#and to write something in a self-indulgently florid style

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Stars and Shadows: A Fairy Tale

An extremely experimental piece I've decided to submit for @inklings-challenge.

If you wait patiently, there will come a day--in a month, in a year, in a hundred-thousand hopeful days--when you will stare outside into the deep blue-black of a cold winter night and not be able to tell the snowflakes from the stars. It will call to your heart and pull you from the warmth and light of home--wrapped up in coats and boots, scarves and gloves, and one thick woolen blanket thrown over your shoulders like a cloak--in the hope of becoming, even for a moment, a part of the beauty of this moment of creation.

The cold of night will bite your face and steal your breath, but in a moment, you will find yourself racing across the white expanse, snow crunching beneath your boots, soul expanding toward the shining heavens in one upward rush of joy. As soon as home and family are safely out of view, you will slow from your sprint and find yourself content to amble, and wonder, and be, with the shy, slender moon watching patiently above.

You will carry no light, for the world will be light, with the moon and the stars and the snow wrapping all the world in bright illumination. Your breath will shine before you in delicate white clouds, your very life made visible for the fragile, lovely thing it is. In the silence you will hear the snowflakes fall, hear the hushed sound of your footfalls, feel every beat of your strong and pulsing heart.

And then, if you close your eyes and listen long enough, just at the moment when your heart is near to breaking from the beauty of it all, you will hear a cry. For a moment you might think it a phantom of thought, your own soul giving voice to all the aching loveliness that surges through you, but then, you will hear it again. Over and over, thin and wailing, the cry of a child newly born horrified to find the world so great and cold.

The sound will travel like an arrow in that crisp, cold air, and you will follow it without hesitation--over a rise, down a hill, through a twisting stand of trees and countless banks of snow, and at last to an old well, such as you've only seen in illustrations--a construction of wood and stones, covered with moss and aged with time, that you can say with certainty was not there a day before.

Standing by that well will be, not an infant, but a child. A little girl three years old, reaching desperately for the rim of the well and crying for water. Everything about her--her skin, her hair, her eyes--will be white as the snow she stands in, and she will gleam faintly with the light of the stars above, and she will wear nothing but thin, white rags, torn at the edges and singed at the ends, a ragged line of ash the only color in her form.

You will notice all these things and think it strange, and then you will forget everything because the child is crying. You will find a wooden bucket on a chain by the well, and in sheer desperation you will throw it down, though there will be nothing but ice in an open well on a night so cold.

But to your shock, you will hear a splash, and you will pull up a bucket full of liquid water that looks like light itself. You will give it to the girl--you would not dream of taking even a drop for yourself--and she will drink with cupped hands and lapping tongue, and gaze at you with silent gratitude.

When she has drained the last drop, the faint gleam of light around her form will become a white glow. She will seem a bit taller--perhaps a bit older than you first assumed--and for the first time, she will seem to feel the cold. She will shiver and wail and curl in on herself, and you will suddenly understand--or at least bless--your mad impulse to take a blanket out into the night. You will take it from your shoulders and wrap it round her form, head to foot, with only her shining white face peering out. Then you will take her in your arms, settle her on one hip, and carry her across the vast expanse of snow toward your home.

It will be a long trip--you have walked a long way--and before you have gone far, the child will grow too heavy for your strength. You will look to her and find that the blanket you have wrapped around her no longer seems so large, and clings more closely to her form--like something between a deep blue dress and cloak--so you will feel safe in setting her on the ground and letting her walk beside you, her thin white hand in yours.

You will wonder for a moment if you've fallen into a dream, for all seems so strange and perfect--the light, the snow, this silent child--but the bite of the cold and the burn of your legs will assure you that you remain in the waking world. Yet you won't think to question the child--who or what she is, or from whence she arrived--because she is so like the snow and the light and the stars of this crisp, cold night--things that do not become, but simply are. Your wonder make peace with the night's mystery.

