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elamarth-calmagol · 3 years

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What actually is LACE? (an informal essay)

What’s LACE?

Laws and Customs among the Eldar, or LACE, is the most popular section of the History of Middle Earth books. It's available online as a PDF here: http://faculty.smu.edu/bwheeler/tolkien/online_reader/T-LawsandCustoms.pdf . There’s a lot of LACE analysis in the fandom, Silmarillion smut fics are usually labeled “LACE compliant” or “not LACE compliant”, and I’ve been seeing the document itself show up in actual fics, meaning that the characters themselves are discussing it.

LACE is an unfinished, non-canonical essay split into several parts. It covers the sexuality of elves, which is mostly what people talk about. It also covers elvish naming (which I want to make a whole different post about), the speed at which elves grow up, changes that happen throughout their lives, their death and rebirth, and finally the legal and moral issues of Finwe remarrying after Miriel’s death. The discussion about rebirth conflicts with Tolkien’s later writings about Glorfindel’s re-embodiment, but to the best of my knowledge, LACE is the best or only source for most of the topics it covers.

However, LACE is not canon since it doesn’t show up in the Silmarillion. Counting all of the History of Middle Earth as canon is literally impossible, considering Tolkien contradicts himself all over the place. It is only useful because it has so much information that is never discussed in the actual canon. Many people consider it canon out of convenience.

Another important thing to remember is that, other than presumably the discussion of the growth of elvish children, the information is only supposed to apply to the Eldar (meaning the Vanyar, Noldor, Teleri, and Sindar) and not the dark-elves such as the Silvan elves and Avari.

The rest is behind the cut to avoid clogging your feeds.

Problems with LACE interpretations

But because it’s hidden in the History of Middle Earth (volume 10, Morgoth’s Ring), barely anyone actually gets the opportunity to read it. I don’t think most people are aware that you can get it online, so it doesn't get read much.

I feel like this leads to a handful of people saying something about LACE and everyone else going along with it. I definitely did this. I was amazed by all the things that were in the actual essay that nobody had ever told me about, or had told me incorrectly. For example, most people seem to believe that elves become married at the completion of sexual intercourse (whatever that means to the fic author). In fact, LACE explicitly says that elves must take an oath using the name of Eru in order to be legally married. Specifically:

It was the act of bodily union that achieved marriage, and after which the indissoluble bond was complete… [I]t was at all times lawful for any of the Eldar, being both unwed, to marry thus of free consent one to another without ceremony or witness (save blessings exchanged and the naming of the Name); and the union so joined was alike indissoluble.

I’ve seen a marriage oath being included in a few stories recently, but most writers leave out the oath entirely and just have sex be automatically equivalent to marriage. What would happen if elves had sex without swearing an oath? I don’t know, but I’d love to see it explored.

Then there’s a footnote that might explicitly deny the existence of transgender elves... or not, but I’ve literally only seen it mentioned once or twice. Overall, I feel like all of LACE is filtered through the handful of people who read it, and we’re missing out on a lot of metanalysis and interpretations that we could have because most fans never see the actual document.

Who wrote LACE?

I mean within the mythology of Middle Earth, of course. Since LACE appears in the History of Middle Earth and not the Silmarillion, we can be pretty sure that J.R.R. Tolkien himself wrote it and it wasn’t added to by Christopher Tolkien. But that’s not the question here. Remember that Tolkien’s frame narrative for all of his Middle Earth work is that he is a scholar of ancient times and is translating documents from Westron and Sindarin for modern audiences to read and understand. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings come from the Red Book of Westmarch, and I believe The Silmarillion is meant to be Tolkien’s own writings based on his research (though it might also be an adaption of Bilbo’s “Translations from the Elvish”, but I haven't looked into that). So what does LACE come from?

Christopher Tolkien admits in his notes that he doesn’t know. He says, “It is clear in any case that this is presented as the work, not of one of the Eldar, but of a Man,” and I agree, because of the way it seems to be written as an ethnographic study rather than by someone who lives in the culture. Honestly, it talks too much about how elves are seen by Men (e.g. speculating that elf-children might look like the children of Men) to be written by an elf. This changes once it gets to the Doom of Finwe and Miriel, but that could be, and probably is, a story told to the writer by an elf who was there at the time.

Tolkien actually references Aelfwine in the second version of the text. The original story behind The Lost Tales, which was the abandoned first version of the Silmarillion, was that a man from the Viking period named Aelfwine/Eriol stumbled onto the Straight Road and found himself on Tol Eressea. He spoke to the elves and brought back their stories to England with him. So it makes a lot of sense that Aelfwine would also write about the lives and customs of the elves for an audience of his own people.

Does LACE exist in Middle Earth?

I keep finding fics where first age elves discuss “the Laws and Customs” openly, as if it’s a text in their own world. I usually get the impression that it was brought by the Noldor from Valinor. But did the document actually exist in that time period? For me, the answer is definitely not.

First of all, LACE was probably written by a Man, meaning it could not have dated back to Valinor in the years of the Trees, because Men hadn’t awaked yet. In fact, the closest thing to an established frame narrative for it is that it was written by Aelfwine, who comes from the time period around 1000 CE (though Tolkien doesn’t seem to have pinned him down). This is at least the fifth age, if not later.

But what if you don’t believe that it was written by a Man? It still couldn’t have been written in the First Age, because it discusses the way the relationship between elves’ bodies and souls changes as ages go by. For example:

As ages passed the dominance of their fear ever increased, ‘consuming’ their bodies... The end of this process is their ‘fading’, as Men have called it.

A lot of time has to go by in order for elves to get to the point of fading. As a bonus, here’s another reference to the perspective of Men. LACE also discusses the dangers that “houseless feas”, which are souls of elves who do not go to Mandos after their bodies died, pose to Men. How would they have known about that in the First Age? It further says that “more than one rebirth is seldom recorded” (which isn’t contradicted anywhere I know of), and that’s not something you would know during your life of joy in Valinor, where almost nobody dies. That’s something you learn after millennia of war. This has to be a document written well after the Silmarillion ends.

So what about the sex part? That’s all we care about, right? Well, it is entirely possible that this was written down by the elves and Aelfwine translated it (though my impression is that he mostly recorded stories told orally to him and that elves were not very much into writing, at least in Valinor where you could get stories directly from someone who experienced them). However, why would the elves write this down? They know how quickly their children grow up. They’ve seen actual marriages. They don’t need that described to them. And if they did have a specific document or story explaining the expectations of them when it comes to sex and marriage, why would they call it “Laws and Customs”? That’s a very strange name for a set of rules for conduct. I’m sure they had a list of laws written out somewhere in great detail, like our own state or national laws (that seems very in character for the Noldor, at least). But I seriously doubt that those laws are what we’ve been given to read. LACE is not an elvish or Valinoran document.

Is LACE prescriptive or descriptive?

Here’s the other big question I’m interested in. Prescriptive means that the document describes the way people should behave. Descriptive means that it describes how people do behave. And the more I worldbuild for Middle Earth and the culture of elves, the more I want to say that LACE is prescriptive in its discussion of sex, marriage, and gender roles.

But wait. I’ve been saying for paragraphs that I think LACE is Aelfwine or another Man’s ethnographic study of elvish culture. Then it has to be descriptive, right?

Does it? How long do we think Aelfwine stayed with the elves? Did he wait fifty years to see a child grow up? Did he get to witness a wedding ceremony? Did he meet houseless fea? I don’t think he could have done all of that. Maybe a different Man who spent his entire life with the elves could, but then when was this written? When the elves were still marrying and having children in Middle Earth or when so much time had gone by that they had begun to fade already?

Whoever wrote this was told a lot of information by elves instead of experiencing it firsthand, the same way he heard the stories from the First Age from the elves instead of being there. Maybe it was one elf who talked to him, maybe several different ones. But did those elves accurately describe their society the way it was, give him the easiest description, or explain the way it was supposed to be? If I was describing modern-day America, would I discuss premarital sex or just our dating and marriage customs? Maybe people would come away from a talk with me thinking that moving in together equated to marriage for Americans in the early 21st century. And I don’t even have an agenda to show America in a certain way, I'm just bad at explaining. Did the elves talking to what may have been the first Man they had seen in millennia have an agenda in the way they presented themselves?

Or did the writer himself have an agenda? Imagine going to see these beautiful, mythical, perfect beings, and you find out that they behave in the same immoral ways Men do. Do you want to share the truth back home? Or do you leave out things that don't match your worldview? Did Aelfwine come back wanting to tell people what elves were really like? Or did he want to say “this is how you can be holy and perfect like an elf”?

Anyone studying the Age of Exploration will tell you that Europeans neber wrote about new cultures objectively, and often things were made up to fit the writer’s idea of what savages looked like. For example, my Native American history teacher in college told a story of how explorers described one tribe who (sensibly) didn't wear clothes as cannibals, because cannibalism and going around naked went together in their minds and not because of any actual incident. Unbiased scholarship barely existed yet. Even Tolkien was extremely biased and tended to be imperialistic, as we all know. There’s absolutely no reason to think that Aelfwine wasn’t biased in his own way. (Of course, now we have to consider what biases a Danish or English man from the centuries around 1000 would have when it comes to things like gender roles. I assume he would have been more into divorce and female warriors than the elves are said to be.)

But is that what Tolkien intended? Probably not. He probably wanted LACE to be descriptive. But he also never got much of a chance to analyse the essay after the fact, which might have led to him discussing its accuracy and even the exact issues I just pointed out about explorers. Anyway, we know he's biased, and honestly, what he intended has never slowed down the fandom before.

Conclusion

In short, I take LACE to be a prescriptive document describing the way elvish culture is supposed to be, not a blueprint I have to stick to in order to correctly portray elves. I also don’t believe the document that’s available for us to read existed even in the early Fourth Age, where The Lord of the Rings leaves off. There maybe have been some document outlining the moral behavior of elves, as a set of laws, but thats not the Laws and Customs we have.

Of course, canon is up to you to interpret. If you want Feanor discussing LACE with someone back in Valinor, go ahead. If you want to throw out LACE entirely, go ahead. It’s not even a canonical essay. All of this analysis is honestly useless when you consider the fact that no part of LACE exists in any canonical book.

But that’s Tolkien analysis for you.

#lotr #silmarillion #tolkien #laws and customs of the eldar #history of middle earth #silm #analysis #meta #headcanon #long post #mine

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tendertenebrosity · 3 years

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Illiam and Helis on the road! Close sequel to here and here. Masterpost for these characters is here. Mostly just some conversation and worldbuilding today; stay tuned for part 2!

Taglist: @castielamigos-whump-side-blog, @doglover82; @top-hat-aye; @burtlederp; @just-a-raccoon-with-wifi @thesleepysnapdragon @whump-cravings

Helis knew, from the conversations they had overheard at Illiam’s heel, that today they would pass into the south of Rosdan, the part the Toraldan army hadn’t taken yet. If they hadn’t, they probably wouldn’t have been able to guess; the countryside was the same as it had been for the past few days. Heavily forested hills, a dirt road that wound side-to-side between their peaks like the track made by a snake. The ground was rocky, any snow long since trodden into black sludge peppered liberally with gravel. Helis had an impressive bruise on the underside of their foot from trying to make their way through it, and the little downy feathers on their ankles hadn’t been either white or downy in days.

“We have quite a large ravine to cross next,” Illiam commented. “The town is just over the bridge; we should be able to see both once we’re around this next bend in the road.”

Helis made a wordless hum of acknowledgment. They wouldn’t be stopping for the night in this town; they might pause so that people could mill about, make a mess and maybe have another urgent, terse meeting. Or they might not. Helis supposed they’d be glad for a chance to stretch their legs.

The thick pine forest on some of these hills was a lot like the country that they’d spent a few weeks camping in with Reed. Had it been this tiring, going up and down the hills? Not for Helis, but maybe for Reed it had been. He’d never complained.

“I built some bridges, you know,” Illiam remarked.

Helis blinked, roused from their reverie. “What?”

“Bridges. You know, big structures, usually made of wood or stone, they allow you to get over bodies of water… ”

Helis hunched their shoulders. Yes, very funny. “You… built bridges? Why?” It wasn’t something they’d ever considered him doing. It seemed… beneath him, or at least that he ought to think it was beneath him. They didn’t remember him ever showing the slightest interest in that kind of thing before.

“It’s the kind of thing I’ve been working on, the last few years,” Illiam explained. “Not just bridges, but… large engineering work. Repairing dams, roads. You usually do that with magic in Crestmead, don’t you?”

“Sometimes,” Helis said. Their friend Diamand had taken a job in that direction; another scholarship student, like them, he’d chosen to go into government service in construction. “It’s usually done with teams of mages…”

“It’s not been used much here,” Illiam said. “Most things like that in the North are built the old-fashioned way. Bricks and mortar and a lot of peasants with shovels. It can be difficult and dangerous work, not to mention slow. I had seen a lot of… interesting things done in the South, and I wanted to try and replicate them. Not just structures, either - I still wonder if I could get some of your irrigation and wind shelter techniques to work with our farms.” He paused. “You came from a farm, didn’t you?”

“Yeees…” Helis wasn’t sure whether to be surprised he remembered, or brace themself for him to say something derogatory. “We didn’t use any magic, though. I think you’re talking about bigger places than ours…”

He barely seemed to be listening. “I imagine the climate to the south is better, so you probably didn’t need much help. The land to the west of our holdings is harsh, and crop failures are common. It would make a big difference if I could increase yield even a little bit.” He sighed. “Bridges proved easier, at least to start with. Of course, I was somewhat hampered by the fact that, as you say, I don’t have a trained team. I only have myself. So a lot of the techniques needed… adjusting.”

Despite themselves, Helis found themself a little interested. “That’s a bit more than just an ‘adjustment’,” they said. “You’re trying to do the work of, what - four to six people by yourself?”

“Mm,” he said, dismissive.

“That sounds… dangerous,” Helis said. They’d had to design the kind of spells Illiam was talking about as part of their course; they couldn’t imagine trying to handle that much magic, in that many different moving parts, at once. It was overambitious to the point of being irresponsible.

Then again, in light of his current project, they shouldn’t be surprised.

“Oh, maybe if you don’t know what you’re doing,” Illiam said, airily. They could practically picture the smug tilt of his chin as he said it. “I had it down pretty well by the third attempt. Besides, it was unavoidable. Even if I’d managed to get four or five mages together, there’s no guarantee they’d have been able to work together in that way. It’s not a common skill here.”

Helis’ brow wrinkled. “But… I’ve seen other mages here, in the army ranks.” Mostly men, a scattering of women, their uniform marked out with a red scarf or sash or hat. The common soldiers deferred to them, but nowhere near as much as they did to Illiam. Helis had seem them performing heat spells, wind spells, stick-fast spells - the kinds of minor workings any large group of people needed. Are they mages or not? they wanted to ask. Why ‘if’ you get four or five people? Aren’t they trained properly?

He hummed thoughtfully. “Yes, but the… culture, I suppose you’d say… amongst mages is different here. Much less collaborative. Much less standardised. A Northern sorceror works alone, or maybe with an apprentice or two if they’re inclined to that sort of thing.”

“Oh.”

“There’s nothing like the Academy here, or even the sort of smaller schools that teach people to read and write in Crestmead,” Illiam explained. “I learned my Northern magic from my master, Karlin, who learned it from his, and so on. I started when I was nine - that’s pretty normal. He didn’t have a second apprentice while teaching me, but I understand he often did. Some masters can get a bit… stingy, paranoid. They don’t like to share their knowledge too freely. Karlin was never like that.”

“Oh. You… always did seem like you knew a bit already, in the first semester,” Helis admitted.

Illiam was silent, just a beat longer than usual. “You could say that,” he said. “You know, I - ”

He cut himself off - the hands that had been fairly slack on the reins in front of Helis were suddenly moving, pulling the horse up to a sudden stop.

They had just rounded the curve of the hillside. As Illiam had said, they could look down and see the bridge - miles ahead of them yet, a squat and sturdy structure made from the same grey stone as the cliffs it straddled. The riverbed was a long way down.

They couldn’t see much of the town, though, because it and the forest to the east were obscured by a thick dark plume of smoke.

The soldiers in front of them were clogging the road, the whole unit that had been ahead of Illiam’s horse, pulled to an unplanned halt. Raised voices and curses reached Helis’ ears; people were pointing at the smoke, barking orders, shoving the people ahead or behind them.

“This town was supposed to be secured!” someone was insisting, harsh and strident. “Lord Garnier sent - ”

As the army milled, disorganised, there was a sharp whistle, thinned out by distance and followed by a crack. The light that flashed in the forest beyond the town was tinged pale blue, obviously magical in origin. People in the army flinched and swore as more clouds of dust and smoke rose up. As they watched, aghast, a wedge of stone split away from the cliff face and tumbled down into the ravine with a crash.

