musings

[bedlamsbard]

Water is currently at 45K and rising, so I should be able to get 50K by midnight tomorrow, theoretically, which would work out a whole lot better if there wasn't at least another 25K of story left. (Peta has screwed up, the siege is about to begin soonish, whereupon we commence three months worth of being under siege. I am trying not to think about the fact that I could probably make that another 50K of story, especially once I go back and flesh out what I have already have.)

Meanwhile, Dust 6 hasn't been started yet; I know vaguely what's going to happen, but I'm going to finish my 50K of Water first. I'm also debating whether it's going to be a Lucy POV or a Jill POV; it could very easily be either, but I think I'm leaning for a Jill POV right now just for the outsider perspective after the past two insider perspectives of Dust 4 (Peter) and Dust 5 (Susan). I also have to figure out how to make it not all talkyface -- right now, it's not looking like quite as much of an infodump as the Tirian chapters usually do, but I still don't have anything other than talking. I mean, we're introducing at least one more character, we'll have some Jill and Lucy bonding, we'll have some other stuff, but I feel we should have some action, though not nonstop action the way 4 and 5 were.

In other news, hey, remember swanprincess!Susan? Apparently that is what my brain wants to write right now, and apparently this is also first time Peter/Susan in the Warsverse.

Comments

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

yay jill! i am looking forward to the her and eustace povs!

and you know my feelings on swanprincess!susan i think. and also on peter/susan. and how the combination of both would probably make me explode into my component parts.

(PSST CHECK OUT MY NEW ICON OF AWESOME)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I SEE YOU HAVE GONE OVER TO THE DARK SIDE LASS.

jill and eustace povs should be interesting, because there are outsider povs, and then there are outsider povs. and they are both outsider and insider. 's kind of interesting. (dust 7 is probably going to be a eustace pov, but it could also be either peter or tirian. i am kind of in debates over this. i mean, either way we get peter diplomacy. which amounts largely to breaking heads in barfights.)

they are so cute. because she is all, "goddamnit, i just got rescued by some stranger knight, and he probably expects i'm going to marry him, so i'm just going to close my eyes and think of narnia, and at least he's good kisser, and --" "SUSAN OPEN YOUR EYES," and then they nearly have sex up against a tree before some knight hits peter over the head and tries to take susan for himself.

i feel that in the warsverse peter/susan could either start with "till human voices wake us" or with swanprincess!susan. there is, like, a five year gap in between the two. almost a ten year gap, depending.

(IT IS AN ICON OF AWESOME INDEED. also, i thought it was a narnia icon, and i was all, "...i do not remember this from the movie." except i couldn't even figure out which movie it was, lww or pc. and then i went, "wait a second. OH.")

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

show's parallels proportions have reached EPIC PROPORTIONS
SEXY FOURSOMES HAVING ADVENTURE AND SEX
and then next week: dead unicoooooooooorn
omfg bed if anyone touches that unicorn while it's still alive, what then?! WHAT THEN.

i can see the argument for both, but i feel human voices is more of an ensemble piece, and with swan princess it can REALLY take the spotlight. and you can wax all dark and lyrical about how fairy tales betray you and how you must take the story by the throat

THE DARK SIDE HAS COOKIES icon space, what can i do?! D:
merlin/narnia icons have become my NEW COCAINE

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

IT IS LIKE FATE. what now, bbc?

it shall depend on whether or not they establish the virgin think in the merlinverse, of course. if they do i predict HILARITY. it shall probably be merlin, though. *sigh*

human voices is more of an ensemble story, you are right. (on the other side, i figured out what the problem with it was! same problem with water: it doesn't have an emotional plot. i just haven't thought about it enough to figure out what the emotional plot is. *sigh* also, the timeline problems keep tripping me up. *snarls*)

*drops swanprincess bits on you*

she closes her eyes as the knight's big hands cup her face. his lips are soft and he kisses her sweetly and gently, coaxing her mouth open with his. she lets him. she's so damn tired --

he strokes his thumb over her cheekbone. "susan," he says, "open your eyes."

she opens her eyes. "peter!" she says breathlessly, and throws her arms around his neck.

peter sweeps her up in a bearhug, crushing her against him. he kisses her mouth, her cheek, her forehead, the corner of her jaw. he kisses the tears from her face.

