companion in DA2 is really Justice, not Anders at all. Which could have been really cool if his writer had shown the transition or the conflict more clearly; unfortunately, I feel like most of that has to be filled in by the player. So I'd love to see something exploring the transition from the guy who mostly ran away from his problems with the Circle to the monomaniacal crusader we get in the second game. Why did he take on Justice after Kristoff’s body began to fall apart? What did it feel like, becoming an abomination? How did the downhill slide into Vengeance happen, and how consciously aware was Anders of the process? I have a headcanon where anyone possessed by a spirit will eventually end up like Anders did; Wynne, for example, would have eventually morphed from “vessel for Faith” to “avatar of Zealotry” or something in that vein, simply because the human soul can’t handle the purity of a Fade spirit, regardless of what impulse that purity represents. In Anders’ case, it’s clearly his only partially-buried anger against the Circle that sends him off-balance; I’d love a story that digs into that rage, the causes behind it, and how it eventually spins out of control. And though I normally prefer things to adhere to canon, in this case I don't mind at all if the two personalities are presented as starting out separate and in conflict, contrary to what he says about it onscreen, or if the Justice takeover is a slower process than in canon. (Since I'm less keen on seeing canonical!Hawke in fic, you're welcome to write a Kirkwall AU in which everything's falling apart without Hawke there.)
Flemeth -- pretty much anything you care to write about Flemeth. :-D I'm convinced her appearance in DA2 is mostly to explain how she survives DA:O/remind players she exists, because Bioware has something big in mind for her later. Either way, she is clearly a hell of a lot more than just a Witch of the Wilds. If you have ideas for what that "more" is, then share! Old God? Fade spirit? High dragon in human form? Stories about her with her daughters are cool (I've read the comics, so I know about Yavana and the scheme there), or something explaining why Flemeth decided to play "ugly old witch in the swamp" when she's clearly far more than that, or whatever.
I'm sort of paranoid that I've managed to land on the four you're the least interested in writing, so quick notes on a few others: I'd also be keen on a story about Merrill making that deal with the demon to cleanse the eluvian; Isabela having pirate ship adventures; Morrigan growing up with Flemeth, or where she goes after passing through the eluvian in Witch Hunt; Shale becoming a golem (grim) or squishing pigeons (silly); or Varric wheeling and dealing in Kirkwall, especially if it's early days, when he and Bartrand are just establishing themselves. I won't report you to the Exchange Police if you go with one of those options; it's more important to me that you have fun with the character you choose to write. (I promise this isn't me trying to get around the limit on character requests, either. I just get nervous any time "any" comes into play, because let's face it, you probably aren't equally excited by every character in that list, and maybe I picked the ones you like least.)
Fandom: Highlander
Character: Methos
True story: back in the Stone Age of Compuserve et al, when I had only seen a few episodes of Highlander, I was nosing around on internet fansites and came across references to Methos: the Oldest Immortal Alive! He’s Five Thousand Years Old!!! And I rolled my eyes because my god did that sound like a terrible idea.
Then I saw an episode with Methos in it, and realized he’s the best character in the show.
So, um. The tl;dr version is METHOS YES PLEASE. The rest of this is me fangirling about why I like him, followed by some vague nods to what I'm keen on seeing.
Why I like him: uh, because he’s awesome? The writers avoided the pitfalls I automatically expected when I saw “five thousand years old, world’s oldest living immortal.” He’s not some uber-powerful demigod; he’s just a guy, and not even the strongest one out there. He’s also not some wise, enlightened elder -- though they poke at that idea entertainingly in “The Messenger.” He isn’t weighted down by the angst of his life; he has a fabulous sense of humour (that extends to mocking himself), and I loved how they handled the relationship with Alexa. So often, immortal characters (vampires, etc) moan about how they can’t get attached because the people they love will die and then it’ll be grief foreeeeeever; with Alexa, Methos is all, “Let’s date! Wait, you’re dying of cancer? NO TIME TO LOSE THEN” instead of flinching away from the pain. At the same time, man does he have some trauma and angst in his past (Horsemen, anybody?), which I am very much a sucker for. He doesn’t put dignity (or sometimes even honor) ahead of his own survival; yet on the other hand he will risk himself for his friends -- and also, every so often, this sort of masochistic or even self-destructive streak rears its head. He nearly suicides to Duncan in his first appearance (which, to be fair, is mostly because the writers originally intended him to be a one-off character), and then in “Comes a Horseman,” when he’s trying to squirm out of the conversation and Duncan won’t let him, he turns around and just starts twisting the knife in himself, talking about his own past in the most blunt way possible. And yet, there are moments where the wisdom comes out. I love the exchange between him and Duncan at the end of “The Valkyrie,” about who judges whom, and his epic speech at Amanda in “Methuselah’s Gift” is sheer brilliance. (The plot of that episode is Macguffin Ahoy! from one end to the other, but it’s worth it just for that speech.)
Basically, I love every episode he’s in and everything they do with the character (though I don’t remember season six very well), so if you have a Favorite Methos Moment, odds are I like it, too. Hanging out with Byron? Shooting Duncan in the head? His confrontation with Kristin at the end of “Chivalry?” (“A man born long before the age of chivalry” -- that was a nicely chilling moment.) Awesomesauce, all of it. :-D
Now that I’ve written a mini-dissertation, what about the actual request? Well, I'm open for pretty much anything, but there are a few things I’d prefer you to avoid:
1) Anything that flat-out contradicts canon. Unless I specifically ask for an AU or crossover or fixit fic, etc, I like receiving things that fit into the world and history presented in canon. This doesn’t mean you have to drive yourself batty double-checking every last detail for fear of contradicting one (I probably wouldn’t notice the contradiction anyway), but it does mean I’m not keen on “the Horsemen team up for realz in the modern age” or whatever.