The way back will seem longer than you remember--the trees taller, the stars brighter, the air colder. The night will seem large and you so very small, but you will not be afraid, for there is one beside you too innocent for fear. You will walk in the tracks you left on your way, stretching between footfalls that seem much more distant than you expected. Yet the moon will look larger, and you will take comfort in that. You will need the comfort before long.

For just when you are in the very midst of the trees, you will hear a sound from the shadows--dark and dangerous, like the growl of a wolf or the rumble of a distant train. And then the shadows will seem to take shape, growing arms and legs, teeth and claws, and they will gather in a great black wall that blocks the way you mean to take.

The voice that speaks will be less of a voice, and more like the clench of fear in your chest, the monster that mocks you as you lay awake at midnight with all the shame and sorrows of your wasted youth.

We will have the child.

You will know that the voice promises death for disobedience, and you will know to the depths of your soul that you would rather die than obey. You will hold the child close, and she will cling to your neck, and you will sprint with all your strength back toward the well. The shadows will surge and swirl around you, grabbing at your clothes, tearing at your face, and once--only once--drawing blood that drips a red path upon the snow.

You will sprint through the snow and twine through the trees, each step seeming a mile, each moment a lifetime. The shadows will gather--closer, darker--and the light of the child in your arms will fade with fear.

At last, you will see the well at the base of the hill, seeming to shine in a circle of light. If you can reach it, you know, you will be safe--every childhood game seeming suddenly like training for this very moment.

And yet, at the very edge of the clearing--somehow you always knew this would happen--you will lose your footing and fall face-first into the snow. You will shield the child's face from the snow by holding her close, and you will shield her body with your own. The shadows will fall upon you, tearing you to pieces. Your very body will seem to dissolve in pain.

Through their snarling, the shadows will promise relief, if you will only relent--the child's life for yours. Not so great a sacrifice, is it, for a child you've known for mere minutes? These words will tear at your mind, but it is your heart that will reply, drawing strength for defiance from you know not where. And you will. not. move.

You will feel the night fading--the stars and the snow and even the cold growing distant, like some faraway world in which you have no part. Even the pain will seem like something happening long ago and far away to some ancient hero in a dusty, tattered book. Yet you will feel the child beneath you, her beating heart still alive against yours, and that hope will keep you clinging to the tatters of breath in your body.

Then, at last, there will be light. So bright that it blazes white even through your closed eyes. The shadows will crumble like ash, retreat like the dark from a flame, and the destruction of your battered form will cease. The child you shelter will cry with joy.

A gentle touch will lift your shoulder so you lay on one side, and attempt to pull the child from your arms.

With a cry of defiance, you will hold her with what remains of your strength.

But then a voice will flow through you, lovely and feminine, like water and winter and moonlight given tongue. Peace.

Peace will come, perfect and pure, and you will release the child without fear. But without her presence, your need for strength will fade, and all your pain will come rushing in upon you, dark and hot and crushing, and you will have no strength to hold it back.

Absurdly, you will be most aware of an all-consuming thirst. Tears will pour from you--precious, wasted droplets. Then it will be you, and not the child, who cries for water. Then it will be the child who will draw water from the well and put the shining liquid to your lips.

You will drink, and the first mouthful will bring the cold climbing back upon you. But you will welcome it as re-entry into this world, and drink deep, again and again, until you find yourself freezing, but wholly alive, your wounds as if they never were. You will sit and gaze up at a woman dressed in midnight blue, as white and glowing as the child, who clings to her as she would to a mother, and you will find yourself alight with the same glow.

You have served my daughter well, that lovely inner voice will say again. Come and be at peace.

She will turn your eyes toward the heavens, and offer you a place there in the shining light, far from the troubles of this dark world. It will draw you as the snowflakes drew you from the warmth of home, so many long moments ago. Yet you will find yourself standing, and bowing your head, and with utmost humility refusing the honor. You will not leave this world, be there ever so many shadows, while there is still more beauty to behold.

