![[sticky entry]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/entry/sticky_entry.png){kind=small}
Okay, so I have switched to posting my fics only on AO3 (Ankhiale), though the ones already up here will stay up. I will keep a running list here, however.
Fandoms and fic series are alphabetized; fics are listed in preferred reading order. One-shots are listed first, and are alphabetized. Older fics have two links: the title link going to the post on this journal, and the AO3 link to the fic. Newer fics are linked only to AO3. A handful of fics are not up at AO3; if I ever do post them there, I will add the appropriate link. Links for series titles take you to the series page on AO3.
Meta/head-canon posts are also linked here, grouped at the end of the relevant section. (General meta grouped at the end of the one-shots; meta pertaining to specific fic series at the end of those sections.)
On warnings: I warn for rape, incest, and abuse/torture. Any such fic is locked, unless I think it's very, very vague. I do NOT warn for spoilers, language, character death, violence of a level found in the original works, consensual sex, any pairings, or anything else. The warnings are only for fics posted here; I won't bother listing warnings for the AO3 fics since you can easily read them there.
(A note on sex: I don't ever get very explicit at all, though you'll definitely know what's happening. Unless there's another reason to lock the fic, such fics are unlocked.)
( Alice in Wonderland (2010) )
( Circle of Magic )
( Death Note )
( Harry Potter )
( Saiyuki )
( Tortall )
( Yu-Gi-Oh! )
...
I really, really wish authors would just butt out of conversations about their works. Especially when they get overly-defensive and throw out random, never-before-heard "canon" about the things people are criticizing.
It really, really stifles discussion.
(Yes, Tamora Pierce, I'm looking at you.)
It really, really stifles discussion.
(Yes, Tamora Pierce, I'm looking at you.)
Entry tags:
Oh. My. God...
If I do the Emelan/Tortall crossover I'm pondering, it just occurs to me that the Dominion Jewel itself poses two huge problems, namely:
1. What happens when an ambient stone mage who can canonically talk to rocks like they're sapient beings gets near the Jewel?
2. What happens when the living heart of a mountain, who can talk to more rocks, gets near it?
...If I were writing epic crackfic, I'd totally ship Luvo/Dominion Jewel, actually. XD
1. What happens when an ambient stone mage who can canonically talk to rocks like they're sapient beings gets near the Jewel?
2. What happens when the living heart of a mountain, who can talk to more rocks, gets near it?
...If I were writing epic crackfic, I'd totally ship Luvo/Dominion Jewel, actually. XD
Entry tags:
More thoughts on the Emelan/Tortall crossover.
See this post for the setup.
Minor Battle Magic spoilers ahead. ( I could use a second opinion on all of this. )
Minor Battle Magic spoilers ahead. ( I could use a second opinion on all of this. )
Entry tags:
Holy cow, I've not been around for a while.
Fic update: wrote two new fics, one (Memory) reconciling the end of Battle Magic with what we got told in Will of the Empress and Melting Stones (my first Emelan fic!), and one (Duty) playing with an old, old idea about what would happen if Numair died on a mission for the Crown.
Speaking of Emelan... I'm really wishing I knew more people into the Circle books, because I've just been bit with a plotbunny for, well, another in the inexplicable genre of Tortall/Emelan crossovers. (Probably 'cause I've been reading a bunch of other peoples' crossovers, actually; it seems like half the Emelan fic out there is crossed over with Tortall.)
And, well, it seems like everyone sets their Emelan crossovers in the Lady Knight era. I have no idea why, save that PotS and Kel and the gang are pretty damn popular. I guess people sort of default to "present day" in writing fic?
But I am a SotL junkie, and as anyone who's so much as sneezed at this blog knows, I'm ... more than a little obsessed with Lioness Rampant, and the AU-ing thereof, in particular. XD
You can probably see where this is going. If you haven't read Emelan, beware of spoilers. ( Plotting ahoy! )
So... too contrived? Did I miss something blindingly obvious? (Wouldn't surprise me.) Other criticisms? I ... sort of really want to write this, but I'm not sure if the genre's overdone.
Speaking of Emelan... I'm really wishing I knew more people into the Circle books, because I've just been bit with a plotbunny for, well, another in the inexplicable genre of Tortall/Emelan crossovers. (Probably 'cause I've been reading a bunch of other peoples' crossovers, actually; it seems like half the Emelan fic out there is crossed over with Tortall.)
And, well, it seems like everyone sets their Emelan crossovers in the Lady Knight era. I have no idea why, save that PotS and Kel and the gang are pretty damn popular. I guess people sort of default to "present day" in writing fic?
But I am a SotL junkie, and as anyone who's so much as sneezed at this blog knows, I'm ... more than a little obsessed with Lioness Rampant, and the AU-ing thereof, in particular. XD
You can probably see where this is going. If you haven't read Emelan, beware of spoilers. ( Plotting ahoy! )
So... too contrived? Did I miss something blindingly obvious? (Wouldn't surprise me.) Other criticisms? I ... sort of really want to write this, but I'm not sure if the genre's overdone.
Entry tags:
Dear Tamora Pierce, Please Shut Up About Queerness.
So I haven't been on the internet for a while, and yesterday, what with my roof collapsing and a sewer line breaking, I decided I needed a break. And so I come back to the internet, catch up on Mark Reads Tortall, and realize Tamora Pierce has been making comments there. And, once again, she's being crazy defensive over criticism, and once again she proves she doesn't understand what it means to be genderqueer.
So because I'm pissed off again, I'm writing a letter.