Illiam hissed wordlessly under his breath, and tapped Helis - more of a shove, really - on the shoulder.

"You’re getting off,” he said abruptly.

“What?”

“Get off the horse, lackwit, move!”

Helis let go of their grip on the saddle and drew their knees up slightly, uncertain of what to do next. Illiam lifted them unceremoniously around the waist, and they swung their leg awkwardly over the horse’s neck. They made it to the ground in an awkward, flapping fall, their legs nearly giving way under them.

The horse stamped and sidled back and forth, rolling one dark eye as Helis stumbled back. Illiam gathered up his reins. He didn’t even look down at Helis.

“Go back and wait with the rest of the camp followers,” he said, his voice raised over the commotion. “Do not come and find me. Do not cause problems.”

He kicked the horse into motion. Helis shielded their eyes from the dirt he threw up; they could hear him yelling something at the soldiers down the slope. By the time they had collected themself, the crowd of soldiers had parted to allow Illiam and his horse to canter down the hill in the direction of the smoking town.

“Well, now what?” Helis asked aloud, to nobody in particular. They watched the figure of Illiam and his horse, dramatic black cloak flapping, until it was out of sight. Helis didn’t know much about war magic. But they had a hazy, uneasy idea how much damage a single magic-user could wreak against an undefended force. Was he going to fight? Or did he think the battle needed him in command? It still seemed unbelievable to Helis, that men twice their age, generals and leaders, actually took orders from Illiam, who wasn’t any older than Helis themself.

The crowd of soldiers was forming up into some kind of order in his wake, the person who’d been yelling about Lord Garnier unloading a series of profanities and insults on everybody in earshot.

The wagons and the rest of the army had been following Illiam and the advance party, much slower on the hilly ground. Helis had no idea how far away they might be.

They sighed, picked a rock out from between their toes, and set off back the way they’d come.

#Illiam #Helis #war and military stuff #riding double #not much to tag today or maybe my brain just isn't working that well haha #winged OC #environmental whump

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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How Science Fiction’s Ensemble Stories Humanize Space

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

A close-knit crew of wildly different people ride around on a spaceship having adventures. If you’re a sci-fi fan, there are very good odds that this synopsis describes one of your hooks into the genre. That crew might be a dysfunctional band of space criminals and revolutionaries, or a clean cut team of scientists, diplomats and soldiers serving a galactic Space UN, but there is a core appeal to this set up across the genre.

“Ensemble crews are one of the quickest and most powerful ways to forge a found family. A foundational example for me was Blake’s 7,” says Paul Cornell, who has written stories for the Star Trek: Year Five comic series among his many speculative fiction credits. “They haven’t been recruited, they have relative degrees of distance from the cause, they’ve been flung together. The most important thing is that they’re all very different people.”

These Are the Voyages…

It’s a formula that has been repeated over and over for about as long as there has been science fiction on television—starting with the likes of Star Trek and Blake’s 7, through the boom in “planet of the week” style TV in the 90s and 00s with Farscape and Firefly, to more recent stories like Dark Matter, The Expanse, Killjoys, and the Guardians of the Galaxy films. Most recently Sky’s Intergalactic, and the Korean movie Space Sweepers have been carrying the standard, while last month saw people diving back into the world of Mass Effect with Mass Effect Legendary Edition. While Commander Sheppard is ostensibly the protagonist of the video game trilogy, few would argue that it’s anything other than the ensemble of the Normandy crew that keeps people coming back.

As science fiction author Charlie Jane Anders points out, it’s not hard to see the appeal of a family of likeable characters, kept in close quarters by the confines of their ship, and sent into stories of adventure.

“I love how fun this particular strand of space opera is, and how much warmth and humour the characters tend to have,” Anders says. “These stories have in common a kind of swashbuckling adventure spirit and a love of problem-solving and resourcefulness. And I think the ‘found family’ element is a big part of it, since these characters are always cooped up on a tiny ship together and having to rely on each other.”

Over the years the Star Wars franchise has delivered a number of mismatched spaceship crews, from various ensembles to have crewed the Millennium Falcon, to the band of rebels in Rogue One, to the crew of the Ghost in Star Wars: Rebels.

That energy was one of the inspirations for Laura Lam and Elizabeth May, the writers behind Seven Devils and its upcoming sequel, Seven Mercies. In Seven Devils, a team of very different women come together aboard a starship stolen from an oppressive, galaxy-spanning empire, clashing with each other as much as the regime they are fighting.

“So many of these stories are what we grew up with, and they were definitely influences. The scrappy people trying to make a living or rebel against a higher power, or the slick luxury communism of Star Trek,” says Lam. “What’s great and terrible about space is how you are often stuck on a ship with people, for better or worse. That isolation can breed really interesting character conflict and deep bonds. You have to have your crew’s back, otherwise space or alien plants are too large or dangerous [to survive].”

While the “Seven” duology is very much inspired by this genre of space adventure, it also brings these stories’ underlying political themes to the surface.

“What I enjoy most about space operas is taking contemporary socio-cultural and political issues and exploring them through a different lens,” says May. “I love to think of them in terms of exploration, analogous to ships navigating the vastness of a sea. And on journeys that long, with only the ocean and saltwater (space) around you, things become fraught. Yes, these are tales of survival, but they’re also tales of what it means to question the world around you. Aside from the cultural questions that [premise] raises, it opens possibilities for conflict, character bonding, and worldbuilding.”

In Yudhanjaya Wijeratne’s novel, The Salvage Crew, his ensemble don’t spend long on their ship. In the opening scene, they are plummeting through the atmosphere of an alien planet in a drop-pod piloted by an AI who is also the book’s narrator. But the book shares that sense of characters who need to stick close together in the face of a large and dangerous universe.

“What did I like about [space team stories]? Well, always the sense of wonder that the scale brought me: the feeling that Earth, and all our bickering, was just a tiny speck of dust – what Sagan called ‘the pale blue dot’ – and out there was an entire universe waiting to be explored,” Wijeratne says. “I treasured the darkness, as well: the darkness of the void, the tragedy of people in confined spaces, and a terror of the deep that only the deep sea brings me. It wasn’t the family attitude: it was more the constraints and the clever plays within terrifyingly close constraints. There’s a kind of grim, lunatic nihilism you need for those situations, and I loved seeing that.”

When asked for their favourite examples of the genre, one name kept coming up. Wijeratne, Anders, Lam, and May all recommended the Wayfarers books by Becky Chambers. The first in the series, A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, concerns the crew not of an elite space naval vessel, or a renegade crew of space criminals, but of a ship that lays hyperspace tunnels for other, more glamorous ships to travel through. This job of space road-laying is one that I can only recall seeing once before, much more catastrophically, in the Vogon Constructor Fleet of Hitchhiker’s Guide the Galaxy. A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is a very different tale, however.

May tells us, “It’s a quieter space tale, a novel that feels very much like a warm hug. I love it with all my heart.”

Chambers doesn’t hold back when describing the impact this genre had on her growing up.

“I can’t remember life without these stories,” she says. “TNG first aired when I was three years old, and I watched Trek every week with my family until Voyager wrapped when I was sixteen. I can recite most of the original Star Wars trilogy word for word while I’m watching the movies, and I binged Farscape like my life depended on it when I was in college. This storytelling tradition is so much a part of my fabric that I have a hard time articulating what it is I like about it so much. It’s just a part of me, at this point. These stories are fun, full stop. They’re exciting. They can break your heart and crack you up in equal measure. They’re about small little clusters of people doing extraordinary things within an impossibly vast and beautiful universe. Everything about my work is rooted here. I can’t imagine who I’d be without these stories.”

The Unchosen Ones

Perhaps a big part of the appeal of these stories is that they are about an ensemble of people, each with their own stories and goals and perspectives. It can be refreshing where science fiction and fantasy frequently centre stories of “the Chosen One”, be it a slayer, boy wizard, or Jedi who is the person the narrative happens to. While Chosen One stories will frequently have a wide supporting cast, the emphasis for those other characters is frequently on the “supporting”.

“I very intentionally wanted to do something other than a ‘chosen one’ story with Wayfarers. I’m not sure I can speak to any broader trend in this regard, but with my own work, I really wanted to make it clear that the universe belongs to everybody in equal measure,” Chambers says. “Space opera is so often the realm of heroes and royalty, and I love those stories, but there’s a parallel there to how we think about space in the real world. Astronauts are and have always been an exceptional few. I wanted to shift the narrative and make it clear that we all have a place out there, and that even the most everyday people have stories worth telling.”

It’s an increasingly popular perspective. Perhaps it’s telling that one of the most recent Star Trek spin-offs, Lower Decks, focuses not on the super-heroic bridge crew, but the underlings and red shirts that do their dirty work, and that in turn echoes the ultra-meta John Scalzi novel, Redshirts.

Charlie Jane Anders’ recently released young adult novel, Victories Greater Than Death is a story that starts off with an almost archetypical “Chosen One” premise. The story’s protagonist, Tina, is an ordinary teenage girl, but is also the hidden clone of the hero of a terrible alien war. But as the story progresses, it evolves into something much more like an ensemble space adventure.

“I was definitely thinking about that a lot in this book in particular,” Anders says. “Tina keeps thinking of the other earth kids as a distraction from her heroic destiny or as people she needs to protect. Her friend Rachael is the one who keeps pushing for them to become a family and finally gets through to Tina.”

Seven Devils (and its upcoming sequel, Seven Mercies) is also a story that tries to focus on the exact people who would never be considered “chosen” or who have wilfully turned away from their destiny.

“I do like that most of them [the characters] are those the Tholosians wrote off as unimportant–people to be used for their bodies, and not encouraged to use their minds,” Lam says. “And Eris’s journey turning away from the life chosen for her and choosing her own, but having to wrangle with what she still did for the Empire before she did, makes her a very interesting character to write. In many ways, she was complicit, and she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to atone.”

Wijeratne also argues that an ensemble story is in many ways more true to life.

“Rarely in life do you find this Randian John Galt type, this solo hero that changes the world by themselves; more often you find a group of people with similar interests, covering for each other, propping each other up,” he says. “It’s how we humans, as a species, have evolved. Our strength is not in our individual prowess, but in the fact that three people working together can take down a mammoth, and a thousand people working together can raise a monument to eternity.”

While there are certainly themes and kinds of story that are more suited to ensemble storytelling, May points out that there is plenty of room for both kinds of story.

“Having written books that explore both, I find that Chosen One narratives are often stories of duty, obligation, and self-discovery,” she says. “Ensemble narratives often involve themes of acceptance and friendship bonds. To me, these serve different narrative functions and ask separate questions.”

A Space of Their Own

The spaceship-crews-on-adventures subgenre is one of the major pillars of science fiction as a whole, with the trope codifier, Star Trek, being likely one of the first names that comes to mind when you think of the genre. This means that the writers working within the subgenre are not only heavily influenced by what came before, they are also in conversation, and sometimes argument with it.

Paul Cornell is a huge Star Trek fan, and has written for the characters before. His upcoming novella, Rosebud, features the quite Star Trek-ish scenario of a crew of AIs, some formerly humans, some not, investigating an anomaly. It’s a story that very much intersects with the ideals of Star Trek.

“Rosebud is about a crew who are meant to believe in something, but no longer really do,” Cornell says. “They’re a bunch of digital beings with varying origins, some of whom were once human, some of whom weren’t. There’s a conflict under the surface that nobody’s talking about, and when they encounter, in a very Trek way, an anomalous object, it’s actually a catalyst for their lives changing enormously. I’m a huge fan of the Trek ethos. I like good law, good civilisation, civil structures that do actually allow everyone to live their best lives, and Rosebud is about how far we’ve got from that, and a passion for getting back to that path.”

Other stories more explicitly react against the more dated or normative conventions in the genre. Seven Devils, for instance, both calls out and subverts the very male demographics of a lot of these stories.

“For a lot of ensemble casts, you get the token woman (Guardians of the Galaxy, for example) and until recently, things were fairly heteronormative,” Lam says. “So we basically wanted to turn things around and have a gang of mostly queer women being the ones to save the universe. We also went hard on critiquing imperialism and monarchies with too much power.”

Indeed, the “space exploration” that is the cornerstone of much of the genre, is an idea deeply rooted in a colonialist, and often racist tradition.

I’ve written my own space ensemble story, an ongoing series of four “planet of the week” style novellas, Fermi’s Progress. One of my concerns with the genre is how often the hero spaceship will turn up at a “primitive” planet, then overthrow a dictator, or teach the women about this human concept called “love”, or otherwise solve the local’s century’s old, deeply rooted societal problems in half-an-hour and change in a way that felt extremely “white colonialists going out and fixing the universe”.

My solution was simple. In Fermi’s Progress, the crew’s prototype spaceship has an experimental FTL drive that unfortunately vaporises every planet they visit as they fly away. It’s a device that riffs off the “overturn a planet’s government then never mention them again” trope of planet-of-the-week stories, keeps the ship and crew moving, and leaves the reader in no doubt as to whether or not these “explorers” are beneficial to the places they visit.

Of course, not every effort to engage with these issues needs to be so dramatic.

“Since I tend to view space operas in terms of uncharted exploration, it’s crucial that the text addresses or confronts power issues in its various forms: who has it, who suffers from it, how is it wielded?” May says. “And sometimes those questions have extraordinarily messy and complicated answers in ways that do not fit neatly with ‘good team overthrows evil empire.’ One of the things I wanted to address was this idea of ‘rebels are the good guys.’ Who gets to be a good person? Who else pays the price for morality? In Seven Devils, the character of Eris ends up doing the dirty, violent work of the rebellion so the others can sleep at night–so that they can feel they’ve made moral and ethical choices. And for that same work, she’s also judged more harshly by those in the rebellion who get to have clear consciences because of her actions.”

“I had particular beef with the homogeneity,” says Wijeratne. “An entire planet where x race was of an identical sentiment? Pfft. At the same time, this naive optimism, that people can work together on a planetary scale to set up institutions and megastructures without enormous amounts of politics and clashes. I was most frustrated with this in Clarke’s work. [Rendezvous with] Rama in particular: it just didn’t compute with what I knew of people.”

As a consequence of the genre’s colonialist roots—not to mention the nature of most real spaceflight programmes—space in these stories can feel like an extremely militarised space. Even a gang of misfits, fugitives and renegades like the Farscape cast features at least a couple of trained soldiers at any one time.

“I didn’t want my characters to be just redshirts or ensigns, who get ordered around and seldom get to take much initiative,” Anders points out. “And I was interested in exploring the notion that a space force organized by non-humans might have very different ideas about hierarchy and might not have concepts like ‘chain of command’. I tried not to fall unthinkingly into the military tropes that Trek, in particular, is prone to.”

Chambers was also driven by a desire to show people who were working in space without wearing a uniform.

“I wanted to tell space stories that weren’t about war or military politics,” she explains. “These things exist in the Wayfarers universe, and I personally love watching a space battle as much as anybody, but I think it’s sad if the only stories we tell about the future are those that focus on new and inventive ways of killing each other. Human experience is so much broader than that, and we are allowed to imagine more.”

Getting the Band Together

Writing a story built around an ensemble, rather than a single main character, brings its own challenges with it. In many ways, creating a central protagonist is easy. The story has to happen to somebody. Creating an ensemble can be tricker. Each character needs to feel like they’re the protagonist of their own story, but also the cast is in many ways a tool box for the writer to bring different perspectives and methods to bear on the issue at the centre of their story. Different writers take very different approaches to how they put that toolbox together.

“I had some types I wanted to play with, and I was consciously allowing myself to go a little wild, so they get to push against the walls of my own comfort zone,” Cornell says of the AI crew in Rosebud. “I created a group of very different people, tried them against each other, and edited them toward the most interesting conflicts that suited my theme.”

Anders also went through various iterations in assembling her cast of characters for Victories Greater Than Death.

“I went through a huge process of trial and error, figuring out exactly how many Earth characters I wanted in the book and how to introduce them,” she says. “I wanted characters who had their own reason for being there and who would either challenge Tina or represent a different viewpoint somehow. I think that’s usually how you get an interesting ensemble, by trying to have different viewpoints in the mix.”

In writing Fermi’s Progress, I very much tried to cut the crew from whole cloth, thinking of them primarily as a flying argument. Thinking about the original Star Trek crew, most of the stories are driven by the ongoing debate between Spock’s pragmatism, McCoy’s emotions, and Kirk’s sense of duty, and so the Fermi’s crew was written to have a number of perspectives that would be able to argue interestingly about the different things they would encounter.