2) Shippy fic or porn. Although I like his relationship with Alexa, I’m not that interested in a fic that focuses on it, nor do I really want to see him slashed with Duncan/Joe/Richie/whoever. Which is not to say you have to avoid relationships like the plague; if it would fit your story to have Methos be involved with some character of your own devising, that’s fine. (Female or male. I read him as straight, but open-minded enough that he wouldn’t say no to other kinds of fun. Especially if he were in a time and place where that sort of thing was mainstream, e.g. ancient Greece or pre-Meiji Japan.)
3) Horsemen-era stuff. I’m not hugely averse to this, so if you have a brilliant idea for something in that time period, go for it. But Horsemen-era Methos is not yet the complex character I love, so he’s less interesting to me. Also, I’m an archaeologist, so the TV version of the Bronze Age makes me roll my eyes. Though if you can do a more realistic Bronze Age, rock on!
Since now I feel like that makes me sound choosy, let me say that beyond those three things, I really am up for just about anything! Emo fic about some tragedy in Methos’ past; hilarious fic about a ridiculous caper; introspective fic musing on immortality and being thousands of years older than everybody around you; grimdark fic about the Gathering actually coming down. If you have a time period you really like, feel free to set the story there; if it’s a time period you know a crap-ton about, yes please. I adore historical fiction full of chewy little period details.
(If it’s a historical period in which -isms become an issue: you’re welcome to address them or sweep them under the narrative rug, whichever suits you better. I kind of think that Methos, with that range of experiences under his belt, has probably learned not to make snap judgments about people based on externalities, but that doesn’t mean he’s 100% free of prejudice. I also know that the prejudices we’re familiar with are very much an inheritance of the last few centuries, and that racism and sexism in, say, republican Rome operated in different ways than ours. So basically, do whatever serves the story best/you are okay with writing; I don’t particularly need this to be issuefic, nor am I upset by characters acting in less than fully enlightened ways.)
Fandom: Song of the Lioness
Characters: Alexander of Tirragen, Alanna of Pirate's Swoop and Olau
Man, I love this series. I read it when I was a kid; coming back to it later, I discovered that not only had the Suck Fairy not paid a visit, it had qualities I never appreciated when I was ten. (Yes, it’s kind of stereotypical girl-disguised-as-boy wish-fulfillment, but Alanna has three lovers. And doesn’t get slut-shamed or anything. It’s kind of amazing.)
The actual canon scratches most of my itch, but there’s one thing that’s stuck in my mind like a burr, which is the focus of my request: Alex’s betrayal.
I’ve got a thing for the slender dark ones (and the good swordsmen), so I always had a real liking for Alexander of Tirragen . . . which is why it sucks that he ends up on Roger’s side. I’m not looking for fix-it fic, though. Instead, I want to know why.
There are fics out there that answer this question, but as good as some of them are, none of them really scratch the itch for me. All the ones I've found have taken one or more of the following three tacks: 1) Alex is being magically controlled, 2) Alex is in a relationship with Roger, 3) Alex is a hillman, and their history with the rest of Tortall is less than harmonious. Me, I’m looking for something more psychological. I do think magical control might have played a role (his “sparring match” with Alanna when she’s a squire is too weird to seem entirely natural), but I also think any such control worked because it leveraged things already within Alex. And by the time you get to the fourth book, it’s Alex’s own choices that bring him to that final fight.
So why does that happen? My read on him is that he’s driven by the pursuit of skill, to the point of perfection. He’s competitive not because he wants to win, or even trounce the other guy, but because he wants proof that he’s the best. And that’s why he has such an interesting relationship with Alanna; she’s more or less as good as he is, and driven in a similar but not identical way, which makes them natural rivals.
What did it mean to Alex that a boy several years younger was nearly his match? What did it mean when he found out that boy was actually a girl? How about when Alanna went off and started having adventures, covering herself in glory in distant lands without Alex ever getting to test himself against her on equal terms? He insisted on facing Alanna before she got to Roger; by that point the rivalry, and the need to find out which of them really was the best, seems to have consumed him utterly. I’m fascinated by the question of how that comes to pass. So: perfectionism, obsession, the gradual abandonment of other values in the service of those things, yes please. :-)
Other stuff I'm keen on: the physicality of a knight's training; fantasy!medieval society and the burdens it places on people; the philosophical implications of the code of chivalry, as Myles debated with the pages. I also really enjoyed the Keladry books, because that entire world of knightliness is really fascinating to me, even though I recognize that it doesn't match up with historical reality.
Regarding the other nominated characters, you're welcome to bring any or all of them into the story as you please (though of course it isn't required). I am very fond of all of them.
Fandom: Phantom of the Opera
Character: Christine Daae
This one is two requests, because the first is a crossover, and I know those are even more optional than the usual optionality of optional details. If you can't or don't want to write the crossover, the second request is for you.
The first request is born of the fact that Sarah Brightman, who originated the role of Christine in the musical, also plays the singer Blind Mag in the movie Repo! The Genetic Opera. Which is utter cracktastic silliness from one end to the other, but for whatever reason, my brain looked at it and decided that Mag is totally Christine.
Yeah, I have no idea how that works, given that Repo! takes place in the future and so it's been, what, a hundred years or more since Christine would have died? But we're talking about a movie with a character called GraveRobber. Who does, in fact, dig up graves. He does so in order to extract Zydrate from their corpses, but hey, who's to say he wouldn't have dug up a grave that was older than he thought, and for whatever reason the woman in it wasn't dead or came back to life or look, I'm not claiming this makes any more sense than the movie itself does, but whatever. Blind Mag is Christine Daae!
So the crossover request is some story in which that's true. The how and why of it are up to you; I'm not married to any specifics beyond the premise, and a general desire to see the GraveRobber play a role. (He's got a fantastic voice. Apparently that is a Thing with me, as per my comments on Fenris above.) Just have fun.
