rthstewart | To E, Part 3

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To E, Part 3

Gosh, this makes me want to pick up Harold and Morgan again! Thanks so much, E. A couple of things, I guess, other than a humongous thank you.

Thank you for the comment on consistency as I see some definite inconsistencies, especially with Morgan and Lucy. My ideas on Lucy really firmed up after working on Palace Guard and some of TQSiT, so she’s much more developed in H&M. Your comment about the quote at the beginning of the Foolish Faun chapter from PC and then the tale itself are indeed going to precisely the deux ex machine point. I developed it further in TPG with Lucy excpecting Aslan to save her. It’s actually sort of interesting to think about – for a 100 years, they were probably wishing Aslan would save them and he doesn’t. The despair during the rise of the Telmarines would have been even greater. It would be hard to see how Narnians could assume Aslan would fix everything when he didn’t for so long. Lucy, on the other hand, doesn’t have that experience of waiting and disappointed expectation.

The Bahamas were exactly what I was thinking of as off shore tax havens. The idea of bias and favoritism in corporate and tax policy is well established – the benefit of home ownership in the US, or sin taxes on soda pop, deductions for dependents. I just read on article on how high tariffs on Chinese made ironing boards have kept the only American manufacturer of ironing boards in business. As you point, economic espionage and protest were rampant during WW2 – I’m reading now how the French sent all their bad wine to the Wehrmacht during the occupation. Unfortunately, I’m really rubbish at finance and numbers so I was just making up so much of this as I go along and now I am stuck with something I know nothing about as people said they kinda sort liked how Edmund and Morgan had something they were doing together that was important apart from Tru Lurve and/or hawt, sweaty timez.

I have, at the moment, given the barest thought to the organization of the banking syndicates, except to assume that the individual houses operate like a Lloyd’s of London, who are independent and competitors but also work cooperatively to pool and share risk. I had thought that for whatever reason that Narrowhaven ends up being a sort of financial capital, possibly because of very lax oversight by Narnia. Were I to go on in H&M, a lot of this would have to be explored and I did envision a storyline involving what it means politically that a Linch banker has aligned with the Narnian monarchy.

OK, last, about the princesses. When I wrote those lines about manipulating and being manipulated, I had not even thought the final chapter of the story would happen. It was going to end with Jina in the corset. Ha. But, having gone down that road, I have been thinking a lot about women using their sexuality for advancement on the one hand and how embracing of personal sexuality is a tool of empowerment. As I was working on TQSiT, some of the “Tarkheenas” of the story really gave me pause. The men of that milieu were treating women as toys. Why was it bad that these powerful women – politicians, power brokers, socialists, and newspaper owners -- were playing a man’s game in a very male dominated world, and succeeding at it? I found something grudgingly admiring in their seizing of what they wanted. That notion of seeing, wanting, looking, and maybe acting (but thinking, refraining from acting, and making good choices) ended up finding its way into Susan’s characterization as I wanted to attack the fandom convention of Susan’s frequent sexual victimization.

Then, of course, I turned it all on its head with Jezebel and the princess discussion in H&M. It does show something of how Susan and Lucy come to be the strong characters that they are and shows something of how oblivious Morgan can be and that, as if I needed any more proof of it, that she is wholly not of that world view but will sort sell people into it if that’s what she’s paid to do. I admit I’m also taking another swipe – there is a persistent idea in some communities that a young woman should pass from care, custody, and control of her father, directly to that of her husband. I think that is a real life thing for some people in this fandom community and so I was putting it into Narnia.

Phew. That’s all. Thanks so much. Glad you caught the discussion you sparked and I’m very grateful

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Does all this thinking mean there will be another chapter of H&M, or some serious air time in Part 3?

Evil environmental finance analyst, mostly a lady wants to know!

AEE

Heh. I really don't know right now. As I said in the profile update, where I took most of everything down, I've written around 400,000 words since March 2009 and I need to take stock of that, particularly given the end of TQSiT. I am working (even this moment) on the Narnia Fic Exchange and the prompt is fabulous. The deadline is August 31, though I suspect I'll be done well before then. Then, well, I don't know. I don't want to be all over-dramatic about this -- pseudo-cide sock puppets anyone?