Others, however, focus strongly on the individual characters before looking at how they fit together.

“I gravitate much more toward writing multiple POVs than sticking with just one. Character dynamics are catnip to me, and I love to play with them from all angles. But building each character is a very individual sort of process,” Chambers says. “I want each of them to feel like a whole person, and I’m struggling to think of any I’ve created to complete another. I just spend some time with a character all on their own, then start making them talk to each other — first in pairs, then in larger groups. I shuffle those combinations around until everybody comes alive.”

In writing Seven Devils, May and Lam began with a core pair of characters, then built outwards.

“El [Lam] and I each started with a single character we wanted to explore,” May recalls. “For me, it was Eris, who also had the benefit of being an exploration of thorny issues of morality. Eris’ natural foil was Clo–conceived of by El–who believes in the goodness of the rebellion. From there, our cast expanded as different aspects of imperial oppression that we wanted to address: colonial expansion via the military, brainwashing, the use of artificial intelligence. Each character provides a unique perspective of how the Empire in Seven Devils functions and how it crushes autonomy and self-determination.”

“We started with Eris and Clo,” Lam agrees. “Eris is sort of like Princess Leia if she and Luke had been raised by Darth Vader but she realised the Empire was evil and faked her own death to join the rebellion. Clo has elements of Luke in that she grew up on a backwater planet where things go wrong, but it was overpopulated versus wide open desert with a few moons. She also just has a lot more fury and rage that doesn’t always go in the right direction. Then we created the other three women they meet later in the narrative, and did a combination of using archetypes as jumping off points (courtesan, mercenary, genius hacker) but taking great care crafting their backstories and motivations and how they all related to each other.”

Ensuring that every character has their own story to be the protagonist of is something you can trace right back through the genre- particularly with series like Farscape, Firefly, and the more recent Intergalactic, where the crews often feels thrown together by circumstance and the characters are very much pursuing their own goals.

Balancing all of these different perspectives and voices is the real trick, especially if you want to avoid slipping back into the set-up of a star protagonist and their backing singers.

“This was a bit of a struggle, especially in a book with a single pov,” Anders says. “In the end all I could do was give each character their own goals and ideals that aren’t just an extension of Tina’s. It really helps if people have agendas that aren’t just related to the main plot.”

“We have five point of view characters and seven in the sequel, and it was definitely a challenge,” Lam admits. “For the first book, we started with just Eris and Clo until the reader was situated, and then added in the other three. We gave each character their own arc and problem to solve, and essentially asked ourselves ‘if [X] was the protagonist, what would they journey be?’ Which is useful to ask of any character, especially the villains!”

Chambers has a surprisingly practical solution to the problem: colour-coded post-it notes.

“Some characters will naturally have more weight in the story than others, but I do try to balance it out,” Chambers says. “One of the practical tricks I find helpful is colour-coding post-it notes by POV character, then mapping out all the chapters in the book on the wall. That makes it very easy to see who the dominant voices are, and I can adjust from there as needed.”

A Ship with Character

One cast member these stories all have in common is the ship they travel in. Sometimes the ship is a literal character in itself, such as the organic ship Moya in Farscape, but even when not actually sentient, the ship will help set the tone for the entire story, whether it’s the sweeping lines and luxurious interiors of the Enterprise D, or the cosy, hand-painted communal kitchen of Serenity. When describing the Fermi in my own story, I made it a mix of real and hypothetical space technology, and pure nonsense, in a way that felt like the story’s mission statement.

Seven Devils’ stolen imperial ship, “Zelus”, likewise reflected the themes of the book.

“Our ship is called Zelus, and it begins as a symbol of Empire but gradually becomes a home,” Lam says. “They took it back for themselves, which I think mirrors a lot of what the characters are trying to do.”

The same was true of the “Indomitable”, the ship Tina would inherit in Victories Greater Than Death.

“The main thing I needed from the Indomitable was to be a slightly run down ship on its own, far from any backup,” Anders says. “I did have a lot of fun coming up with all the ways the ship’s systems work. In the second book I introduce a starship that is a little more idiosyncratic, let’s say.”

For Cornell, the spaceship at the heart of Rosebud was an extension of the characters themselves, almost literally.

“It’s a kind of magical space, in that the interior is largely digital, and reflects the personalities of the crew,” he says. “There’s an interesting gap between the ship’s interior and the real world, and to go explore the artefact, our crew have to pick physical bodies to do it in. Their choices of physical body again tell us something about who they are.”

“My background is in theater, so I am always thinking about what kind of ‘set’ I’m working with,” Chambers tells us. “Colour, lighting, props, and stage layout are very important to me. I want these to feel like real, lived-in environments, but they also communicate a lot to the reader about who the people within these spaces are. Kizzy’s workspace tells a completely different story than, say, Roveg’s shuttle, or Pepper’s house. I spend a lot of time mulling over what sorts of comforts each character likes to keep around them, what food they like to have on hand, and so on. These kinds of details are crucial for painting a full picture.”

Stellar Dynamics

When he was writing the cast of The Salvage Crew, Wijeratne fleshed out his characters by focusing on how they relate to one another.

“My cast tends to be more of ‘what’s the most interesting mix I can bring to this situation, where’s the tragedy, and where’s the comedy?’ I go through a bit of an iterative process – I come up with one stand-out attribute for the character that makes sense given the world I’m about to throw them into,” he says. “Then the question is: what’s a secondary quirk, or part of their nature, that makes them work well with the others, or is somehow critical? What’s a tertiary facet to them that really rubs the others the wrong way?

“Then I take those quirks and go back to the other characters, and ask why do they respond to these things? What about their backstory makes them sympathize with one thing and want to pummel the other into dust? By the time this back-and-forth is complete, I’ve got enough that the characters feel like they really do have shit to get done in this world, and really do have some beef with each other. They have backstory and things they react to really badly and situations they’re going to thrive in.”

In The Salvage Crew, this included Simon a geologist who crew up plugged into a PVP MMORPG and who hasn��t really adjusted to the real world, Anna, a wartime medic who has PTSD around blood, and Milo, who is a decent all-arounder, but has problems with authority, particular women in authority.

In the best-loved stories of this sub-genre, it’s not just the strong characters, but the relationships between those characters that people love. Spock and McCoy, Geordi and Data, Jayne and Book working out together in Firefly. Even in the protagonist-heavy Mass Effect, some of the best character moments don’t involve Shepard, but are the character interactions you eavesdrop or walk in on while wandering around the Normandy.

“I think we’ve all experienced being flung together with a group of workmates, and nobody asking us if we like everyone there,” Cornell says. “And how the smallest quirks of personality can come to mean everything over several centuries.”

Getting those relationships to feel organic and natural is the real trick, and it can take endless writing and rewriting to get there.

“For me, it’s usually a lot of gold-farming,” Anders says. “I will write a dozen scenes of characters hanging out or dealing with stuff, and then pick two or three of them to include in the book. I can’t write relationships unless I’ve spent a lot of time with them.”

Often it’s a question of balancing conflict and camaraderie among the group.

“It’s easy to want to go straight to banter between characters, which is a massive benefit of ensemble casts. But I also think it’s essential that they have moments of conflict,” says May. “Not just drama for drama’s sake, but in any friendship group, boundaries often have to be established and re-established. Sometimes those boundaries come from past traumas, and taking moments to explore those not only adds dimensionality, but shows how the character unit itself functions.”

For May and Lam it helped that their ensemble cast was being written by an ensemble itself.

“Having both of us work on them really helped them come to life,” Lam says. “Their voices were easier to differentiate because we’d often take the lead on a certain character. So if I wrote a Clo chapter, I didn’t always know how exactly Eris might react in her next chapter, or Elizabeth might change Eris’s dialogue in that initial Clo scene to better fit what was coming up. As co-writers, we were in conversation with each other as much as the characters, and that’s quite fun. We tend to work at different times of the day, so I’d load up the manuscript in the morning and wonder what’s happened next to our crew during the night and read to find out. We also did a lot of work on everyone’s past, so we knew what they wanted, what they feared, what lies about themselves they believed, how they might change and grow through the story as a result of meeting each other, and therefore the characters tended to develop more organically on the page.”

For Wijeratne, the thing that really brings the characters’ relationships into focus is a crisis, and it’s true. Across these stories, more often than not you want your space team to be working together against a common challenge, not obsessed with in-fighting among themselves.

“The skeleton of what you saw was the output of an algorithm. A series of Markov chains generating events, playing on the fact that humans are extraordinarily good at seeing patterns in random noise,” Wijeratne says. “But the skeleton needs skin and muscle, and that’s more or less drawn from the kind of high-stress situations that I’ve been a part of: flood relief efforts, factchecking and investigating in the face of terrorism and bombings, even minor stuff like being in Interact projects with people I really didn’t want to be working with. I find that there are make-or-break moments in how people respond to adversity: either they draw together, and realize they can get over their minor differences, or they cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war.”

Found Family

Whether we’re talking about Starfleet officers, browncoats, rebel scum or galaxy guardians, these crews are rarely just colleagues or even teammates. They are family.

“I think it goes back to many space operas ultimately being survival tales: whether that’s surviving in the vastness of space or against an imperial oppressor,” May says. “These stories bring unrelated characters closer together in a way that goes beyond the bonds of blood. ‘Found family’ is a powerful bond predicated on acceptance and respect rather than duty.”

It’s a topic at the heart of Seven Devils, set in a galaxy where the regime in power has done all it can to eliminate the concept of “Family”, but Lam also believes the found family is something extremely important to marginalised groups.

“In ours, the Tholosians have done their best to erase the concept of family entirely–most people are grown in vats and assigned their jobs from birth. You might feel some sort of sibling bond with your soldier cohort, perhaps, but most people don’t have parents,” Lam says. “Rebellion is incredibly difficult, as your very mind has been coded to be obedient and obey. So those who have managed to overcome that did so with incredible difficulty, and found each other and bonded among what they had in common. You see it in our world as well of course–the marginalised tend to be drawn to each other for support they might not find elsewhere, and the bonds are just as deep or deeper than family you’re related to by blood (just look at drag families, where you have a drag mother or daughter, for example).”

“Found family is definitely a strong narrative thread,” Wijeratne agrees. “I think it stems from an incredibly persistent process in our lives – in human lives: we grow up, we outgrow the people we are born among, and we go out into the world to find our tribe, so to speak. And this is a critical part of maturity, of striking out on out own, of becoming comfortable with who we are and realizing who we’ll be happy to battle alongside and who we’d rather kick in the meat and potatoes.

“Space, of course, is such a perfect physical representation of this process. What greater ‘going out’ is there than in leaving aside the stale-but-certain comfort of the space station or planet and striking out for the depths? What better idea of finding a family than settling in with a crew? And what better embodiment of freedom than a void where only light can touch you, but even then after years?”

Of course, the “Found Family” isn’t exclusive to spaceship crews. It’s a theme that we see everywhere from superhero movies to sitcoms, reflecting some of the bigger social shifts happening in the real world. As Cornell points out, one of the very first spaceship ensembles shows, Lost in Space, was based around a far more traditional family.

“I think one of the big, central parameters of change in the modern world is the move from biological family being the most important thing to found family being the most important, the result of a series of generation gaps caused by technological, ecological and societal change happening so fast that generations now get left behind,” Cornell says. “So all our stories now have found family in them, and we can’t imagine taking old family into space. The new Lost in Space, for example, had to consciously wrestle with that. And even in the original, there’s a reason the found family of Billy and Dr. Smith is the most interesting relationship. It’s the only one where we don’t immediately know what the rules are meant to be.”

To make a huge generalisation, that sense of “not immediately knowing what the rules are meant to be” might be the key to the genre’s appeal. After all, if your space exploration is closer to the ideals of the Star Trek model than they are to Eddie Izzard’s “Flag” sketch, then it’s about entering an alien environment where you don’t know the rules. If there are aliens, your space heroes will be trying to reach out and understand them. But for the writer, whether those aliens are humanoids with funny foreheads or jellyfish that only talk in the third person, the aliens will still be, behind however many layers of disguise, human. We really struggle to imagine what it’s like to be anything else. Perhaps our spaceship crew’s efforts in communicating with and understanding those aliens is reflected in their efforts to understand each other.

Seven Devils, by Elizabeth May and Laura Lam, is out now, as is The Salvage Crew by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders, and A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. Rosebud, by Paul Cornell, will be out in April 2022.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The first two parts of Chris Farnell’s serial, Fermi’s Progress, Dyson’s Fear and Descartesmageddon, are also out now, or the season pass for all four novellas is for sale at Scarlet Ferret.

The post How Science Fiction’s Ensemble Stories Humanize Space appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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crookedbigbang · 4 years

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ARTIST CLAIMS ARE HERE!

TIMELINE:

Artist Sign-Ups: May 22-August 7

Artist Claims Open: August 6

Final Check-In: August 30

Final Drafts Due: Sept 18

Posting Begins: September 21

THE BASICS:

One of the unique aspects of a big bang challenge is the combination of fic and fanart. Artists are welcome to create art in any medium they choose, including but not limited to: mixes, videos, podfics, gifs, drawings, paintings, graphics, edits, comics, physical crafts. Art is impossible to quantify, but we do ask that artists put in a significant effort in recognition of the work that the writers are doing on the fics. Authors will be writing their fics all summer and will be expending significant time on the project. A good benchmark for artists is about 15-20 hours of work, including brainstorming and planning.

The final product should be a collaboration between author and artist. What that collaboration looks like is a highly individual process: if you get a clear artistic vision, run with it; but you should also feel free to ask your author any questions you have along the journey. Artists and authors should share drafts with each other as they go so that when the final products are posted, they complement each other well.

We have 5 wonderful Big Bang fics. Click the Read More for their summaries!

Fic 1: Take Me Out to the Ballgame Tentative Title: (not the title) take me out to the ballgame Pairing(s): Jon Favreau / Tommy Vietor Characters: Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor Ao3 Rating: E Warnings: No archive warnings apply Additional Tags: Baseball AU ; Coming Out ; Bisexual Characters ; Dating ; Alternate Universe - Different Meeting Summary: Jon and Tommy meet playing baseball in high school and start to fall for each other, then Tommy moves away. Their epic love story continues when they end up on the same Minor League baseball team. The big question is, will they end up with a World Series ring or an engagement ring? Fic 2: Spirits that I’ve Cited Tentative Title: Spirits that I've cited Pairing(s): Tommy/Lovett; background Emily/Jon, Alyssa/Erin Characters: Tommy, Lovett, Favs, Emily, Alyssa, Erin, Dan Ao3 Rating: tentative M (for psychological horror and possible sex) Warnings: a non-consensual kiss under the influence of possession might happen, this scene is not yet written Additional Tags: paranormal investigators, slow burn, reluctant colleagues to friends to lovers, mutual pining, angst, hurt/comfort, accidental internet stars, bed-sharing, coming-out, road trips, witches getting married, demonic possession, ghosts, mythical creatures, Monster of the Week, psychological but non-graphical horror, slightly unreliable narrator, intoxication, magical mind control, themes of bodily and mental autonomy, (past) abusive relationships (not between main characters), possession induced mental health problems, worldbuilding, happy ending Summary: It’s a cold day in November when Tommy meets Lovett and his life turns upside down. Which shouldn’t be the worst thing, looking at it objectively.

