beyond the wide world's end

I spend far too much time in this fandom thinking about clothes.

*frowns*

And it's not like checking the movies does all that much good, because one also notes that fashion changes over a fifteen year span, and what we see in the movies tends to be from about the same year, two-year, maybe three-year span -- the Pevensies still have to be able to fit into the clothes that are stored away, which dates them back more than a decade after they left Narnia. Which means that nine years later, in Dust, they'd be wearing something different (chances are, something more "adult", because the tailors in Narnia probably aren't going to be making something very revealing for young Queen Susan at this point in time).

And, okay, yes, fashion drift -- chances are that Narnia gets Archenlander fashions about half a year to a year after Archenland gets them, which means that Narnia tends to be constantly out of fashion. (Seeing as Archenland is the closest all-human country, not counting my lovely warring western states.) Especially since, at least during the first five years or so, Narnia doesn't exactly have a lot of humans. (Later, though, when the nobleborn refugees start coming in, then we get probably get Narnia developing her own fashions. But not at first.)

(I kind of want the missing sccene from PC where Lucy and Susan bitch about wearing clothes fifteen years out of fashion and Edmund dryly points out that, hey, so thirteen hundred years ago. And Peter just kind of blinks and looks like he missed the entire conversation.)

Whoa. Why does Susan have her bow unstrung in her quiver and her bow strung in her hand in this picture? ADAMSON. I DO NOT APPROVE. *checks movie* Okay, that error isn't in the movie, just the picture. AND STILL. Really, Susan should be carrying about fifty more arrows in her quiver, considering how fast she goes through them in combat.

I kind of want to write a Susan and Legolas archery contest. I fear it would not be pretty. (Except on that way shallow level of mine.) (Yes, I have been rewatching LotR. In the sense that I have been watching the fight scenes in FotR. Because. That is what I do when I want to get the salient points of movies. I watch the fight scenes. BECAUSE THEY ROCK. Although Narnia's battles are still better choreographed that LotR's, because in my head Peter is a better general than Theoden, Aragorn, or Denethor. Not that he did much generalling, just a lot of craziness.)

Wait, where was I? Clothes. Yes, clothes. Seriously, I have never spent as much time staring at clothes, weapons, and armor as I have for -- okay, I lie. Spaceforce. Except all of the above are prettier in Narnia than they are currently for the U.S. military. (Spaceforce, a.k.a. the War on Terrorism expands to outer space, because you know those aliens. Also, Bedlam spends far too much time on little details, like: do ABU blouses have zippers or buttons, and also, oh shit, would a pilot even wear ABUs? He'd wear a flightsuit, wouldn't he? But what if he's stationed on an aircraft carrier? Although at this point by aircraft carrier, we mean starcarrier, and yeah, I know, Navy and Marine gig, but technically speaking, space is a USAF thing, so hey, it's USAF, Navy, and Marine pilots on a Navy starcarrier with a Navy crew hauling around Marines and Army Rangers, because in my universe, the military is giving like that. Also, fifteen years into the war, Congress figured the Army should finally get to get out of the sandbox and into the stars and I'll stop talking now because y'all seriously don't care.)

Excuse me. I have to go write Susan seducing interrogating a Calormene soldier and then nearly getting herself killed. Why did I have to look up clothes? I had to go look up how canonically lowcut her dresses are.

...wait, I forgot it was winter. NEVER MIND. THAT WAS FOR NAUGHT. God, Bedlam, try and remember the details of your own story.

Clearly there are not gossip mags in Narnia, especially not during the Golden Age. I mean, it's hard to have paparazzi, when you're so technologically advanced a snapshot is, like, a sketch. "It's Queen Susan! Hold still! I have to copy down every detail of her dress so I can report in on What Narnia Wears." Or, alternately: "It's the High King! He's collapsed! Is that blood? Where's his sword! Nobody move him while I paint a quick picture that will make the front cover of Narnia Us Weekly."

This is brought to you by the current fic in progress, "These Last Golden Days of Summer," where the narrator is an OC and has a little sister that's, like, in lust with Edmund and wants all of Lucy's dresses and has a huge girlcrush on Susan and wouldn't dream of crushing on Peter because he's, you know, the High King. It would be like crushing on Aslan.

Also, I forgot how much fun it is to have a new fandom. Everything is fresh and shiny and full of squee! And there is meta, and fic, and plot bunnies, and people that like you -- I'm serious, ducks, it's been a while. ( For the past eight months my fandom has been my original novel, and yeah, that's great: )

And then Narnia came out. And -- I'd been so excited about it -- "Screw graduation!" I kept telling people. "I'm so excited for Prince Caspian!" -- but I didn't see it for a week. And then I saw it. And I was so excited, because I wanted to write and meta and squee and it was so different from Spaceforce! And I'd forgotten, really, what it's like to be in fandom, because for the past eight months -- for most of my fandom career, actually -- I've been a lurker, and a reader, and occasionally a writer. But I was so happy. And I forgot how wonderful feedback is, because you really do forget, when you're writing original fiction -- and I didn't even get feedback on my novel from the panel I presented to. (Except the vice principal, who apparently now thinks I am, like, next to God. "I can't believe I went through four years without knowing you!" he kept saying. "Sorry, I graduated, I guess you could have failed me.") I forgot how fantastic it is for people to be excited about the same things I'm excited about, and want to exchange intelligent discourse with me, and who don't think I'm over thinking, or that I'm too dark, or wonder why I care.