If you don't want to do that, then my Phantom-only request is for aftermath to the musical. This one is born of a brief moment in the film (which has the freedom to show a few things the stage show can't), where Raoul is at the auction, and he exchanges a glance with . . . I can't remember now whether it's Meg or Madame Giry, though I think it's the latter. That glance really got me, because it hammered home the extent to which there's a story behind the things being sold off, that almost nobody there knows about, except the two of them. (When I say "it got me," I mean I wrote an entire short story just off that moment.) And so I thought about what it would be like to be someone who was there for those events, looking back on them after the fact, when so few people understand.
It doesn't have to be Christine's aftermath specifically, though if you want to write about her, go ahead. She is, after all, the character I requested, and I can't imagine she just waltzes away after living through those experiences and never gives it a second thought. Does she ever think maybe things could have worked out with the Phantom (despite his dysfunctional behavior), or wonder what happened to him, or have nightmares in which Raoul is strangling and she can't save him? Does she ever go back to the opera house? But if you want, feel free to write instead about the Girys, or Raoul, or Carlotta -- I'm less interested in the Phantom himself, since I like the way he vanishes at the end. That's a good conclusion for him. Meg pulling away the cloak, though, and finding nothing there . . . I love that moment. I know she's barely a character in the musical, compared with the others, but it could be really cool to get her side of things, especially with her mother having known more of what was going on than just about anybody else in the opera house. Or Carlotta could sell her story to a tabloid, in which it is All About How She Suffered. Or Raoul could struggle to cope with the questions raised by Christine's relationship with the Phantom and her decisions when his life was in danger.
Other info: I think the above gives a pretty good picture of the spectrum of things I like. Drama is good, drama mixed with humor is even better when the story suits it, I don't mind violence so long as it isn't splatterpunk gore. I adore stories with plot in. My default preference is for stories that fit in with canon -- "this could be the secret backstory/sequel you never knew about" or "if you changed X, things could totally have gone this way" -- as opposed to outright revisions, though obviously some of my specific requests deviate from that.
Above all, I hope you have fun!
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/585702.html. Comment here or there.
hahaha, you only *thought* my brain was helpful
I'm only one scene away from the end of "To Rise No More" (because I wrote the other remaining one last night, after I posted), so what do I do tonight? Do I settle in and finish that one?
No, of course not. I write two thousand words of the punk Tam Lin story instead.
Seriously, I don't even know. I just work here, man. Now I have two half-finished short stories instead of one finished one and one barely-started one. Well, one is three-quarters done. Maybe if I go re-read the relevant period in Ada Lovelace's letters, I can crank out that final bit tonight? It would be nice to be able to put paid to one of these things.
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/585417.html. Comment here or there.
No, of course not. I write two thousand words of the punk Tam Lin story instead.
Seriously, I don't even know. I just work here, man. Now I have two half-finished short stories instead of one finished one and one barely-started one. Well, one is three-quarters done. Maybe if I go re-read the relevant period in Ada Lovelace's letters, I can crank out that final bit tonight? It would be nice to be able to put paid to one of these things.
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/585417.html. Comment here or there.
April 17, 2013
I might actually finish this thing
Another 1500 words or so, including a terrible pun about swan upping.
I think I've got about two scenes left in "To Rise No More," one of which should be pretty short.
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/585169.html. Comment here or there.
I think I've got about two scenes left in "To Rise No More," one of which should be pretty short.
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/585169.html. Comment here or there.
April 16, 2013
I don't have to work on anything right now, so I'm procrastinating with a meme
Several of my fanfic-writing friends have been doing a meme wherein they post the first lines of their last twenty-one fics. Because I don't feel like doing anything more mentally taxing right now than faffing around on the computer listening to music, and also because that's a lie and Anthropologist Brain is having thinky thoughts but doesn't mind listening to music while faffing around collating stuff, I'm going to do this twice: once with fanfic, and then once with my original short stories. I want to see how they compare.
This is going to be dominated by my Yuletide efforts, since this past winter was the year of "if I write ALL THE FICS, I won't try to write even more next year."
She was mostly deaf even before the percussion grenade went off; now she can’t hear a damn thing. -- Can You Hear Me Now?
They have to move the desk further away from the window, which makes the whole room feel wrong. -- The Wrong Side
He didn’t know he was being watched until he looked up and saw the forest man staring at him. -- Echoes of the Wolf
No-one will ever say at a child’s funeral, “Well, it’s a tragedy, but at least the unpleasant one died.” -- An Abecedary of Tragic Ends, Explicated for the Reader
They made a pair of interesting contrasts: the English librarian and the American archaeologist; one barely more than a girl, the other a woman grown; one half-Egyptian and dark, the other, by ancestry at least, pure red-headed Scot. -- No Harm Ever Came from Digging Up the Past
“Hey, have you guys seen the nominations?” Ethan asked, sliding in next to Zach at the lunch table. -- Unlikely
The calluses have faded from your fingertips, leaving them tender and soft. -- If Your Hands Are Cold, and the Fiddle Is Old
Strychnine is bitter, but the most pleasant to work with. -- Dying Old
Holdaway never told Freddy about Joe Whitmore. -- Stories Untold
When the boy who should have been a piemaker was nine years, thirty-three weeks, six days, twenty-three hours, and thirty-four minutes old, someone found out what he could do. -- It ends in a small white room
It wasn’t love that did her in, whatever Madmartigan thinks. -- Impossible Things
The sound was faint enough for Aviendha to wonder if she had imagined it. -- A Thousand Paths in a Single Step
The evening would have been a giant media circus even if it had just been the Tony Stark Show Featuring Tony Stark and His Ego. -- Oh So Pretty
Genji always struggled not to grin when he saw Detective Kobayashi. -- On Dragonfly Wings
Without fear, without weakness, without hesitation. -- A Prepared Spirit
The first time Lucy called him "Your Majesty," he almost snapped and said something unforgivable. -- Majesty
He falls. -- Broken by the Light
This is not a tale the wolfcarls tell. -- Die erste Königin
Things They Don't Teach You in Auror Training: #1 - Forget the Unforgivable Curses. -- Ouroboros
Hamlet never even said he was leaving. -- A Devilish Exercise
Captain Li Shang stood stiffly in the corner of the tent, trying to pretend he did not hear the argument between his father and Chi-Fu. -- Dài lóng wénshēn de nǚhái
Next, the original stories. For these, I'm going to take them in reverse order of writing (newest first), and include some that haven't sold yet. No novels, though -- only shorter fiction. (I figure novels are playing too different of a game to be useful for comparison.)