Because, objectively, Tommy’s life already sucks. He is lonely, depressed, and Crooked Medium, the agency for paranormal investigations he co-owns with his ex-boyfriend Jared, is falling apart. Besides the shitty fact that he and Jared broke up, they constantly operate in the red, despite their best efforts. And it’s just the garbage cherry on top of the dumpster sundae that Jared and their only other core member, Jon, hate each other’s guts. Jon is Tommy's friend, but more importantly, he is Crooked Medium's exorcist par excellence, and for a former priest Tommy thought he might be better at the whole 'turn the other cheek' thing. He supposes that probably explains the 'former' part. So of course he panics when Jon unexpectedly buys out Jared’s shares in the company and offers Lovett a one-year apprenticeship as a medium and buys Jared shares of the agency. Suddenly Tommy’s faced with training a person who is not familiar with magic in one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, instead of relying on the experience Jared had. Despite the help from magical professors Alyssa and Dan, witch and shop-owner Erin, and their whole team—to Tommy it feels like Lovett’s credentialing next November is ages away. However, after a bonding experience involving ghost mice, Tommy slowly but surely discovers that Lovett isn’t an inconvenience at all. He is charming, attractive, hilarious, and way more talented than Tommy originally anticipated. Even their business improves, especially when they become an overnight internet sensation due to a malfunction. Instead of operating only in Boston, people across the country are now booking them to handle their mystical and paranormal problems. With each new case, Lovett learns more—and Tommy learns more about Lovett. This is unfortunate, given that Lovett is technically Tommy's intern, and the last thing Tommy needs is a harassment scandal. Tommy, naturally good at ignoring things, decides to ignore it. Which works out fine, thank you very much. At least up until Alyssa and Erin’s magical wedding in the woods. Or up until Lovett has a life-changing experience with a mirror. Or maybe even up until Lovett (plus Lovett's friend/household spirit Spencer) moves in. And just when Tommy thinks falling in love with his employee is his biggest problem, it turns out much more nefarious forces are at work. Fic #3: The gentle outline of the country we are building Tentative Title: The gentle outline of the country we are building Pairing(s): Jon Favreau/Jon Lovett/Tommy Vietor, Jon Favreau/Jon Lovett, Jon Favreau/Tommy Vietor, Jon Lovett/Tommy Vietor Characters: Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vietor, Dan Pfeiffer, Alyssa Mastromonaco, Cody Keenan, Michael O' Neill, Spencer Wong, Andy Favreau, Tanya Somanader, Travis Helwig Ao3 Rating: E Warnings: No archive warnings apply Additional Tags: DC era, LA era, pining, wrong number AU, polyamory, threesomes, jealousy, slow burn, friends with benefits, angst with a happy ending, getting together, smut, fluff, blowjobs, anal sex, rimming, dirty talk, sexting, drinking, marijuana, sex under mild influence of alcohol, friends to lovers. AO3 (working) Summary: It takes spending the night in one room with a king-sized bed for Jon, Lovett, and Tommy to finally get it right after nearly a decade of trying. AKA A story about Jon, Tommy, and Lovett getting together, aided and abetted by Jon’s technological ineptitude, misunderstandings, love, friendship, and longing. Expanded summary: Jon and Lovett embark on a charged, text-based flirtation without knowing the other after Jon texts the wrong number during the 2008 general election campaign. It feels like a summer fling that wouldn’t end, just like those times Jon had slept with Tommy back in Chicago. But both of them do end, but at least Jon’s going to the White House with a new speechwriter and his best friend in tow. Jon thinks, not the right time then with Tommy, not the right time now with you, Lovett. They write speeches and policies and learn lessons on how to build a country and a friendship. The first summer at the White House, Tommy starts taking Lovett to bed almost every night. Two years later, he stops, because Lovett knocks on his door one day and says, “I am leaving.” Not quite the right time for you and me. Lovett spends his days in LA writing things very different from what he used to but thinking thoughts about Jon and Tommy that aren’t all that different. Jon and Tommy skype him from Chicago when his show gets canceled, and Lovett thinks about how right they look together on the screen, like they belong to each other. Jon comes to LA and doesn’t leave. Tommy moves closer, but not close enough. They lose everything when November 2016 dawns and then build an empire from the ruins, and over the next few months, they think, maybe it wasn’t the right time then, and maybe we did not do this before because we were always meant to do this together. All of us. Fic 4: Loving Him was Red - Azure Title: loving him was red - azure Pairing(s): Jon Favreau/Dan Pfeiffer, background Michael/Elijah Characters: Jon, Dan, Tommy, Lovett, Alyssa, Michael, Elijah Rating: E Warnings: No major warnings apply Additional tags: alternate universe, actors, hollywood, tabloids, love at first sight, BDSM, like lots of BDSM, spanking, flogging, humiliation, painplay, safeword use, failed scene, alcohol, alcohol abuse, drug use and abuse, divorce, bad at communication Summary: Rising star Dan Pfeiffer meets grown-up child actor Jon Favreau on the set of the movie that just might be their big break. It's a good old-fashioned Hollywood story. Boy meets Boy. Boy falls head over heels at first sight. Boy marries Boy. Boy ties Boy up and fucks him til he screams. But the Hollywood lights hit every dark shadow too and as the tabloids stir up gossip; as Jon spends more and more time at the club; and as Dan starts to wonder what comes next, the faultlines widen and their marriage falls into the abyss This is the first of a three fic arc chronicling the beginning, end, and re-beginning of an epic love story. Fic 5: Invisible String

Tentative Title: Invisible String Pairing(s): Jon Favreau / Tommy Vietor Characters: Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor Ao3 Rating: Explicit Warnings: NO WARNINGS Additional Tags: affection, holding hands, chase sequence, shaving (face), mention of pod sponsors, wills & estates, cartoon villains, clothes sharing, Boston, plane flights, current day/LA era,Summary: Human boatshoe Tommy Vietor discovers he can claim a huge inheritance if he can prove he is married. If he does not, the $40 million fortune will go to the National Rifle Association. Best friend Jon Favreau steps up to help Tommy out. The NRA hires investigators to find information in order to break the will, chasing our boys all over Boston at one point.

#come create art for these amazing fic!#crooked big bang

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charlotte-sloane-writes · 4 years

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Part 2 - A Wicked Little Thing

Here’s Chapter 2 of my Zatanna/John Constantine fic. Get ready for some quality feels and worldbuilding. The story is after the cut, the tags are at the very bottom.

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The flesh on Anna’s hands had turned a bright angry red fifteen minutes ago; fifteen minutes before the end of her shift. Though the color had abated by the time she got to the cleaning cart lock-up, they still itched and burned from the overexposure to cleaning chemicals. Despite the smell of bleach and cheap latex gloves permeating every digit, Anna abstained from washing her hands in fear of rubbing off the last layer of skin she had left on her palms.

“Shit, and I thought we were busy in the summer.” Freddie leaned back, popping her spine.

“You’re working a second shift too?” Anna smiled at her friend, unbuckling the utility belt from around her waist.

“Yeah.” Freddie scoffed, removing the little, fuzzy, red hat that had leaned crookedly off the side of her ginger crown. “The second it starts pourin’ and all the tourists get stranded, Buddy gets big ideas about a Michelin star for the Hotel California.”

“Talk about overflow.” Anna closed up her locker, spinning the dial on her combination lock for good measure.

The bellhop sat back on the wooden bench in the middle of the locker room, stretching her arms above her head. “When do you get out?”

“Oh, you haven’t heard? We can never leave.”

“Oh, very funny, Anna. It was also really funny the last thirty times I heard that joke.”

“What? If you’re gonna have a shitty job might as well have it at the Hotel California.”

“That should be the new tagline. Come to the Hotel California, if you’re gonna have a shitty vacation, you might as well have it set in a mediocre rock song.”

Anna threw her towel at Freddie’s head “That’s a great song.”

“I’m more of an Aerosmith kinda gal.” Freddie winked, the freckled skin around her eyes wrinkling with a shit-eating grin she gave her friend.

“Blasphemy. Absolute blasphemy.” Anna laughed, the ends of her black hair tickling the bottoms of her shoulder blades when she leaned her head back.

“You’re one to talk.” Freddie threw the offending towel back towards Anna’s face. The cleaning maid caught it and jolted it back towards her chest, dragging Freddie off of the bench in a series of uncontrollable giggles.

The two collapsed in a heap on the linoleum floor, panting between the ghosts of their laughter. “Fuck, I’m gonna be late. George’ll kill me.”

Anna leaned up “If he kills you, who’s gonna bail him out from laundry duty?”

“Fair enough.” Freddie heaved herself up, getting a sturdy landing on her feet and tugging Anna back up with her. “You off on lunch?” Freddie’s breath tickled Anna’s cheek and left a ghostly disturbance against her eyelashes. This was too close.

“Yeah, about to. Why?”

“I’ll tell George you’re there when I see him. He’ll be glad to have a cards partner.”

“And to think he was getting so good at solitaire.” Anna smiled crookedly and nodded “Okay, you tell that brother of yours I’ll be waiting to serve his ass up on a round of Go Fish.”

“Make him regret it. I need something to feel like the superior twin.” Freddie winked, getting to her locker and changing into her brother’s spare laundry uniform. Tightening the white pants around her hips, Freddie spread her arms, shaking her head and making her short hair messier, somehow wilder “How do I look?”

Anna was leaned back against the locker, a bite of her apple making the rounds to her molars “Sexy in a ‘1950s sanitorium worker’ kind of way.”

Freddie laughed freely, hands gripping her shuttering belly “What’s your damage, Arataz?”

Anna swallowed the chunk of fruit in her mouth, wiping her chapped lips roughly with the back of her hand “You haven’t even scratched the surface, honeybuns.”

Freddie scoffed, rolled her eyes, and nudged her friend in the ribs playfully “See you tonight for a nightcap?”

“You got the…?” Anna made a signal with her hand– two fingers to her lips and outward.

“Only if the back patio is dry by then. I don’t want to have to share with Buddy again.”

“Fair. See you then.”

“Yeah.” Freddie waved over her shoulder and walked out to bail her twin brother out.

Anna wouldn’t see such a familiar face until thirty minutes later, lunching on a cheese and bologna sandwich and nibbles of saltines she’d kept lying around her locker in case she ever wanted to treat herself.

“You’re a sorry sight.” George announced his presence, changed into his sister’s bellhop uniform. The first few times they’d done the switcheroo around her, Anna got whiplash.

“Ever so charming.” She shrugged out the earbud and laid the pair off to the side, looking up at the man settling into the chair across from her.

“Freddie tells me you’re gonna kick my ass at Go Fish?”

“Yeah, so long as your cards aren’t rigged.”

“Me? Cheating at cards? When there’s no money to be won? I’m wounded.” George leaned over and stole a cracker from its sleeve.

“What’s for lunch?” Anna swiped back the cracker, leaving more crumbs on the table between them than in either of their hands.

“Some fried rice and chopped SPAM.” George shrugged and wiped off the debris of the saltine battle.

“Seriously?”

“Some of us need variance, Arataz.” George nudged his chin towards the cleaning lady’s meal. “We can’t all survive on bologna sandwiches every day.”

______________________

John Constantine is laying across his bed, unmade and wrinkled like his dress shirt. A loose cigarette hangs from his bottom lip and his heavy eyelids drift closed to the heavy smoke drifting through the industrially recycled air of the Waverider. A final moment of peace, a stillness in his heart, permits his mind to now wander with eyes shut tight. He wonders on passed loves and good times, beers with Chas and drinks with King Arthur’s proginey, shots with Dez and wine with Bruce. Come to think of it, his bonding moments seem to circle around alcohol a bit too frequently. When was the last time he had a deep conversation without booze to lubricate his thoughts to slip past that hard wall he’s built? “Zatanna, must’ve been with Zatanna” He thought aloud, remembering her Painted Lady-esque mansion on an off-shoot road in San Francisco. The silk sheets, the aroma of floral soy candles, the Korean face masks:

“How do you know how to use these things?” John flicked the plastic pack with Korean print all over it. No amount of squinting or divining was making the words any more English.

She laughed, flicking her dark hair behind her shoulder and leaning down onto the mattress behind him. “There...I think.” Her manicured finger pointed down at the one discernable thing on the silver pack, the number 15 “I think that means you leave it on for 15 minutes.”

“Fuck it, sure.” He shrugged and laughed, leaning back and letting his head rest on her thigh “Will you open it for me?”

“Sure. You sure you want this one?” She plucked it from his hands and looked at the picture on it “Pearl? I have others if you want.”

He turned on to his side, one finger tracing an ancient Nordic rune on her knee “Which one are you doing?”

“The snake one.” Zatanna leaned onto one hand, the mattress dipping with her weight.

“Snake oil? Isn’t that like...clearly not real?” John mumbled

“Hm?” Zatanna laughed, her fingertips pushing back his hair “What are you talking about, John?”

“Nothing, love.” He sighed “Just talking for the sake of hearing m’self.”

“You do that often?” She teased him, leaning forward to lay on her side across from him.

“I think so. Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Why do I like to hear myself talk so much?”

“Yeah.”

John leaned on to his back and sighed, letting his back ache in relief. He scratched over his belly button absent-mindedly “Not sure. Maybe it’s to figure out whether I know what I’m talking about.”

The stage magician crawled over to him, sitting up on his chest and pulling his hands away from himself “You don’t think you know what you’re talking about?”

“I don’t know. Who knows? Maybe it’s an act...all of it. But if I sound like I know what I mean, maybe what I’m saying and what I’m doing is right, true, correct. Just got to convince myself as much as those around me.”

Zatanna nodded “I think I know what you mean.” She opened the pearl essence face mask, pressing the cold and slimy sheet onto his face. John jumped at it, surprised at the feeling. “I sometimes wonder where I’d be if I couldn’t just make shit happen with a few backwards phrases.”

“Still rich.” John laughed, watching with one eye open as Zatanna dismounted from his chest and laid down next to him, placing her own sheet mask on her face.

“I don’t know. My father’s money didn’t stretch that far, and I’d be lying if I said my stage magic would be just as good without my real magic. And my name does a lot of the legwork for me…”

“I think you’re brilliant.” John admitted

“Oh, well thank you, all my problems are solved now.” Zatanna rolled her eyes

John laughed and nudged her with his elbow “You wanker.” He scoffed.

“I know, I know, I shouldn’t question the very rarest of Constantine compliments. Thank you, honeybuns.” She kissed the underside of his chin and leaned back to play with the ends of her hair.

“Yeah, yeah, alright.” John rolled his eyes and pretended he wasn’t feeling the closest to home he’d ever felt in his life.

That Zatanna Zatara didn’t exist anymore. All that’s left of her now is a scorned lover, just like the rest of them, as far as John was concerned. She did just fine without him, and he didn’t need her.

An alarm blared, breaking his reverie. John groaned as he leaned up and ashed his cigarette. “Calling all Legends to the Bridge. Calling all Legends to the Bridge.” Sara Lance’s voice echoed through the time travelling ship. “That means you too, John.”

The mage rolled his eyes and stood, stretching out his spine, twisting his arms around to his hips. He slipped his trenchcoat on, feeling the small fizzle of arcane energy as his arms fit through the conduit. “Alright, Johnny. Time to wake up.” He murmured to himself, rolling his shoulders. He pushed the button and the doors to his room slid open.

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gffa · 4 years

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ardid replied to your post: Scattered Star Wars thoughts: - I am so close to...

I think the problem with Thrawn: Treason is that the action take place to close to the end of Rebels and Disney here is keeping its cards with too much zeal. I really enjoyed the irony and the parallelisms between the grallocs and the purrgils and my final “feel” about the novel is that the last part Zahn was dividing the pieces (Faro, Ronan, even Savit!) before the true battle (or story). Despite what I said my personal ranking is Thrawn > Treason > Alliances.

I really do agree that I think the biggest problem with Treason--and, frankly, a lot of the books that have come out in the last year, year and a half--is exactly that, that Disney is keeping its cards too close to the vest that nothing can actually happen anymore. Going back to read the books that were put out 4-5 years ago, it’s sort of startling how much actually happens in those books. Dark Disciple actually told the fates of characters! Stuff happened in the Aftermath trilogy that affected the major characters and the New Republic! Bloodline actually gave us concrete info on the story! Catalyst actually managed to bridge the Clone Wars and the Empire in a way that really helped build up Rogue One! Phasma was a legitimately interesting background for the character! Compare that to any book that has come out in the last year and the stakes have been massively dropped re: plot. Even by many of the same authors--Leia: Princess of Alderaan had a fair amount of this (so much less worldbuilding than I was hoping for, for a book about Leia’s younger years, I know so little more about Alderaan than when I started!) and Master and Apprentice had basically zero worldbuilding that had any real impact. Black Spire continues Vi’s adventures, but it feels so disconnected from the main storyline that I still haven’t been able to finish the last third of it. The other Galaxy’s Edge stories have all felt like they have even less impact. (This doesn’t make them inherently bad books, btw, especially since I recognize that this is a thing that’s happening all over the place, re: the lack of much that’s concrete! I legit enjoyed many of them!) Some books can take this and run with it--Pirate’s Price doesn’t need impact to be a super delightful, fun romp where old faves meet even older faves in hilarious clashes. Spark of the Resistance is the same, it’s a cute story set between the movies, it’s all about the characters being adorable together. Alphabet Squadron and books like Join the Resistance or Adventures in Wild Space can tell stories with real stakes about the characters within those novels, set close enough to the action (even if they can’t impact that action) that they work. The problem with Treason is that it gets caught up in the problem a lot of books are facing--they can’t actually set anything into stone when it comes to the big name characters, not even for the OT or even PT characters, in case someone else wants to do something later on down the road. Thrawn can’t actually go anywhere past the end of Rebels because Filoni hasn’t told us his fate yet. Leia can’t actually discuss anything about her son’s fall because The Rise of Skywalker might tell that story and The Rise of Kylo Ren hasn’t come out yet. I get that Lucasfilm is in a difficult position here, because they want to keep things as consistent as possible and these stories take years to get told sometimes, but they also want to crank out a lot of books to keep the SW hype going, even while the movies are ongoing. And no one author probably should be able to totally define a character or place or group or whatever. I don’t have an answer for this and, hell, they’re probably doing a vastly better job of this than I could possibly do--I’m still here and still eagerly picking up the books! I think part of my dissatisfaction is that, especially for awhile there, there was SO MUCH that was about constantly establishing new characters instead of giving us stories about the characters we already care about. (And then some about established characters came out and they were lackluster because they were caught up “can’t actually really do anything with the character”.) Treason got a lot of that, it was set at a point in the story where not much explosive plot stuff could even happen, it couldn’t go past the end of Rebels, and it didn’t dig into the characters’ motivations enough to make up for that. So, I still like it better than Alliances (which I’m mostly cranky about because I had trouble seeing Anakin in the writing, also forever mad about Padme’s role), but until Filoni tells us what happened with Thrawn and Ezra, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to be much more invested in future Thrawn books. I’ll be happy to be proven wrong, though! And I guess we’ll see if the tone of books changes after authors have some time to incorporate TROS into their writing/are freer to actually make stuff happen.