There is a division in those who read my stuff, with some only reading one side of it, and others reading both. The general consensus among those who read both is that the Spare Oom/TSG side is better. Which then leads me to the problem of the end of Part 2. Some might think Part 2 is better, but if so, then that's really bad given what has happened to the readers. I had a HUGE drop in hits in the last third of the story, submitted reviews fell by half over the previous highs, long time reviewers disappeared, and it ended up being fav'd 25% less than Part 1. With the exception of one temporary blip, reviews and hits per chapter have fallen steadily since March. So, there's a message there, yeah? And I have to decide whether I want to figure out what it is, and whether I care. Again, I don't like the woe is me bit but in real life writing, I'd be horrified by that sort of declining performance and it would call for a drastic course correction. I feel it's really irresponsible to do anything other than stop and look really hard at this before committing to anything further.

Kudos for your aspiration to excellence. I can't say that I'm the least bit surprised given the quality of your work.

Have you considered whether or not the readership is down is directly due to the audience on ff? I'm a reader, not a writer, but it seems to me like the field is dominated by late teens early twenty folks who might not have the experience or the education to understand, much less appreciate, the depth and the subtelties to the historical background and themes you're writing about.

In short, keep going, and save me from the duldrems of bad teeny bopper fanfic ;)

BTW, I'm in my late 30's with a PhD in Foreign Affairs, and I've read textbooks that aren't this insightful to WWII Britain.

AEE

oh gawd. See this is when I start filling in blanks and begin to worry whether I know you in the neighborhood or otherwise in real life. This took on really extreme levels of paranoia when I intended to go to an ice skating cocktail party last year to mock the US men's final and I felt I had to confirm that a reader was not going to be there and that someone I know in real life had not had An Event at her workplace. Thanks for the WW2 comparison, I really appreciate it and it makes me go all Sally Field.

I already know that the audience for my stuff is small, with the TSG audience even smaller than the Narnia based stuff. I knew that when I started in March 2009 -- with references to polygamist evolutionists in Chapter 1, Dun Scotus and dinosaurs in Chapter 2, and female genital mutilation by chapter 3, yeah, not the typical audience. Overall and as far as I know, there are maybe a handful of high schoolers and, again, based on self-reporting, a few more who are in college age. I assume most of the rest are out of school.

I am incredibly grateful and shocked that I found the readership that I did. If I had been more savvy, it might have been better to have just gone straight to the LJ communities, though there really aren't many serialized stories over here -- Bedlamsbard being the exception I can think of in Narnia fandom. The fact that it found the readership that it did is why I am pausing. If I had never gone beyond say 100 hits and ten reviews a chapter, I'd be thrilled. But that's not what happened. I had not really studied the numbers until last night and the precipitous decline is, in fact even worse than I had thought. So, thanks for the thoughts. Self critique is not comfortable but it is warranted here methinks.

*hops into the thread with wild abandon*

Rth, what you write is different, and that's what makes it so fantastic.But you already know how I feel about that. And I completely agree with AEE's above comment about the readership on ff.net (and this is so hypocritical, coming from me...): most of the people on that site don't venture into stories of this depth or intensity or interest. I know that, when I start to read one of your stories, I'd better be ready to hop onto Wikipedia and educate myself, and I love that. Your stories are rich and interesting and terribly wonderful. Thank you.

Thank you! This wasn't supposed to err, morph into what it did. I've had all this stuff written about these thinky thoughts that I never posted and they are sort of sliding out in comments instead.

So I have been catching up on the FF.net reviews you've referred to here, and the LJ comments about it all. Pretty much, I agree with what everyone's said about your wonderful writing and how you chose to show sex and romance in Narnia.

Recently, I sat down and re-read TSG again (from the hard copies I printed for my trip last year) and skimmed the earlier chapters of TQSiT. And as I went back to the earlier stuff, I did find Part 1 more enjoyable than Part 2.

Part 1 was fun and while it was certainly an enjoyable educational experience (for me, anyway), what I liked about it over Part 2 was the lightheartedness of it (questionable archaeologists, animals, and intellectual & philosophical conversations between persons of different backgrounds) over the drama, intrigue and serious backdrop of the War in Part 2.