***
Dear Tamora Pierce,
Let me start by saying that I am coming at this from a place of profound love for your stories. You are one of about five authors whose books I buy sight unseen. Song of the Lioness in particular was hugely important to me growing up, and it still is; I may not like everything you've written, or every aspect of the things I do like, but I always have been a critical reader. (My lit teachers trained me well!) The messages you try to work into your stories are the messages I wish I'd found in more stories - that I wish I still find in more stories.
But recently, you've been worrying me. It's starting to feel like you're not content to just write really kickass feminist fantasy - it's starting to feel like you've got some list of underrepresented groups and are trying to work through that. It's getting preachy, and I say that as someone so liberal I find socialism conservative. If anything, it sits less comfortably for me, because these are messages I should like, should even find empowering.
And you're pretty clearly getting out of your depth. It's pretty clear you're moving beyond the limits of your knowledge - Bloodhound proved that, and while I could have chalked that up to just the strictly limited POV and the culture, every time you make additional comments about queerness, you prove that no, you really don't get it.
I'm queer. Specifically, I'm asexual and, for lack of any better term, I identify as third-gendered or simply genderqueer, despite knowing full well that doesn't help people "get" me. This line of yours, in SotL - "But you cannot change what the gods have made you. The sooner you accept that, the happier you will be." - that line fucked me up good.
Not by itself, of course. But it was one more part of a constant drumbeat that told me that if I felt my body was wrong, it was all in my head, and I should just suck it up and pretend I'm female, and that doing so would somehow make me happy. Just like all of your characters needing some romantic/sexual plotline means there's no one I can identify with on that level.
I don't want to be too harsh, here. It's not like you singlehandedly gave me a gender-identity complex or something . . . but see, as a teen I really identified with Alanna. Not with her particular goals or her particular personality, but with her masquerade. Sure, I wasn't stupid. I knew she wasn't genderqueer - I didn't even know that word, then, but I knew she wasn't whatever I was. She was female and just playing at being male, really, so she could achieve a larger goal. She was still the closest I found to someone like me, though.
But that wasn't all I could identify with, when it came to how Alanna related to herself. I could - still can - relate very strongly with her strongly negative reactions towards her breasts and, especially, her period. Nothing makes me feel so alien in my own body as menstruating; nothing is quite so ... dissonant ... as being perpetually startled by my own breasts. Given the opportunity, my uterus and my breasts would be gone.
We can do that, these days. But there's still a constant judgment and even shame towards women who get elective surgery - and that's what people would see with me. Just a big-breasted woman getting elective surgery. And it'd be worse if I had the chance to get rid of my uterus - people don't trust people like me to know what we really want, to make up our own minds.
People act like I somehow owe it to them to remain what nature made me - female-bodied and potentially fertile.
You reinforced that.
You reinforced that, just like you reinforced the notion that I couldn't be a feminist and prefer skirts (seriously, Ms. Pierce, you've been wearing the wrong skirts), that I couldn't be someone who preferred beauty and silly things without being condescended to by snot-nosed teens. (and folks wonder why I hate Daine...)
You weren't the one who fucked me up, Ms. Pierce, but people like you certainly did. Some of us don't identify as feminists despite strongly resonating with the basic message because feminists drove us out.
And now you keep trying to be queer-positive, and I believe you mean it. You also clearly don't understand what you mean, not when you're making characters like Okha (is he a gay man who dresses in drag? or is she a transwoman, Ms. Pierce?) or comments like this: ::But you cannot change what the gods have made you. The sooner you accept that, the happier you will be.”
Well, okay, so I imagine if you were trans* or genderqueer, that sentence is like being punched in the face?::
Where--anywhere--does it say the gods make us straight? Where does it say the **gods** forbid queerness or that the gods do not allow us to be queer? Do you think the gods really believe queerness is unnatural? After all the shenanigans that gods get up to?
In BLOODHOUND I explain that one god makes trans folk his express responsibility. Well, "responsibility" is too strong a word for the Trickster. He hates it. He isn't always a "he," either.
It's no secret I hate it when authors retcon their own work, which is probably the single biggest issue I have with your later Tortall canon. I understand that's a personal taste thing, but it becomes ... kind of offensive when you start retconning yourself to be immune to criticism, to make a hurtful line less hurtful because all of us who were hurt were, apparently, just reading it wrong.
And, like I said, you don't get it. Being genderqueer or trans* has nothing to do with sexual orientation. Mark rightly took you to task for sticking in a comment that borders on transphobic - you responded with a comment making it an issue of sexual orientation, which is not the same thing.
When you did this in Bloodhound, I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. I clearly shouldn't have. You clearly don't get the difference between being not-straight and being genderqueer or trans*, and given that this is hardly your first muddled post-Bloodhound comment, and given that I know your fans have talked about this, you clearly don't want to learn.
Yet you still want to write about us. Worse, you want to come off as an authority, spinning your feminist cred into broader progressive cred. You're trying to 'splain things to us, and when we call you on it you backpedal frantically so you don't lose face.
It's not working.
Please, please stop talking about me. Stop using my nature as fodder for your stories, as one more plank in your progressive pedestal.
It hurts. You're hurting me. If you can't understand what I am, can you at least understand that?
Sincerely,
Alix
P.S. - While we're at it, could you stop acting like you actually know shit about mythology? Your comments come off as insulting, ill-informed, and somewhat racist. And for what it's worth, you don't know shit about tricksters, the lwa, chthonic deities, or real Greek mythology. It might help if you read something other than bad Victoriana and Joseph Campbell.
Signed, a devotee of those "scary" tricksters, who finds your pathetic, half-assed Kyprioth so offensive I can barely speak about it.
(And no, I'm not going to be polite about this. I've been polite enough already.)
