rthstewart (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rthstewart) wrote2011-12-30 01:42 pm
rthstewart) wrote2011-12-30 01:42 pm
I wouldn't say no, but... (Also, to Tess, Anons, and others adding Kudos and Favs)
Contrary to the notice you might have received, it is not my birthday on January 1. My birthday (a horrendous, shocking, terrible, giganormous milestone) passed without comment in October. So, it's been, gone, and I'm older than compost and very much feeling it.
I've seen an uptick in readers, with guest Kudos for Unquenchable Fire (the Narnia/Temeraire xover) on AO3 (the most popular thing I've written, it turns out) and favs and such for the older stories, particularly By Royal Decree and the seldom read/reviewed/recc'd Palace Guard. So, should you quiet types come by, thank you! I greatly appreciate it and I'm always curious how you found the stories and what you thought of them. I seem to have, on the other hand, lost a number of regular readers, so I do hope it's just the distraction of the holidays and Yuletide. My enormous thanks and gratitude to those who commented on or reviewed the latest updates to AW. It's the best present ever for me and thank you.
Tess, thank you for your lovely review for chapter 13 and I'm assuming that you had not yet read It's The Thought The Counts so you didn't know how Asim acquires the The Dawn Treader picture, which is then repeated in Chapter 14. I hope you won't be a stranger and do weigh in as the mood hits! Thank you especially for the comments about unconventional families. That was a thematic element that hit late -- when I started AW and realized that families were playing a big part in the story and that almost none were typical. I have enormous empathy for the single parent and found it interesting to play both with what a Narnian family might be (both parents, one or none, solitary/herd) and the impact of the War on family life. And you can't have Tom Clark. He's mine. MINE. He looks like some gorgeous cross between Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, and Gene Kelly. Tebbitt can go hang for all I care. It's Tom Clark and he has a tragic lovelorn past, too, all tied up with an ancient curse from the days of the Salem Witch Trials and his wife ran off with a trapeze artist leaving him all alone with Jack and a broken heart.
I've been pushed into hosting part of a New Year's Eve party. It is supposed to be progressive and reflect the New Year's foods/traditions of the country where it is turning midnight over several hours. So I snagged the appetizer part, beginning at 7:30 PM, at which point, New Year's will have just passed in the UK. I am ordering trays of chicken tika, samosas, tandoori, and paneek panir. We are serving Jamaican and Canadian beer, aged Scotch (from Scotland), Australian Shiraz, South African white wine, and I've got champagne (from France) that I've plastered "Aquitaine" on to. Har Har.
Work has begun on the Big Bang.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amine_eyes has graciously offered to assist with some technical and Brit speak bits but if there are any of you out there with some background in the Brit part of D-Day, military service, common language among the light infantry NCOs, and what not, please drop me a line. Help. I need it. For instance, I was writing something last night and someone poses the questions "Maybe the food would be better?" and I got stumped by whether a light infantry corporal from London, training in 1943 at a base in Bulford would say any of the following in response:
That is all. Happy New Year. My sincere and deepest thanks to you all. I am deeply grateful for this community and for the friendship and support.
I've seen an uptick in readers, with guest Kudos for Unquenchable Fire (the Narnia/Temeraire xover) on AO3 (the most popular thing I've written, it turns out) and favs and such for the older stories, particularly By Royal Decree and the seldom read/reviewed/recc'd Palace Guard. So, should you quiet types come by, thank you! I greatly appreciate it and I'm always curious how you found the stories and what you thought of them. I seem to have, on the other hand, lost a number of regular readers, so I do hope it's just the distraction of the holidays and Yuletide. My enormous thanks and gratitude to those who commented on or reviewed the latest updates to AW. It's the best present ever for me and thank you.
