Ordinary Day

As y’all know, I am partial to the whole Tauriel/Kili romance in the Hobbit movies, and I have this idea for a short piece in my head wherein Tauriel must go to Dís and bring her news of the deaths of both her sons and her brother. I’m seeing this as perhaps Tauriel’s last act before she bails for Valinor—or perhaps thinks she’s about to bail for Valinor. I can totally see her and Dís teaming up together to roam Middle-Earth for a while in shared grief and companionship. It could even be a parallel to Legolas and Gimli, later. And mostly I just have an urge to write about female dwarves.

But while I’m on the topic of Middle-Earth fanfic, Dara and I got into discussing a potential AU last night after I finished rewatching the first half of The Two Towers. I was struck anew by the scene in which Sméagol banishes his darker Gollum-self—and how for a very short time, he’s just so happy. “Sméagol is free!”

And then of course it goes back to hell after Faramir’s men are so harsh to him. Gollum becomes the dominant personality once more. But Dara and I wondered: what if that hadn’t happened? How would the scene at Mount Doom played out differently?

I can see Frodo maybe beating down poor Sam just before he proclaims, “The Ring is mine!”—but then, Dara and I decided, Sméagol would put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

And he says, “I know. Let the Precious burn.”

I. Not we. Because now that I have finished my reread of the books, I am reminded that Tolkien did indeed use pronouns as a marker of Sméagol’s mental state. And in this version of the story, he would have become more stable than he’d been in centuries.

The Eagles would have had three small travelers to rescue, not two.

Dara and I think that perhaps Sméagol could not have handled going back to the Shire, and that perhaps Gandalf would have taken him into his care—properly this time, not as a prisoner. And as he is finally free of the Ring, I see Sméagol learning to welcome the touch of sunlight once more. Remembering the taste of fresh bread. Maybe even being able to touch things made by the elves without pain.

But Sméagol, much, much older than Bilbo, would quickly start to age and draw near to his death. And he would have been on that final boat to Valinor, ancient, wizened, and so fragile that he might not even have been able to walk. Perhaps Gandalf would have carried him.

Yet he would have been granted a place on that boat. And a place in Valinor. Because at the end of the day, he too was a Ringbearer. And he paid his penance for the slaying of Déagol, for all the many long, dark years that he kept the Ring under the Misty Mountains.

As the Fourth Age began and the War of the Ring passed into the legends of Men, Sméagol’s name would have been spoken alongside that of Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee. He would have been hailed as a hero for having kept the Ring from Sauron—secret and safe, for five hundred years, even though it nearly destroyed his mind.

Don’t get me wrong; I would not trade a single word of the narrative as actually written.

But this makes for one hell of an AU. Sméagol. Sing his name, sons and daughters of the free peoples of Middle-Earth. Remember him with honor.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Some good reading on the Intarwebz today! First up, I bring you today’s Big Idea column over at the Whatever, where Mr. Scalzi brings word of Brad Meltzer’s new children’s books about Amelia Earhart and Abraham Lincoln. Parents of small children, especially daughters, go check this out. Especially if you’re fans of Calvin and Hobbes. The art for the Amelia book looks adorable.

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Meanwhile, Jim Hines has put up a good post today going over a writing advice question I hear time and again: i.e., whether you should try to write to the market. I said over there, and I’ll say here too, that even though “don’t try to write to the market” and “be aware of the market” seem contradictory on the surface, for me they’re actually kind of not. You want to be aware of what people who aren’t you are writing, so you aren’t writing in a complete and utter vacuum, and accidentally writing stuff that people lost interest in reading five or ten or even more years ago. Plus, you never know what awesome ideas you may have spark for your next book.

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Fellow Carina fantasy author Shawna Thomas is talking up her work over at Eleri Stone’s place, and in particular about coming-of-age fantasy. Go give her a look, ’cause fantasy by Carina is love!

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I’ve been following the news posts on TheOneRing.net for a while now, because hi, yeah, Tolkien geek, yo. But this post of theirs made me up and join their message forums for the express purpose of voicing my appreciation to their forums member who wrote some nice fanfic about Dís, the mother of the dwarves Kíli and Fíli, the only female dwarf Tolkien ever named. Looks like Cirashala’s getting her epic on with further fanfic about the character, too, based on what she’s saying in the thread that the news post links to. I approve!

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And last but least, speaking of Tolkien, I’m posting about reading fantasy in other languages over on Here Be Magic today! I talk up the Trilingual Hobbit Reread, but also a couple of the novels I want to read out of Quebec SF/F as well, like the ones by Élodie Tirel I’ve been talking about, as well as Esther Rochon.

C’mon over and tell me about nifty non-Anglophone genre works English speakers should know about, won’t you?

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Whoa hey, a sudden flurry of hits from the site transformativeworks.org has alerted me to having gotten linked to right over here! It’s a roundup of reactions to the story I posted about last month, when a Sherlock fanfic writer’s saucy fic got unexpectedly thrust into the faces of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman when interviewer Caitlin Moran asked them to read it out loud.

So um hi, people coming over from transformativeworks.org! Say hi if you see this post. As I said in the post that got linked to, I’m fanfic-friendly, and have been both a reader and a writer of fanfic in my day!

And to the rest of you, if you’re also fanfic-friendly and don’t already know about transformativeworks.org, you might go check ‘em out.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

I’ve been seeing a good-sized explosion rolling around the Interwebs about this story, covering how a woman named Caitlin Moran put Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman on the spot by making them read some saucy fanfic she’d pulled off the Net. Without, it goes without saying, the permission of the fanfic author in question.