So because I'm pissed off again, I'm writing a letter.
***
Dear Tamora Pierce,
Let me start by saying that I am coming at this from a place of profound love for your stories. You are one of about five authors whose books I buy sight unseen. Song of the Lioness in particular was hugely important to me growing up, and it still is; I may not like everything you've written, or every aspect of the things I do like, but I always have been a critical reader. (My lit teachers trained me well!) The messages you try to work into your stories are the messages I wish I'd found in more stories - that I wish I still find in more stories.
But recently, you've been worrying me. It's starting to feel like you're not content to just write really kickass feminist fantasy - it's starting to feel like you've got some list of underrepresented groups and are trying to work through that. It's getting preachy, and I say that as someone so liberal I find socialism conservative. If anything, it sits less comfortably for me, because these are messages I should like, should even find empowering.
And you're pretty clearly getting out of your depth. It's pretty clear you're moving beyond the limits of your knowledge - Bloodhound proved that, and while I could have chalked that up to just the strictly limited POV and the culture, every time you make additional comments about queerness, you prove that no, you really don't get it.
I'm queer. Specifically, I'm asexual and, for lack of any better term, I identify as third-gendered or simply genderqueer, despite knowing full well that doesn't help people "get" me. This line of yours, in SotL - "But you cannot change what the gods have made you. The sooner you accept that, the happier you will be." - that line fucked me up good.
Not by itself, of course. But it was one more part of a constant drumbeat that told me that if I felt my body was wrong, it was all in my head, and I should just suck it up and pretend I'm female, and that doing so would somehow make me happy. Just like all of your characters needing some romantic/sexual plotline means there's no one I can identify with on that level.
I don't want to be too harsh, here. It's not like you singlehandedly gave me a gender-identity complex or something . . . but see, as a teen I really identified with Alanna. Not with her particular goals or her particular personality, but with her masquerade. Sure, I wasn't stupid. I knew she wasn't genderqueer - I didn't even know that word, then, but I knew she wasn't whatever I was. She was female and just playing at being male, really, so she could achieve a larger goal. She was still the closest I found to someone like me, though.
But that wasn't all I could identify with, when it came to how Alanna related to herself. I could - still can - relate very strongly with her strongly negative reactions towards her breasts and, especially, her period. Nothing makes me feel so alien in my own body as menstruating; nothing is quite so ... dissonant ... as being perpetually startled by my own breasts. Given the opportunity, my uterus and my breasts would be gone.
We can do that, these days. But there's still a constant judgment and even shame towards women who get elective surgery - and that's what people would see with me. Just a big-breasted woman getting elective surgery. And it'd be worse if I had the chance to get rid of my uterus - people don't trust people like me to know what we really want, to make up our own minds.
People act like I somehow owe it to them to remain what nature made me - female-bodied and potentially fertile.
You reinforced that.
You reinforced that, just like you reinforced the notion that I couldn't be a feminist and prefer skirts (seriously, Ms. Pierce, you've been wearing the wrong skirts), that I couldn't be someone who preferred beauty and silly things without being condescended to by snot-nosed teens. (and folks wonder why I hate Daine...)
You weren't the one who fucked me up, Ms. Pierce, but people like you certainly did. Some of us don't identify as feminists despite strongly resonating with the basic message because feminists drove us out.
And now you keep trying to be queer-positive, and I believe you mean it. You also clearly don't understand what you mean, not when you're making characters like Okha (is he a gay man who dresses in drag? or is she a transwoman, Ms. Pierce?) or comments like this: ::But you cannot change what the gods have made you. The sooner you accept that, the happier you will be.”
Well, okay, so I imagine if you were trans* or genderqueer, that sentence is like being punched in the face?::
Where--anywhere--does it say the gods make us straight? Where does it say the **gods** forbid queerness or that the gods do not allow us to be queer? Do you think the gods really believe queerness is unnatural? After all the shenanigans that gods get up to?
In BLOODHOUND I explain that one god makes trans folk his express responsibility. Well, "responsibility" is too strong a word for the Trickster. He hates it. He isn't always a "he," either.
It's no secret I hate it when authors retcon their own work, which is probably the single biggest issue I have with your later Tortall canon. I understand that's a personal taste thing, but it becomes ... kind of offensive when you start retconning yourself to be immune to criticism, to make a hurtful line less hurtful because all of us who were hurt were, apparently, just reading it wrong.
And, like I said, you don't get it. Being genderqueer or trans* has nothing to do with sexual orientation. Mark rightly took you to task for sticking in a comment that borders on transphobic - you responded with a comment making it an issue of sexual orientation, which is not the same thing.
When you did this in Bloodhound, I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. I clearly shouldn't have. You clearly don't get the difference between being not-straight and being genderqueer or trans*, and given that this is hardly your first muddled post-Bloodhound comment, and given that I know your fans have talked about this, you clearly don't want to learn.
Yet you still want to write about us. Worse, you want to come off as an authority, spinning your feminist cred into broader progressive cred. You're trying to 'splain things to us, and when we call you on it you backpedal frantically so you don't lose face.
It's not working.
Please, please stop talking about me. Stop using my nature as fodder for your stories, as one more plank in your progressive pedestal.
It hurts. You're hurting me. If you can't understand what I am, can you at least understand that?
Sincerely,
Alix
P.S. - While we're at it, could you stop acting like you actually know shit about mythology? Your comments come off as insulting, ill-informed, and somewhat racist. And for what it's worth, you don't know shit about tricksters, the lwa, chthonic deities, or real Greek mythology. It might help if you read something other than bad Victoriana and Joseph Campbell.