Let me tell a tale of my father's kin, for in me runs their blood, and so to me falls this burden: to keep the knowledge, the old-thought, the shape of how it began, as my father gave it to me. -- "What Still Abides"
The skies were clear and the winds fair for Plymouth, the Hesperides flying before them like a swan, her wings unfurled from the yardarms and belling out full. -- "False Colours"
She was never happier than when she Danced the Warrior. -- Dancing the Warrior
The coyotes of Mexicali were bold. -- "Coyotaje"
"I want to make a map of Driftwood." -- "The Ascent of Unreason"
Peter found her slippers just inside his office door. -- "Mad Maudlin"
They offered him a beautiful woman, power over men, victory in war. -- "The Wives of Paris"
He spends his days sitting at the window, like a maiden in some troubadour's tale. -- "Two Pretenders"
Henry Garnet's breathing was the only sound inside the room, marking the passage of time like a ragged and desperate clock. -- "And Blow Them at the Moon"
Abstract: This study seeks to establish a hierarchy of efficacy for various antipathetic materials and delivery mechanisms thereof as used in the extermination of lycanthropes. -- "Comparison of Efficacy Rates for Seven Antipathetics as Employed Against Lycanthropes"
With his fangs still buried in the thick meat of his own tail, the great serpent says, "I wondered when you would come." -- "Serpent, Wolf, and Half-Dead Thing"
In her first light, Noirin never thought it strange that her world should be only a few blocks square, and that on the other side of the Palace Way (whose Palace had vanished before her grandmother was born) there should be a place where the people had four arms and water always fell from the sky. -- "Remembering Light"
Dear Mom and Dad: The good news is, nobody's dead anymore. -- "Love, Cayce"
They found him in a narrow alley, within smelling distance of the riverside wharves and the pestilential tenements that crowded them, with his throat slit from ear to ear. -- Deeds of Men
The new ground of the milpa showed like a scar torn into the forest. -- "Chrysalis"
1. In the beginning God made the world, and on the sixth day he made creatures in his image. -- "The Gospel of Nachash"
For eleven years Hathirekhmet was a goddess, and then they sent her home. -- "Once a Goddess"
I have not spoken with my own voice in nearly seven years. -- "Kingspeaker"
The stars winked in conspiratorial excitement as the two travelers flew by, borne on nighttime winds. -- "The Last Wendy"
Among the noble flowers that have gathered for the ball, the hopeful young ladies in lavender and spring green and pink, she stands out like a rose, red-black as venous blood. -- "Footprints"
The king was dying, and nothing in the world could save him. -- "A Heretic by Degrees"
And now, thoughts on how they compare.
I am not surprised in the slightest to discover that in fanfic, I am vastly more likely to pull the trick of not introducing the character(s) right away, but just referring to them with pronouns. Where I do the same thing in original fiction, odds are good that I'm retelling some existing story or bit of history. In other words, that's a stunt that works best when you have a certainty or at least decent chance of your reader knowing the character already. They don't need to know that person is the one referred to; sometimes you can get a good effect from briefly hiding the character's identity. (Or permanently. In some of these stories, like "Footprints," I never give a name at all: you can tell it's Cinderella gone wrong.) But the technique only works when there's a shared familiarity there. I have no reason at all to withhold Noirin's name (to pick one example); it means nothing to the reader, and so treating it as a revelation is not only pointless but counterproductive.
I am also not surprised in the slightest to discover that while I may begin my short stories with description or other forms of scene-setting, I almost never do the same with fanfic. They begin with characters, not context. This is because a) context is often unnecessary -- the fanfic reader already knows what the world is like, and b) character may be what the fanfic reader has shown up to the story for in the first place. To continue using "Remembering Light" as my example: I can't give you Noirin's conflict right away, because you don't know who she is (and therefore have no reason to care), and her conflict also depends on me first establishing the environment of Driftwood. But I don't have to tell the reader that Aviendha is a warrior recently forced to put aside her weapons; they already know that, and I can jump right into her dealing with an intruder.
What's interesting to me is that I don't feel like I had to learn to approach the stories differently, when I first waded into Yuletide a couple of years ago. Looking at those first fics (which haven't made it into this list), the only one that starts at all like an original story is also the one that starts from the perspective of an original character. It seems to have been natural for me to follow the structure of a fanfic, where you don't have to establish context to the same degree. Is that because it's somewhat like jumping to an interesting scene in a novel? Or something else? I don't know. The next question, of course, is whether fanfic has changed the way I start my short stories . . . but really, if I'm going to blame anything for a difference there, it's going to be all the time I've spent writing in a vaguely eighteenth- or nineteenth-century voice. (Man, is that hard to get rid of.)
This is good stuff for me to think about, though, because I'm going to be teaching a three-week writing course this summer (more on that later), and my students, who will be twelve and thirteen years old, may very well have written fanfic. So I'll want to watch out for the habits of that genre, where they may shortchange some of the work an independent short story has to do.
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/584713.html. Comment here or there.