Maybe Part 2 did get a bit heavy, though I didn't find it harder to plough through than Part 1. Maybe because it delved more deeply into the reality of what went on with the War and many of us know some historical background about it that for me, didn't require as many re-readings as Part 1 (when it was more about zoology).

As for Susan and Tebbitt at the end of Part 2... I liked reading about it though it wasn't something I cared for much, which is odd. You've been hinting at their relationship through many chapters and we all knew it was coming, and even I enjoyed the not-a-chapter insert where you began to explore the feelings they had for each other. I can't quite pinpoint what it is exactly that didn't sit as well with me as the rest of the story. To some extent, I think because even though I was expecting it, the scenes in the lift and the closet seemed somehow... rushed? Not sure if that's the right word for it. Or that it was more of extra "filler" (also not the right word) after the seriousness and depth of the rest of Part 2. While I'm happy that you did Go There with Susan and Tebbitt, it didn't mesh as well with all the other chapters that came before it. It felt a bit like I could take it or leave it.

... Or maybe it would have worked better if we saw more of their relationship in Part 3, when Susan's "older".

So these are the thoughts that have been in head when taking Parts 1 and 2 together and trying to sort out my overall feelings on both. I wonder a bit if my own thoughts here mirror those of your readers, and why the reviews have dropped with the more recent chapters.

Don't take this as harsh criticism or anything, Ruth. Truly, I do so very much enjoy your work and LOVE reading all of it! If I didn't appreciate the time, effort and research that you so cleverly include in your writing, then I too would have become one of your lost readers.

As for Susan and Tebbitt at the end of Part 2... I liked reading about it though it wasn't something I cared for much, which is odd. ... To some extent, I think because even though I was expecting it, the scenes in the lift and the closet seemed somehow... rushed? ... Not sure if that's the right word for it. Or that it was more of extra "filler" ...While I'm happy that you did Go There with Susan and Tebbitt, it didn't mesh as well with all the other chapters that came before it. It felt a bit like I could take it or leave it.

This is not harsh criticism my friend. Harsh criticism in my real life is in the nature of my colleague saying "This is crap and I have to rewrite it," and in professional fiction it is the "I don't care that you love that part, if you don't find a better ending, we're not printing it." No, what has me going AHHHH is that RTH MISJUDGES AGAIN! I have been reading feedback very, very closely this past few months and in it I did notice a certain increasing equivocation and omission. I had assumed precisely the opposite -- that readers who otherwise liked my stuff weren't comfortable with the Susan/Tebbitt content and were trying to say something nice rather than nothing at all. I have assumed that it wasn't that there was too little of said content or that it wasn't developed adequately, but that it was there at all.

Based upon what I have assumed were pretty serious misgivings of this nature from long time readers whose opinions I value, I have had really grave concerns about Part 3 given where I had always intended to take the story. In other words, if people I hoped to maintain reader relationships with through Part 3 didn't like the sharpened focus upon a Susan/OC ship at the end of Part 2, this meant real trouble for Part 3 once I had aged the characters enough that I could explore these things further.

OK time for Saturday errands where I will fortunately be alone in the car for some extended conversation with me, myself, and I. Thank gawd for the bluetooth in my ear.

I had other thoughts about Part 2 that I didn't add to the above simply because I was already running late for an appointment. But now that I'm sitting in front of the computer again, I've forgotten it all. Arrgh. Hopefully it'll come back to me at some point.

At any rate, I don't know where you are going to go exactly with Part 3 yet, but I think I'd be fine reading of Susan/Tebbitt there. I suspect it's part of that whole "older" issue I mentioned above, because right now, even though I know Susan is older (than Tebbitt), I can't seem to get rid of the visual in my head of her being 15. Visuals here are not helping me here at all!

And yet, if Susan and Tebbitt had continued in the not-a-chapter, that would have worked for me! There's something about the whole setup in that went well for me when I read it, so it's not as if I'm against their relationship at all. Hmm. Must ponder some more about it.

I wonder if I just need to re-read the later chapters for things to sink in and make more sense (to me) clearly. I used to re-read the chapters at least once over but I had stopped at some point for some reason I can't even come up with at the moment.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I really, really appreciate it. More thinky things for me to ponder!!