The woman will smile, pleased with your answer, and the light surrounding you will fade. And you will see your home alight on a nearby hillside, waiting for your return.

You will say your farewells to the child--who embraces you with gratitude--and turn your path toward home. The child and her mother will do the same, fading as the sunset fades with the coming of night. And you will notice two stars in the sky above where you had noticed none before.

You will smile up at them and walk home--warm, alive and fearless. There will be no more shadows lurking along your path. But high above, and all around, you will know there is--and always will be--light.

[yelpfic]

2020 Writing (Year in Review)

In 2019, I posted 3K words on AO3.

In 2020, I posted 214K words on AO3.

I have probably written more fic this year than I have in my entire life... and I didn't even start until April.

Since I feel like I'm new to writing all over again (the last time I wrote regularly was probably about a decade ago), this has been a year of experimentation. One obvious change is that I'm writing from this "alt" account, where I've been posting whatever the hell iddy, gratuitous, self-indulgent stories happened to fall out of my brain. (Perhaps as a consequence, I noticed that the ratio of public bookmarks across all my fics clocked in at around 50%. In other words, half the people who bookmarked my works chose to do so privately!)

I also experimented with:

participating in fic exchanges and prompt memes

writing for a variety of fandoms: big and small, new and dead

varying up my writing style: using present and past tenses, ranging from super florid descriptions to conversational prose

self-promotion on Tumblr, which meant attempting to learn how to use it. I'm sure I still don't have all the etiquette down, but no one's complained yet I guess.

My main project this year has been Once a Runner, the fic that got me started writing again, so I owe quite a lot to it. It's also sucked me deep into Eyeshield 21, a fandom that was active 10-15 years ago but still somehow has a few loyal fans. I am deeply grateful to these folks for... well... existing! In addition to OAR, I've written four other ES21 fics this year, each with a different pairing. In all but one fic, I managed to use a different obscure character tag that has never been used before!

This year, I've done a decent job (mostly) working on one big project at a time. I'm starting to get used to the feeling of always having an active writing project again, letting it churn away in my brain in a background process. Sometimes I'm rewarded with a scene or a plot idea that comes out of nowhere, like a plant that produces mysterious fruit - both delightful and worrying at the same time.

I wrap up this year embarking on a new project, Solid as Stone, which, as currently planned, is going to take me even further out of my comfort zone.

AO3 stats and meme responses below the cut.

My AO3 stats at the end of the year:

Meme questions:

Best title: Cloak and Dagger, Cape and Cowl

Worst title: Lightbringer Mine

Longest title: Their offers should not charm us (their evil gifts would harm us) (65 characters)

Shortest title: Talisman (8 characters)

Best first line: "Don't," the witcher's arm shot out, barring his companion mid-step, "touch."

Worst first line: Yeah, in hindsight, Sena shouldn't have answered that doorbell.

Best last line: "It will be done," he agrees, and presses the lilies into her hands. "My promise is solid as stone."

Worst last line: "I can't win or lose until you bring your strain to market. All I ask is that you hurry up and regrow, so we can really compete."

Conclusion: I need to work on endings.

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted? I wrote more than I could have imagined in my wildest dreams.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year? Everything. I wasn't into any of these fandoms last year.

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest. OAR, for sure. It got me back into writing, and I devoted an enormous amount of mental energy to it. Runners up (pun intended) were any ES21 rarepair fics where I lamented the lack of content for a pairing I loved, tried to explain everything I loved about them in fic form, and basically turned into my ship manifesto/soapbox. In fic form.

Okay, NOW your most popular story. Solid as Stone. OAR comes close by sole virtue of being a long, multichaptered work posted over 8 months, but with a single chapter of under 3K words, and having been up for under two weeks, SAS is already beating OAR in some statistics. I never realized Genshin Impact was such a hot fandom, even for a rarepair like this.