This is going to be dominated by my Yuletide efforts, since this past winter was the year of "if I write ALL THE FICS, I won't try to write even more next year."
She was mostly deaf even before the percussion grenade went off; now she can’t hear a damn thing. -- Can You Hear Me Now?
They have to move the desk further away from the window, which makes the whole room feel wrong. -- The Wrong Side
He didn’t know he was being watched until he looked up and saw the forest man staring at him. -- Echoes of the Wolf
No-one will ever say at a child’s funeral, “Well, it’s a tragedy, but at least the unpleasant one died.” -- An Abecedary of Tragic Ends, Explicated for the Reader
They made a pair of interesting contrasts: the English librarian and the American archaeologist; one barely more than a girl, the other a woman grown; one half-Egyptian and dark, the other, by ancestry at least, pure red-headed Scot. -- No Harm Ever Came from Digging Up the Past
“Hey, have you guys seen the nominations?” Ethan asked, sliding in next to Zach at the lunch table. -- Unlikely
The calluses have faded from your fingertips, leaving them tender and soft. -- If Your Hands Are Cold, and the Fiddle Is Old
Strychnine is bitter, but the most pleasant to work with. -- Dying Old
Holdaway never told Freddy about Joe Whitmore. -- Stories Untold
When the boy who should have been a piemaker was nine years, thirty-three weeks, six days, twenty-three hours, and thirty-four minutes old, someone found out what he could do. -- It ends in a small white room
It wasn’t love that did her in, whatever Madmartigan thinks. -- Impossible Things
The sound was faint enough for Aviendha to wonder if she had imagined it. -- A Thousand Paths in a Single Step
The evening would have been a giant media circus even if it had just been the Tony Stark Show Featuring Tony Stark and His Ego. -- Oh So Pretty
Genji always struggled not to grin when he saw Detective Kobayashi. -- On Dragonfly Wings
Without fear, without weakness, without hesitation. -- A Prepared Spirit
The first time Lucy called him "Your Majesty," he almost snapped and said something unforgivable. -- Majesty
He falls. -- Broken by the Light
This is not a tale the wolfcarls tell. -- Die erste Königin
Things They Don't Teach You in Auror Training: #1 - Forget the Unforgivable Curses. -- Ouroboros
Hamlet never even said he was leaving. -- A Devilish Exercise
Captain Li Shang stood stiffly in the corner of the tent, trying to pretend he did not hear the argument between his father and Chi-Fu. -- Dài lóng wénshēn de nǚhái
Next, the original stories. For these, I'm going to take them in reverse order of writing (newest first), and include some that haven't sold yet. No novels, though -- only shorter fiction. (I figure novels are playing too different of a game to be useful for comparison.)
Let me tell a tale of my father's kin, for in me runs their blood, and so to me falls this burden: to keep the knowledge, the old-thought, the shape of how it began, as my father gave it to me. -- "What Still Abides"
The skies were clear and the winds fair for Plymouth, the Hesperides flying before them like a swan, her wings unfurled from the yardarms and belling out full. -- "False Colours"
She was never happier than when she Danced the Warrior. -- Dancing the Warrior
The coyotes of Mexicali were bold. -- "Coyotaje"
"I want to make a map of Driftwood." -- "The Ascent of Unreason"
Peter found her slippers just inside his office door. -- "Mad Maudlin"
They offered him a beautiful woman, power over men, victory in war. -- "The Wives of Paris"
He spends his days sitting at the window, like a maiden in some troubadour's tale. -- "Two Pretenders"
Henry Garnet's breathing was the only sound inside the room, marking the passage of time like a ragged and desperate clock. -- "And Blow Them at the Moon"
Abstract: This study seeks to establish a hierarchy of efficacy for various antipathetic materials and delivery mechanisms thereof as used in the extermination of lycanthropes. -- "Comparison of Efficacy Rates for Seven Antipathetics as Employed Against Lycanthropes"
With his fangs still buried in the thick meat of his own tail, the great serpent says, "I wondered when you would come." -- "Serpent, Wolf, and Half-Dead Thing"
In her first light, Noirin never thought it strange that her world should be only a few blocks square, and that on the other side of the Palace Way (whose Palace had vanished before her grandmother was born) there should be a place where the people had four arms and water always fell from the sky. -- "Remembering Light"
Dear Mom and Dad: The good news is, nobody's dead anymore. -- "Love, Cayce"
They found him in a narrow alley, within smelling distance of the riverside wharves and the pestilential tenements that crowded them, with his throat slit from ear to ear. -- Deeds of Men
The new ground of the milpa showed like a scar torn into the forest. -- "Chrysalis"
1. In the beginning God made the world, and on the sixth day he made creatures in his image. -- "The Gospel of Nachash"
For eleven years Hathirekhmet was a goddess, and then they sent her home. -- "Once a Goddess"
I have not spoken with my own voice in nearly seven years. -- "Kingspeaker"
The stars winked in conspiratorial excitement as the two travelers flew by, borne on nighttime winds. -- "The Last Wendy"
Among the noble flowers that have gathered for the ball, the hopeful young ladies in lavender and spring green and pink, she stands out like a rose, red-black as venous blood. -- "Footprints"
The king was dying, and nothing in the world could save him. -- "A Heretic by Degrees"
And now, thoughts on how they compare.
I am not surprised in the slightest to discover that in fanfic, I am vastly more likely to pull the trick of not introducing the character(s) right away, but just referring to them with pronouns. Where I do the same thing in original fiction, odds are good that I'm retelling some existing story or bit of history. In other words, that's a stunt that works best when you have a certainty or at least decent chance of your reader knowing the character already. They don't need to know that person is the one referred to; sometimes you can get a good effect from briefly hiding the character's identity. (Or permanently. In some of these stories, like "Footprints," I never give a name at all: you can tell it's Cinderella gone wrong.) But the technique only works when there's a shared familiarity there. I have no reason at all to withhold Noirin's name (to pick one example); it means nothing to the reader, and so treating it as a revelation is not only pointless but counterproductive.