#ardid #novels #meta

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azvolrien · 6 years

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First Steps

I originally intended for this to be just a short one, but somehow it ended up almost four thousand words long. What can you do. Bit of a prequel story; mostly worldbuilding, but also some character backstory and the first ‘on-screen’ mention of High Master Carwel’s given name.

~~~

The door was slightly ajar, but Nicholas tapped his knuckles against it regardless. “Can I come in?”

There was a noncommittal grunt from inside the room.

“I brought you up some cake.”

A pause. “…What kind of cake?”

“Sponge with buttercream icing and strawberry jam.”

Another pause. “All right.”

Nicholas shouldered the door open. The room on the south corner of the house was well-placed to get the sun all day; even in the early evening, light streamed in through the tall, wide windows, casting shifting shadows through the linen curtains and the mobiles hanging from the ceiling. Nicholas didn’t duck quite in time to avoid hitting his head against a carved dragon, sending the mobile spinning on its string as its wooden wings flapped in place. A model of the solar system spun gently in the breeze from an open window, five little planets rotating around a painted yellow sun. In the far corner of the room, eleven-year-old Wygar huddled cross-legged on his bed, a white bandage wrapped around his head, a woollen blanket draped over his shoulders, and a large ginger cat curled up loaf-fashion on his lap. A few spots of blood had leaked through the bandage where it covered his right ear.

Nicholas set the plate down on the bedside cabinet. “I… I see Gregor’s keeping you company.”

Wygar didn’t look up or even smile, though his eyes darted sideways for a moment. Gregor purred happily as Wygar stroked his fur.

Nicholas sat down on the bed. “How does your ear feel?”

Wygar sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Still hurts,” he mumbled.

“I’m not surprised!” Wygar’s breathing quivered and he bowed his head. Gregor repositioned himself slightly and continued to purr. Nicholas sighed. “I’m sorry I shouted earlier,” he said more gently. “I was just so scared when I came in and saw you with the knife to your ear like that. Were you really going to cut the point off?”

Wygar nodded.

“Oh, son. Nothing should be so bad that it’s worth hurting yourself over.” Wygar looked up at that. “Would you like us to take you out of that school?” asked Nicholas. “We thought it would be good for you to be with other children your own age, but if you’re really that unhappy there, we can find a tutor for you. You wouldn’t have been there for more than another few months before moving up to secondary, anyway.”

Wygar shook his head.

“No?”

“Why should I leave?” asked Wygar, scowling. “They’re the problem.”

“That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose,” said Nicholas with a small smile. “So. I know you’ve had trouble before, but… None of the past times have resulted in half the windows at your school broken and you trying to cut your ear off. Talk me through what made it so much worse than usual, eh?”

Wygar took a deep breath. “I was outside at lunch break, reading my book. Usually I stay in the library at breaks, but they’re replacing all the bookcases so it’s closed, and they don’t let you hang around in the corridors or the assembly hall so I had to go outside instead. People sneaking whispers during class, it’s not great, but I can handle it and if the teacher’s there then they don’t push their luck too much. But, you know, outside… it’s a big playground and the teachers and helpers don’t pay as much attention as they do in classes, you know?” Nicholas nodded. “So I just… sat down on one of the benches under the rain roof and had my lunch, and I almost, almost made it to the bell without anyone noticing me. But then there were about five minutes until we had to go back to class when Darren Williams and his gang of, of cronies came over.”

“Which one is Darren Williams again?” asked Nicholas, frowning.

“The tall one. Well, everyone’s tall compared to me…”

“About so high, blonde hair and brown eyes?”

“Yeah, that’s him. It’s not the first time he’s picked on me, but he’s good at sweet-talking the teachers and getting his gang to back him up so he always gets away with it… Well, they just started off with the usual stuff, just saying… saying stuff, so I just sort of hunkered down behind my book and tried to block them out, you know? Because there’s just the one of me and they had me cornered in the shed, and I’m too small to fight past them so ignoring them’s all I can do.” Wygar sighed, and fell silent for a few seconds before continuing.

“But then Darren grabbed my book off me and started going through it really roughly, tearing the pages and reading bits out loud in this really sarcastic voice, like it was so stupid that anyone might actually enjoy reading it, and then he got to my favourite part – the scene where Lord Rathus defeats the Red Hills Revenant – and just got this look on his face, and then he said-” Wygar’s breathing shuddered and both of his hands closed into fists. Gregor looked up at him. Wygar adopted a fair imitation of Darren’s voice. “‘It’s no wonder you’re always reading this rubbish – books are the only place some long-eared freak could ever be a hero.’ And then he just chucked the book over his shoulder, pages coming loose, and I… I just lost it and went for him. But he’s still bigger than me and he has all his friends, you know? And they were all around me, all poking and grabbing at me and chanting their stupid chants and pinching their ears into points, and then… I’m not really sure? Things went sort of… weird and shimmery, sort of like above the road on a really hot day, only it wasn’t hot? It was like the air was shaking around me, and then there was this, this weird rumble, then this sort of, of wave went through the air with a funny snapping sound. All of Darren’s gang were thrown back, but the wave kept going until it hit the school and broke the windows. Then everyone got sent home, but the headmaster – he doesn’t like elves either, he’s just better at hiding it – kept giving me this look like it was all my fault and sweet little Darren couldn’t have started anything, no, even though he’s like twice my size and with a whole gang to back him up… And I got home and thought to myself, maybe if I didn’t look so different to everyone else…” A few tears leaked from his eyes, but he rubbed them away before they could really fall.

Nicholas laid one arm around his shoulders. “If you’re sure you want to stay at that school, that’s fine,” he said. “But before you go back, I’m going to go and speak to your headmaster, and I’m going to rip him a new one for letting things get this bad.”

Wygar let out a half-hearted giggle at the idea of his even-tempered merchant father ripping anyone a new anything.

“But that’s not the only thing to take from your story,” Nicholas mused. “This wave you described – it sounds a lot like a technique I’ve seen the wizards use now and then. I think before you go back to school – before anything else – we need to talk to the College.”

The following afternoon, the doorbell rang. Wygar did not look up from his book until his mother called for him to come downstairs. With a sigh, he trudged down to the hall with the book under his arm and Gregor trotting at his heels.

“You’ve got a visitor from the College,” Mari said brightly, waving towards the living room door. “We’ll be in the next room the whole time,” she added in an undertone. “Just shout if you need a hand.”

Wygar just nodded and let himself into the living room. A cup of tea rested on the coffee table; a tall, broad-shouldered man with long black dreadlocks and skin a dark, warm shade of brown stood by the window, his hands folded behind his back as he looked out at the street. At Wygar’s footsteps, he glanced over his shoulder and smiled.

“I heard there was an incident at your school yesterday,” he said.

Wygar perched on the nearest sofa. The man took a seat on an armchair, still on the opposite side of the room, and tied his dreadlocks back with a strip of green cloth. Gregor hopped up beside Wygar and made himself comfortable.

“Are you… Stormlord Llewellyn?” asked Wygar. “Am I in trouble?”

The man laughed. “Am I-! No. My name is Master Idris Carwel. And no, you’re not in trouble for what happened. I’m afraid a few broken windows is far from unusual for a first manifestation.”

Wygar blinked.

“It happens a lot when people first come into their powers,” Carwel explained. “It can be a stressful, confusing experience, especially if they haven’t grown up in a magical family. I expect you have questions; I’m here to answer as many as I can.”

Wygar looked down at the book he still held. “Have you ever fought a revenant?”

It was Carwel’s turn to blink. “…Nnnot what I thought your first question would be,” he said. “No, I’ve never fought a revenant. I have seen a few, though; the best examples have been found down in Kemet and up in the far north of the Sea Loch Country, created to guard the tombs of important figures – kings, priests and so on.”

“Oh.” Wygar tucked the book behind Gregor.

“The Barrow of the Red King is a pretty accurate depiction of ancient Kaldrfjord burial practices in most respects,” said Carwel, “so you can tell the author did do the research. She just upped how dangerous the Revenant would be for dramatic effect. The magic involved in creating a revenant is actually not very different to animating a built construct, but even laden with spells a mummified corpse is just too fragile to do more than walk back and forth looking scary.”

Wygar’s eyes widened. “You’ve read Fireclaw?”

“Of course.”

“Lord Rathus is my favourite character,” said Wygar in a confidential manner.

“The rest of the group wouldn’t have got far without him,” said Carwel, nodding. “But we might be getting a bit side-tracked. Do you have any questions about your magic?”

Wygar screwed up his face in thought and ran his fingers through Gregor’s fur. “Can you tell how powerful I’ll be?”

“Well, it’s not something that’s easily quantified,” said Carwel, “though the number of windows you broke suggests ‘very’.”

“Ooh.”

“There is a safer way to get some idea. Do you know how to conjure a witchlight?”

“No, I’ve never done any magic on purpose.”

“Right.” Carwel cracked his knuckles and held out one hand, palm up. “It’s one of the simplest magics there is; it requires nothing but a little concentration and willpower. Focus on the energy inside you. I like to visualise it as a sort of vortex just under my heart, but you might find something else more helpful; everyone has their own way of managing it.”

Wygar closed his eyes. “All right.”

“Then draw on a little of it, and will that energy to convert into light.”

Wygar took a deep breath and thought about what had happened the previous day. There had been a sound like thunder, a shockwave through the air, and a lot of broken glass. A big fire could do the same thing; he had once seen a half-razed house, the remains of its windows blasted outwards by the heat. He pictured a crackling orb of flame in his chest, and imagined pulling a strand out like drawing a string from a ball of yarn, guiding it down from his heart to the palm of his right hand. It itched, as if roiling under his skin. He took another deep breath and tried to tell the energy what to do, changing it from the rage of a forest fire to the warm glow of a candle.

“That’s it,” said Carwel.

Wygar opened his eyes to see a ball of yellowish-white light, perhaps three inches across, hovering steadily above his hand. An involuntary smile appeared on his face.

“Now,” Carwel went on, “feed that little light as much energy as you possibly can, and we’ll have a better idea of how much power you have at your fingertips.”

Wygar furrowed his brow in concentration, and channelled the rest of the fire into the ball. Immediately, it grew five times the size and flared a brilliant, blinding white, so bright that it leached all sense of colour or texture from the entire room. Wygar gasped, clapped his other hand over his eyes, and cut the magic off. Gingerly, he lifted his hand back off his face and, blinking, waited for his vision to return.

When it did, he saw that Carwel still sat across the room, his mouth hanging open.

“And you’re only eleven,” he said faintly. “Once you’re a grown adult, with full access to your power… Harbinger’s fire.”

“What?”

“Wygar.” Carwel sat forwards, clasping his hands in front of him. “I’ve been around magic for my entire life,” he said. “I grew up in a house full of wizards even before I attended the College, and as a Master I’ve worked with mages – wizards and witches alike – from all over the continent. So I want you to really understand what it means when I say that I believe you have the potential to become one of the most powerful wizards I have ever seen.”

“…Wow.”

“Indeed. Which makes it all the more important that you attend the College.”

“So… if I have magic, I have to go to the College, right?”

Carwel nodded. “It’s been part of Stormhaven law almost since the founding of the College itself. An apprenticeship lasts a minimum of four years; after that, you have the option to either continue your studies as a senior apprentice, or you can leave the College if you decide you’d prefer to follow a different path. After another four years, you can decide if you’d like to stay at the College and move up to journeyman rank.”

Gregor, oblivious to this conversation, climbed up onto Wygar’s lap and sprawled across it. Wygar stroked his fur, thinking. “Mr Griffiths at school said that they made it the law to go to the College just so they can control the wizards.”

“I take it Mr Griffiths is not a wizard himself.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Carwel shook his head. “Mages are required to attend the College so that they can learn to control themselves. Because the consequences of a mage losing control can be terrible, and for many more people than just the mage alone.” He paused, drumming his fingers on his knee, and went on more slowly. “Have you ever heard of the Andari Event?”

Wygar shook his head.

“No, I don’t suppose it comes up much in a primary school curriculum.” Carwel cast an eye over the bookcase. “I see there’s a copy of Maps of the Known World up there; do you mind if I take it down?”

Wygar shook his head again. Carwel got up to lift the hefty hardback book from its shelf, laid it on the coffee table, and flicked through to a page showing part of the land between the Eastern Lakes and the Inland Sea.

“Here.” Carwel tapped a finger against an irregular blob about two hundred miles long and more than a hundred wide, completely encircled by a thick black-and-grey line. Tiny letters painstakingly written along the line labelled it ‘The Andari Wall’.

“Andari was the biggest Imperial city east of the Lakes,” Carwel went on. “It was an important trading hub between the Imperial heartland and the Kingdom of Huaxia on the other side of the Inland Sea. At its peak it had more than ten times the population of Stormhaven, though still smaller than the Imperial City. And eighty-seven years ago, it was utterly obliterated by the most devastating explosion in recorded history. The people who survived the blast – mostly by being far enough away – started falling ill. After a couple of years, when people made the connection between the Event and what became known as Andari Sickness, the Empire evacuated the remaining survivors and built the Wall to keep people a safe distance from the blast site. We don’t know all the ins and outs of exactly what caused the Event – even today, people who spend too long inside the Wall get sick, so nobody can get close enough to the origin point to study it – but we have determined with certainty that a local mage lost control of an experiment that quickly went horribly wrong.”

Wygar stared at him in silent horror, hugging an indignant Gregor.

“See, this is why I don’t usually teach the children’s classes,” said Carwel. “I have trouble calibrating just the right amount of fear to instil.”

“What’s the right amount of fear?” stammered Wygar.

“Oh, simple. Enough to make you careful without making you timid.”

“That… makes sense, I suppose.”

“Yes, I’ve always thought so.” Carwel clasped his hands in front of him. “What about the College itself? Do you have any questions there?”

“What’s it like?” asked Wygar as Gregor squirmed out of his arms and back onto the sofa.

“Big question, but I’ll cover the basics.” Carwel held up a hand and one finger from the other. “The College is divided into six Schools. Journeymen and Masters all choose one school to specialise in; junior apprentices such as yourself take basic classes from all of them, while senior ones usually narrow their field of study once they have a better idea of where their powers lie and what interests them most. I’m with the School of Combat, where we teach you how to fight both with magical techniques – what you accidentally did yesterday is called a ‘concussive wave’, by the way – and mundane ones, as well as classes on tactics and strategy. There are also the Schools of Healing, Constructs, Portals, Sight, and History.” He folded each finger down one by one. “Magical history, that is, studying both its use over time and trying to suss out how it actually works. Each School is led by a High Master, who in turn answers to the Stormlord, the head of the whole College. Then there are all the non-faculty staff such as the cooks, the cleaners, the librarians, the administrators… and the maths teachers.”

“Maths?”

“Afraid that’s a skill even wizards need to have,” said Carwel with a smile.

“All right,” said Wygar slowly. “So… would I have to stay there?”

“No, in fact. Students from other parts of the country do have to board except during holidays, but since you live in the city you can either just attend during the day like a normal school, or board during the week and come home at weekends. It’s completely up to you, and you’re welcome to change your mind if you think the other option would suit you better.”

Wygar was silent for a long time, stroking Gregor. Carwel got up to put Maps of the Known World back on its shelf.

“Are there bullies at the College?” Wygar finally asked in a very small voice.

“There are bullies at every school,” said Carwel gently. “But we take a very dim view of it, and Matron Inkfoot in particular – she looks after the apprentices – will help you sort out any trouble you’re given. She’s very protective of her charges.”

Wygar gave this some careful thought before he nodded and went on, still quietly. “I won’t be starting at the College until after the summer.”

“That’s correct. Term starts mid-River Moon.”

“So… Can you teach me a shield spell, for the rest of the term? Just in case.”

“I don’t see why not,” said Carwel. “Those spells are a little more complicated than conjuring a witchlight, but I’ll show you a fairly straightforward one to try. Tap into your magic again, and start off by imagining a shield between you and your attacker…”

The shield was barely visible other than as a faint shimmer in the air forming a rough disc in front of Wygar. They spent a few minutes practising keeping it up as Carwel threw cushions at him from across the room. Gregor watched in quiet bemusement.

“We mostly use beanbags for shield practice at the College,” said Carwel as he collected all the cushions and put them back on the chairs. “You can throw them harder, but they’re still not going to hurt anyone if they drop their shield. This one isn’t strong enough to stand up in serious combat – it wouldn’t stop an arrow or a sword – but the amount of battering your average group of school bullies can dish out won’t leave a dent.” He rubbed his chin, considering Wygar in silence. “I think you’ve been using magic without knowing it for a long time,” he said. “Do you ever feel that you’re tired all the time, or too warm?”

Wygar nodded.

“Thought so. We call that ‘bleeding’, up at the College; when a mage is almost constantly using magic on an unconscious basis. It’s not uncommon, especially in powerful, but unaware young mages, and usually shows up as excess heat. It should mostly stop now that you’ve learnt to channel your magic consciously, but it would explain why you’re so thin.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “Mages need to eat a little more than other people. I’ll give your parents a few pointers about your diet.”

“Will I get taller?”

“People rarely stop growing at eleven,” said Carwel, smiling. “Yes, you’ll get taller. Though how much is between you and the gods.”

“…Huh.”

“I should start getting back to the College,” said Carwel. “Have you got any more questions before I leave?”

Wygar thought for a few seconds, then shook his head.

“All right. I’ll see you after the summer, then.”

He walked out into the hall, where both of Wygar’s parents were not trying very hard to look like they hadn’t been eavesdropping.

“What was that about his diet?” asked Nicholas.

“He needs more of it,” said Carwel, and smiled to take the sting out of it. “For starters, more meat, milk and eggs. I’ll confer with the Healers for more detailed advice; we’ll send a messenger within the next few days.” He nodded to Wygar, collected a two-handed sword from the umbrella stand, and let himself out into the street, where a sturdy construct with the horns of an aurochs waited for him. He tied the scabbard across his back and climbed into the construct’s saddle.

“Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you need more help,” he said as he took the reins. “Helping young mages is the foremost purpose of the College.”

“Wait,” said Wygar. Carwel raised his eyebrows expectantly. “Why do you keep saying ‘mage’ instead of ‘wizard’?”

Carwel grinned. “Because you’re only a wizard once you’ve been trained.” He flicked the reins and turned the big construct northwards. “Good luck for the rest of term. Cadair, go!”

The construct broke into a lumbering canter, its flat, three-toed hooves drumming on the cobblestones. Both it and Carwel were soon out of sight around the next corner.

“So, how did it go?” asked Nicholas, laying a hand on Wygar’s shoulder.

“You probably heard most of it,” said Wygar.

“Well… Yes,” admitted Mari. “But we want to know what you think.”

Wygar held out one hand, conjured a small golden witchlight above his palm, and smiled. “I think… I think that things will be better now.”

