life in bullet points

[bedlamsbard]

* I have been vaguely scarce because I had a midterm and a quiz today and a paper due Monday that I was working on all weekend. Those are all over! Let us rejoice.

* I finally cracked and asked my mother to ship my box set of the Chronicles of Narnia down here. No idea where I'll put them, since I'm OUT OF ROOM on my bookshelves, but maybe if I take my DVDs off the shelves and just stack those on top of the books I can squeeze them in there...

* Currently rereading: Winter House, by Carol O'Connell, one of my two favorite mystery writers.

* Current status on Dust 3: unbegun. STUDYING, ducks, and there are some internal timeline issues I have to work out before the chapter starts, since I'm skipping slight chunks of time.

* Other thoughts on Dust: there's the more famous Eliot poem "The Waste Land" that's also got a line about dust...I know "Dust in the Air" is the full title, but I was glancing over "The Waste Land" the other day and spotted the line "I will show you fear in a handful of dust." Just, you know, food for thought.

* starsimpulse points out that The Last of the Mohicans soundtrack isn't a bad accompaniment to Dust.

* ineptshieldmaid and I have been writing Peta (me) and Edwina (hers) at each other here, and it looks like it's developed a plot...

* lassiterfics and I wrote Susan/Edmund, Peter/Susan, Peter/Edmund, and Peter/Susan/Edmund here. (With bonus Wordle analysis!)

* Possibilities for NaNo include:

FIC: HIGHLY LIKELY

In This Hollow Valley
immortal!Susan and resurrected!Peter. Pros: plot more or less known, should cover 50K, easily made unrecognizable as fic. (Special Agent Susan Regina! This amuses me far more than it probably should.) Cons: fic, crack.

Be Like Water
Petaverse. Pros: plot completely known except for a couple small wrinkles, will cover 50K THREE TIMES OVER, can always throw sex in when the plot seems to be slowing, has been promised for ages and ages now. Cons: extremely easily recognizable as fic, crack.

untitled #1
werewolf!Pevensies. Pros: plot times three, should cover 50K, can disguise as original fic. Cons: crack.

FIC: MUCH LESS LIKELY

untitled #2
pirate AU. Pros: plot, could probably cover 50K, can disguise as original fic. Cons: boring as of now, crack, research.

untitled #3
Everse. Pros: half of a plot, will definitely cover 50K, sex somewhere. Cons: crack, the other half of the plot, easily recognizable as fic.

untitled #4
Chrestomanci/Narnia crossover. Pros: vague inkling of a plot, crack. Cons: crack, slight lack of the rest of the plot, easily recognizable as fic TIMES TWO.

ORIGINAL FIC

untitled #5
Ellis and LaMontaine, a pair of NYPD homicide detectives. Ellis is new to homicide, LaMontaine is a transfer from the NOPD. Pros: original fic, currently in New Orleans. Cons: plot, beyond the whole "LaMontaine may or may not be a serial killer" thing.

untitled #6
modern days Narnia copy. Pros: original fic, vague plot-like type thing. Cons: rip-off of Narnia, could just write fic (did just write fic, to tell you how interested I was in this), and Peter is more fun than Kavan anyway.

untitled #7/#1
werewolf!Pevensies recast as originals. Pros: original fic, plot. Cons: crack, would have to come up with new names for all the characters.

On a Pale Horse
the Spaceforce novel, a.k.a. the senior project novel. Pros: original fic, plot, established characters, world, world-building, sex, violence. Cons: OH GOD NO I DON'T WANT TO LOOK AT THIS FOR ANOTHER YEAR OR SO.

*blinks* It is...a little disturbing how many of these have "crack" as a con. Probably because I'm not sure my non-crack fic covers 50K. "Dust in the Air" is not on this list because I'm going to keep working on it anyway, and I still cherish fond hopes of it not being 50K.

Comments

[lyamainu.livejournal.com]

*votes for "In this Hollow Valley*

Because this is totally a democracy.

*grin*

[saturns-hikari.livejournal.com]

werewolf!Pevensies...
because werewolves need more love!

Although really I want to see all of these. :)

And I'm sorry, but crack is not a Con-- it makes stories interesting. In fact, I'd put it in the Pro side!

:D

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

i like how the thread in ineptshieldmaid's journal goes over and off into the end of the world!

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

Be Like Water is possible.

untitled#7 werewolf!Pevensies I think I like best. as long as they're in narnia. I just... oh my. the white witch scene in PC? What you could do to the mythology and legends alone would be fascinating. Telmarine legends of the Golden Age :

'The way King Peter and Susan and Prince Edmund are spoken of as wolves is a metaphor for their prowess and skill in hunting, *clearly*.'

And then Caspian gets snuck up on by Lucy.

The problem with untitled #6 is that the period setting adds a whole bunch of stuff - the fact that they don't have to adjust to a world with bugger all electronics, they're used to make do and mend due to rationing and the mood of the times, the war period affects them greatly. There's no way a kid from current day Finchley would react nearly so well. (and we're not going to get into the withdrawal symptoms of what happens when their mobile doesn't work or their ipod runs out of battery)

Seriously. If you've ever read sci-fi or fantasy where character A from the period the book was written in gets dumped in period of completely different tech level, it makes a huge difference to how the character reacts. (Actually, Charmed Life is a good example of this)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Werewolf!Pevensies would be the, uh, AU where they're all Americans. Look, there's a reason why that one would be best served as an original.