Pondering is good sometimes. :-)

And one last thing I want to mention before I run off this morning: Like min below, I just want to say that I'll continue to be one of your "read everything" readers. Your stories, characters and plot really have been refreshing and a pleasure to read. As one of your non-teen fans, I've truly enjoyed the more adult nature of your stories, whether it's stuff you posted on FF.net, comment fic, or comment fic to comment fic. :-)

Right, so this is my two cents worth (lengthy, sorry), which you can take or leave, as you please. Yes, like the others, I'm reading because what you write is not only different, but interesting. You've taken a tack, and dealt with issues, that are quite different from the generic themes that are prevalent in much of the fanon, and I find that very refreshing, particularly since I'm well beyond the 'maiden' cohort of your readership.

As you doubtless already know, I'm one of your "read everything" readers, and to be perverse, I like your Golden Age stories just as much (and in some parts, better) than your Spare Oom writings. If I had to nail down my preference between Part 1 and Part 2 of TSG, I'd probably also say Part 1, but not for the reasons you might expect.

I like the light-heartedness of some of the interactions, which thematically didn't fit quite so well with Part 2. As a general comment, you write the witty repartee very well indeed, and there's a bit more scope for that in Part 1. We also saw more of the 'genuine' Good Beasts in Part 1 than Part 2 (where they were more part of the cypher, than themselves), and that, too, was part of the attraction.

I think for me, it's simply that I don't channel Susan nearly as well as the other Friends, so I find it harder to empathise with her character than any of the others. That said, I prefer your characterisation of Susan to any other that I have read. I am absolutely delighted with the way that you've thrown many of the fanon conventions about Susan (and to a lesser extent, the other Pevensies) straight out the window. The stupid, vapid, (sometimes) victimised, party-girl annoys the crap out of me, and I'm not a fan of Suspian either.

I don't have a problem with Susan/Tebbitt, nor with anyone else/OC, provided the OC is well-written and fits the tale (which yours undoubtedly are and do). Yes, there was an initial 'squick' factor, given the age difference, but it didn't become a big problem, particularly given the fact that you had Susan take ownership of herself, her desires and emotions. I can see how this might become a hot button for some of the readership, but I'm delighted to find an assertive women, not a rag doll. Intellectually, I do understand the 'morality' complaint - I think it's rubbish, myself, but I won't answer for anyone else.

Maybe it's partially the subject matter. Issues like the Holocaust and the nastiness of wartime intelligence work still cause quite a lot of squirm factor seventy years after the event, and even fictionalised, I can see that it may be uncomfortable for some. Is it just that it's not as 'fluffy' as Part 1? I don't know - I wish I had a better handle on it, and could give you better insight, but I haven't. Don't know whether there's anything here that's of any use to you, but that's my thoughts...

At any rate, I'm here for the long haul, and I do hope that you decide to continue.
: )

Thanks, Min. I do appreciate it. It's all grist for the mill. I keep turning over in my head, this is supposed to be fun and what happened with the plummeting decline was decidedly not fun. Pause for inverse Sally Field moment. "You don't like me!" "WAHHHH!" Right then. But I write too often when it really matters and there's nothing so humbling as having your work picked over line by line by a committee of fifteen on a 3 hour conference call. I don't put the same level of care into derivative work, but if there's something wrong, I am going to try to fix it.

Rth,

I'm one of the fans you've held onto for the whole of TQSiT. I rec' your work to people I know who like complex, intelligent stories.

I'm also a lurker, so you probably won't be hearing much from me, but keep up the good work.

Thank you so much! I'm no wiser to what the problem is or was, but I'm getting lots of good, constructive dialog with a few people, so that I do appreciate it.

This is off topic to the reviews/commentary here, but I just started read The Stone Gryphon and would just like to say that I LOVE IT. Clearly I need to start digging around for more smart gen/bob fic... I love reading with one tab open for the fic and the other open so i can wikipedia things (mary anning! gotta love her. i remember my feminist mum going on about her during my childhood dinosaur phase.) basically it's awesome & i will get back to you later when i have, like, read more than 3 chapters! Narnia! yay!