"i'm sorry," susan hears herself say. "i can't seem to stop crying."

"it's all right," peter says, hugging her. "susan, i'm so sorry, we couldn't find you --"

susan pulls his head back down to hers, more interested in the taste of his mouth, the feel of his lips. why the hell haven't they done this before?

"susan," he says breathlessly, pressing her back against the tree. his hands fall to her hips and he gets a knee between her thighs.

"please," she begs. "please, peter --" she pulls on his hair and he changes the angle, deepens the kiss, and then the knight the wizard knocked out grabs his cllar and pulls him backwards.

i was just in a mood where i really wanted to write makeout scenes, what can i say? *shrug*

although of course the interesting thing is that in human voices it would be susan rescuing peter and in swanprincess it's peter rescuing susan. *muses*

i will admit the icon space is compelling. *eyes icons*

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

and this is the icon i will use for the calormen fic. it is OFFICIALLY THE LONGEST FIC I HAVE EVER WRITTEN. and it is still not done. and bits of my thesis proposal on food security has made its way into it thusly:

“Calormen is full of many wonders,” says Edmund, taking in the lushness of the Tisroc’s gardens. He wonders detachedly how much water must be pumped to keep them in such a verdant state – water that could have been made available to the people living in the dust and squalor of Tashbaan’s ghettos. Calormen has been teetering on the verge of drought for some months now; the rains have not come and the people grow restless. There will be border disputes with Archenland over the Stormness Head delta (again), and Narnia will officially declare neutrality to preserve her hard-won peace with Calormen. But he and Peter owe Lune certain favors, and Edmund sifts through a growing mental list of spells and enchantments, and catalogues what may come in particularly useful to Archenland’s upcoming struggle.

you don't even wanna KNOW what the outtake of the trade negotiations is like. edmund espouses ruthless neoliberal economic policies -- he would run NOT JUST THE CIA, but also the WTO and the World Bank. SHIT, SON. YOU BAD.

yeah, doesn't merlin run up to the dying unicorn all concerned and stuff?! there is a clip! what is Show going to do with virginityyyyy?!

TRUFAX: i am down for making out

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

REALPOLITIK WHOOHOO.

because we all know how i feel about that. and then also that silly things like the natural turn of the seasons is far less interesting than all the wars and natural disasters. (FACT: i am taking a class next semester called "natural disasters." it is a science class. i also really wanted "war and power in ancient greece", but i didn't have room because of silly japanese 102 being four credits instead of three like everything else.)

DAMN, ED. go pevensies! bring it on! the rest of the world don't got no idea what you're capable of.

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

the golden age is totally just unchecked colonization, and peter totally develops a case of White Man's Burden. it's kind of like the emperor warlord person-thingie in "hero" (did you ever watch that beautiful movie?) who seeks to unite 'all under heaven' because there's strength in unity or some crap.

OMG NARNIA. already you make me espouse judeo-christian angst that i thought i had left behind years ago, and now you make love and get into the head of someone who strives to maintain an international economic network of inequitable trade dependency DDDDDDD: whyyyyyyyYYYYyyyy

YOU, LEWIS IN YOUR GRAVE, STOP LAUGHING

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

oh, dude, don't get me started on colonization. *wild eyes* because that is where we get into dust and the telmarine acculturation and the subsumation of the native narnian culture and i really don't know if it's coming through at all, but it is there! it is just really subtle. like how the huldra is wearing "full skirts" when in bone's prayer she's just in, like, a slip, and how most of the narnians don't actually have narnian names but telmarine names, like arnau and baldesca and all that. except the arn abedin narnians want to throw off the telmarine culture but they can't! because it's all they've ever known, and they're trying to reconstruct a glorious narnian past that never actually existed. (and then meanwhile you have groups like the red company, which thinks that it's remained virtually unchanged for the past sixteen hundred years, except it hasn't, of course it hasn't, because everything changes and nothing stays the same even when you want it too.)

