rthstewart | And in today's news -- heart attack

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And in today's news -- heart attack

I came back to our rental property from an afternoon at the beach and found my mother in law trying to get into my laptop. And my spousal unit, bless him, "Sorry, mom, but I don't know my wife's passwords." Boundaries people. Respect them.

In other news, the Narnia Fic Exchange is going great guns! Check it out! Read! Review!

snacky and

caramelsilver are doing an awesome job on it!

And what the heck, everyone else is, so...
[Meme] If Alfred Hitchcock Made Cinderella
Seen in several places on the F-list:

If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.
— Alfred Hitchcock

What do you expect to find when I write a story?

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Jesus talk about a panic moment! Thank goodness spouse saved the day :DDD

And what I expect from your stories?

Ridiculously awesome details, coming away learning things but not feeling like I've been lectured, all the feelings in the WORLD, and a damnably awesome sense of writing :DD

Panic indeed. Turning on someon's laptop is like opening someone's mail. And aww, thanks for saying the nice things!

Cinderella would be a person of color, there would be a detailed description of the political situation(s) attached to the Prince's marriage options (including scheming by several courtiers) and the Prince would have an original-character best friend who would end up being more interesting than the Prince to half your readers.

:-D :-D ;-D

I DIED when I read this. snort. especially about the OC best friend who is more interesting than the canon character. And I end up shipping the OC with one of the wicked stepsisters, except maybe she's not so wicked after all after a 15,000 word digression. And it's the Fairy Godmother whose the real power behind the broom. Errrr, stopping now.

LOL! Of course the OC falls for the stepsister. Think of the societal pressures the poor stepsister has been under. Her entire self-image has been shaped by a culture that sees women as trophies. Naturally she is threatened by the fact that Cinderella is not only attractive, but doesn't seem to CARE about being attractive.

I think the wicked stepsister may be my new favorite character and she hasn't even been written yet. LOL.

*reads the below comment to

autumnia* AHAHAHA. Awesome. Please write it.

YOU are a BAD influence. BAD BAD BAD And Wicked Stepsister and Cinderella end up running off and forming a combination investment counseling service, pumpkin pie baking, and housecleaning service that doubles as an intelligence operation for Prince's Kingdom.

And yes, I'm already shipping the indefatigable Martin and the not so evil stepsister.

Yay for passwords on computers! Personal computers are, you know, personal.

Hmm. I expect to find lots of very well written Talking Animals, discourses on contracts, joint ventures and monarchical managements. And oh yes, all the glorious historical footnotes, etc.

And if you were writing Cinderella... I do not think she would be a slave of her stepmother. No, she would be serving her stepfamily not because she had nowhere to go, but because she learned the will was a forgery and is on the hunt for the real document so she legally throw them out of the house. Of course, she also has friends--Good Beasts of course--helping her by spying on stepmother and stepsisters and reporting back to Cinderella in Rat and Crow.

And her fairy godmother? I see her as a shrewd adviser of sorts, not unlike a lawyer or a banker. Cinderella does not go to the Ball to win the heart of a Prince, but to corner him so she could discuss revising the marriage and inheritance laws of the country.

Booting up someone's computer is like reading their mail or opening their medicine cabinet. or the bedroom nightstand. Oi.

And speaking of rats and crows, io9 reported via BBC that gay finches mate for life.

And it will be your fault and Katarihno's if I end up writing Cinderella fic for fem gen ficathon. I did just have an idea today for Hwin... And YES, Cinderella would totally go to the ball to cross examine the Prince about the legitimacy of certain documents. "I think it is a fake," she insisted, waving the documents under his nose. "These signatures are not in the same hand."

The Prince took a step backward to avoid the insistent presentation and nearly pitched over the balustrade. "Yes, hrrrm, I quite see your point. But what might we do about it?"

"Do? Do?!? You have the key to the vault, do you not? We need to go there at once."

Martin took that extremely convenient moment to rush out on to the balcony and hide behind a pillar. "Sorry, hope I'm not intruding!" Martin whispered. "But if I have to listen to one more sonnet composed in praise of Princess Kay of the Milky Way and her beautiful features carved out of a block of butter, I shall become murderous. Or insist upon a very large bread basket and a bushel of roasted corn ears."