~~~

See? Wygar is a cat person.

The Andari Event has never come up in a story before, but it’s been part of the canon for some time nevertheless; the Wall is marked on this map of Stranatir that I drew last year. Carwel doesn’t go into detail about the symptoms of Andari Sickness, but suffice to say... it’s something we’d recognise.

#az writes stories

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satyrdaymornings · 3 years

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I rarely post anything on this hellsite but I wrote an essay a while a back about why I write urban fantasy

This is not a critique of Tom’s essays but maybe an elaboration on what it means for a Fantasy to be True and it to explore the genre I tend to write and create. Urban Fantasy. I will be exploring my relationship with writing urban fantasy, the realness of characters, the places and the reasons why I choose to write in this genre.

Tom's books were a panacea for me as a young awkward autistic child. I started reading them in around sixth grade. I started with Heartlight, read The Ancient One then The Merlin Effect. By the time I started reading the Lost Years I was also invested in the Legend of Zelda series and even worldbuilding my own fictional world at fourteen and fifteen. It was the late 90s and early Oughts. The use of the internet to share stories and worlds was not available to me at such ready hands as my students have. I was pulled into these stories, lost in Finacyra and in Avalon. I wanted to be part of these worlds. I wanted to escape the bullies, the violent anxiety and chronic suicidal ideation and ride on the wings of Trouble the hawk and befriend Merlin. It was also the first moment I started to unfurl the first feelings of gender dysphoria. It was through the eyes of Merlin and then Tamwyn when I felt stirrings how I wanted to be them. Not join them but to be a boy on a big epic adventure. Sure girls can go on them, but it seems like the male characters had the better ones. At least in my fourteen year old head. But it was also when I started to notice other things too. I couldn't quite relate to the main characters as much as I wanted. I wasn’t like Kate from Barron’s early books and while I liked Merlin, his struggles were not mine. Yes there echoes, I see them now. How Merlin was disconnected by his father was a sympathy I had, as I was disconnected from my own. Barron’s stories were an adventure, an escape-and one that influenced me tremendously. Yet, they did not resonate in me deeply. While the characters were indeed real, none of them shared my problems, and I shared-really, none of theirs.

In 2001, I joined high school with some battlescars. I escaped Catholic school, wounded but determined to try again. I was in public school, my mother hoped here I would find friends and escape the violence of bullying. I did find the former but I did not escape the later. I was still reading Barron, but I also moved to David Clement-Davies for anthropomorphic fiction, I found Orson Scott-Card (before I knew how goddamn nuts he was) I also started discovered around the same time as Barron, Stephen Lawhead who’s rather preachy but deeply complex historical fantasy became a huge influence. I would even go so far as to say, that Lawhead was a huge reason why I am a practicing Druid and a member of a Druid church. It was also when I got my hands on my Terri Winding’s Bordertown and her anthologies. Suddenly I found characters whose eyes I could see through. Homelessness, drug use and addiction, running away, mental illness. These were all things I could wrap my hands on and go yes, that's what I deal with granted no in the same way as the folks in Bordertown can. It was my first taste of Urban Fantasy and I was hooked.

In Barron’s essay he talks about the realness of place. He draws massive influence from his experiences in Pasfic Northwest, Japan, and of course the Rockies. You can see that clearly in the Great Tree of Avalon. The protagonist Tamwyn explores Stoneroot and I can almost see him Stonewood looking just like Great Divide. However, I don’t live with the massive gaze of ancient mountains. Stoneroot, and Waterroot, and Woodroot, are far away to me. I can’t grasp them. But, I got Bordertown. It feels much closer. I could smell both asphalt of Bordertown, hear the police sirens and see both homeless men and elves alike. That seems more real to me. Because I know I’ve been to Bordertown.

I started working on Styx Water in 2013 as my Nanowrimo. It ballooned into this expansive massive story with struggle, love, sex, death, policial intrigue. It was here I crafted the lessons that I was taught from Barron and the myriad of other authors. Fantasy Must Be True-which I agree, yet there is another axis to this. Fantasy Must Be Real. What I mean is that there is a level of grounding I think that is needed at least for my genre. The grounding I found in Bordertown-and it's sister Neverwhere. Was at it's heart-what drove me to write in that genre. Because while I loved high fantasy and the exciting places I did travel. Sometimes I just needed to stay home rather than run from my problems.

Grounding is what gave my character’s substance. Hermes and Calix problems and stories while also fantastic were also rooted in a space that the reader has been in. Hermes’s struggle with mental illness is a road that many have been on. Indigo’s story of being non-binary is one we have heard before, often in different verses but one that is rarely told. While these are all my characters, I am not the only one that is doing neurodiverse and gender variant protagonists. There has been a dearth of stories in YA that have been taking advantage of the characters and stories that are more rooted in the reality of readers. We’re seeing more queer and disabled heroes and I am all here for it. Fantastic stories and grand adventures and powerful lessons were now available for people like me.

The meaning and messages of fantasy are to be true. Barron stated for a reader to be invested and to be deep within the narrative, the meaning must feel true. His messages are flavors of spiritual enlightenment, deep love for nature, and the triumph of light over dark. Powerful soup for a lonely and starve teen. Message of recovery from trauma, finding self-love, accepting loss and grief and the building the skill of asking for help. Themes that are dotted in my own fiction. Hermes' grand adventure of using the power of the River Styx and saving the world, is balanced with his need to take his medication, going to therapy, fighting with his sister and repairing his relationship with his step-dad. There is a sense of gravity urban fantasy has that high (or low for that matter) doesn’t have in my option. The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher is a crime noir with wizards than the elf kids slumming in Bordertown. It's gravity of relationships and real world problems are often eclipsed by the metaphysical and paranormal ones. Who cares about making rent when the Queen of Summer is after your butt? The flow of Big Problems (like saving the world and supernatural events) and Small Problems (Finishing homework, dealing with a new baby, finalizing a divorce) are a careful balance of realness and adventure. Big Problems show grand truths like ‘love can heal’ and ‘friendship is powerful’. Small Problems show smaller more intimate truths, “Compromise to succeed,” “It's okay to be mad,” and “you can be yourself.” Big Problems can certainly showcase those truths, but Small Problems do it in a more concentrated way. Loneliness on a small scale, small lense, feels more real. We can sit with the protagonist in his lonely moments. We can have this intimate space with them.

And perhaps that is why I write urban fantasy. The intimate Small Problems makes my writing True. It's easier to blend the slice-of-life Small Problems with the Big Problems of a massive epic in a place that we all know. The Small Problems make the story Real, in a way that larger massive narratives lack. I want to know the Small Problems. Does Merlin ever feel uncomfortable in his body while he goes through puberty? Tamwyn has to work with a splitting headache? Has Kate ever been in detention? Do any of the characters struggle with finding the difference between love and sexual lust, a common problem for many teens? Small Problems are not distractions, they are extra bits of garlic or chili flake in a dish. Knowing our grand heroes also have real human problems makes them grounded and tangible.

This is not a novel concept, many great authors have blended real issues that teens face with the hypercosmic problems of a greater narrative. Rick Riordan and Neil Schusterman both do a fantastic job in writing teenagers. Liba Bray and Nancy Farmer give us flesh out rounded characters with both Big and Small problems. I love writing the Small Problems. I love spending quality intimate time with my characters. I like over hearing lunchroom rumors and crude humor. I love the secret confessions made in the still mornings of a weekend. The passing of a bowl of weed or a bottle of beer behind the backs of the adults. I also love the intimate moments of my growns too. Kalliope (Hermes’ mom) paging through old photos of years gone by. Conversations spoke in Greek to her mother in law. Finishing a deadline and celebrating with wine. Love making on a warm Saturday morning. Those moments are sharp tang or the gush of sweet in a bite that makes the meal more rich and more enjoyable. And writing those moments adds a sense of Real to the big narrative of saving the world.

Barron’s statement about what makes fantasy True is the same as what makes fantasy Real. Readers need to believe in the places and feel the wholeness of the characters and the messages in the story, but also the characters need to feel the realness of the reader. They are not absent from the story. Readers should be more than passive voyeurs. They should be on their quest too and their problems, as Small as they are, should not less but the same as the Big ones and just as True and Real.

Kramer.

#personal writings

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marvelandponder · 6 years

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3 for the Price of 1!

When My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) finally came out, I wanted to review it right. And to do that, I had to call in a few friends.

I basically knew this had to be a collab of some sort, but instead of reaching out to big names in the fandom, I decided to ask a couple of friends to review the movie with me. What’s more in the spirit of things than making something with the friends, new and old, that we made because of this show and its ridiculous fandom?

I have links to Mr. Mikail’s and DigiKate’s spoiler-free and, in the case of DigiKate, full-length spoiler reviews!

I’ll wait until the blu-ray/DVD comes out in January to release my full spoiler-filled review (mostly because you know how busy I’ve been the past two months, but also because I have friends who haven’t seen the movie yet), but until then, here’s some general thoughts on the movie and how it fits into the modern animated films scene.

How does it measure up to other movies? Should we be comparing it differently because it’s a movie based on a TV show? How the fuck did the Emoji Movie get nominated for Best Animated Feature when MLP: The Movie didn’t?

Meta-Narratives in Kids Movies

Gotta get this out of the way first. Big surprise: I loved it.

I knew I’d enjoy it, but I couldn’t believe how much I was smiling, even by the first big musical number. Every time a minor character came on screen that I recognized, I had to hold back a scream. I was so proud of the girls, and so impressed with DHX’s work.

I just. Fucking. Loved it.

So, there’s no denying it. My Little Pony: The Movie is an absolute joy for fans (for reasons I can’t get into in the spoiler-free review), but I think what separates this from being a universally beloved insta-classic anywhere except among fans is the landscape of kids movies these days.

Take a look at the likes of Frozen, Moana, and Zootopia and you’ll find a lot of meta commentary on the way Disney usually tells its stories—sometimes, even while embracing those cliches if necessary.

Inside Out and How to Train Your Dragon 2 tackle deeply emotional subjects, as modern Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks love to do.

Even Lego: Batman was a ceaselessly rapid-fire comedy with a heart, and hit on all fronts for it.

So, what? Is there something we’re missing? Well, MLP: The Movie does have all those elements to various degrees---meta humour, emotional subject matter, and quite a number of great jokes. But then, what’s the real missing element for general audiences and movie critics?

A clever, unique message and/or implementation. As much as we love MLP, we know it’s not the first to talk about the value of friendship. And it’s certainly not the first movie to use the 3-act fetch-quest structure it does.

If you wanna know what’s stopping MLP: The Movie from being as phenomenal to other people as it is to me, it’s that this is something I haven’t seen before, and this is something they’ve seen a hundred times (even if it was done pretty well here).

As a fan, who knows these characters inside and out, I haven’t seen these characters pushed to their limits in quite the ways they are here. Leaving Equestria and the lore and worldbuilding therein is inspiring, as it expands the possibilities and the map itself of a world I love so much. And to be honest there are one or two dark moments (by MLP’s standard) that I couldn’t believe!

Basically, the novelty and originality of the movie, at least in terms of story, comes mostly from the perspective of fans and staff members who have been dealing with this world and its characters for the better part of a decade now.

But since they used both the message of friendship without bells and whistles and the tried-and-true road trip movie plot beats, I can see why some audience members think this is adorable, but bland.

If however you think of MLP: The Movie as a response to the recent string of Disney movies that playfully roll their eyes at Disney’s happy-go-lucky (or meet-cute-and-go-marry as the case may be) philosophies, then it’s very relevant.

And a bit of that structure is actually there. Within the movie itself there’s a bit of that eye-rolling, and as seen in the trailers, it comes from the villains. The heroes remain genuinely positive and even schmaltzy, and that’s what wins the day in the end.

These days Disney in particular feels the need to call itself out on all that, and while it can be refreshing, that can also put a bit of a cynical edge into these movies that, frankly, doesn’t always need to be there. Sometimes you do need to believe in the cheesy, sometimes you need your friends and all the sentiment that comes with them. A kinder world can be incredibly charming. Trust me.

But maybe I’m being a bit harsh. All those movies have teams and budgets multiple times the size that MLP: The Movie did. Maybe it’s fairer to compare it to other animated show turned theatrical releases.

So what does that landscape look like?

Adaptation Land

There’s nothing like seeing your favourite show on the big screen for the first time. Upped visuals, bigger stories---what more could you want?

It’s here where I think MLP: The Movie measures up in wonderful ways.

Even going from a seemingly similar medium like TV to movies is a pretty hard transition, and I think there are any number of common pitfalls and crowning moments of awesome that come along with that.

But it’s very rare for an theatrical adaption of an animated show to quite meet the same level of quality as the big Disney, Pixar, and sometimes Dreamworks movies.

And it’s obvious as to why. The lower budgets, teams often having to split their time between the show and a movie, bigger-and-better-itis, you name it.

But even if I can’t say most of these movies are transcendent, there’s often still a level of excellence achieved. Even with the relatively low-performing Powerpuff Girls Movie, or the cheesiness of Pokemon: The First Movie, you can still find great movies in this category.

It’s just... they’re always better if you’ve watched the show. Always. There’s more depth, greater knowledge of what this means for the characters, a built-in love and understanding ofthe world. The phrase “for the fans” is implied. It has to be.

