Chapter 16 of AW (ZOMG she posts)

[rthstewart]

It's been a long time but I finally posted Chapter 16 of Apostolic Way last night.

It's no secret that I've been really close to hanging it all up. There are a lot of reasons for that, including a lot of RL writing, the grim reality of the hostile fandom, the grim reality of the story to come, and the real fear that I knew where I wanted to go and that I really didn't think I had the talent to pull it off and that readers wouldn't follow.  But Starbrow and Oldfashionedgirl95/buttonloops started in on the whole post Jill and Eustace in Quebec story with the avowed purpose of trying to get me interested in picking it up again.

I know it's frustrating to read works in progress.  So many don't.  Nevertheless, I know that probably 75% of what is in the stories now would not be there but for readers.  Lucy and Edmund's Spare Oom story during the War was, like Susan in QSiT and Peter and Susan in Rat and Sword, not something I'd ever intended to tell.  Yet here we are.

So, a couple of things.  In the chapters ahead something that will be useful to remember is that Lucy fails and this is a good thing; Edmund succeeds and this is a bad thing.  Also it is in this context, via flashback, that I will tell the story of Black, White, and Gray in Between, of the Mole spies and the traitorous Mr. Noll.  The Narnian elements, such as they are, will be flashback, not the allegory of TQSiT.  I've gotten accustomed to writing historical fiction now, and so that's where we're going. 

I have a lot of reading still to do.  Edmund's story is fun; Lucy's is hard and those who have worked in relief, democracy building, and with the poor and marginalized will know why. 

Alice Jones made her first appearance here, and some of her best lines were first written by others in that comment fic. 
In my non-linear storytelling, you see that Morgan and Edmund have resolved their differences (H&M has for the moment stopped at a cliffhanger) and are proceeding through the Narnian bonding ceremonies, including the Gretna Green bonding.  Heliopause mentioned the Scottish marital rites and I loved this version of a Las Vegas elopement so much, I ended up adopting it for Frank and Helen and the tradition then passes down.  Yes the Reverend Collins is a nod to Pride and Prejudice's Mr. Collins. 

The issue of food aid to starving Europe and the Total War doctrine (here and here, and here and Vera Brittain (and here) and her peace letters are all to come in more detail. 

That line about schools in LWW is an odd one.  Who imposed them or was seeking to impose them again that the Four would abolish them?  How can it be explained other than Lewis' own views of school?    I am now obviously drawing parallels to Nazi indoctrination, wartime propaganda on both sides, as well as the canon issues of Edmund and horrid school, and the in-story issues of Peter, his academics, the expectations placed upon him, and how that would impact Edmund.  Edmund shall meet his father in the next chapter -- I decided to end it where I did because that's not going to be a pretty encounter and I really want to do it from Walker-Smythe's pov. 

So, for those of you still with me, thank you.  I so appreciate your support and reading and would love to strike up the conversation again if you are so inclined. 

Comments

[psyche29]

I am going to go read this shortly, but wanted to comment. I LOVELOVELOVE your entire universe, and I am always up for reading more of it, though it sometimes takes me a while to get there. RL intrudes often and I forget until I am next reminded.

And then I find I don't always have a comment. Sometimes it's because I need time to re-read and to compose it, but often it's because I feel woefully inadequate to do so meaningfully, and a large portion of that self-consciousness is simply that I am clearly ignorant in every way.

I've only in the last few years or so realized that some people love books so much that they are frequently HORRIBLY DISSATISFIED with many various things within them. It never occurred to me to be so critical of what I read - I generally read something and enjoy it as it's laid out for me, and if I like it enough, I go hunting for fanfic to see what other ideas people have. Until a few years ago, it never occurred to me that maybe Susan wasn't "just into growing up and using makeup and wearing stockings," etc, just as an example.

Reading all the stuff y'all write has been a HUGE education for me, and while I have all kinds of feels about it all, I don't always have words that make any sense about it, or the ability to say why I loved something so much, especially not with coherence...it ends up coming out roughly as, "DURRRRHHHH, KIM LIKEYYYYY."

So I guess my whole rambling, stupid-head point is that you should never, ever think that lack of comments means something is bad or not worth continuing; haters are one thing, and they are every one of them deplorable for not being open-minded, but maybe some others are more like me, and either haven't gotten to it yet or don't know how to say what it is they feel or think. And too, maybe they're self-conscious about it like I am.

And all that said, I know how it feels from the writer's point, too, so I hope you don't feel alone in the way you feel. ♥

[rthstewart]

I LIKE STILL KEEP WRITING is OK by me. If nothing else, it tells me someone is still there and reading. There are a couple of long time readers who I have not heard from and I assume that they've lost interest and/or they don't like me or the chapter well enough to even say "Thanks for the update, dude."

So, always hearing something means a lot.

But... going to your question in your review (and thank you), yes, Morgan is written as being on the Autsim scale -- what is/was Asperger's specifically. She is a very high functioning person in some respects and with the benefit of a talking, highly emotionally intelligent partner in the form of Jina and then Rafiqa she becomes much better. She is still clumsy and has difficult with eye contact and carries on enormous conversations in her head before saying a word. (My LJ entry about Peter and Morgan is a really good example of that. Morgan keeps telling Peter to stop interrupting her and she's not saying anything).

The reason for this was... complex. I gave her the peculiar speech pattern in BRD because I wanted Edmund to riff on his titles. And then having established in chapter 3, I was stuck with it, though it did allow me to set us the whole Harold joke in the last chapters. I'd never intended for the pairing to be romantic. I introduced her solely to be the foil for Edmund's wit in Chapter 3. I also liked the conclusion at the end of BRD that Morgan was not a pack animal which the Beasts understood even if the Humans did not.

But... I got stuck with her because people really liked her. Which meant then what? When I started H&M it became much more deliberate. I did a lot of reading on people on those social scales, I have a family member who is a high functioning autistic, and started writing it deliberately. She's a very difficult character to write and Edmund's own emotional intelligence began so low they were really complete disasters. There is huge growth for both of them from BRD and early H&M to where they are in this recent AW chapter.

Thank you so much for the R&R.

[psyche29]

That's so good to know, because believe me, my first overall reaction is often ZUHHHH WOW. Which is always only an approximate amalgamation of All The Feels that make up each individual little thing.

And thank you for the answer! I mean, of course I don't care if she's Autistic or not, it was more an "insatiable curiosity" thing than a judgment call on my part. I figured if she was specifically on an Autism spectrum, she was certainly very high-functioning, and if she wasn't then I was kind of leaning toward the "eccentric brilliance" camp...which is really just my way of acknowledging that people with extremely high brilliance - whether in one subject or many - don't always operate on the same level as the rest of us.

Either way, characters like that are bound to be difficult for the writer, and I hugely appreciate the effort you've put in with Morgan because she is so real, she leaps off the page (screen?). ♥

[rthstewart]

Thank you! As mentioned, Morgan was an accident. And then as I was filling in the head canon, and necessity of there being succession and heirs, I thought, OK, Edmund is sort of the only one left. So, do I invent a new character or go with Morgan? Readers likes her so I was stuck with her, and so was Ed.