So, how do people like you FIND people like me? This is like all kinds of awesome and feminist moms FTW. Thanks so much my friend! I'm not going to say, "Gosh, I should threaten pseudo-cide" more often because on that path lies fandom wanking and you know, it's just fan fic. But truly, what just thrills me is finding these neat new cool people. I lurve Internets, I do. Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you, if you are so inclined.

Well, I am not sure what demographic "people like me" fall under, but I think I saw your fic rec'd by someone on dreamwidth, just in passing? Anyway, I have torn through The Stone Gryphon (probably faaaaar too fast, but I wanted to finish it!) and part of the sequel, which I'm pretty sure I will have to reread because I am bad at keeping up with the corresponding real life/Narnian characters in Susan's letters. At first I was a bit iffy about Peter being too "perfect", but then I realised: a) the stuff the other characters (Asim especially) think about him is pretty much valid, and b) he is totally not perfect. Mainly I was impressed that you managed to keep the pace going between different characters/POVs. Usually when POVs switch around I get annoyed -- wanting to return to Peter's POV, then getting used to Edmund's and so on -- but it seemed very even here and I ended up liking ALL the characters instead of having to skip annoying ones or something.

Oh, and footnotes. Dang, I love footnotes. Are there a lot of stories of this kind in Narnia fandom? I've only ever read, like, 3 Narnia stories or something.

p.s. Can i friend you?

Ohh, Friends! Yes! Though my posts here tend to be exclusively fandom related. I keep my real identity elsewhere as I'm really far too old to be cavorting about like this. What I had meant about how do cool people like you find weird me is always something I am curious about because if this happens on ff.net, I'll go and look at someone's profile and I see nothing in the stories the person favs, the authors the reader likes, and the fandoms they frequent to indicate where they found me. On LJ, same thing -- if someone into Narnia stories and fandom found me, I'd not be too surprised as I tend to pop up there, but without that network, I'm always left scratching my head thinking, nifty, someone found me somewhere. I had one reader who found my story By Royal Decree via corsets.

In any event, Part 1 that you just read -- yes, Peter can come across as being "perfect" except that he's really missed the boat, Aslan is really frustrated (to the extent a deity can be frustrated) and the man's in for angst wallowing before he figures it out. I've written recently to E that the Peter of this vision is very much a reaction to the Angry!Stupid! Peter of the Prince Caspian film and resulting fandom - -WAAAAAH, I'm not King anymore, this WORLD SUX, stomp stomp. I appreciate AU characterization as much as the next person but I really don't see that in the Prince Caspian book, so this is very much a reaction to all that angst. I like to think that the stories are really low on overall angst.

Thanks for saying that about the voices. I do tend to jump around a bit, though in Part 2 it is, until the very end, nearly all Susan with some Peter and Edmund tossed in. Part 2 is a HARD and demanding story to read with its multi-layered story telling. Most readers picked up the "code" about the same time that Peter does and really not knowing the Narnia characters doesn't matter because it is NOT the true canon Narnia characters in the story -- it's a conceit, a made up story, to get by the censors and once, as revealed in chapter 3, the gig is up (around chapter 19), the dual action disappears entirely. It's actually better to not know that Sallowpad was a Raven who appears once in Horse and His Boy or who Prince Cor is -- the characters that appear here are not the characters of the Chronicles.

As it turns out, I was glad to have that option of telling the really dodgy bits in Narnia code where I was dealing with real people and real events. It became a form of historical fiction and I was glad to be able to use the Narnia bits to distance myself from real Congresswomen, ambassadors, generals, and newspaper heiresses and reporters.

No, this is not a typical Narnia fic by a long shot. I'm an adult, writing adults, for adults. This means a lot of things, including the fact that I include adult content and thematic elements (e.g., premarital and extra marital sex, female cutting, moral use of power in pursuit of national goals, euthanasia, genocide) and I take some grief for some of those things -- especially the sexual content (see above). And Part 2 is demanding enough that it takes a certain reader to even stay with it -- footnotes indeed. You have to be interested in the War and in the things the British did to engage the Americans in the War to even be interested in the story. Plenty of readers are interested in something more fun and less taxing.