Unless, of course, you’re like the Lego: Ninjago movie which (I haven’t seen but heard) totally and completely abandons the canon of the show. But then, what’s the point in making a movie based on that show?

You see the problems show staffs face here?

So, I think MLP: The Movie is exceedingly enjoyable, but is that really just for fans? And if it is, did it cater enough to fans?

In her review, ILoveKimPossibleALot made a good point: we spend the movie with a new set of villains, in new territory, with new characters, and a new story unrelated to the backstories and lore that we, as fans, are so interested in.

I’ve seen a number of fans actually wish the season seven finale’s story and MLP: The Movie’s story were switched.

The season seven finale is straight up lore porn, and one of the greatest two-parters MLP has had. And honestly I would love to see this expanded on in a way to see what it would be like for Starswirl to be emotional. Build it all up even more so the weight of the regret hits home harder.

But, see, that would be impossible, because MLP: The Movie went into production 3-4 years ago.

You can tell, too. No spoilers, but Twilight’s arc in this movie is very reminiscent of something she might go through in season 4 and Rainbow Rocks.

That’s yet another reason animated adaptations are so tricky---unless you’re in the case of Hey Arnold, which is about to premiere its final movie this friday over a decade after the end of the show. In that case, no matter how long the movie took, they knew for sure where the characters would be, and thus, where they could take them.

Which isn’t to say MLP: The Movie doesn’t do anything with the characters, far from it, but I think it’s also far from how deep it could’ve gone.

But then... that rounds back to the top, and how it compares to other animated movies in the eyes of general audiences, and how they might feel alienated, and we just keep going ‘round and ‘round in circles.

So, does any of that make it a bad story or a bad movie? No, certainly not! For fans, this is a moving character study and a celebration of a lot of the elements we love most from the show (meta humour, genuine heart, the works). The beats, as standard as they are, pretty much all work, save for maybe Grubber’s comic relief depending on your sense of humour.

But, you know, it’s funny to be left with the feeling that you just watched something incredible, that made you so happy you couldn’t believe it, only to have to admit it’s understandable that critics and even general audiences won’t feel the same way. But, that’s where I am.

Depends on the context.

Go check out Mr. Mikail’s review here! And Digikate’s reviews here (spoiler-free) and here (spoiler)! *Will be updated with links shortly

Year of the Pony

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cosmosogler · 7 years

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hi guys! i got home after 9. so i am six minutes late starting this post. 10:06 i mean.

anyway god dang it! i forgot my dream again. i think i was thinking about math and statistics though. numbers are super hard in dreams though because all the information changes and melts between instants.

i got up at a reasonable time- 7:40. still got out of the shower super late though. i’m not even sure what takes so long! maybe it’s because i brush my teeth and blow dry my hair and everything in that span of time so it’s not just “hopped in the shower at 7:50 and oH GOD IT’S 8:15.”

i tried to have a bigger breakfast than usual- i had a bagel and some bacon i put in the microwave. and a big glass of orange juice. i watched snoopy roll around in a patch of sunlight while i ate.

then i biked to campus a little late. i was super thankful that the light on the busy road happened to turn green right as i approached. if you miss it it’s a 2-minute wait for the next cycle.

i used my lecture notes today when i started the lab period!!! people started working on their labs while i was talking though and i got a little discouraged. i’ll need to ask for feedback over email i think. maybe it’s still good to lecture so that the people who already know what’s going on can get started while the people who are still a little confused have some basis to start from.

some questions really get me turned around though. i feel kinda stupid when i have to check my notes on the lab to answer a question like “but are the forces REALLY always equal and opposite?” because i think i know an exception but really no i don’t. and then i have to explain why there are no exceptions and i try to draw on some experiences as an undergrad ta but i only remember half-sentences and bits of anecdotes and i have to try to string them together into a coherent explanation that is catered toward intro physics courses.

i’m always exhausted afterward. i really give it everything even though i’m not the best ta.

i got scolded by my supervisor for getting suzanne to help me fix one of the computers when i couldn’t find him. what had happened was, i saw him talking to suzanne out the door earlier since the lab is across from the office. when i needed to find him i checked his office first, didn’t find him, and asked suzanne if she knew where he went. when she said the other side of the building she also offered to take a look because she’d been having a couple computer problems too on monday.

but a few problems i did fix myself fairly quickly. i don’t mind troubleshooting, but sometimes i have to stand there and process information and i get quiet and kind of stare into space and don’t move and then i feel dumb because i’m not actually thinking using any words.

maybe those are less “processing” thoughts and more “racing circular” thoughts.

ehhh afterward i went to my lab office hour. one of my students with the computer issues was in there trying to finish. he didn’t though.

during my office session i received an email from the grad advisor. he said every single first year grad student needed to be at a meeting right now. it was the end of my session anyway so i packed up and went over to the office to see if anyone else had caught the email.

they were actually all discussing it with an older graduate student. jennica was scrolling through every email she’s received on the student account to try and find any previous information about the meeting. there was none.

we talked about it for a few minutes before the older grad student went up to talk to him. jennica and harrison and i went to get some lunch and i picked a smoothie up for rebika.

actually that was funny. i asked her what kind she wanted and she said “i don’t know” so i said there were like a hundred and i would have to pick one at random so she better be okay with kale. she said whatever so jennica found an online random number generator.

anyway while we were out we got another email from the grad coordinator. this one was really passive aggressive and sent to the whole department about how no one showed up and the lady making the presentation had “come all the way across campus.”

i said “???” because this was well after the situation had been explained to him. i’m not sure why he was so mean about it when it was his mistake. we had literally never heard about this before and he told us to be there one minute before it started.

eventually suzanne found a reminder for it on her phone. we had to hack it to find out when she had actually set that reminder to give us an idea of where we might have heard about it.

it was during our “graduate welcome” presentation back in the middle of august. it wasn’t written down anywhere. it had just been mentioned in passing and suzanne made a note of it in her phone because it sounded interesting. not because we knew it was required.

my classmates complained that we’d never gotten any reminders for it but i was more annoyed that we hadn’t received any written notification of the event in the first place.

after that we studied a lot. i talked about some problems, fudged some math on the blackboard, and scribbled some stuff down on the homework problems i’d printed.

harrison has started telling me to “stop talking” whenever i say something depressing. jennica picked up on it pretty fast too.

during coffee/cookie time at 3:30 ish i was chatting with one of the upper classmen aboutttt star trek i think it was. i’ve never watched it but i know... enough to talk about it i guess. i ended up having a fun discussion with taylor about the boundary between sci fi and fantasy when he said star wars was the superior sci fi story.

i said it was based on how heavily it leaned thematically on hard science and logic to inform its worldbuilding. taylor said it depended on the setting.

anyway i was talking to the guy and i was maybe talking about how i’d burned myself on my tea and also spilled some on my shirt because i’d burned my face and flinched violently. i said “thank you for listening to my problems” and jennica was all “don’t get her started, oh god, unless you want to be depressed.”

i laughed and said “hey did i ever tell you about the time i broke my ribs?” and that got, i guess, a surprised laugh out of him. jennica gave me a Look. “just kidding, my ribs were too soft to break then,” i said apologetically-but-not-really.

i really relate to that short homestuck comic about dave talking about how his bro would leave him in the ball pit when they went to the store. except the ball pit was a slab of concrete in a dark room.

ok! i said my last prayers for the physics midterm and then at about 5:30 jennica and i played five rounds of love letters, adventure time edition. we were going to 3 wins and it stayed pretty close. i admitted that it’s a lot more active with three players and four gets to be a little too much. she seemed to like it well enough at least.

then at 6:05-ish i dumped all my trail mix in my mouth and turbo biked over to the drc to take my Accommodated Test in their Testing Facility. i almost got hit by a car while i was in the crosswalk. i was crossing at the same time as another bike, but as soon as he was past and i was approaching the end of the road, a driver slammed on the gas and i had to actually for real hard brake. i stared at her as she passed, she made eye contact with me. i don’t know why she did that if she saw me.

guess i’ll just go screw myself.

anyway i got there about fifteen minutes before the test was gonna start. there was trouble with the check-in devices so i was glad i got there early. i had time to get settled and put my stuff away and brush my hair a little bit to get the helmet tangles out.

then i took the test for two and a half hours! i was allotted three, and my classmates had two, so i think i made good use of the extra time and didn’t panic too hard.

i’d felt super sleepy and lethargic all day. the test wasn’t much better. but... i recognized all the problems at least. and i knew how to start all of them. and i had enough time to finish to my satisfaction.

i’m not gonna say i did well on the test. but i did way better than if i hadn’t studied. which is kind of a given, but. i think i tried more study strategies this time and asked for more help and maybe that made a difference. can’t say. i had no particular feeling about it when i looked over my work. i noted where i knew what i was doing and where i’d forgotten something, and where i’d probably made a mistake but had no idea what to do instead, and i really have no idea how i did.

i think biking home right after that though did a lot toward helping me not die of lack of energy. i had to bike up the big hill because of where i was leaving campus. that was ok though, i got up in no time at all! in third gear, even!!!

then i got home, and took out the trash, and devoured an ice cream sandwich, and then made some dinner. and then i sat down at my desk for 20 minutes, did a little e&m homework, sent some emails, and started writing, and then here i am.

five minutes left. i will try to talk about something good about me.

i uh... i was gonna talk about something ta-related but i can’t think of anything right now that i actually like about my method haha.

i’ve made a lot of progress this last week toward finding a study strategy that works for me. i know i have to use more than one of the study style fields to really learn material. two is good, three is better, four is overwhelming. i know that i am learning material on the backburner even if i don’t consciously feel like i understand anything because i look at some problems and i’m like “oh! i know what that is!”

still having trouble remembering relationships between equations. but i think that will get better the more time i spend looking stuff up over and over. like i really Get the yukawa potential and how that one equation basically provides a link between classical mechanics and e&m, and that’s so cool.

tomorrow i’ve got group therapy and it’s SPAGHETTI DAY. AGAIN!!!!!! but i also gotta start studying for that e&m test on friday. i need to figure out how to do that. maybe i will find and talk to adamya since he was helping suzanne the other day.

ok. it is 10:45. i will stop writing now and meditate for a few minutes and then go to bed. i need to get up a few minutes early to pick up a package. i think it is either the rest of my stuff i’ve been trying to get my parents to send for the last month, or it’s the cat food that i’m glad i ordered when i did and not a day later.

later guys, i hope you are well. drink more water.

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callunavulgari · 7 years

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Year-In-Fic

Total fics written this year?

Another Love (The Flash; Barry/E2Wells, Barry/Thawne; 4,586 words) “I want you,” Barry confesses unhappily, a charming pucker between his brows. His eyes dart back up, not shying away for once, to meet Eobard’s. A little bit of steel creeps into his expression again, and Eobard wants to applaud him all over again. What a beautiful creature he’s created.

time in a bottle (The Flash; Eobarry; 2,961 words) “If I didn’t exist,” Thawne says, quietly, moving to slide his fingers up Barry’s jaw; they leave goosebumps in their wake. “Then neither would you. And if you didn’t exist… well. We won’t get into that mess. So the universe — the, hah, Speed Force — sent me here. A paradox, clinging to the cracks between time. Just… waiting.”

nothing's gonna harm you (not while i'm around) (SW; Gen, Reylo; 1,167 words) Ben and Rey Organa are born ten years and five hundred parsecs apart, but Ben can feel it in the Force the moment she comes into being. He can feel her every second of her way home, a bright star that outshines even the familiar intensity of his parents.

we dream in the dark (for the most part) (DA; Gen; 806 words) “Will it go away?” Bethany asks, her voice quiet as a whisper.

Ramble On (The Flash; Eobarry; 2,695 words) Thawne playfully hums a few bars of something vaguely familiar. Barry looks back at him, and when Thawne sees him looking, he smiles wider and gleefully stomps his way through a puddle. Sings, “If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I’d like to do…”

D.C. al Coda (The Flash; Barrison; Harrison edges closer, until Barry is close enough to touch, and reaches out to take Barry’s jaw in hand. It’s tacky and cool against his palm, from sweat, tears, or both. He tilts Barry’s chin up in a testing sort of way, willing him to open his eyes. “Barry,” he says, gently. “Look at me.”)

it began with stones (DA; Fenhawke; Everyone knows that the blight started in Ferelden.)

darling, you gotta let me know (Stranger Things; Nancy/Steve/Jonathan; 6,120 words) Jonathan’s room is messy the same way that Steve’s is. There are dirty socks and shirts and underwear strewn across the floor. Cassette tapes litter the desk like miniature landmines. There’s a notebook open on his bed, a textbook and a pencil beside it. He must have been studying when Steve knocked.

Binary Sunset (SW; Reylo; 1,747 words) Center stage, Rey holds herself as still as a statue. Spine straight, toes pointed, already in first position. They’ve done something to her eyelashes, softened all her hard edges, from the jut of her jaw to the point of her nose. She glitters, from her feathered bodice to her flowing skirts, a bright glint of white in the dark.He doesn’t think that anyone else has noticed that she’s trembling.

Nine fics. I don’t even want to know how many words.

Best story I wrote this year: darling, you gotta let me know. It was the first fic that I was proud of from the get go this year.

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest. Ramble On. It had all of the weird dreaminess of Time In a Bottle without the Inception feel. I ended up rereading it on the plane back to Ohio and liked it so much more than I did when I was writing it.

Okay, NOW your most popular story. darling, you gotta let me know, hands down. It’s the first fic to get over a 1000 kudos since I stopped writing Teen Wolf. I mean, of the nine fics that I wrote this year pretty much every one of them is from a smaller fandom. I think the only reason this one got as popular as it did was because I published it right after Stranger Things got big and I was one of the three people who had written for the pairing. Story of mine most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion: it began with stones, probably? I usually have a definite answer for this question, but this one was strange as it is. Dragon Age/In the Flesh fusion with Hawke as a zombie? Kinda weird. I don’t mind that it got a small reception, but it fits the most.

Most fun story to write: Another Love. I had a ton of fun playing with that whole concept. Barry going back in time to when Eobard was playing at being Wells was a fucking gift.

Story that could have been better? All of them? Technically? I’m still not entirely pleased with how time in a bottle turned out, but I ramped that one up in my head for so long that I’ll probably never be satisfied with it.

Story I wrote to fix things: Pretty much all of my Flash fics were written to make something better. Ramble On and time in a bottle were both written to satisfy my need for there to be a current-timeline paradox Thawne still out there, tucked away in the speedforce, just biding his time. Hell, all of the God Complex series were written because I wanted to rewrite or add bits to an episode to suit my shipper heart.

Oddest story: it began with stones. In the Flesh. Dragon Age. Kind of weird. But my brain went, what would Jen like for her birthday? Okay, she likes Dragon Age. And she likes zombies. How can I write zombies in a way that I haven’t written them yet? Oh, I know! Hardest story to do: Okay, so it isn’t on here, but the Sabriel AU is what I’ve really been suffering through. I hit a point and wasn’t able to overcome it, which is why it still isn’t done. I’m hoping to read Goldenhand and the rest of the Like Young Gods series sometime this month and we’ll see if it inspires anything. Easiest story to write? I struggled with pretty much everything I wrote this year except for Another Love. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it just so happens to be the only fic I wrote before I gave up smoking.

Most mining of your own history in one story: Pretty much none of them. D.C. al Coda has a lot of my experiences with grief, but that’s about it.

Themes, or absence thereof: Pretty much ‘heroes and villains make out’. Or in the case of Hawke and Fenris... rivalmancy. Where did you publish/archive your stories? Ao3, as per usual. Story I haven’t yet written, but intend to: I have nixed pretty much all of my Teen Wolf projects. I would like to say that at some point I’ll finish the Bioshock Infinite AU and the Carmilla one, just because I have so much written of it already, but I don’t know. I do know that I want to finish the Sabriel AU and I currently have a weirdly one-sided Julian/Barry fic, a Prompto/Noctis pining fic, and several Stargate Atlantis fics that I want to finish. Oh, and maybe the Yuri on Ice soulmate AU if I can make the idea hang around long enough to get to.

Sexiest moment (excerpt): He slides the palms of his hands up her sides, ghosting them up and over her ribs, framing them, feeling where the softness of skin and muscle gives way to hard bone where her rib cage starts, how each breath she takes pushes her body more firmly into his hands. She makes a noise when he reaches her breasts, shuddering when he cups them, even through the fabric.

“Please,” she breathes, and Jonathan hesitates, unsure of what she wants.