Signed, a devotee of those "scary" tricksters, who finds your pathetic, half-assed Kyprioth so offensive I can barely speak about it.
(And no, I'm not going to be polite about this. I've been polite enough already.)
Random question on the K'mir.
So I'm rereading LR in preparation for yet another Dominion-Jewel-goes-to-Sarain AU, and I'm struck by how Liam describes the civil war. Apparently, I remembered it all wrong:
And as we all know, Adigun married Kalasin and had a daughter, who was twenty in LR and thus must have been around eighteen when the rebellion started - nineteenish when the K'mir rebelled. Adigun must also have married Kalasin well before he was even warlord, because he became warlord when Thayet was ~15.
This, to reiterate, is what Liam says about the effects of Adigun's mercenaries:
The further implication here is clear: Adigun couldn't control the mercenaries. Liam speaks of them in terms almost more suited to a natural disaster, and the implication is that they slipped their leash and went on a campaign of terror against everybody in Sarain: not just against Anduo partisans, which is what Adigun hired them for, but against the K'mir and even Adigun's own partisans.
Later WOG talks almost as if it's lowlander vs. K'mir, but that's explicitly not what Liam and Alanna describe in LR. Except for one thing: Liam also explicitly states that the war is in the mountains and highlands, not down by the coast, which implies that the war has become Saren vs. K'mir.
I also see no implication that Adigun married Kalasin for political reasons. All it says is that he married her, and that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. I do suspect they were a love match, and that Adigun, and possibly most of the Saren, had no problem with the K'mir until the K'mir decided they had a problem with all the Saren.
I'm not, incidentally, blaming the K'mir for this. If Adigun's mercenaries did go after them and, say, torch their land, it's entirely reasonable for them to a) blame Adigun for not controlling them/think he let them loose deliberately and b) think that the lowland war has gotten out of hand. The mercenaries might be ethnically lowlander, as well.
This puts the crackdowns against the K'mir Buri mentions later in a new light. The laws against the K'mir must be relatively new - only a year old, if that. Buri does imply a longer, much more entrenched animosity towards the K'mir - lowlanders taking them for slaves, stealing their horses. But part of me wonders if that is all that longstanding, or if it's new since the war; it's not explicit either way in text. The laws forbidding the K'mir to meet are new, and seem to be a wartime imposition; this is bolstered by the fact that Kalasin and Thayet's pleading doesn't change Adigun's mind. I wonder if the lowlanders have only been enslaving prisoners of war - or perhaps using the war as an excuse. It wouldn't be unheard of for either case, at all. The horse-stealing could even be justified by military or economic necessity.
I also find it interesting that Adigun apparently passed "laws" - as in, more than one, forbidding the K'mir to meet in groups - and that these are apparently the only anti-K'mir laws he passed.
But Liam also says that "in five years, Adigun has destroyed the work of generations" - implying not only that Sarain was peaceful for generations, but also prosperous. This squares with the suggestion that the jin Wilimas took over from the Kaufains or whoever was in between peacefully, but also suggests that Adigun has, from day one, been a bad king destroying his country - which is somewhat contradicted by Liam's earlier timeline for the rebellions, unless the reason zhir Anduo made his play was that Adigun had spent three years running the country into the ground. Which is possible.
I've also been wondering about Thayet. She speaks some K'mir, and is implied to be fluent; Buri says Thayet's "K'miri-taught," but contrasts it to her being "K'miri-bred," yet implies that Thayet's basically as good as a pure K'mir. When did all this happen? Given the timeline, I assume before Adigun even assumed the throne - i.e., before Thayet was fifteen. Yet Buri doesn't say Thayet was raised K'mir, so it wasn't like prior to Adigun's ascension Thayet was living full-time from birth among the tribes. It does, however, bolster the notion that pre-war Adigun didn't have a problem with the K'mir, or even with his half-K'mir daughter learning and even celebrating her mother's heritage. Which goes towards the notion that the antipathy towards the K'mir as a whole is recent and driven by their sudden rebellion, but does not square with how Thayet and Buri talk about the Saren court so virulently hating female warriors and K'mir. It also doesn't square with how Kalasin sent Thayet to the convent - but given the timeline, that could be something Kalasin only did after the war broke out.
Also, given how Buri refers to Thayet as "Kalasin's daughter," as if this means something significant, I wonder if Thayet is twice-royal - she's the last jian Wilima, though not Adigun's heir, but she might well be Kalasin's heir among the K'mir, and possibly to a position of high power, if not necessarily an explicitly royal position.
--
On the question of zhirit - Coram talks like it's a higher title than zhir, in which case it's likely to be both singular and plural, like jin seems to be. On the other hand, since I can't quite figure out how to feminize zhir - you can't pull a jin/jian - and we know that the K'mir are at least partly matriarchal, part of me really likes the idea that the last true Saren royalty was a matriarchal line, and that zhirit is the female equivalent of zhir. This does not square with Thayet's insistence that no woman may sit on the Saren throne, or with Liam's insistence that Thayet is not the heir, but that could be a relatively recent rule, perhaps made because of however the Kaufain line fell.
- Adigun is the third jin Wilima ruler of Sarain. Apparently his transition to power was peaceful; no mention that it wasn't.
- The text implies, but does not outright state, that the jin Wilima took over the Saren throne from the zhirit Kaufain, and does not imply that this happened particularly brutally. (Random question: is "zhirit" plural or singular, or both? "jin" seems to be both.)
- Two years prior to LR, rebels try to put zhir Anduo on the Saren throne. Their reason is that he is a descendant of the Kaufains; that his surname differs suggests the Kaufains' main line died out.