Story most underappreciated by the universe? All my stories got quite a bit more attention than I expected (thank you, everyone, sincerely), but I'd say Cloak and Dagger, Cape and Cowl. It's original, it was written in an exchange, and it has a decent plot (if I do say so myself) and even a bit of smut. Perhaps F/F work is not so popular?

Story that could have been better? I could probably list multiple things I'd want to improve about each story, but let me just limit myself to one. Lightbringer Mine had more story in it that I didn't get around to telling, and the ending felt a little abrupt. I feel a little awkward extending it now, though, as it was a gift fic.

Saddest story? Hmm, I think just about every story I wrote had a happy-ish ending. I suppose I'll go with C&D,C&C.

Most fun? TBH, the same? There are several lighthearted moments and a heist scene. 

Most fucked-up story? Stars and Stripes Forever (lack of link intentional)

Hardest story to write? Once a Runner

Easiest/most fun story to write? Always Knew I'd Fall. I went skeet shooting once, and as soon as I had the idea that Kid and Hiruma might be good at it, the story basically wrote itself. I also thought the song from the title was too perfect of a Kid song to pass up.

Top five scenes you would like to see illustrated: I would die happy to see any scene from OAR illustrated. Off the top of my head, the Hiruma and Sena bathtub scene, haircutting scene, or Hiruma taunting Monta in the car when we first meet Monta. From other fics, Kid walking around the course with Hiruma and making him carrying his gun properly in "Always Thought I'd Fall", and Sara Spectacular blocking the shadow bolts in "Cloak and Dagger, Cape and Cowl".

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I experimented with posting explicit works, and as it turns out, sex sells. I also really put my kinks out there (sexual and otherwise) and was surprised and gratified to find others who appreciated it. Conclusion: it's okay to write the fic that you've always wanted to write. Even if it's embarrassing, or if some will judge you for it, writing for likeminded souls makes more sense than writing to avoid critics.

What are your fic writing goals for next year? I have a lot more ideas for SAS, so I'd like to make that my next big project. I'm also signed up for Five Figure Fic Exchange, so that means I have a 10k fic due by the end of the month that I need to... start... Beyond that, I'd like to write more original works, perhaps something that I can even publish under my real name?? Is that crazy, brain??

Some specific things I've struggled with this year that I'd like to improve: titles and character names, physical descriptions, making my endings less abrupt

[thesinglesjukebox]

TAYLOR SWIFT - BEAUTIFUL GHOSTS

[3.50]

Taylor takes a chonce...

Thomas Inskeep: Where we learn that Swift has ambitions of writing relentlessly overblown, ridiculously florid Broadway songs just like her co-writer, Andrew Lloyd Webber. And god, her keening vocal on this makes me want to punch someone. [0]

Alfred Soto: Her voice is not her strongest element, a fact this farrago overlooks. By comparison her accent on "London Boys" is a Meryl Streep Oscar stroke. [2]

Katherine St Asaph: I don't mind Taylor Swift being on this, in theory (in voice is a somewhat different proposition); Sarah Brightman was a dancer in Hot Gossip. Nor do I want to reassign this piece to Andrew Lloyd Webber's cat. I could even, begrudgingly, stop minding that Nile Rodgers worked on this, or that there's a gratuitous Phantom reference, or that the whole thing is a worse version of Jekyll and Hyde's "A New Life," when Cats already had the blueprint for "A New Life." But I do mind there being no structure, melodic, emotional, or otherwise. [3]