Tess, thank you for your lovely review for chapter 13 and I'm assuming that you had not yet read It's The Thought The Counts so you didn't know how Asim acquires the The Dawn Treader picture, which is then repeated in Chapter 14. I hope you won't be a stranger and do weigh in as the mood hits! Thank you especially for the comments about unconventional families. That was a thematic element that hit late -- when I started AW and realized that families were playing a big part in the story and that almost none were typical. I have enormous empathy for the single parent and found it interesting to play both with what a Narnian family might be (both parents, one or none, solitary/herd) and the impact of the War on family life. And you can't have Tom Clark. He's mine. MINE. He looks like some gorgeous cross between Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, and Gene Kelly. Tebbitt can go hang for all I care. It's Tom Clark and he has a tragic lovelorn past, too, all tied up with an ancient curse from the days of the Salem Witch Trials and his wife ran off with a trapeze artist leaving him all alone with Jack and a broken heart.
I've been pushed into hosting part of a New Year's Eve party. It is supposed to be progressive and reflect the New Year's foods/traditions of the country where it is turning midnight over several hours. So I snagged the appetizer part, beginning at 7:30 PM, at which point, New Year's will have just passed in the UK. I am ordering trays of chicken tika, samosas, tandoori, and paneek panir. We are serving Jamaican and Canadian beer, aged Scotch (from Scotland), Australian Shiraz, South African white wine, and I've got champagne (from France) that I've plastered "Aquitaine" on to. Har Har.
Work has begun on the Big Bang.
amine_eyes has graciously offered to assist with some technical and Brit speak bits but if there are any of you out there with some background in the Brit part of D-Day, military service, common language among the light infantry NCOs, and what not, please drop me a line. Help. I need it. For instance, I was writing something last night and someone poses the questions "Maybe the food would be better?" and I got stumped by whether a light infantry corporal from London, training in 1943 at a base in Bulford would say any of the following in response: - "When pigs fly." [era appropriate]
- "When Hell freezes over" [militarily appropriate] or
- "When [insert football team] wins the Cup." [I did look it up and Manchester United was very poor in the years leading up the War, so wondered if that would work, for the time].
That is all. Happy New Year. My sincere and deepest thanks to you all. I am deeply grateful for this community and for the friendship and support.
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(I'm also kind of waiting until you put it on AO3 so I can download it to my Kindle, which will make me much more likely to read through it in bits and pieces.)
In regards to your question--I'd go with the militarily appropriate response. I don't have military experience, precisely, but I did spend four years at a military college and have enough friends who are officers.
Along that line, I would also argue the point that an enlisted soldier in the infantry around that time period probably comes from a rather uneducated background. He probably would have been a farmer or a low-paid factory worker. Unless he comes from a better family and just didn't want to go through the process of training to be an officer and "miss out on the war".
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As for the BB, yep yep, there's SO MUCH that I do not know. At some point, I just have to screw it, and go with what sounds right and makes sense. I'd never, ever intended to do a war story. I was going to pick up again AFTER the war with Peter's service being perfunctory and uninteresting, if he ever made it, given the timing. I just wasn't going to do it.
But, now I am and sort of have to. And I've been a bit all over the place. He fights like a soldier, but thinks like a general, and has been worried enough about not being the General of his own army (or King) that he's tried to keep a low profile. He's now decided England is his country too, and not just Narnia and this is what he is supposed to do.
And I just wrote a big long post about why I've decided to put him in as an NCO rather that put him through OCTU and I've deleted it because it is all just so much teal deer. Short answer, yes, now that Peter's decided to do this, he wants to get there, NOW and doesn't want to wait for OCTU.
Thanks so very, very much. It's great to see you!
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(Anonymous) 2011-12-31 07:37 am (UTC)(link)~LotL
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Stories not on AO3 are trickier; you can either read them online, or do like I used to do back when I still had dial-up and wasn't allowed to be online for long periods of time--navigate to the web page (say, ff.n), load the story you want, then turn off the wi-fi so you don't drain the battery as quickly. Read the chapter, then turn the wi-fi back on to navigate to the next chapter. Or if you're fortunate and you can get your hands on a .pdf version of the document (asking the author nicely usually will grant you access, if they have one), you can load it directly from your computer onto your Kindle.