- According to the timeline, this rebellion is three years after Adigun ascends to the throne. No mention of prior problems or challenges to Adigun.
- "Last spring" - i.e. approx. halfway through the rebellion, Adigun hired mercenaries (from where?) that "destroyed towns, crops - people." Liam uses this as proof that the Anduo partisans might now win, because Adigun is no longer strong enough to maintain his hold on the throne.
- Liam also states explicitly that it is after this mercenaries' rampage that the K'mir rebelled against both sides, and that they "promise to fight the winner" of the Saren/lowland civil war.
- No problems with the K'mir are even hinted at before this.
And as we all know, Adigun married Kalasin and had a daughter, who was twenty in LR and thus must have been around eighteen when the rebellion started - nineteenish when the K'mir rebelled. Adigun must also have married Kalasin well before he was even warlord, because he became warlord when Thayet was ~15.
This, to reiterate, is what Liam says about the effects of Adigun's mercenaries:
- They destroyed crops, towns, and people - implicitly, this caused the famine and utter systems collapse evidenced in LR.
- Prior to the hiring of these mercenaries, Adigun was in a much stronger position; Liam implies that the Anduo partisans could not have unseated Adigun until Adigun destabilized his own position by hiring mercenaries.
- The mercenaries were what triggered the K'miri rebellion against both factions of Saren lowlanders.
The further implication here is clear: Adigun couldn't control the mercenaries. Liam speaks of them in terms almost more suited to a natural disaster, and the implication is that they slipped their leash and went on a campaign of terror against everybody in Sarain: not just against Anduo partisans, which is what Adigun hired them for, but against the K'mir and even Adigun's own partisans.
Later WOG talks almost as if it's lowlander vs. K'mir, but that's explicitly not what Liam and Alanna describe in LR. Except for one thing: Liam also explicitly states that the war is in the mountains and highlands, not down by the coast, which implies that the war has become Saren vs. K'mir.
I also see no implication that Adigun married Kalasin for political reasons. All it says is that he married her, and that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. I do suspect they were a love match, and that Adigun, and possibly most of the Saren, had no problem with the K'mir until the K'mir decided they had a problem with all the Saren.
I'm not, incidentally, blaming the K'mir for this. If Adigun's mercenaries did go after them and, say, torch their land, it's entirely reasonable for them to a) blame Adigun for not controlling them/think he let them loose deliberately and b) think that the lowland war has gotten out of hand. The mercenaries might be ethnically lowlander, as well.
This puts the crackdowns against the K'mir Buri mentions later in a new light. The laws against the K'mir must be relatively new - only a year old, if that. Buri does imply a longer, much more entrenched animosity towards the K'mir - lowlanders taking them for slaves, stealing their horses. But part of me wonders if that is all that longstanding, or if it's new since the war; it's not explicit either way in text. The laws forbidding the K'mir to meet are new, and seem to be a wartime imposition; this is bolstered by the fact that Kalasin and Thayet's pleading doesn't change Adigun's mind. I wonder if the lowlanders have only been enslaving prisoners of war - or perhaps using the war as an excuse. It wouldn't be unheard of for either case, at all. The horse-stealing could even be justified by military or economic necessity.
I also find it interesting that Adigun apparently passed "laws" - as in, more than one, forbidding the K'mir to meet in groups - and that these are apparently the only anti-K'mir laws he passed.
But Liam also says that "in five years, Adigun has destroyed the work of generations" - implying not only that Sarain was peaceful for generations, but also prosperous. This squares with the suggestion that the jin Wilimas took over from the Kaufains or whoever was in between peacefully, but also suggests that Adigun has, from day one, been a bad king destroying his country - which is somewhat contradicted by Liam's earlier timeline for the rebellions, unless the reason zhir Anduo made his play was that Adigun had spent three years running the country into the ground. Which is possible.
I've also been wondering about Thayet. She speaks some K'mir, and is implied to be fluent; Buri says Thayet's "K'miri-taught," but contrasts it to her being "K'miri-bred," yet implies that Thayet's basically as good as a pure K'mir. When did all this happen? Given the timeline, I assume before Adigun even assumed the throne - i.e., before Thayet was fifteen. Yet Buri doesn't say Thayet was raised K'mir, so it wasn't like prior to Adigun's ascension Thayet was living full-time from birth among the tribes. It does, however, bolster the notion that pre-war Adigun didn't have a problem with the K'mir, or even with his half-K'mir daughter learning and even celebrating her mother's heritage. Which goes towards the notion that the antipathy towards the K'mir as a whole is recent and driven by their sudden rebellion, but does not square with how Thayet and Buri talk about the Saren court so virulently hating female warriors and K'mir. It also doesn't square with how Kalasin sent Thayet to the convent - but given the timeline, that could be something Kalasin only did after the war broke out.
Also, given how Buri refers to Thayet as "Kalasin's daughter," as if this means something significant, I wonder if Thayet is twice-royal - she's the last jian Wilima, though not Adigun's heir, but she might well be Kalasin's heir among the K'mir, and possibly to a position of high power, if not necessarily an explicitly royal position.
--
On the question of zhirit - Coram talks like it's a higher title than zhir, in which case it's likely to be both singular and plural, like jin seems to be. On the other hand, since I can't quite figure out how to feminize zhir - you can't pull a jin/jian - and we know that the K'mir are at least partly matriarchal, part of me really likes the idea that the last true Saren royalty was a matriarchal line, and that zhirit is the female equivalent of zhir. This does not square with Thayet's insistence that no woman may sit on the Saren throne, or with Liam's insistence that Thayet is not the heir, but that could be a relatively recent rule, perhaps made because of however the Kaufain line fell.
