Hiding fandom in the underwear drawer since 1977

I interrupt this Star Wars squee to enthusiastically plug a follow on to Harold and Morgan written by the lovely, talented and amazing syrena_of_the_lake   It's here, The Last Test and Proof and deals with a disaster of epic proportions befalling Cair Paravel after the departure of the Four.  Go!  It's lovely.  And I'm so honored that Syrena decided to tell the story and borrow some of the characters from H&M and elsewhere.

And Oh My Gosh, I forgot to include a picture of Cook that Syrena did!

And so Harold and Morgan has concluded. The chapter is here, based heavily upon some meme responses and requests here, including E's Acceptance of the Terms and requests by Adaese and Syrena. I am going to go ahead and make a plea. If you did read it and liked it, could you let me know and please leave a review?

I guess I should say something about the characterization of Edmund Linch -- he (and Liv) are both pretty critical of their older generation. He's vowing to do it differently and Liv is there pushing him on. A lot of this is the arrogance of youth and the "I won't make the mistakes they did." He wants to strike his own path, establish his own rule, and that's not a bad thing. It can, however, be hard to read, as if some young one is just trashing all the good that came before. He's not -- Ed is just making his own way. They are young and think they know everything and I let them enjoy that surety that comes with youth.

Liv sort of leaped off the page. In pieces that didn't make the cut, I played a lot with her being very much inspired by Lucy, though with more of Susan's traditional femininity (she is 2-3 years older than he is). And I enjoyed writing their relationship, which took an unexpected turn toward the sensual, which I hope isn't off putting -- but that's where this all started. There's a lot of guilt and baggage both in H&M (for instance the way the Bankers and Calormenes look down on Narnians) and in I love not Man the less with the bonding rites. Liv and Ed are obviously way beyond that, crazy in love, completely devoted to one another, and always have been, and have a very positive and equal relationship. This chapter ended up pulling in things from nearly all my other work.

And I killed Jalur (that was Syrena's fault). And Lambert.

I had promised a second epilogue, Rejection of the Terms, in the vein of Lost in Translation's Everybody Stays, Nobody Leaves. I liked the 7000 words or so I've pulled together. The idea, which doesn't hang together completely, is set up at the beginning of Acceptance. Peter has the choice to again chase the White Stag or not. Chasing the wish leads them back to Spare Oom. It poses the same issue that underlies a lot of the work -- If you act, does it mean you don't have faith? Are you the Foolish Faun? It's at the heart of Food for Thought and the ultimate split between Peter and Susan over whether to use the rings. Peter will act, because that's what Peter does, even if maybe he should not, in this case to literally chase a wish. So the epilogue splits at this point. Does Peter chase the Stag (Acceptance of the Terms) or does he not chase the Stag (Rejection of the Terms). This piece with Dinan I owe to Adaese btw.

Rejection of the Terms is very Peter and Morgan heavy, with lots of added children sword play and food fights. it poses the idea that both of them come to terms with what family means and the possibility of letting go of expectation -- also, very much a Peter character issue. It was too long to include in this update and once Acceptance of the Terms was all on the page, I was happy with its happy ending.
( a little more on Rejection and what I might or might not do with it )

if you read, thank you, so much. I'm very grateful.

I posted In the Counting House. Thank you for reading.

The end is near. I posted Chapter 23, Yule Tidings of H&M. I know the story is getting tedious. We're almost done. There was just stuff that had to be done in the last 3 chapters will all this outside pov. In the old days of the story, it was easy to get Morgan back where she belongs. But having done what I did because that's where the characters were in their arc, it meant I had to write out of it. And sometimes I know the end game but the way they get there isn't so well thought out. Or something.

( story blather )
From Tumblr, this accurately describes my posting mood:

 

source

The NFE Madness round posted here! AND TWO IMPORTANT THINGS! Someone wrote a lovely Susan story for me! World Enough

And someone else wrote a story set in TSG-related verse (set during Apostolic Way) involving Peter and the rabbit he showed to Morgan in the AUish Lost in Translation I wrote.  It's adorable and sad and lovely,  The Rabbit of the High King

There are some other really fun stories, too, so go check them out!


I should be posting a new H&M chapter this soon.  Here's a snippet.


I owe comments and thanks to many people for generous reviews.  Thanks so much.  I've not responded as I've been trying to finish the above chapter and as you might have read in the paper, things have been very unsettled in the area I live in.  Your support has been a bright spot in a very, very dark time.  A brief bit on that below. 