And I keep thinking -- "Thank you, thank the Gods, thank Walden Media and C.S. Lewis," -- but especially, thank you, for helping me remember why I got into this in the first place, for helping get me out of my own head. I'm reading. Fiction. And I'm writing fic, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with spaceships or the military or special forces, and I can be silly and talk about Narnian celebrity blogs if I want, or about my Aslan conspiracy theories, or why Peter is the High King and Caspian is just screwed, so screwed, and -- thank you so much, because I think I was on the edge of cracking. I was so tired, and now there's light, and I'm refreshed and happy and new again.

God, it says so much about my novel that I have to Google "u.s. navy mortuary affairs" -- fifty-three percent casualty rate, people! Fifty-three! On the North Carolina alone! That's over five thousand souls who never made it back to Earth. (All starcarriers do have cold storage for bodies, but a number of those lost die in space, which makes it nearly impossible to recover the bodies. As well, Mortuary Affairs Storage wasn't meant to have to carry that many dead, and so Engineering has rigged up a system to double some of the now-empty sections of the ship as cold storage to allow everyone who can come home to come home. Just before McAuliffe finally figured out the Zelenka converter, the senior staff were discussing the necessity of burial in space or at one of the American forts -- there reaches a point where it's impractical to carry around that many dead. Several thousand families are extremely grateful the North Carolina got home when it did, if only so that they could bury their children and spouses and parents.)

So, I've been looking at other writing programs, since Word is a little bit of a mess to work with when I'm writing non-linearly -- oh, yeah, I figured this out when I was putting together the draft of my novel a month ago.

( Screenshots and thoughts below )

You know, I was really excited about not having to work on my novel once I handed my senior project portfolio in, but I'm so invested in Spaceforce that now I don't want to work on anything else.

*sigh*

I do in fact have a 100K worth of novel; there is also the fact that it is about as disjointed as disjointed gets and makes no sense whatsoever. However. I have a 100K worth of novel! (Actually more; I have bits that even I couldn't figure out how to work into the draft.)

Also, I have to figure out if there is a better way of organizing the bits and pieces. Word so does not cut it. I'm sure there's a "perfect program" out there somewhere, I just have to find it.

Next up: Going through and adding commentary.

I have been doing character exercises with Creative Writing Club for the past few weeks; my default narrator is one Beau Lorne, so he's the one I've been working with. And the results are fun. (The exercises happen to come out of this book, which I have on loan from my AP English teacher, who also happens to be my Creative Writing Club adviser. Not this book, although I also have that one too.)

(Also, if someone would like the writing exercises, just drop a line and I'll e-mail them to you.)

( Oh!...That Sort of Person )

( What Do You Know About Your Characters? )

They changed the senior project requirements again.

Now it's the reflection letter -- which we already had to do, but they changed the content. Instead of being about the senior project experience (probably because they heard that everyone was planning to write about how the senior project sucked in it), it's now about our experience in high school.

Look, this shit is not stuff I want to share. I don't really want to look back on my high school career, okay? I had a lot of good experiences. I had some really bad ones. I had some that make me want to die because of how stupid I was. Let us be honest about the whole senior project experience, okay? You want feedback on it, right? Just let us give it to you so you don't screw over the class of 2009 the way you're doing us.

You know what? I'm worried about not graduating. I have the grades, I have the credits, I passed the WASL, I'm already accepted to two colleges -- but I don't know if I'm going to finish this, and it's scaring me, because I don't know what they want me to do. I'm an honors student. I'm not a 4.0 student, but I'm an honors student. I take AP classes and do extracurriculars and have leadership positions; I've done summer programs and I have a pretty detailed plan for what I'm doing after high school. I DON'T KNOW if I'm going to be able to finish this. I think I can, but I'm not actually kidding when I say I go home and it's a choice between homework, working on my novel, and filling out scholarship apps. I use take the novel option, because it's second semester of my senior year; I know I'm going to graduate class- and credits-wise. I don't know if I'm going to get my senior project done. And everyone's telling me I'm an idiot for explicitly stating "100,000 word science fiction novel," but what the hell, what's the use of stopping a story in the middle and calling it done? I've done NaNo, this should have been easy.

*looks at proposal* On the other hand, apparently I never actually said 100K, so praise the lord and hallelujah. I said "full novel" and "complete novel." Oh my God, I didn't say 100K, I said "full novel."

Okay, to make myself sound less stupid, the last time I looked at this thing was in May 2007. I swear to God I put 100K, but apparently not.

I also thought I said "draft", which I apparently did not do either. GOD DAMN IT.

Curiously, I did say, "The novel will cover the United States’ involvement in an intergalactic civil war, concentrating on themes of loyalty, change and adaptation, and shades of gray in wartime." Yeah. Those themes? Not here anymore. Well, I mean, they are, but they aren't the main themes.

...I should make a list of "Things I Have Learned From Fandom That Are Going Into My Novel." The fact that it would include "The most depressing ending ever is the one where one half of a pairing dies and the other half goes back to Earth and teaches college" says so much about SGA fandom as a whole. No, really.

limmenel, you're suddenly in a tizzy wondering which of my babies is dying, aren't you?

See, and I'm a little surprised about this, but writing the I-Search paper actually did help me figure a few things out about my novel -- important things. Like the sociopolitical underpinnings, which I was aware of, but was hoping to just, you know, avoid. But if I actually look at them as important to the theme -- and holy God, are they ever -- then I have figured out the goddamn plot which hid for me for the past year. And it makes me alternately depressed and gleeful, because most depressing yet most perfect ending ever. I mean, it has to end this way. It just has to. (limmenel, you're going to kill me a lot.)