Grrr.
This is why I don't write Circle-fic. I have a solid idea for an AU. If this were a Tortall fic, I would've had it banged out and posted already.
Instead, I have had to scrap the whole fic twice. Once to fix character issues, and now to fix a location issue.
I have no idea what it is about the Circleverse that makes it so damn hard to write about. It's almost like there are whole other layers of complexity one never has to deal with in Tortall, and I keep getting thrown for a loop.
In brighter news, the Circle AU has turned kind of epic and interesting, but it has also turned massive, and I now have no idea if I will ever be able to get it done. It's also finals for the next two weeks, so it may take a while.
Instead, I have had to scrap the whole fic twice. Once to fix character issues, and now to fix a location issue.
I have no idea what it is about the Circleverse that makes it so damn hard to write about. It's almost like there are whole other layers of complexity one never has to deal with in Tortall, and I keep getting thrown for a loop.
In brighter news, the Circle AU has turned kind of epic and interesting, but it has also turned massive, and I now have no idea if I will ever be able to get it done. It's also finals for the next two weeks, so it may take a while.
Entry tags:
Am working on Circle fic.
I am as shocked as you are.
And yes, I know I have a bunch of Tortall fics to finish, but I've been rereading all the Circle books and reviewing them for my normal journal, and Glake is having their Role Reversal Week, and it all melded together in my head when I started wondering what Glaki, the twins, and the other students would be like as adults. So.
If I am lucky and don't freeze my fingers off in this drafty house, it may be up tomorrow.
And yes, I know I have a bunch of Tortall fics to finish, but I've been rereading all the Circle books and reviewing them for my normal journal, and Glake is having their Role Reversal Week, and it all melded together in my head when I started wondering what Glaki, the twins, and the other students would be like as adults. So.
If I am lucky and don't freeze my fingers off in this drafty house, it may be up tomorrow.
Entry tags:
Daaaaamn.
A lot changes if you eliminate the Immortals, and not always the obvious stuff. It means a lot of little changes too, like Kel not having her griffin-feather band, that I entirely forgot about.
...This is fun and exciting and I wish I didn't have to sleep now and do classwork tomorrow (er, later today) because I have SO MANY IDEAS and two stories fully laid out in my head and the end is omg in sight and I want to write them all NOW.
Oh, well.
Also, is it just me, or does not a lot actually happen in the Immortals Quartet? I've blown through the books again for the fics, and I was trying to keep track of the major events - there aren't really that many, and certainly not after you cut out all the stuff with Immortals. There are pretty big time jumps between the books, but the books themselves cover very little. Which in a way is wonderful, because it means I can skip a lot and not end up with a massive fic o'doom again.
( cut for me nattering on again )
All that said, I am so ready to churn out this fic. Pacing/flow problems or no.
Largely because it's turning into a sort of character exploration of Numair, with the requisite crackishness this 'verse demands. XD
ETA: There is only one single plot thing I can't decide on, for Unhidden #3, though I'm still ironing out some details. So I ask the internets - Daine/Numair, or no Daine/Numair? I hate the 'ship, but. I am wondering if that'd come across forced, since I usually do break them up/make them never happen.
On the one hand, canon. Also, I can almost make the case for it in this 'verse, esp. if I do what I'm considering and limit Numair's role as Daine's teacher/mentor. On the other, well. I don't see them a) lasting, whatever Pierce insists, or b) happening outside a very specific set of circumstances*, largely but not entirely known as RotG, which basically doesn't happen in this 'verse. So.
Maybe I should just write them as a fling. Or marry Numair off again.
---
*Funny how very many times I've said that about stuff in Pierce's books, really. Not that that's a bad thing, necessarily - for example, Joren's bullying occurs under very particular circumstances, and he'd be much less of a threat in a different context.
But it's interesting how often that's true of her romances. Daine/Numair and Aly/Nawat are the ones that come to mind - and in Tortall, there are only three lasting romances out of four leading ladies. So. Alanna/George I can see happening under multiple scenarios - not either of the other two.
...This is fun and exciting and I wish I didn't have to sleep now and do classwork tomorrow (er, later today) because I have SO MANY IDEAS and two stories fully laid out in my head and the end is omg in sight and I want to write them all NOW.
Oh, well.
Also, is it just me, or does not a lot actually happen in the Immortals Quartet? I've blown through the books again for the fics, and I was trying to keep track of the major events - there aren't really that many, and certainly not after you cut out all the stuff with Immortals. There are pretty big time jumps between the books, but the books themselves cover very little. Which in a way is wonderful, because it means I can skip a lot and not end up with a massive fic o'doom again.
( cut for me nattering on again )
All that said, I am so ready to churn out this fic. Pacing/flow problems or no.
Largely because it's turning into a sort of character exploration of Numair, with the requisite crackishness this 'verse demands. XD
ETA: There is only one single plot thing I can't decide on, for Unhidden #3, though I'm still ironing out some details. So I ask the internets - Daine/Numair, or no Daine/Numair? I hate the 'ship, but. I am wondering if that'd come across forced, since I usually do break them up/make them never happen.
On the one hand, canon. Also, I can almost make the case for it in this 'verse, esp. if I do what I'm considering and limit Numair's role as Daine's teacher/mentor. On the other, well. I don't see them a) lasting, whatever Pierce insists, or b) happening outside a very specific set of circumstances*, largely but not entirely known as RotG, which basically doesn't happen in this 'verse. So.
Maybe I should just write them as a fling. Or marry Numair off again.