And behind the cut a brief comment on the federal government shut down

( Brief rant against those who think our President is a foreign-born Muslim and the anti-Christ )

So I just posted Chapter 20, Covered in Thorns of Harold and Morgan.  The chapter jumps around a bit in time, all told probably spanning about 2-3 months.  Some of this chapter is really, really, really old. 

It's been an odd week about which the less said the better.  This upcoming week, we have Hurricane/Cyclone/Nor'easter Sandy bearing down  on us, so that's definitely not good and my thoughts to those of you in the path, too.  Stay safe!

edit:  Now that it is not near 2 AM, there are a couple of other things I wanted to add.

Hoberry's comments about what death does to memory and communication are, not surprisingly, based upon personal experience.  Lucy mentions this during the Dieppe memorial Chapter 2 of TQSiT, how people say odd things when they are grieving.  The strangest conversations of my life and some of the worst arguments have been when there was a casket in the room.

Second, if you like, you can invent all sort of things about Edmund and the handsome, witty, very adroit Archen widower, Lord Abnur.  I have my own head canon there, but neither has deigned to confirm it, being the clever and discreet men that they are.

Third, Seth Stanleh's letter, while cheating in reveal of Plot, also has a whole lot to say about character.  In earlier drafts, I had him being very sympathetic and including a letter for Rufus, who had been his guard.  That came out and he expresses his condolences in a short, curt sentence and then moves on to what is more interesting and important to him.  He concludes, clever boy that he is, with a quid pro quo.  I gave you all THIS and now won't you let me continue working on the mine?  Oh Seth.  You still have a ways to go.

I realized that an earlier version of Edmund's letter to Morgan mentioned her Gryphon flight but it somehow disappeared in the editing and different versions I've had of that letter -- which date back at least 2 years.  So, I'll be editing the story to add that line back in. 

The short conversation with Peter that Edmund has does reflect my own particular head canon of the relationship which is not especially emotionally intimate.  That's not a popular interpretation at all. 

Oh, I also posted a story about the Gryphon General from the last HM chapter on nffr_party called Camouflage. 

Time to clean out the gutters.

So, last night I posted Many Happy Returns. 

This has been a very difficult update.  I’ve had tons of real life writing and close readers know what is coming and I'm looking forward to it no more than you are.  It's strange because I have probably 50,000 words in this part of the story and the first part, the presentation to Peter, I had written before and it still took me 2 weeks to write a few thousand words of the same scene from a different point of view. 

And gosh, I could not resist making Peter so sentimental about it all.  They are completely counting their eggs before they are fertilized, though both Roblang and Mr. Hoberry express some caution.  And yes, about that.  The resolution at the end of the chapter leaves open the possibilty that Morgan is pregnant.  If you have any thoughts on that, I'd love to hear them.

Peter and Susan are a bit clueless about all this -- in their defense, they've really not been around for most of the relational development.  Susan also has her issues with the whole thing as she sees it (and rightly so) as politically very problematic.   Also, we have something of a return to the politics and worldbuilding, such as it is, that were developed in the Lone Islands arc.

We've covered a lot of ground in the last couple of chapters.  They have really learned how to communciate and are both rising to the challenge of becoming a couple, a we, a them, in the greater world.  And then... well...

Coincidentally, Elecktrum and the1hobbit posted the first chapter of a bawdy bachelor party with Bacchus in attendance, so you know it's going to be a rollicking time.  They borrowed my Sir Leszi who would never miss a good party and I'm very flattered that they did so.  You can find the first chapter of Evangeline here. 

I'll say this again, even at the risk of being a review hound.  This type of story is a dying breed in the Narnia fandom on fanfiction.net.  If you like it and other works like it, even a single guest review of "Thanks for updating!  I liked it!" really, really means something.  Those counts, favs and follows make a statement.  As I said in the a/n at the end of the chapter, my work and I have become real outliers in the past few months as the fandom on the site has become actively hostile to anything except a very specific, very narrow brand of story.  Thanks so much for your support.

I posted chapter 16, A is to B as B is to C.  You can find it here. 

A huge thanks to all of you who helped with this.  Some of the dialogue was really hard.  I hope it works for you.  Please let me know, one way or another.  There are a couple of really important scenes coming up but I found this was just getting too long, so I cut it here.  

I posted chapter 14 of Harold and Morgan early this morning and you can find it here:


( Assumption make an Ass of U and Me )