I am also not surprised in the slightest to discover that while I may begin my short stories with description or other forms of scene-setting, I almost never do the same with fanfic. They begin with characters, not context. This is because a) context is often unnecessary -- the fanfic reader already knows what the world is like, and b) character may be what the fanfic reader has shown up to the story for in the first place. To continue using "Remembering Light" as my example: I can't give you Noirin's conflict right away, because you don't know who she is (and therefore have no reason to care), and her conflict also depends on me first establishing the environment of Driftwood. But I don't have to tell the reader that Aviendha is a warrior recently forced to put aside her weapons; they already know that, and I can jump right into her dealing with an intruder.
What's interesting to me is that I don't feel like I had to learn to approach the stories differently, when I first waded into Yuletide a couple of years ago. Looking at those first fics (which haven't made it into this list), the only one that starts at all like an original story is also the one that starts from the perspective of an original character. It seems to have been natural for me to follow the structure of a fanfic, where you don't have to establish context to the same degree. Is that because it's somewhat like jumping to an interesting scene in a novel? Or something else? I don't know. The next question, of course, is whether fanfic has changed the way I start my short stories . . . but really, if I'm going to blame anything for a difference there, it's going to be all the time I've spent writing in a vaguely eighteenth- or nineteenth-century voice. (Man, is that hard to get rid of.)
This is good stuff for me to think about, though, because I'm going to be teaching a three-week writing course this summer (more on that later), and my students, who will be twelve and thirteen years old, may very well have written fanfic. So I'll want to watch out for the habits of that genre, where they may shortchange some of the work an independent short story has to do.
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/584713.html. Comment here or there.
This month at SF Novelists
I decided to leverage my recent efforts into a blog post I've been meaning to write for a while: Noun of Nouns, on the issue of titling fantasy novels. Comment over there; no login required.
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/584696.html. Comment here or there.
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/584696.html. Comment here or there.
April 15, 2013
poll results
I'm sort of fascinated by seeing how people have voted in the short story poll. (Which is still open, so if you want to go register your opinion, feel free!) I mean, ultimately I'm going to write whichever one(s) say "oooh oooh write me write me," but it's enlightening to see where other people's interest goes.
Dead last is "A River Flowing Nowhere," which surprises me because it's a Driftwood story, and historically those have been something people really want me to write more of. Of course, all I said about it at the time was that it is a Driftwood story, so maybe it would have done better had I said something about the premise?
Next lowest is "An Enquiry into the Causes." I'm tempted to make a new poll saying "Do you know what the Bow Street Runners were? Y/N" -- because if you don't know, then, well, there's not much reason to vote for that one, apart from "it's an Onyx Court story."
Then we have a bunch in the middle, and then after that, two runaway favorites: "To Rise No More" and the punk Tam Lin. The former, I imagine, gets votes because a) I have a sizable part of it written already, b) I've been talking about it recently, and c) who doesn't love Ada Lovelace? The latter . . . you all just want to watch the spectacle of me trying to write anything punk, don't you. :-P
We'll see what happens. Odds are that "To Rise No More" will be first, because it's the closest to being done and also the freshest. After that, who knows. My brain keeps trying to say "The Unquiet Grave," but until I figure out what the hell I'm doing with it (a straight-up narrative treatment of the song lyrics would be boring), it's kind of hard to make it go anywhere.
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/584203.html. Comment here or there.
Dead last is "A River Flowing Nowhere," which surprises me because it's a Driftwood story, and historically those have been something people really want me to write more of. Of course, all I said about it at the time was that it is a Driftwood story, so maybe it would have done better had I said something about the premise?
Next lowest is "An Enquiry into the Causes." I'm tempted to make a new poll saying "Do you know what the Bow Street Runners were? Y/N" -- because if you don't know, then, well, there's not much reason to vote for that one, apart from "it's an Onyx Court story."
Then we have a bunch in the middle, and then after that, two runaway favorites: "To Rise No More" and the punk Tam Lin. The former, I imagine, gets votes because a) I have a sizable part of it written already, b) I've been talking about it recently, and c) who doesn't love Ada Lovelace? The latter . . . you all just want to watch the spectacle of me trying to write anything punk, don't you. :-P
We'll see what happens. Odds are that "To Rise No More" will be first, because it's the closest to being done and also the freshest. After that, who knows. My brain keeps trying to say "The Unquiet Grave," but until I figure out what the hell I'm doing with it (a straight-up narrative treatment of the song lyrics would be boring), it's kind of hard to make it go anywhere.
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/584203.html. Comment here or there.
Writing Fight Scenes: Focus
[This is a post in my series on how to write fight scenes. Other installments may be found under the tag.]
I may have a big soft spot in my heart for the fight scenes in R.A. Salvatore's Dark Elf series, which describe the mechanics of each combat in loving, blow-by-blow detail, but as I said at the start of this blogging, you don't actually need to do that in order to write a good fight. Even if you do, you're unlikely to detail every single move of anything but the shortest clash: you'll pick key moments to focus on. The same is true of the less mechanical approach. But then the question becomes, which parts deserve focus?
I don't mean you have to wax rhapsodic about the conclusion of every single fight, but the level of detail there should probably be on par with or higher than the rest of the combat. The scene would flow very oddly if you spent three paragraphs on the first six moves, then said "when his opponent was dead, he moved on." Maybe you can pull it off once or twice as an anticlimactic trick, but in general? The fight presents the reader with a conflict; the end of the fight is the resolution of that conflict. You can't cheese out on that any more than you can cheese out on resolution elsewhere in your story.