---
*Funny how very many times I've said that about stuff in Pierce's books, really. Not that that's a bad thing, necessarily - for example, Joren's bullying occurs under very particular circumstances, and he'd be much less of a threat in a different context.
But it's interesting how often that's true of her romances. Daine/Numair and Aly/Nawat are the ones that come to mind - and in Tortall, there are only three lasting romances out of four leading ladies. So. Alanna/George I can see happening under multiple scenarios - not either of the other two.
Entry tags:
Rereading WM for the third Unhidden fic...
(because I forget the details, what.)
And apparently one of those pesky little details I forgot was that the whole reason Onua and Daine stumble across Numair-the-freaky-hawk at all is because Daine's woken from a dead sleep by the weird-sick-magic feel of the Stormwings.
....iiiiiinteresting.
( Cut for minor spoiler for the sequel, if you care. )
Any thoughts, ideas, or crackbunnies welcome, as always.
And apparently one of those pesky little details I forgot was that the whole reason Onua and Daine stumble across Numair-the-freaky-hawk at all is because Daine's woken from a dead sleep by the weird-sick-magic feel of the Stormwings.
....iiiiiinteresting.
( Cut for minor spoiler for the sequel, if you care. )
Any thoughts, ideas, or crackbunnies welcome, as always.
Entry tags:
Er.
The problem with writing genderswap is working out the details.
I'm working on the third fic in the Unsecret/Unsilenced 'verse, and, well...
This spoils something in Unsilenced and the sequel I'm hashing out. ( Hence the cut. )
I'm working on the third fic in the Unsecret/Unsilenced 'verse, and, well...
This spoils something in Unsilenced and the sequel I'm hashing out. ( Hence the cut. )
Entry tags:
Posted a fic for Carmarthen.
Because her views on Alex are always inspiring. This is probably the best I can manage with a canon Alex - attempting to make his canonical behavior fit with any rationale for his treason is, for me, surprisingly tricky, if I don't fall back on "because Roger's magic." *sigh* I tried, anyway. Take away the "Roger made him do it!" compulsion excuse, and either Alex was a scarily cunning ten-year-old, or he went off the rails a bit as he got older. (Why must Pierce always make her villains crazy?)
This isn't a nice fic, especially if you like Jon, the Old King, or Tortall and Tortallans in general.
Read: The Grim Gray Hills.
This isn't a nice fic, especially if you like Jon, the Old King, or Tortall and Tortallans in general.
Read: The Grim Gray Hills.
Entry tags:
Grargh.
Along the lines of my previous post, this is me, listing all the niggling details I kinda need to figure out for the Alanna-isn't-Champion AU. Sorta spoilers, for the work in progress, though not in terrible detail. This is mostly to keep things straight in my head, but if anyone has any opinions or suggestions, those're always welcome. :)
1. Who becomes training master. This actually isn't so much a detail caused by the AU, but one caused by the canon timeline; Duke G. has his heart attack in LR, and then three years later Wyldon becomes training master. Did he take over for the duke? If not, who was training master between the two?
In this AU, I am sticking with Duke G. being training master up through the coronation, and then after, there's a problem, because I'm pretty sure in this 'verse that the heart attack causes his retirement, but that means I either move Wyldon up three years, put someone else in there before Wyldon, or simply don't make Wyldon training master in this 'verse at all. I have an option I rather like if I go the no-Wyldon route, but Wyldon as training master'd be equally interesting.
2. What happens to Neal. I am not at all sure he decides to become a knight late in this AU, but if he doesn't, it creates a whole host of problems when it comes to Kel's assimilation into her cohort.
3. Alanna's kids. Just for the sake of limiting the number of timeline wrinkles I have to wrangle with, I know she still has them, and I am (at least for the moment) keeping to the canon timeline of when she has them; for all that she implies in LR that she wants to wait on kids, by the timeline, she doesn't really, to my eyes, wait all that long. (Four years, I think.)
Thom I am keeping canon; he'd go to university, given what little we know of him, whether Alanna was Champion or not. Alan and Aly ... are problems. Alan's only a problem because of the lateness of when he canonically goes for page training; I need to decide, for this AU, if he goes at the normal time (three years earlier than canon), or doesn't go at all.
Aly, I don't even know. George is still spymaster, like in canon, and so I'm pretty sure that like in canon he's been teaching his kids tricks, and Aly's taken to them like a duck to water. But even if she has that epic fight with Alanna over spying, I'm not at all sure there's an opportunity for her to get kidnapped by pirates.
Then again, part of what makes DotL so unsatisfying to me is that Kyprioth is constantly meddling, and I thought it was at least implied that the whole reason Aly even got kidnapped in the first place was that Kyp arranged it. So he might still find a way to meddle, IDK.
4. What happens with Carthak. I'm pretty sure that everything through WS happens roughly as it does in canon; all the impact my AU has on the events in WM and at Dunlath are a few switches of who's where when, and those are for secondary characters, or a few alterations of motivation.
EM becomes a problem, because of the embassy. I am not sure who ends up sent, entirely; given one person who likely would end up there, I'm not sure the plot turns out at all like canon. Which is absolutely fine by me, but it leads to the question of if the Immortals War even happens in this AU ... which, now that I think on it, ties directly back to #2.
5. I shouldn't even really number this, because Kel's story, despite being quite a bit different in her page and possibly her squire years, still ends up in the same place. I think. Kel is strangely unaffected, ultimately, by AUs, I find. XD But, I dunno. I kinda feel either like she should be more affected by this one, or like there's something I'm really missing here.
1. Who becomes training master. This actually isn't so much a detail caused by the AU, but one caused by the canon timeline; Duke G. has his heart attack in LR, and then three years later Wyldon becomes training master. Did he take over for the duke? If not, who was training master between the two?