Katie Gill: The idea of adding in a song to CATS kind of misunderstands the structure of the musical. You see, CATS already has a big awards bait song, "Memory," which is musically is integrated into the show via a prelude at the end of act 1, other cats singing the tune at various point, and the prelude ending with a leitmotif often heard throughout the show. HOWEVER, now "Beautiful Ghosts" exists. It's positioned as a direct response to "Memory" and ALW loves his goddamn leitmotifs so logically it should sound like a response to "Memory", but it doesn't! It just sounds like a Taylor Swift song! Likewise, if this song is a direct response to "Memory" then one would think it would come AFTER "Memory" or the "Memory" prelude. However, "Memory" is the emotional climax of the show and the prelude is the Act 1 finisher, neither of which are a good time to add in a pop song to kill the plot. "Beautiful Ghosts" should really be positioned as a response to "Grizabella the Glamour Cat" because the transition between that song and the next one is an awkward spot in the musical that the pop song + a bit of dialogue could help smooth over. HOWEVER, if you position "Ghosts" as a response to "Grizabella" then it'll occur way too early in the film and also rob "Memory" of its lyrical impact. Part of the big impact of "Memory" is that you've had two goddamn hours of fiddle-dee-dee Jennyanydots whimsical nonsense and then WHAM, we go right into "touch me / it's so easy to leave me" which gives us the big, giant, emotional impact that "Memory" deserves and dammit, I don't have anywhere else to write about how this addition means that ALW fundamentally misunderstands his own musical so y'all are going to have to put up with me here. [4]

Jackie Powell: What makes this recording so charming is how practically imperfect it is. And I mean that as a compliment. The attempt at a British accent aside, Taylor Swift did her homework. And I'm not talking about T.S. Elliot, which I'll return to. This performance reminded me of Roland Barthes' "The Grain of the Voice," an essay that discusses how perfect vocals aren't what always sell a performance. The French philosopher and critic pontificates that a singer who is compelling has what he refers to as a "grain" or the "body in the voice." In other words, when Swift embraces her weaker while spectral head voice on the verses, cracks on the last line of the bridge and forces her belt on the last note of the entire song, she embraces Barthes' "Grain of the Voice" almost to a tee. Her belting is far from bodacious and like Jackson McHenry of Vulture, I question if this Andrew Lloyd Webber penned melody was really meant for Swift. But ALW did, in fact, need her. "If you can't get T.S. Eliot, get TS," she said while in the studio with Webber. "I'm here for you." And TS does study up on T.S. In "Beautiful Ghosts," Swift penned a lot of gerunds and descriptive nouns that have shapeshifted into gerunds. Or sometimes she just uses the suffix -ing more than twice the amount that Elliot employed it in his 1915 poem "Hysteria." In between all the "Chonces" being "Bawn into Noothing" and being "let intou," it's endearing to get a sense of Swift's acting chops via listening to her inflection, diction and even her ability to weld some dynamics that we don't often hear in her own catalog. But Swift was in between too many decisions. Was this supposed to be a pop version of a Broadway-style song? Was this supposed to be akin to Demi Lovato on "Let It Go?" (Maybe not, as we all know which version of the song is sung at karaoke.) But with all else being equal, Swift shalt have made a commitment to one of these two worlds: she's now clinging to pop but Broadway is now calling? She's straddling between these two islands and it doesn't work as well as she might have "waaanteed." [7]

Isabel Cole: Is it weird that I think I would like this better if it were more awful? Taylor Swift and Andrew Lloyd Webber are not similar artists, but they are two people who have between them made [checks spreadsheet] a million bajillion dollars by being wildly extra and unafraid of leaning the fuck in. Many of my favorite Taylorisms are fun because of their hyper-earnest theater kid melodrama (just think of the tremor with which she sings another girl in "Style"); many of my childhood memories involve belting "Memory" in my bedroom. But this is just so... dull. TS + ALW 4 CATS sounds like a nightmare of unhinged excess, but this could be any generic Best Song Oscar also-ran; the most interesting part is that she reuses the best line from "Fifteen." Worse, these artists who can write a hook that will be stuck in your head until the end of time somehow came together to write a melody so sprawlingly uninspiring I cannot hum it after several listens. There's nothing here even to make fun of beyond (objectively funny) Taylor's sporadic British affectations. Like, come on, guys: I'm not sure you can do better than this, but I know you have it in you to do worse. [2]