“Here,” Steve murmurs, taking hold of Jonathan’s hands once more. He guides them to the buttons of Nancy’s blouse and pauses, waiting, as Jonathan undoes them himself, his touch sliding down Jonathan’s forearms then back up again.

Jonathan pushes the blouse from Nancy’s shoulders, watching the blush that blooms under his eyes, going from her throat clear to her navel. Her cheeks are flushed too, her eyes black and wanting.

Steve lets go of him, maybe realizing that Jonathan won’t be of much help at this moment, and his hands vanish around Nancy’s sides, quick and darting. It isn’t until he’s helping her pull her bra loose that Jonathan even realizes what he’s done.

Steve’s hands go back to his, guiding them to Nancy’s breasts. The skin is firm and supple, and so very warm. Her nipples pull tight when his hand brushes them. Steve leans close to Jonathan’s ear, and whispers, “Touch her.”

Crackiest moment (excerpt): Outside, it’s raining. The air is heavy with humidity, heat pressing down on his back like something alive. Barry walks down the street, feet bare against the wet asphalt. Thunder rumbles threateningly in the distance. A bird sings, and a street over, another joins it. Everything is green and damp. It smells real. Would a dream smell real?

Halfway down the street, a second pair of feet join his. The person they belong to is silent, doggedly following him down the road. Barry doesn’t have to turn to know who his newest phantom is.

“Are you going to sing at me too?”

“Do you want me to sing to you?” Thawne asks.

Barry glances at him, frowning unhappily. He’s wearing Wells’ face again, a familiar little half-smile playing around his lips. His suit is wet. It isn’t the suit — not the yellow one — just a regular one. Plain. Black. The fabric clings to his shoulders and his hair is dripping in his eyes. His feet are bare too, and somehow it feels wrong to see them, the fine slender bones gleaming wetly. Too intimate.

Barry swallows and looks away, but even when he concentrates, it refuses to change. Figures, that even in a dream Thawne would cause him grief. When Barry doesn’t reply, Thawne playfully hums a few bars of something vaguely familiar.

Barry looks back at him, and when Thawne sees him looking, he smiles wider and gleefully stomps his way through a puddle. Sings, “If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I’d like to do…”

Favorite dialogue (excerpt): “At least,” Eobard interrupts, thoughtfully tapping his finger against his lips. Slowly, he starts to grin. “Not everything. So, Mr. Allen, I’ll ask you again. What do you want?”

The answer is written all over Barry’s face. There’s a story there, behind the pain, the grief, the hopeless lust, and it’s one that Eobard knows he’ll get to live out himself over the course of the next year. He wonders just how many times he fucked this boy before the truth came out. The boy — his Barry — already loves him. Not like this, of course, not yet, but a hero worshiping kind that he’s had since day one.

“Well?” He coaxes, eyes widening. “I’m waiting.”

Barry wets his lips convulsively and swallows, his adam’s apple working. He tugs on the cuff, halfheartedly, mouth turned downwards. He didn’t expect this. Maybe he’d expected closure. Or maybe he’d convinced himself that all he really needed was the formula. But he wants this. And Eobard’s going to make him say it.

“I want you,” he confesses unhappily, a charming pucker between his brows. His eyes dart back up, not shying away for once, to meet Eobard’s. A little bit of steel creeps into his expression again, and Eobard wants to applaud him all over again. What a beautiful creature he’s created.

“Just you,” he adds, just as quiet and unhappy, but with a dawning comprehension. “Eobard Thawne.”

A shiver crawls down his spine, dick twitching in his pants. God, it’s good to hear that name again. “Oh, Mr. Allen,” he breathes. “Say it again, won’t you?”

Favorite lines (excerpt):

Jonathan had known that they’d done this before. After all, he was sort of a witness to it. But up close it’s something else, it’s poetry in motion, the way that Nancy’s head tips back, the bead of sweat that slides down the tip of Steve’s nose, how her legs wrap around his waist, her small feet locking at the dip of Steve’s spine.

It’s beautiful, and his fingers itch for his camera, so he fumbles around beside him, stretching his arm out to his desk until he catches the strap and can tug it into his hands. He watches them through the lens of his camera for a moment before he gets up the courage to touch, tapping Steve with his foot and then gesturing with the camera, head cocked.

Can I?

Steve’s entire face transforms when he laughs, going bright with emotion. He nudges Nancy until she glances over and then she’s laughing too, and they’re both nodding.

He catches them both mid laugh, naked limbs flung around each other. And then he catches the moment that the laughter turns to something else, mouths half-parted in breathless pleasure. He catches the curve of Nancy’s breast and the freckle behind Steve’s ear, and then he waits, breathless, for the right moment.

He waits and waits, and the moment that they both go still, bodies shaking with pleasure, mouth caught on soundless moans-

Click.

He swallows, lowering the camera as it spits the picture out with a hiss, and holds it in his hand, watching them. Their eyes are closed, breathless little smiles across their faces, sweat on their brows. Steve hasn’t even pulled out of her.

Click.

Fic goals: Finish Sabriel AU. That’s it. My only other writing-related goal is to get out of this funk, write something big (which will hopefully be the Sabriel AU) and something original. Fingers crossed.

#heather writes #new year's memes #heather says what

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miss-m-calling · 6 years

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Trick or Treat 2018 letter

Dear writer,

Hello and thank you for writing for me. I’m very excited to read whatever you come up with.

Regarding tricks and treats: for tricks, a story in the general tone of the canon would be great; if you want to introduce a more clear-cut trick element, spookiness, ambiguity, menace, some darkness, maybe some violence if the story wants to go there, a dark supernatural element (e.g., what may or may not be a haunting) even if the canon’s realistic, rather than extreme grimdark where everyone dies or gets raped and dismembered.

For treats, a story in the general tone of the canon would be great; if you want to introduce a more clear-cut treat element, humor, silliness, crack, a maybe-supernatural element (e.g., this is definitely not a haunting right?), something mildly hopeful, rather than teeth-rotting fluff.

Requests:

American Gods (TV)

Laura Moon, Mad Sweeney

Fic, trick or treat

I ship it. Yes I do. I also love their snarky road trip in and of itself. They’re both such assholes and so fascinating, even if they mellow toward each other a bit in the last two episodes, and all the gods/magic/resurrection stuff swirling around them begs to be explored further. Plus she’s half his size yet can and does beat him up with literally one finger, and then there the angst of he having killed her and then brought her back.

Please give me either missing scenes from the road trip (with or without Salim, whom I like too) or something post-S1. Laura discovers (how? you decide!) that Sweeney gave her back the coin after their accident -- whatever happens next, some punching may be involved. Wednesday’s big war finally comes, and “don’t you dare die on me, you asshole” is a line either Sweeney or Laura (or both) might say to each other. Or something exploring living death. Magical bargains. Meetings – smooth and harmonious, though let’s be real, with these two it’s probably the opposite – with other Old Gods and assorted supernatural beings from various cultures. What kind of favor did Sweeney do for Ostara that would be worth her bringing someone back to life as repayment? What other powers might Sweeney have (he doesn’t seem on a par with someone like Wednesday and Ostara, nor does he consider himself to be entirely like them)? How long can a dead wife keep going before she’s “soup”? What other superhuman abilities might dead!Laura have? Can the dead do magic? Laura asked “What does Wednesday have to lose?” and the answer is...? (Yes, give me that sweet poetic justice.) Sweeney basically stops calling her “dead wife” (or anything else) toward the end of S1 -- there comes a time when he (has to) call her by her actual name, and that’s a tricky moment for them to navigate. Or, Mad Sweeney is not his actual name, since true names have great magical power; Laura discovers or learns his name, from someone else or from himself; what does she do with that knowledge? Also, my perfect AG spinoff would basically be Sweeney and Laura tooling around America, looking to get her resurrected (whether they succeed in this or not is up to you), stealing ever more ridiculous vehicles, arguing/fighting and having those pesky moments where vulnerability and genuineness creep in – and fucking. So I’d be down for porn, but only for these two characters together, not one of them with a third party. If it helps your inspiration, you can find some of my meta and lots of tag-burbling about these two here.

I have read the book, and while I prefer the show characters, you can use or riff on book material if you want. With reference to one of my DNWs, for this canon, describing Laura’s physical decay is totally fine.

Cabin Pressure

Fic, treat

Carolyn Knapp-Shappey, Arthur Shappey, Martin Crieff, Douglas Richardson

I just want more canon-y stories with their loopy humor and their weird yet loving family dynamics among the crew. Shenanigans in mid-flight or in the tedium which precedes and the tiredness which follows them. Someone smuggles (knowingly or not) an exotic animal on-board, legal, security, medical and/or slapstick chaos ensues. A mechanical, passenger- or smuggled-goods-caused problem arises and is solved during a journey. More games played on board GERTI. While I DNW holiday settings or themes, I can see comic potential in Arthur getting overly enthusiastic about Halloween (remember Arthur at Christmas?). Playing around with a specific destination, like in many episodes, would be a plus. If it helps inspire you, my favorite episodes in terms of tone and content are: Douz, Gdansk, Johannesburg, Limerick, Ottery St. Mary, Uskerty, and Xinzhou.

For this canon, I’d prefer either gen or, if you want to go there, Douglas/Carolyn, which is a ship I always thought had potential – they understand each other very well and trust each other most of the time, but they’re both also snark-masters, tend to look down on anyone not as smart or quick-witted as they (Arthur being the sole -- occasional -- exception), and are really good about keeping their defenses up against other people.

Justified

Boyd Crowder, Rachel Brooks

Fic, trick or treat

For Boyd, a moment in canon or post-canon, during his likely-lifelong incarceration, where we get to see him work one of his schemes. For Rachel, case fic or friendship fic, and you can definitely throw in Raylan and/or Tim and/or Art. Model Marshal Rachel gets stuck doing the early morning prisoner transport or handling walk-ins (bonus points for telling me how she earned this punishment from Art). Banter is always a plus.

And if you wanted to tackle Boyd & Rachel or Boyd/Rachel, well. I would love that. Their few brief interactions in canon always left me wanting more. Boyd trying to pull the wool over Rachel’s eyes and her not having it. Having to work together or Rachel needing to use Boyd as a informant, and possibly how the hostility might shade into flirting and how Rachel might feel about that, given Boyd’s past (even if, as Raylan said, Boyd’s too smart to really believe in white supremacy, there’s still his lifelong criminality). The beginnings of a good working relationship or friendship or affection, and how frustrating and difficult that would be, because they are who they are. Or the later stages of a relationship, when somehow they make it work, however tense it gets at times.

Specifically for trick fic, there be somethin’ spooky in them there hills. Maybe it’s just the usual bunch of hillbillies with more firepower than brains, maybe it’s something genuinely eldritch. Marshals and/or local crime lords walk right into it. A Lovecraftian riff would be great, as would an actually-mundane case of crime happening under cover of supernatural goings-on.

DC New Earth

Thessaly

Fic, trick

I nominated this character under The Sandman’s canon tag, but it got moved to the DC New Earth umbrella tag.

Thessaly is my favorite Sandman character and one of my favorite characters in general. I love that she is not always or even often likeable, but she is always compelling, intriguing, hypercompetent, ruthless, fearless, and sometimes foolhardy. Her solitary ways and commitment to her own long-term survival, without the reader ever figuring out what – other than the desire for more life – drives her, fascinate me, as does her humorlessness coupled with everything that’s fantastic and supernatural about her. I’d love to see her do more chilling magic (invent dark, bloody rituals and tell me about them, by all means), go on adventures in the Waking, Dreaming, or still other realms*, get into a jam (maybe the Moon tries to claim her? Or she obtains a magical artifact and its owner isn’t happy?) and get out of it in her own way. Or Thessaly interacting with other Dreaming denizens (say, snarky Matthew, or the three guardians of the entrance to Morpheus’ palace, or the Second Corinthian with all his identity issues). Or give me glimpses of Thessaly’s past, over the many millennia she’s been around. Or, she must have moved from other worlds or planes of reality, possibly at their final destruction, to our own, just as she moves to Barbie’s dreamworld and survives its destruction; what were those worlds like, or where might Thessaly go once this world is gone? Does she outlast or out-trick the Moon in the process?

One thing I would appreciate you not dwelling on is Thessaly/Morpheus – I don’t mean retcon it out of existence, just don’t dwell on the actual relationship, which I always found somewhat improbable. Exploring Thessaly’s hurt and anger after the end of that relationship is fine. I have also read the Thessaly spin-offs, so you can riff on those if you want (what does she do with all the dead crowding her at the end?), but please note that if you describe Thessaly, I prefer her frumpy, self-composed design in Sandman over the Lara Croft-lite of the spinoffs.

*Fusion suggestion: if you wanted to send Thessaly into the world of Jennifer Haley’s play The Nether, I would be there with bells on. If you are unfamiliar with The Nether, it’s a science-fiction play about literally living on the Internet (easily handwaved into a kind of magic or a living dream) and how that influences people’s sense of self – be forewarned that the play’s not explicit but is pretty damn dark.

Likes:

I love pre-canon, canon, post-canon, canon-divergent, and “missing scene from canon” stories. I love character-driven and plot-driven stories equally, and I love fics which mix humor and angst/serious business when appropriate for the canon.

I love character studies, characters at work and play, stories about group dynamics, family dynamics (including constructed families), professional partnerships, friendships, alliances, rivalries, intimate couples, UST-ridden couples who are not just UST-ridden but connected in other ways too, etc.

I love irony, snark, 5+1 stories, bittersweet endings, hopeful endings, happy endings, canon-fitting crack, worldbuilding, characters who are their own worst enemies as well as those who learn to get over themselves, characters with conflicting values which may or may not be reconciled/resolved in a believable and IC way, characters who treat each other with respect and as equals even if they hate/annoy/can’t stand/love to dislike each other.

I especially love workplace stories (this can mean anything from an office/procedural setting to anything that revolves around the canon world in which the characters live) in which the characters are competent and dedicated to the job, and while they may not be exactly friends and they may well irritate one another, they still manage to rub along to get the job done and maybe even grow to care about one another (much to their surprise and sometimes reluctance/discomfort). Or, if they can’t get along, show me why not and what’s preventing them from finding common ground.

In terms of ship dynamics, I love (where it fits the characters) banter, competitiveness or antagonism shading into attraction (this tension need not be resolved), bickering yet loving couples, faithfulness, characters who are serious about their romantic interests, characters who think they are much better at flirtation than they actually are, characters forced to work together only to prove much more compatible than they initially assumed, fics which mix an exploration of characters’ professional and everyday lives with shipping. A dynamic I cannot resist is shipping a couple who are incompatible in some important way (they are ideological enemies, cop/criminal, spies from opposite sides), and while they love and want each other they’re also not willing to change sides or surrender/compromise their identity for the other’s benefit, and how they might (or not) make their relationship work anyway.

I don’t have any very specific likes for smut, other than smut fitting the characters – show me how their canon dynamics spill over into the bedroom (or other place of congress). I also like sexual scenarios that subvert expectations a little and surprise the characters themselves (e.g., the person who’s usually quiet or more passive taking charge, the more aggressive person goes with it possibly snarking or commenting on it as long as they can). And I like sexual scenarios that contain an element of competition, antagonism, oh-god-this-is-a-bad-idea-but-we’re-going-for-it, not wanting to admit feelings or show vulnerability except oops it happens anyway, whether the characters acknowledge it or not, or just people getting way more into it or being more affected by it than they thought they would. Oral, vaginal, anal, manual (ifyouknowwhatImean) – it’s all good. You can go as veiled or as explicit as you like, but please avoid excessive medical jargon – I don’t find a lot of mention of “penis” and “clit” sexy.

DNWs:

Kinks, MPREG, A/B/O, knotting, D/s, incest, underage, genderswap and genderbent characters, non-con, dub-con, torture and abuse (this and non-con/dub-con can be mentioned if the story needs it, but please don’t dwell on it in loving detail or subject any of my requested characters to it), dwelling on bodily fluids (mentions of gore and come are fine where appropriate), toilet humor, character bashing, soulmates and soul marks, major character death (unless it’s canon), pregnancy and children as the lynchpin of the story (unless strictly canon appropriate), characters agonizing over/analyzing/dwelling on their or others’ sexuality as if it’s the sum total of their existence, secondary characters acting like shipping the main pair is their be all and end all, fluff and schmoop, OCs (except in small roles and/or for worldbuilding purposes – I just don’t want a fic in which OCs are the heroes, while my requested characters are cameos), issuefic, explicit or implicit reference to current events or politics in the US, fic written in the first or second person, holiday or wedding setting or theme, AUs which have nothing to do with canon (cop characters working in a coffee shop, high-school janitor characters in space, etc.)

#dear author letter #trick or treat exchange

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