Although now I kind of want to write werewolf!Pevensies in Narnia. OH THANKS.

The other main problem with untitled #6 is that I basically started the story where PC starts. I kind of abhor origin stories; they don't do anything for me. So what we'd be seeing would be the recovery and the withdrawal and so forth -- I actually have a bit of it written up, from when I was still hesitating between writing Narnia fic and this original novel. It's told not from the POV of one of the four kids -- Kavan, Paulie, Alec, and Max -- but from their older half-brother, a Marine who's just come home from Iraq. I could type it up and post it, if there's any interest in seeing what it started out as. (And it does do the whole Narnia thing where they're gone for fifteen years and come home and they've -- well, in this case they were missing for about six months.)

Re: :D

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

it is a metaphor! for how peta and edwina are so far out of their depth, you see.

...this is what college does to you.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*snort* I THINK NOT.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I'm just wondering why all my novel-lengths are crack...

[zempasuchil.livejournal.com]

I think that if you made werewolf!Pevensies into original fic it would come of as much less cracked-out than if you kept them Pevensies. Also I am for that one, or immortal!Susan and resurrected!Peter. But really all of these sound so exciting :D

[saturns-hikari.livejournal.com]

beacuase crack is much more fun? and there's just so much more you can do with it!

[animus-wyrmis.livejournal.com]

...Werewolf!Pevensies in Narnia would be AWESOME. Just saying.

Re: :D

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

yes, I'm not sure why my LJ does that... *shrug* but Bedlam's right, it's probably metaphorical.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I think the White Witch is responsible for their wolfiness somehow. Like, they were human when they went into Narnia, but something happened...Maugrim turned Peter right before Peter killed him, I think. And the others were turned later -- Edmund got captured by a pack of rogue wolves years later! And Peter comes rushing in at the last minute to save the day, but it's already too late. And Susan and Lucy -- Lucy made friends with a wolf that turned out to be a traitor and got turned by accident, and Susan was the last one. Maybe Peter turned her.

...oh dear.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

It would be much less cracked-out, yes. I just don't particularly want to come up with new names. And the worry with doing original fic is that I'll lose the feel for Narnia; I really can't work at more than one thing at the same time.

[dikela.livejournal.com]

Write the werewolf!Pevensies.
You think they (NaNo) would mind? From what I read at their site nobody there reads the stories, and they say that they (stories) are deleted later.

So you would have to post it HERE too.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

It's not a problem with NaNo itself; I know they don't give a damn if you write fic or original, so long as you get the 50K. It's that I'm actually writing with RL people I know this year, none of whom are fannish creatures.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

:shrug: One of my fannish nanos had the most real-world research I'd ever done, with my going 'arrrgh, precisely what date can I throw people into this period of the African conflict before the Americans retaliate?' 'why don't you just set it before the Germans invade?' '...Because the Russian campaign hadn't started to go badly then.' They really, really won't mind and might in fact be impressed with your attention to detail.

never, ever set anything in WW2. Really.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Peter probably bit her by accident, or she decided that it would be easier and more practical if they were all werewolves (not to mention tactical advantage occasionally). The Narnian werewolves don't have any mention about silver or the moon and can change at will. (considering they're only mentioned, what twice? The one that's there for the summoning that bites Book!Caspian)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*shudders* I hear you on the research. (EIGHT MONTHS OH MY GOD. I will never recover, at least until the next time.) I'm hesitating between the big three -- Be Like Water, immortal!Susan, and werewolves.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking accident, personally. Maybe the time he got possessed by the White Witch, or something of the sort.

Me being me, I'm thinking about the friggin' political ramifications of Peter being a wolf. *bangs head into desk*

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

me too. see the comment in the other post. But how could it not affect it? Fer crissakes, see the English kings. Mary Queen of Scots essentially got kicked off the throne for marrying someone the lords disapproved of. James I had a habit of giving stuff to his boyfriends...

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*nods* It would have been even harder for Peter to hold than the throne than it already was. And what did Aslan think of this? I mean, he has to have his four kings and queens on the thrones, but aside from Edmund, he doesn't seem like particularly the forgiving type. And while it isn't Peter's fault, well...werewolves are the White Witch's creatures.

There'd be a balance for Peter between playing human and playing wolf -- and he would have had to do the latter when dealing with the White Witch's Narnians, who probably would have been more eager to bow the knee to him. That's about the only up side. And he would have repressed it until some point in time when he really needed it, or spent a lot of time as a wolf, or something...

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

maybe more scouting or midst of battle? Because I could see Edmund taking advantage of his wolfiness in his position as undercover/spymaster.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

As far as Peter goes -- I think he'd have to be forced into using it, and if we're using Warsverse background, my bet would be the year he spent with the Red Company, because then he's going to have no reason to think it's that odd. Especially since the Red Company may have a few weres or part-humans in it anyway...

Which will, of course, lead to his eventual alienation from his siblings when he returns home. *muses*

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

oh yeah. Being used to cutting loose in the red Company, where it was accepted as a really good trait of Breakneck's, used to its full advantage, and come back and it's something he only used when utterly necessary.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

And it will probably have Susan worrying he's gone darkside, because werewolves are dark creatures, and if Peter's not bothered by it anymore...

On the other hand, with the Red Company, he would have learned exactly how to fight as a were, so a definite advantage there.