Meme see, Meme do

[rthstewart]

Really bad week.   I've been dealing with babysitting and cooking for many, many children not my own through 4 days of snow-related school cancellations and power outages and I'm very much understanding that the Donner Party probably turned cannibal and ate their young first. We've lost power, again, and have been camping out either in cold dark houses or in light, overly warm houses filled with children I am babysitting while the parents are all at work.  Oh, and the $20 ice cream cake for the kid's birthday tomorrow melted. So, I've been alternating on the Blackberry between increasing frantic work emails coupled with a growing panic that maybe things are repeating and I did something wrong in the latest chapter of AW. Again.  So, I'm trying not to cry or angst, because really, I'm just being stupidly insecure. 

Also we had 30 enormous donuts that were supposed to go for the class party (canceled due to snow) and I never want to see another glazed donut again, ever.  Or Mac and Cheese and hot dogs.   On the plus side, as workers crawled home in the a nightmare of ice, snow, and gridlock this week, I was at home babysitting 6 children ages 12 and under and did not have to 1) sit in my car for 8 hours trying to go 10 miles; 2) get stuck and run out of gas in a snowstorm; 3) park the car and walk home as many did, then have to find the car the next day after it was towed; or 4) give up and sleep in a gas station or check into a motel where you pay by the hour. 

I'm still not King but I do have Power as of this morning. So, I'm now in my own house, with own firewall, with light and heat and I spent 4 hours actually doing writing work that pays and cursing junior staff who don't understand how to redline documents.

And now I have fallen to the meme-side and I lovingly blame the f-list, including snacky  metonomia  lady_songsmith  anastigmatfic and animus_wyrmis who have been circulating these memes.  And then Ana went and posted a fabulous one involving Glendon, Edmund, and a tree, and now I just HAVE to play along because I have a BAD RL WEEK and FIC ANGST. 

So, these are the memes:

• Ask me a fandom-related question in the comments. This can be fandom specific, general, or about fandom/lj stuff/fic writing/etc. in general. Questions can be as wacky as you want. Ask me about tv shows, characters, fanfic in general, fandom issues/meta, anything about any of my stories specifically.

OR

• Give me the title of a story I've never written, and feedback telling me what you liked best about it, and I will tell you any of: the first sentence, the last sentence, the thing that made me want to write it, the biggest problem I had while writing it, why it almost never got posted, the scene that hit the cutting room floor but that I wish I'd been able to salvage, a short excerpt, or something else that I want readers to know.

OR

• Name a character and I will tell you:

a) a fact about them from my personal canon
b) a reason he/she sucks
c) a reason he/she is amazing
d) a thing that I'd like to see happen to them
e) someone that I can't ship that character with

 

Comments

[autumnia]

My condolences for the extreme babysitting of this past week. I am surprised that having to feed so many, you have not decided to stage a protest by turning into Cook and making stewed intestines.

As for AW, really, you have nothing to worry about. NOTHING. Your one dozen (an increase from the days of 5) adoring fans still clamor for more fic despite the reviews you've gotten. I think in general, readership has been down in the fandom, whether it is a good story or not.

I'm still not King but I do have Power as of this morning.

But why a King? Why not Queen? Can it not be a matriarchal society instead?

And I'm going to go with Meme #3 and ask for info about Master Roblang the Dwarf. :-)

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Master Roblang:

a) a fact about them from my personal canon
b) a reason he/she sucks
c) a reason he/she is amazing
d) a thing that I'd like to see happen to them
e) someone that I can't ship that character with

In my typical make it up as we go along, how I envisioned him with the title of Arms Master is not especially accurate anymore. He is Mrs. Furner's brother and he was part of the resistance Triumvirate of the General and Leszi that goes back decades in Jadis' reign. If the General is the strategist and Leszi the weapons specialist, Roblang is the oil in the gears and the oil poured over troubled waters. He sucks because he's really not especially true to the stereotype of his kind -- he's not mechanically inclined, unlike every other Dwarf, and feels that insecurity. It also sucks because he really wishes he had a canine's nose or feline's sensitivity and he envies them that. He's Army through and through, a detail oriented sort of the Staff Sergeant and does a lot of the unglamorous work. And because he's detail oriented, and has to deal with all those different Narnian personalities, he's really an expert at it. Not a scholar, exactly, but when you've been in hiding in caves from the Witch for decades with all this fractious bunch, he's learned how to communicate and how to avoid trouble.

I'd love to write of the day that he and Leszi realize that the General has been captured by the Witch and turned to stone.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

And I don't ship him with ANYONE. Just. Can't.

[autumnia]

Well... I wasn't expecting the shipping at all! :-)

But how interesting that he's related to Mrs. Furner! Even if he's not as skillful as the other Dwarfs, he does have other wonderful talents. I would think knowing how to deal effectively and politely with other Narnians is a skill that's worth even more than making things in the smithy.

(And you are most welcome about the research emails. I'm happy to have helped!)