*twitches* i didn't try, it just happened.

tell me not to make cair paravel the new orleans of narnia. really, you don't understand why this would be a bad thing! i'm not talking about modern new orleans, i'm talking about friggin' eighteenth century new orleans. we are already going to see cair paravel's seething criminal underworld! and the brothels. this is narnia, kids: they cater to everyone. i wonder if people are going to be more pissed about that or the gunpowder? (there is not gunpowder, by the way, but you may or may not remember the gunpowder controversy.)

heaven knows lewis never thought about any of this crap.

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

COLONIAL RESENTMENT MY FAVORITE
omg i have not noticed that but it all makes sense now and that is brilliant! silly red company, NOTHING IS UNCHANGING and it's gonna be pretty sweet to see their pride about this knocked down. omg revolutions that try to reclaim the past, but to recapture one past, you will have to unravel another and that in itself is already a pretty destructive act.

FOR EXAMPLE. when indonesia declared independence from the dutch, it purged the indonesian language of 'non-indonesian' words -- out went the dutch words, the chinese words, the indian words. the language became that much more impoverished for it. all in the name of cultural purity. the language is no longer representative of the people, and large groups of indonesian ethnic chinese and etc became alienated. (well, the chinese in indonesia are quite alienated still, but that is a rant for another day.)

hell yeah gunpowder and brothels!

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*flaily hands* narnia omg! because dust is just a big mess (well, i hope it's not a mess, but you know what i mean) of all these different cultures and beliefs and memories and histories, because the victors write the history but that doesn't mean that's the only history there is; there is no one true way. and narnia has been conquered and conquered and conquered again, and the narnia of the golden age is two thousand years dead and gone: it can't come back, and no one is left that remembers it except the pevensies. (and hell, at this point, it's not even about the pevensies. dust is different than pc: they've been here before, they know the past is dead and gone, and they're not fighting for it. they're fighting for the future, and they're the first to realize that. all the other narnians think they're fighting for the past.)

*cough* lewis set it up; i just take it and run around in circles, cackling. (god, this fandom alone is pushing me into a history major. crazycakes.)

one of the things i thought to put into dust but couldn't because i was already 20K in and it would have involved changing the name of a major oc was the arn abedin narnians changing their names to try and reflect what they thought of as "traditional narnian names" -- arnau becoming something like harthelm or something. except i was already 20k in, and that might have been too subtle.

narnian brothels cater to all types. so you've got your human prostitutes, and your dwarves, and your fauns, and your centaurs, and i am seriously going to get internet-slapped for this, aren't i?

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

I MEAN HEY remember that time i wrote 10 pages on narnia for sociology class? yeah. (got a B+.) SO. also i am writing about incestuous thieves with you and in conclusion i am hardly the person in any position to be doing any internet-slapping. CENTAUR/DWARF

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

well, i don't think you'd be the one to slap me.

some of those calormenes have weird tastes, let me tell you.

...you know, canonically, we do have narnian dwarves and telmarine women getting it on.

[starsimpulse.livejournal.com]

really? where?

*does not read the books often enough to know this and is shameful*

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Prince Caspian. Cornelius tells Caspian that a number of dwarves married Telmarines women in order to blend in. Let me find the quote --

"Many Dwarfs escaped in the great battles and lived on, shaving their beards and wearing high-heeled shoes and pretending to be men. They have mixed with your Telmarines."

[almostinstinct.livejournal.com]

Dust: \o/

That pun: /o\

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*blinkblink* What pun?

[almostinstinct.livejournal.com]

Water is currently at 45K and rising?

Tell me that was intentional.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*facepalm* It was not.