Hiding fandom in the underwear drawer since 1977

There's so much, where to begin? Well, it depends. Most of this is Narnia, though there are a few other things, too. To decide if you are interested in "Not My Children's Narnia" (I'm an adult writing mostly adult characters for mostly adult readers) try Under Cover, or the first three chapters of The Stone Gryphon, Part 1 (Oxfordshire 1942), and/or the first four chapters of By Royal Decree. If you don't like those, you probably won't like the rest of it.

Edit in March 2021 to add the following:
I'm not going to attempt to update this badly dated list.  The best reading lists are on my AO3 series pages.  The items below are useful, particularly for things that were never added to AO3 (and which I should probably get to at some point).

( Never tell me the word count )On Fanfiction.net
On Archive of our Own

The Other Stuff
Liliandil and the Just King aka it's not all about you
Kwong Lee is a bad Buddhist
Lie Back and Think of Narnia -- Peridan, Flobber and meaning of the word "fark"
The Horse, his boy, the girl, her horse, the Rat and the Trickster stories are here and here
You need a wolf to run a mole to ground -- The Stone Gryphon AU
Morgan and Edmund On Two Hearts Day in the Lone Islands and Acceptance of the terms (after the departure of the Four)
Comment Fic, Give the Pevensies A Friend
More Comment Fic, including why Edmund and Leszi don't get along, why Morgan and Peter don't get along, and Jalur and the Cub.
And Then The World Blew Up (only here because really, how can you resist Sherlock Holmes, L.King's Mary Russell (no relation to Mary Anning Russell of TSG -- a coincidence), Ramses Emerson and Edmund Pevensie in Jerusalem in 1918?  The F List and I couldn't and comment fic madness resulted. The only thing missing was Miles Vorkosigan and maybe his mother.)
Lots and lots of Alternate Universe Stone Gryphon stories (where everyone lives and nobody dies and there are adventures) are scattered all over this LJ and spread to others. The easiest way to find out about the camels in the Sahara, spies in Moscow, alligators, and Che Guevara is to go to the TSG AU tag
Eustace, Jill and Quebec
The Great Mother's Day Debate in which the Just King argues for posting Chapter 8 of By Royal Decree so that he can have sex and accuses Rthstewart of disrupting expectations because she's worried her children will grow up to be like him.
Food for Thought, in which I channel the mind and writing of a 16 year old girl who blogs about going through her Great Grandmother Susan's wardrobe.

Because people sometimes ask, On the Narnia side, you have, in chronological order:

The Palace Guard (chronologically first but written after By Royal Decree)
By Royal Decree and at AO3
Chapter 1 of It’s The Thought That Counts
Black as Rat and Crow
Harold and Morgan: Not A Romance (in progress, maybe)
Two Hearts Day (part of H&M: Not A Romance)
Acceptance of the Terms (part of H&M: Not A Romance)

Deny the Child (sequel to Acceptance of the Terms by the awesome Anastigmat)

I love not the man less but nature more the Great Bonding of The Monarchs To Narnia
comes first chronologically but I do not recommend reading it until you've been through at least the Narnia stories and probably Part 1 of TSG. And maybe not even then. It's not for everyone, though its assumptions are sprinkled throughout the overall story arc.

 

On the Spare Oom side you have, in chronological order,

The Stone Gryphon, Part 1, Oxfordshire 1942 and at AO3
Chapter 2, It’s The Thought That Counts
The Stone Gryphon, Part 2, The Queen Susan in Tashbaan and at AO3
The Stone Gryphon, Part 3, Apostolic Way
(up to Chapter 15)
Rat and Sword Go To War

I personally think that before you start Part 2 of The Queen Susan in Tashbaan, it's a good idea to skim By Royal Decree and Harold and Morgan (even though unfinished) because there’s a lot that happens there, especially in terms of Edmund’s story, that is relevant. The Palace Guard is relevant to the Good Beasts and other personalities who crop up throughout The Stone Gryphon. I don't have many true surprises but one of them is spoiled in Chapter 2 of the It's The Thought that Counts so you might want to read Chapter 14 of The Stone Gryphon, Part 1, Oxfordshire 1942 first.

Stories outside this (intended to be) cohesive vision are:

Under Cover and at AO3
The Maenad of the Maquis and at AO3
Follow The Star and at AO3

Oh My Gawd, it's sooo long, so here's a short cut

A Timeline of events in The Queen Susan in Tashbaan
Partial cast of characters through most of The Queen Susan in Tashbaan, including character key to the allegorical code used in the story.

I had to google fu More Joy Day. Admittedly, I’m not feeling terribly joyous the last two days due to some badness and woe – one of those situations with a close family friend about your own age going into the hospital for a backache and coming out a day later with a dire prognosis. WTF? So, I’ll just get that out there and move on.

After 2 plus years of hiding rthstewart from the Old Fandom Friends, I’ve now come clean, more or less, and so some of them are now over here. So, Old Fandom Friends meet New Fandom Friends. Fanfiction has been my social network for a very, very long time.

We’ve all had some fun watching this Ur Doing It Wrong unfold (also here and here) and if you want to read more, PM lady_songsmith about it who has done a wonderful job dissecting the Ur Doing It Wrong advocates.  (I very much want to buy Sasper and NotAFan a drink.  Step up to the bar, ladies, whoever you are).  We went through some of this earlier over here with the “fic slayer” Anaprate which turned into a lovely discussion here about textual analysis, communities, and canonicity.