And I’d just like to go on record as joining my voice to that of the author of the above link, expressing the many and varied ways in which that was SO TOTALLY NOT COOL. It makes me irritated on behalf of the actors and even more on behalf of the creator of the fic. It smacks of pointing and laughing, and of telling somebody that the art by which they’ve chosen to express themselves is worthy only of ridicule.

Certainly, I am fanfic-friendly. I’ve written quite a bit of it myself, both in actual fanfic form and in the form of the hundreds of roleplay logs I still have in my personal archive to this day. And as a writer, I’d be tickled to death if somebody decided to write fanfic either about the Warder universe OR the universe of Rebels of Adalonia.

But mostly, I’m a fan of not pointing and laughing at people. There’s way too much of that in the world. And not enough encouragement of people to make some goddamn art.

Here, have a link roundup of others discussing this:

Author Martha Wells posts about it on tumblr

Mary Robinette Kowal, as usual, is awesome

The author of the fic in question, from what I see on her tumblr, is also awesome

In closing, remember, kids, Wheaton’s Law applies here, just as in all walks of life.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Who can help out nanocorp with designing a header for her Russell fanfic journal? Sing out if you want to give it a shot.

Over on makinglight, I just found this post about a fanfic writer who has apparently... wait for it... posted her Star Wars fanfic novel for sale on Amazon.com.

I particularly like this quote of the author's response to the question of whether she is concerned about copyright given that her novel is set in someone else's universe (which is in turn pulled from John Scalzi's blog post on the topic, which in turn references nihilistic_kid's post on it): "Yes, it is for sale on Amazon, but only my family, friends and acquaintances know it’s there." That, to also quote one of the many customer review tags this has scored her on Amazon, is weapons-grade stupidity.

I mean, DAMN. I'm scared to actually go read the excerpt. I half-fear that like unto risu's succinct and potent review of Atlanta Nights, it might suck the Good out of my own writing.

ETA: kathrynt informs me that this magnum opus can also be purchased on barnesandnoble.com and powells.com. This author has a very interesting definition of "not a commercial effort".

ETA #2: kathrynt also says, re: reading the excerpt of the novel: "Don't. I did, and now my vocabulary is small."

ETA #3: journalfen.net discovers the wankage!

alg posted this excellent link to a gentleman's blog entry about fanfic and the issues of copyright involved therein. The comments are especially good reading, involving some nice, rational discussion about the matter at large. Check it out!

This being flashback #1--the wreck of the Windrider from Arnos' point of view. Interested parties may want to reference the roleplay log Battle on the Vastdeep, which has the scene where the Vraeyans were originally attacked by Zalehrin's monster in the Vastdeep Water. Arnos was not actually referenced in the log at the time--so with the help of ssha, I've retconned in what happened to him at the time and come up with the explanation for how he got wounded during the wreck in the first place. Also, Part 1 is going to be several scenes, as I've divvied up the story into three primary parts.

EDIT 6/28/04 2:50pm: Adding in the word count tally.

Written today and yesterday: 1,228
Story total: 2,858

(crossposted to my personal journal and willowholt)

( Read more... )

Today was a bit vexing at work, another one of those series of annoying little things adding up to just give me a stressy, annoying day. Inexplicable issues with test cases failing, forgetting to run configuration test cases that I needed to make other test cases work, and then being confused when those other test cases didn't actually work... bleah.

On the good side, though, I have noticed distinct improvement in my hips and my back thanks to the chiropractor visits; I have been able to walk a lot more easily downhill to the bus stop lately, and my back doesn't feel nearly so stiff. Yay!

Also on the good side, went and saw Hidalgo with mamishka tonight, and that was pleasantly fun and about what I expected: not a spectacular movie, but certainly worthy entertainment! Viggo did not however quite manage to chase the shadow of Aragorn out of my brain, though. I kept flashing to him speaking Elvish in LotR every time Frank Hopkins started speaking in Sioux, and it didn't help much to see grassy plains full of galloping horses and having my brain keep going "What business does a man, an elf, and a dwarf have in the Riddermark?" I kept expecting Eomer to ride up looking cranky. ;) (I must be sleepy. I let this LJ post sit for a bit, then I came back to it, and all I could think of was the beginning of what might well be a joke among the Rohirrim: "A man, an elf, and a dwarf walk into the Riddermark..." Ahem. Er. Sorry.)

Anyway, 509 words tonight. Which was more than I was expecting given the distraction of a movie and a bit more RP with Ynderra on Two Moons--but hey, it satisfies tonight's quota! AND, it takes the story over 20K!

Written tonight: 509
Chapter 3 total: 3,804
Story total: 20,252

( And speaking of writing, this quiz sounds about right )

Did a bit of work on my long-neglected fanfic Iterations, getting Chapter 6 underway and trying to apply some of the systematic habits I've picked up from Nanowrimo to getting some progress on it. I've reviewed my outline for it, too, trying to fill in some of the gaps; I've actually written up through the beginning part of the outline I had for it, so as with Faerie Blood, I've gotten to the point where I'll have to write more outline! But at least I've got 642 new words in a new chapter.

Also, I've started reviewing the notes for the trilogy I'd started working on before breaking my arm: The Dove, the Rook, and the Hawk. I think the next item on my agenda with that, though, is going to be going over the outline for book 1 in depth.

But first, bed.

Written tonight: 642
Iterations total: 21,687