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(Anonymous) 2011-12-31 05:11 pm (UTC)(link)~LotL
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So Happy New Year to you, too - hope the Big Bang will move forward as it should! Good that you've got some good help!
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I hope you have a wonderful New Year, and here's to a 2012 where all the good things happen :)))
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Um, yes. That's what I got out of this. Tangentially, I went back the other evening and skimmed through TQSiT for all of the Tebbitt pov parts with his poetry. AND IT WAS AWESOME STILL.
That New Year's party sounds really cool! When you say progressive do you mean an actual progressive party where you go house to house? In which case, double fun! Good luck with the hosting and happy almost New Year! <33
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And sorry, but Tebbitt can hang. He's weedy and he's a drunk and he falls in and out of love the way other men change socks. Tom Clark is a good dad and he pines for his worthless wife. And he looks like Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant and he's all moral-like. It's no contest. Really.
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That sounds like a fabulous assortment of drink offerings, and a really fun idea for a party. Personally I'll be ringing in the New Year with a potluck put on by the most amusing group of widowed octagenarians I know. If your party at any point becomes too overwhelming and you crave comic relief, by all means nip up and join us.
All the best to you and yours in the year to come.
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If you need a beta for your BB, I'll be more than happy to volunteer since I'm not taking part. Also, if you decide to write more about food, I've got "Wartime Recipes: A Collection of Recipes from the War Years" handily available. (I also recently found I had a Wartime Rationing recipe for Christmas pudding and Emergency Cream saved which would have helped you in that last chapter or two of AW! Ah well.)
And a very Happy New Year to you and your family!
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And yes, we'll just ignore my visuals problem where my BF Tom Clark is concerned. I have no idea what Tebbitt looks like. Don't care a whit.
But Lt. Col. Clark, oh yes.
Happy New Year to you!
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It's something akin to frosting, I believe. It was probably used to glaze cakes and puddings if one didn't have/want to waste the good liquor or cream.
Emergency Cream
(Recipe from the Imperial War Museum's collection)
"Bring 1/2 pint of water to blood heat and melt 1 tbsp unsalted margarine in it. Sprinkle in 3 heaped tbsp household milk powder, beat well, then whisk thoroughly. Add 1 tsp sugar and 1 tsp vanilla. Leave to get cold."
Let me know if you want the wartime Christmas pudding recipe too.
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Your party sounds like fun - we'll be doing things Aussie-style, with a barbecue, pavlova and taking the kids to the 9pm fireworks locally, and watching the midnight fireworks from Sydney on the TV. I hope to be crashed in a pile asleep when the UK New Year comes in, but I'm not holding my breath - small children and animals all seem to have this strange need to be fed at the regular time, regardless of what time they went to bed! At any rate, enjoy!
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Pavlova... yummmm. I ordered Indian food today. A few plates of appetizers and DONE. Have a lovely day!
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As tomorrow will be another un-birthday for you, I hope it will be a happy one.
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Yes, go with this.
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Except ME. As I thought - a little younger. About six years. ;-)
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A wonderful chapter as always! I made it through my nonfiction writing project and have almost enough brain cells left to leave a bit of feedback. Although I don't have much this time around for some reason, I just quite liked it. I particularly liked Susan thanking her mother for the "sacrifice" of sleeping with Mrs. Goodwin after simply refusing to believe that there could be anything going on between them. I also loved seeing Helen get ahead of Susan and surprise her a bit, and seeing them reconcile. That was all quite well done.
Edmund's interactions with Aslan are apparently as blunt and occasionally snarky as with everyone else. It is good to see that he can joke about something related to Morgan, if only in such a private setting.
And I love Ruby, the Brigadier!
Happy New Year!
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