He paused in mid babble and looked about, more carefully. "I say, it seems I am interrupting something. Excellent! Can I help? Does it require foodstuffs? Or fishing hooks? Raising an army of chimney sweeps?"

Cinderella stared then gave him a sideways look that Prince had seen so many times before. To her considerable credit, the women had usually run for their lives upon such an introduction to Martin. At least Cinderella wasn't screaming, yet. And if there was ever someone who would be game for breaking into the royal vaults on Ball Night, it would be Martin, and especially if it meant he could avoid Princess Kay of the Milky Way.

This almost makes me want to go watch Disney's Cinderella, just so I could try to figure out how to rewrite 'helpless girl looking for her Prince Charming' into what you have above. Seriously. I am liking this Cinderella very much!

Gay Finches, eh? Well, I suppose the High King didn't have to lecture them like he did with the Songbirds!

Please, Please, PLEASE WRITE THIS!!!

The monogamous, gay finches? Or AU Cinderella? Gawd, only my LJ would have a comment like that..

Both but I was talking about the AU Cinders.

BTW, it's not only your LJ that would have this. There are a couple of NFFRs I can think of that might & Animus Wyrmis

D: That's just...well, good for your husband.

And when you write a story! I expect to learn a bunch of things I never knew or even thought of before, both in terms of detail and just general thoughts; I expect a certain...expository style of prose? If that makes any sense. Your narrative style is very distinctive to me, is what I'm saying. Lots of descriptive explanation but that makes it sound boring when it's not at all :) And always, always a mix of literal laugh out loud humor and tiny-but-meaningful comments or moments that hit hard, over and over, in the best of ways.

Aye Aye! Captain Exposition of the ship Point of View Exposition, as opposed to omniscient, And then X happened. And abuse of commas. Let us not forget misuse of commas. Thank you!

Animals that behave like animals (even if they have intelligent brains and can speak).

Also evidence of research.

With footnotes! Thanks so much!

At least one instance of facts about animals I never imagined before!

Two words: Gay finches

Thank you!

Actually, thanks to the miracles of 3rd grade class pets, THAT does not surprise me.

What the hell, why would she DO that? asd;lghsdkgh

I expect a lot of realism and really accurate facts and details that are hidden everywhere and that are like discovering Christmas presents.

I guess other people don't have secret identities in their laptops? ??

And thank you!!!

Oh my god, I would die of embarrassment if people tried to read some of the things on my computer. It's almost exactly like reading a person's diary, and everyone knows that that is Not Done. Thank goodness for passwords and your husband!

What do I expect from your writing? A sort of wry humor laced through even relatively serious moments, lots of careful research into the natural world (carefully presented for the reader's general edification and comprehension), consideration shown to all characters, and Capital Letters deployed in places I was not expecting to find them. :-)

And commas! don't forget the commas! One beta even told me for an anon exchange that I really needed to change my comma usage because I might as well have plastered something on it that said, RTHSTEWART WAS HERE.

Commas are evil, no two ways about it! You use them to break your sentences into a distinctive and idiosyncratic rhythm. On my part, I swear they multiply like cockroaches -- they never seem excessive when I am writing, but every time I go back to edit a story I find an infestation of extraneous commas and have to prune at least a quarter of them out. Very frustrating!

What do I expect to find? Well, the historical facts and research have been noted, but I'd particularly emphasize illuminating aspects of past society that one doesn't typically hear about, especially those that we might, in a self-centered fashion, consider too "modern" to have existed at the time.

I also expect to see characters dealing with adulthood. Not just growing up, but growing into who they are after the "up" part seems finished.

And yes, OCs that are every bit as interesting as the canon characters. And animals that act like animals (and not like we would expect).

-H

P.S. zOMG GAY FINCH LIFE PARTNERS!!!!!!! :-)

I know! The Finches are just... wow. I spotted it on my Tweet feed via io9, http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/14479670 from BBC Nature. Families and bonding come in all sorts of different patterns and styles and it is such fun to show that in fic. And, all I'm going to say for now, H., is that after the NFE reveals go up, you and are going to have a nice, long (anonymous) exchange and I hope I got it right because some of our earlier back and forth has definitely been an influence.