It does make me a little sad and wistful as I have noticed that some folks who have been long time readers, have apparently finally abandoned the stories and jumped on board with the above. I suspect that, to their mind, I finally went where they just could not follow, first with the NFE, and then when I tried to recognize what the data show about the social impact of the war on women with Helen and her guilty relationship with the widow Beatrice next door. I get where the objections come from and I regret that we seem to have parted company as I do really value the associations that have developed over the course of the last few years.

Something interesting from the last chapter is the reader split on whether the “children” would perceive the relationship.  They are all adult and sophisticated.  Susan sees something and dismisses it -- essentially concluding, "I know what that looks like but of course it's just my imagination.  My mother would never do anything like that."   I’d written several versions of the scene in the kitchen with Susan and her mother and in some Susan did recognize it.  Readers definitely went both ways on the issue.

Last, there’s been (again) a lot stuff about poor Mary Sue. Geek trendsetter Felicia Day recently Tweeted that more than “meh” she was coming to hate the term Mary Sue, which led to the often posted link to the discussion of why Mary Sue was sexist. My favorite exploration of Sue comes from Pat Pflieger here. It was that article that formed the basis for my own exploration of Sue in the character of Dalia. The article is dated in its fandom references but in the end, Ms. Pfliger comes down solidly in the camp that Mary Sue is an expression of feminine empowerment, and maybe the very first one for a young girl.

Granted I don’t read all those stories on the ff.net page. But that’s not the point. I think of it this way. When I was 10, I used to make sure I always wore sensible shoes to school because, should a portal open and take me to Narnia, I’d be ready. I knew it wasn't real, but if it was real, one does not simply walk into Narnia in sandals (I grew up in So Cal). And you can bet there was a purpose/prophecy in me going there; I didn't think romance at the time but adventure and awesome ninja fighting skills definitely.  By 13, I was certain I had a tragic past and I was totally the 10th member of the Fellowship.   My spousal unit mentions that there’s not a boy (or man) in the world who, alone, shooting hoops or kicking a ball, doesn’t pretend he’s the hero scoring the game-winning point. Every girl out twirling on the ice pretends she’s an Olympic medalist. These are self inserts, the products of our glorious imaginations, and damn it, most of us will never make a living as a basketball player or Olympic skater. The fact that we aren’t great at these endeavors, and might even be really terrible at them, doesn’t matter because it’s the glory of creative pretend play.  So there.  (I've been thinking about this a lot as someone posted the first 1700 words of a girl falls into Narnia using some of rthstewart-verse, so I'm anxiously waiting to see what (if anything) happens next.  Oh vanity but I am curious really to see a modern FOC/Peter set in rth-influenced Golden Age crack Narnia).

Oh and I’m looking for a 1940s Brit speak for insert into the following [assume drunk paratrooper grunts at a pub]

“That trout was plaster-of-paris,” Peter added, laughing at Brotheridge's quote.

The others all stared at him.

“The book? Three Men in a Boat? To say nothing of the dog?”

More blank, glassy looks.

“I’ll just shut it and drink my pint,” Peter said.

Bailey laughed and slapped him across the shoulder blades so hard he nearly upended his beer.  “It’s cuz it’s about boats.  That's how you know it."

“Pevensie don’t know ___ from ___, but he does know boats!” Parr hollered.

Mary, Peter, Asim, Eustace, Alligator Snapping Turtles, and Alligators.  anastigmatfic is magnificent and awesome and really you have to go read this right now.

Also moonshine, the Florida swamp, and a missing camera bag.  Though I am wondering what a pair of leopard-spotted Y-fronts are and I'm too scared to google it.

“Macrochelys temminckii is one of the largest freshwater turtles in the world, Eustace,” scolded Mary, “and you’d do well to show it somerespect.”

Mary had been ecstatic at the sight of the thing. Of course she had: what the locals called an ‘alligator snapping turtle’ was enormous, thickly spined, and resembled nothing so much as the illegitimate offspring of a rhinoceros and a pangolin – one with a bad, bad hangover and the head of a dinosaur.

You would be amazed, really, how many times a reader/reviewer has said something that made me think, "Oh yeah, better do that" or "Great idea!" All of TQSiT came from reader commentary in Part 1.  I assure you that the most commented part of the Chapter 9, the little bits of Lucy writing to Aidan and Edmund writing to Morgan, would not have been in there if the F-list had not suggested it. So, thanks! Thank yourselves. Round of applause! I have not received a single notification about the chapter by the way. Zip. So, my usual posting paranoia is like times 12 and I so appreciate those of you who have reviewed.

In other news, I got my Remix assignment  and it is awesome and I'm thrilled. Deadline is April 23 so I've got some time and with spring allergies (yes, I'm getting sick) and US Tax Day approaching, April 15, this probably demands another look at Harold and Morgan. We'll see.

Also, despite my usual aversion to the dread visuals, the superlative Anastigmat has been busy and has created some very amusing Narnia based ones of old photos with captions -- the Polly ones are great and the one of "Lucy" kicking "Susan" is hilarious.  She's included a few with tie ins to my fic. Do go take a look here and here and tell her how awesome she is.

Also, dear unfortunate remixer who drew my name.  Have at it.  There's a lot of material so pick something or anything, a chapter, a character, the shorts or one shots.  I've enable anonymous posting here and on ff.net and don't log IPs so if you want to ask a question, you may do so.  I will be thrilled with whatever you do for I adore fic of fic.

For l_a_r_m  on her birthday.  Birthday fic!  The first part some of you might recall from the Give the Pevensies a friend commentfic.  This expands it a little bit.  Years and timing and dates are wrong wrong wrong.  Also, I borrow heavily from the ideas of John LeCarre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  The ideas are, in sum and substance, his.  I've just inserted Tebbitt and Susan into it.

****

( Walking from the train station had not been one of George's better ideas  )