The beginning of the scene is the next most likely candidate for close attention, especially if this is the first fight for these characters, or something about the event makes it stand out from the previous ones. After all, this is where you set the scene, and if the combat is more than a throwaway line about "she cut the guard's throat in silence," the reader needs to know what they're looking at. Remember all those questions at the start of this series, about who and what and where? This is where you turn those answers into a story. Two fencers calmly testing one another's defenses in a training hall makes for a very different opening from a starving street urchin leaping on a man from the shadows and trying to bash his head in with a rock. The opening sets the mood, the pace, the stakes. You don't want to spend so long on it that we lose all urgency, but you probably don't want to skip over it, either.
What else deserves focus? After "the end" and "the beginning," the answer to that question gets much more subjective, varying from story to story and author to author. You can make the middle a five-page extravaganza or a five-sentence summary (though it should still be an exciting one). How do you decide which one you should aim for?
Some of that depends on your own personal comfort level with writing combat, but we can also return to a previous concept for guidance: beats. If your fight is complex enough to have more than one beat, then you want to pay attention to the inflection points, the moments where the scene changes. If Inigo starts out fencing left-handed and then switches, we need to know why; we need a clear sense of how the man in black has gotten the upper hand (tactics, skill) sufficiently to drive Inigo back toward the edge of the cliff (positioning). To pick a different example from the same movie, when the man in black runs up a rock and then leaps onto Fezzik's back to get him in a chokehold, we have to see that happen. You can't have the man in black dodging and then say "he got Fezzik in a chokehold," because your reader will be left scratching her head and saying, "I thought Fezzik was huge. How does that work?" We should see how important wounds get inflicted -- not every little nick (you're free to use the classic line "he was soon bleeding from a dozen points"), but the ones that change or threaten to change the course of the fight. A slash to the arm that weakens a swordswoman's grip, an injured knee that sends the Karate Kid into Crane stance because he can barely stand on that leg. If it makes a difference, we need to see it enter the scene.
What "attention" means is still variable, depending on the scene you want to create. It can be a single sentence, or multiple paragraphs. Similarly, the extent to which you gloss over the intervening parts depends on your purpose and how much you like writing combat. The initial exchanges between Inigo and the man in black can be written out in detail, saying that Inigo disengaged for a deft outside thrust but the stranger's quick wrist shifted to block and then riposte; if you aren't a fencer, then you can instead just say "they tested one another's skill in focused silence, and Inigo discovered the man in black was equally quick in both attack and defense." Or whatever. But you don't need to give the entirety of that beat at the same level of detail; once you've established what they're doing, you can jump to "soon Inigo found himself retreating up the rocks" and get into the dialogue. The exact steps by which Inigo was put into retreat aren't vital to the story, since he is not yet at the point where retreat has become a serious enough problem to force a tactical change.
In doing this, don't forget this is a story. The mechanics of movement are, ultimately, less important than what they mean. It's important to say that Inigo is testing the man in black early on because we know he decided to handicap himself by fighting left-handed, and expects to win anyway. So if he finds his opponent is just as quick as he is, with no obvious weakness, this is going to make Inigo happy! Finally, a challenge! Then we need to see that change when he discovers this is a real challenge -- one that might actually kill him if he doesn't bring his A game, i.e. his right hand. But that goes both ways: you don't want to give us the mechanics without the reaction, and you don't want to give us the reaction without explaining what sparked it. You have to say enough that the reader can follow what's happening and why it's important; the key moments have to stand out from the surrounding narration. This is a song, and it needs dynamics.
We're nearly at the end of this blog series. Before I write the final post, though, I want to ask: is there anything in particular you guys want to see me address, that I haven't already covered?
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/584105.html. Comment here or there.
I may have a big soft spot in my heart for the fight scenes in R.A. Salvatore's Dark Elf series, which describe the mechanics of each combat in loving, blow-by-blow detail, but as I said at the start of this blogging, you don't actually need to do that in order to write a good fight. Even if you do, you're unlikely to detail every single move of anything but the shortest clash: you'll pick key moments to focus on. The same is true of the less mechanical approach. But then the question becomes, which parts deserve focus?
I don't mean you have to wax rhapsodic about the conclusion of every single fight, but the level of detail there should probably be on par with or higher than the rest of the combat. The scene would flow very oddly if you spent three paragraphs on the first six moves, then said "when his opponent was dead, he moved on." Maybe you can pull it off once or twice as an anticlimactic trick, but in general? The fight presents the reader with a conflict; the end of the fight is the resolution of that conflict. You can't cheese out on that any more than you can cheese out on resolution elsewhere in your story.
The beginning of the scene is the next most likely candidate for close attention, especially if this is the first fight for these characters, or something about the event makes it stand out from the previous ones. After all, this is where you set the scene, and if the combat is more than a throwaway line about "she cut the guard's throat in silence," the reader needs to know what they're looking at. Remember all those questions at the start of this series, about who and what and where? This is where you turn those answers into a story. Two fencers calmly testing one another's defenses in a training hall makes for a very different opening from a starving street urchin leaping on a man from the shadows and trying to bash his head in with a rock. The opening sets the mood, the pace, the stakes. You don't want to spend so long on it that we lose all urgency, but you probably don't want to skip over it, either.
What else deserves focus? After "the end" and "the beginning," the answer to that question gets much more subjective, varying from story to story and author to author. You can make the middle a five-page extravaganza or a five-sentence summary (though it should still be an exciting one). How do you decide which one you should aim for?