So thanks, and I love to hear from folks! Friending commences.

oh, most of my LJ flist is fandom people -- i used to be more involved but now i'm basically just a reader.

when it comes to the Narnia films I am just so filled with overemotional nostalgia i am completely incapable of being critical. ordinarily i critise & analyse every aspect of movies and TV till it drives people crazy, but with Narnia I just weep all the way through -- the first one, anyway. it was ridiculous. thankfully i have heard i am not alone in this, however.
i'm not finding susan's code too difficult once i get into it. i do want more edmund though -- edmund was always my favourite (another reason why i like the movies -- i think the guy who plays him does it in a very sarcastic and sly way, coming across as far more intelligent than magnificent Etonian Peter).

well, i love history so this is definitely the story for me i guess. do you read much historical fiction? i don't in general, but i am a big Dorothy Dunnett fan. is Narnia fic generally quite childish, then? that surprises me, because in most fandoms most of the fic is adult oriented. most of the fic that isn't 12 year olds writing flowery & poorly-spelled romance, that is. i'd have thought a lot of people would want to write about the High Kings & Queens, etc.

I treat the films as licensed fan fic. I adored the first film, and in particular how it so firmly grounded Narnia in WWII -- making the Witch appear like some sort of Aryan goddess, Tunmus as Nazi collaborator, the Gestapo like Wolf secret police, and that their inability to contribute to the War in England certainly colored the Pevensies' decision to engage more fully in Narnia. With PC, I liked the whole grungy dreadlocks, guerrilla, feel to Old Narnia and the Telmarines as Mediterraneans. It was the marginalization of Lucy and the Angry!Stupid! Peter that I took issue with, but hey, it's fan fic and I didn't mind the films so much as the bad fic that has followed reinforcing the stupid monarchs. I'm very ecumenical in my fic, adoring A/U and xovers as much as anything else and... oh where was I.

It felt very odd to consider even the possibility of lusting after actors who seemed so very, very young and indeed my visuals, to the extent I have them, come from the great Peter O'Toole films of the late 60s, early 70's, The Lion In Winter (roaming dogs! chickens! Timothy Dalton and Anthony Hopkins!); Lawrence of Arabia, and Beckett (O'Toole and Burton).

Is Narnia fic childish... Gosh, I dunno. You can look at fanfiction.net and come to your own conclusions. To paraphrase Tolkien, I don't read those works and those writers don't read mine. The undisputed BNF is Elecktrum. Other popular writers who I read or used to read include: Ilysia, Animus_Wymris, Lassiterfic, Be_themoon, Almyra, Francienyc, and Andi Horton. Other very, very popular writers include Lirenel, Tonzura123, and Sentimental Star. None of these writers are 12 years old and the work spans gen to OC romance. A popular LJ/dreamwidth author is Bedlamsbard.

Thanks again! I hope you'll consider leaving a review at some point!

So remember you once mentioned that you were afraid of what might happen if your fandom life ever intruded into your professional life and caused pointed questions, like at a hearing or something? Or you could just watch it not happen to you.

This is sooo not funny. When I first entered online fandom like 20 years ago, I did have delusions of some day sitting before a Senate confirmation panel. I had, you know, ambition. Except that the panel would not have been Senate Judiciary but probably Senate HELP or Agriculture. Now, I worry more about the husband before the Senate Judiciary Committee if he is ever called upon to explain MY activities. Thank gawd neither of works for the Patent and Trademark Office.

Good gods that would be awkward, having Trademark Office affiliations.

I wonder if/how many people in the administration are in fandom at all...

I was part of a movement taking SW lines and replacing them with copyright lawyers. This was back in the early 90s when the Internet was taking off and we were worried that LFL would come swooping in and shut down fan fic sites -- this was before fanfiction.net even.

"I am a copyright infringer, like my father before me."
"The infringement is strong with this one."
"Adventure! Excitement! A copyright lawyer craves not these things."
"Infringers will be with you... always."

Omg. Not in PTO (or at least not yours), but this is the point where any legal librarian sticks their fingers in their ears and goes "La, la, la, can't hear you". And then we go ROFLMAO : )

ROFLMAO.

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To E, Part 3

Harold and Morgan

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