Oooh! Looking forward to it. Thanks for the link.
-H

All the historical details, is what I expect from you! :DDD

What do I expect when you write a story?

Hm.

A piece of fiction that is well-researched (if set in This World), intelligently conceived with a worthwhile narrative structure, really amazing characters who I begin to think about while my attention should be on Latin, subtle humour (Jalur's toy otter, snort!), and, mostly, a mature understanding of the role emotions play in people's lives. How feelings colour, shape and motivate some of the most important bits of life, even while we're trying to be oh-so-rational about it all.

If my mother-in-law had ever tried to open my laptop, I would have wanted to bite her (hard). Then laugh, 'cause I keep some pretty raunchy things on the box, and it would almost have been worth it to see her face finding them. Rrrrrr.

Sigh. That's a bit of a fantasy. Realistically, I probably would've had a huge fight with my husband about his mother, and your anecdote inspires me to install passwords.

Gay finches??? Ahahahaaaa, wonderful. Thought: could finches all be gay by general predilection, and only find opposite-sex mates when in, um, heat? (What do birds have, anyway? It can't be estrous!) Tee hee!

Awww, thanks. I'm sensing a theme here in the research. Fortunately, I had turned the laptop off and did not have, oh I dunno, the latest reading from the Oxoniensis porn battle 12. I get really twitchy when anyone is even NEAR my laptop.

As for the reproductive cycles of birds, I knew this at one point because I got interested when paleontologists checked the fossilized bone marrow of a T.Rex and discovered she was female and pregnant and that the blood markers are some such thing were very avian. I also know that some songbirds in our yard mate at least twice in a spring season. Same sex bonding is really common in birds, too.

I expect airtight plots and snappy dialogue, fascinating digressions into history and/or biology that move the story at the same time, and delicious worldbuilding details piled in on each other like some kind of fractal MC Escher funhouse.

And smuttiness of the wink-and-nod variety!

HA! Digressions is US. Speaking of smuttiness of the wink and nod variety, I spotted a Peter with Bacchus (but not Peter/Bacchus) story on ff.net last night. I'm hardly the first or the last to write that, but some of the word choices and phrasing was awfully Maenad of the Maquis - like. It is certainly possible that we were both relying upon the same hackneyed phrasing. Amusement -- we haz it. I'd rather see this (spreading that M rating around FTW!) than the OMG BOOBIES that you got.

WTF? That's just so, so... I don't know what it is, except you just don't help yourself to someone else's computer without an invitation. Just. Don't. AAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And as for expectations? Research. Challenging the stupid conventions and stereotypes, and going there. Witty, snappy dialogue. Wonderful, full chapters. Thought-provokingness (is that even a word?). OCs, oh yes please.

And PLEEEAAASE, write that Cinders AU ;-)

Mathilde had not seen Ella or the Prince in ages. Her suspicious mind cataloged all the things they might be doing, and rejected the ones that her own, vapid sister would be doing should she be closeted with a handsome, charming, eligible Prince for an hour. So she sat, dejectedly, too plain for dancing, too dull for conversation, and thought about how much money could be saved if they had just cut the canapes into thirds instead of halves and how there really was something wrong with Mother's household budgets that just didn't add up.

Something dangling outside the balcony caught her eye. Looking about, no one else seemed to be paying it any mind at all. Curious, she ventured out, and nearly mowed down the Prince, who was hiding behind a potted palm tree and struggling to hold on two thick ropes. Mathilde looked up and saw two shadowy figures scaling the Palace walls one of whom was definitely wearing glass slippers.

"Oh, hello," the Prince said, pitching about as the ropes pulled and snaked. "Lovely party, isn't it?"

Mathilde turned about and quickly shut the balcony doors. "It's that last will and testament, isn't?"

Hahaha. Love it, love it.

This is one of those times that I love being an Enabler.

*likes* (as in, really, really likes). Brilliant

Deeeeee, that's just hilarious. Of course her name is Mathilde. Who does Mother's household budgets?

Mother does Mother's household budgets and both Ella and Mathilde have separately come to conclusions.

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And in today's news -- heart attack

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If YOU wrote Cinderella

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