Some of that depends on your own personal comfort level with writing combat, but we can also return to a previous concept for guidance: beats. If your fight is complex enough to have more than one beat, then you want to pay attention to the inflection points, the moments where the scene changes. If Inigo starts out fencing left-handed and then switches, we need to know why; we need a clear sense of how the man in black has gotten the upper hand (tactics, skill) sufficiently to drive Inigo back toward the edge of the cliff (positioning). To pick a different example from the same movie, when the man in black runs up a rock and then leaps onto Fezzik's back to get him in a chokehold, we have to see that happen. You can't have the man in black dodging and then say "he got Fezzik in a chokehold," because your reader will be left scratching her head and saying, "I thought Fezzik was huge. How does that work?" We should see how important wounds get inflicted -- not every little nick (you're free to use the classic line "he was soon bleeding from a dozen points"), but the ones that change or threaten to change the course of the fight. A slash to the arm that weakens a swordswoman's grip, an injured knee that sends the Karate Kid into Crane stance because he can barely stand on that leg. If it makes a difference, we need to see it enter the scene.
What "attention" means is still variable, depending on the scene you want to create. It can be a single sentence, or multiple paragraphs. Similarly, the extent to which you gloss over the intervening parts depends on your purpose and how much you like writing combat. The initial exchanges between Inigo and the man in black can be written out in detail, saying that Inigo disengaged for a deft outside thrust but the stranger's quick wrist shifted to block and then riposte; if you aren't a fencer, then you can instead just say "they tested one another's skill in focused silence, and Inigo discovered the man in black was equally quick in both attack and defense." Or whatever. But you don't need to give the entirety of that beat at the same level of detail; once you've established what they're doing, you can jump to "soon Inigo found himself retreating up the rocks" and get into the dialogue. The exact steps by which Inigo was put into retreat aren't vital to the story, since he is not yet at the point where retreat has become a serious enough problem to force a tactical change.
In doing this, don't forget this is a story. The mechanics of movement are, ultimately, less important than what they mean. It's important to say that Inigo is testing the man in black early on because we know he decided to handicap himself by fighting left-handed, and expects to win anyway. So if he finds his opponent is just as quick as he is, with no obvious weakness, this is going to make Inigo happy! Finally, a challenge! Then we need to see that change when he discovers this is a real challenge -- one that might actually kill him if he doesn't bring his A game, i.e. his right hand. But that goes both ways: you don't want to give us the mechanics without the reaction, and you don't want to give us the reaction without explaining what sparked it. You have to say enough that the reader can follow what's happening and why it's important; the key moments have to stand out from the surrounding narration. This is a song, and it needs dynamics.
We're nearly at the end of this blog series. Before I write the final post, though, I want to ask: is there anything in particular you guys want to see me address, that I haven't already covered?
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/584105.html. Comment here or there.
April 14, 2013
Revision done! . . . now what?
The revised draft of The Tropic of Serpents is off to my editor. Now, I just want to fall over . . . but no, I should try to ride that wave of inspiration that was attempting to distract me from the work I needed to be doing. In other words, I should work on a short story.
The candidates which have recently been trying to distract me are, in no particular order:
"To Rise No More" -- the Ada Lovelace Onyx Court story, explaining why she was involved in the creation of the Ephemeral Engine. (Status: started.)
the sequel to "Love, Cayce," provisionally titled "Advice to a Young Lady on Her Way to Hell." (Status: a paragraph or so.)
"The Unquiet Grave," based on the folksong of the same name. Do I have any idea what I'm doing with this story? No. But I keep getting the song stuck in my head, and it makes me want to write something. (Status: nothing.)
Edward Thorne's Onyx Court story, about how he came to be a valet to faeries . . . aka "the Peregrin/Segraine Buddy Cop Tale." (Status: not even a title.)
"This Living Hand," which is the Onyx Court Romantic poets story, except I'd have to do a lot of research for that one. (Status: a title, but nto much more.)
"An Enquiry Into the Causes," ditto, except I'd have to research the Bow Street Runners. (Status: I know who I want to have show up in it?)
Another Xochitlicacan story, a la "A Mask of Flesh," with a jaguar-woman and a temple that hasn't been decommissioned properly. (Status: uh, nothing.)
"A River Flowing Nowhere," which is a new Driftwood story. (Status: vague plot outline.)
A modern sort of punk-ish Tam Lin retelling. (Status: a paragraph or so.)
alecaustin
, I haven't forgotten that I owe you a story about the sacking of Enryaku-ji. (Status: I need to get that biography of Nobunaga out of the library again.)
. . . yeah, my brain wanted to do anything other than revise. So, time for a poll!
View Poll: #1908410
The candidates which have recently been trying to distract me are, in no particular order:
"To Rise No More" -- the Ada Lovelace Onyx Court story, explaining why she was involved in the creation of the Ephemeral Engine. (Status: started.)
the sequel to "Love, Cayce," provisionally titled "Advice to a Young Lady on Her Way to Hell." (Status: a paragraph or so.)
"The Unquiet Grave," based on the folksong of the same name. Do I have any idea what I'm doing with this story? No. But I keep getting the song stuck in my head, and it makes me want to write something. (Status: nothing.)
Edward Thorne's Onyx Court story, about how he came to be a valet to faeries . . . aka "the Peregrin/Segraine Buddy Cop Tale." (Status: not even a title.)
"This Living Hand," which is the Onyx Court Romantic poets story, except I'd have to do a lot of research for that one. (Status: a title, but nto much more.)
"An Enquiry Into the Causes," ditto, except I'd have to research the Bow Street Runners. (Status: I know who I want to have show up in it?)
Another Xochitlicacan story, a la "A Mask of Flesh," with a jaguar-woman and a temple that hasn't been decommissioned properly. (Status: uh, nothing.)
"A River Flowing Nowhere," which is a new Driftwood story. (Status: vague plot outline.)
A modern sort of punk-ish Tam Lin retelling. (Status: a paragraph or so.)
alecaustin
, I haven't forgotten that I owe you a story about the sacking of Enryaku-ji. (Status: I need to get that biography of Nobunaga out of the library again.). . . yeah, my brain wanted to do anything other than revise. So, time for a poll!
View Poll: #1908410