Alex Clifton: Cats didn't really need a new song (nor, frankly, did we need the new nightmare adaptation) and I'm mixed on Andrew Lloyd Webber at best, but this still hits my heart somewhere, especially with Swift's breathy delivery for the first half of the track. I am both surprised and annoyed to relate to a song sung by a cat. Points deducted for chooooooooooonces. [6]

Natasha Genet Avery: Let's dispense with the obvious: 1. That newfangled British accent is...something. 2. Playing into her favorite victimhood narrative, Swift's contribution to Cats *had* to one-up Grizabella ("At least you have something!". 3. This is blatant Oscar bait. Now onto the meat: Cats is a corny and embarrassing head-scratcher. Cats is why people don't trust musicals. I love Cats. To me, to anyone who has been in a musical, musicals are about unreasonable, outsized commitment--you peel off your self-protective shield of irony and spend dozens, if not hundreds of hours donning clown-school makeup and spandex, somersaulting across the stage and belting the praises of storybook animals. If you're entrusted with a big number, you practice and practice until your delivery is technically masterful, if not heavy-handed. Beat me to death with that vibrato. Fuck me up with those dynamics. Leave it allll on the stage. And so, when Taylor set out to out-emote "Memory", she agreed to take on 30 years of mockery, three key changes, Elaine Paige, 600+ professionally recorded covers, and countless school productions and karaoke renditions. A lot of people fault Taylor for being a try-hard (I've always found it sort of endearing), but here, she simply didn't try hard enough. Swift admitted that she wrote most of "Beautiful Ghosts" "immediately after hearing the song for the first time." Without T.S. Eliot's hand, Beautiful Ghosts" is empty, untouched by whimsy. Oh, and the singing: Swift is sorely out of her depth, and mostly opts for limp falsetto, culminating in a strained, awkward belt. We'll see what Francesca Hayward does with it, but for now "Beautiful Ghosts" should get booted from the clowder. [3]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: I consume music of all genres voraciously -- with the exception of musical soundtracks. This is for a number of reasons: 1) I haven't seen a lot of musicals, 2) for the ones I have seen, I tend to find the music and lyricism overwrought and boring, and 3) I would prefer to just listen to artists' original music outside the parameters set by some make believe world. I was worried that I would have a tough time trying to check my own bias in reviewing this song, but am now relieved and confident in asserting that "Beautiful Ghosts" is objectively bad. In an alternate reality, this could be a compelling country-lite track on Fearless or Red, or even a synth heavy ballad on 1989, but here, Taylor just sounds drowsy with a weird British accent, selling a metaphor that makes about as much sense as the utterly bizarre Cats movie trailer. [3]

Andy Hutchins: One tweet that has stuck with me is the one that correctly called Reputation — before its release, even! — the final boss of 2017. I think Cats might play a similar role for the final days of 2019 and the first month or so of 2020, even if its pitch is obviously to a smaller segment of the population than pre-Crisis Taylor reached. So how convenient it is that we have Taylor here, indulging her theater kid impulses with none other than Andrew fucking Lloyd fucking Webber co-writing, singing her heart out in the ingenue role she's clung to throughout her 20s for better and worse (which is, hilariously, not her role in the film itself!), pining for something wild for what feels like the 20th time. "Beautiful Ghosts" is as subtle as a hurricane, and churns powerfully, and Taylor almost hits that note at the end — the strings wouldn't swell if she'd hit it perfect, of course. It's good. Fine. Whatever. This sort of hopeful schmaltz is so safe, though, that it mostly makes me wish that Taylor were still willing to take excursions from beaten paths: That way lies "Style," even if you might have to double back from the doorsteps of "Look What You Made Me Do" or "End Game" on occasion. [5]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]