In this AU, I am sticking with Duke G. being training master up through the coronation, and then after, there's a problem, because I'm pretty sure in this 'verse that the heart attack causes his retirement, but that means I either move Wyldon up three years, put someone else in there before Wyldon, or simply don't make Wyldon training master in this 'verse at all. I have an option I rather like if I go the no-Wyldon route, but Wyldon as training master'd be equally interesting.
2. What happens to Neal. I am not at all sure he decides to become a knight late in this AU, but if he doesn't, it creates a whole host of problems when it comes to Kel's assimilation into her cohort.
3. Alanna's kids. Just for the sake of limiting the number of timeline wrinkles I have to wrangle with, I know she still has them, and I am (at least for the moment) keeping to the canon timeline of when she has them; for all that she implies in LR that she wants to wait on kids, by the timeline, she doesn't really, to my eyes, wait all that long. (Four years, I think.)
Thom I am keeping canon; he'd go to university, given what little we know of him, whether Alanna was Champion or not. Alan and Aly ... are problems. Alan's only a problem because of the lateness of when he canonically goes for page training; I need to decide, for this AU, if he goes at the normal time (three years earlier than canon), or doesn't go at all.
Aly, I don't even know. George is still spymaster, like in canon, and so I'm pretty sure that like in canon he's been teaching his kids tricks, and Aly's taken to them like a duck to water. But even if she has that epic fight with Alanna over spying, I'm not at all sure there's an opportunity for her to get kidnapped by pirates.
Then again, part of what makes DotL so unsatisfying to me is that Kyprioth is constantly meddling, and I thought it was at least implied that the whole reason Aly even got kidnapped in the first place was that Kyp arranged it. So he might still find a way to meddle, IDK.
4. What happens with Carthak. I'm pretty sure that everything through WS happens roughly as it does in canon; all the impact my AU has on the events in WM and at Dunlath are a few switches of who's where when, and those are for secondary characters, or a few alterations of motivation.
EM becomes a problem, because of the embassy. I am not sure who ends up sent, entirely; given one person who likely would end up there, I'm not sure the plot turns out at all like canon. Which is absolutely fine by me, but it leads to the question of if the Immortals War even happens in this AU ... which, now that I think on it, ties directly back to #2.
5. I shouldn't even really number this, because Kel's story, despite being quite a bit different in her page and possibly her squire years, still ends up in the same place. I think. Kel is strangely unaffected, ultimately, by AUs, I find. XD But, I dunno. I kinda feel either like she should be more affected by this one, or like there's something I'm really missing here.
Entry tags:
Sometime I will actually talk about a fandom other than Tortall...
But that day is not today. :)
I am currently halfway finished (I think...) with an AU where Alanna doesn't become King's Champion, and I think it is, quite possibly, the thorniest AU I've ever tried to figure out.
Most AUs, the changes don't necessarily have a major impact on the rest of the series' plots. Well, they do, but the incidentals are all largely the same (like, say, details about what most characters were doing when), or the AUs diverge so wildly that nothing is the same, and it flat can't be run up through later canon.
This AU is requiring a major, major reshuffling of everything - but what it's requiring reshuffling of are those minor background details, like what minor characters are doing what when, and it's turning out that those things have a much more major impact on things like, oh, plot, or the unfolding of Jon and Thayet's progressive changes in Tortall, than I anticipated when I started this.
Also, so many characters are out of place, compared to canon, that I honestly don't know if I can even hash out how the Immortals War happens in this 'verse, let alone anything else. (Which is too bad, 'cause I really, really want to write this 'verse's Kel.) The weird thing is, most of the changes that need to happen by displacing Alanna are really minor - and yet, they build up. If Alanna's not Champion, someone else has to be, which gives a whole different flavor to Jon's reign, and a whole different tool for Jon to use. If Alanna's got a different role, a more constructive one, requiring her near-constant presence in the palace, then other things are similarly displaced, and there are a whole host of minor changes that her being a fixture of palace life brings - such as her children being there, too.
It's the ripple effect, but it's gotten so out-of-hand I don't even know that I can follow this fic through, despite how caught up in it I am. I'm doing my usual thing - writing one scene, taking the plot a tiny step further along, writing that scene - and in each scene, a whole host of new wrinkles are cropping up, and I don't know that I can iron them all out.
Which is vexing me. I just tried to actually plot this thing out - like, in an outline, which I never do - and I got so tangled up in it I deleted it and went back to my baby-steps approach. XD
I think what has me truly consternated is this: how far do these ripples echo? I think, looking over the above, that what my real problem here is is that in most of my AUs, it's obvious where and why things diverge from canon, even later on. Wyldon's still training master in one AU because nothing's happened that would change that; Wyldon's not in another because someone else has the job. And so on.
Here, I keep running into scenarios where I could easily see either happening, and have good reason for either. Like with Wyldon: I could easily stick with canon and make him training master still, which would lead to interesting plotty things, or I could easily stick another character in as well, for very solid plot reasons, and that would also lead to interesting plotty things. It's like keeping Alanna from being Champion sets everything adrift, and while it causes - like with any divergence - all these subsequent divergences later on, it also is so unimportant to later canon that it's hard to figure out how the change propagates.
...And that's more than enough self-indulgent rambling for one day. XD Back to fic.
I am currently halfway finished (I think...) with an AU where Alanna doesn't become King's Champion, and I think it is, quite possibly, the thorniest AU I've ever tried to figure out.
Most AUs, the changes don't necessarily have a major impact on the rest of the series' plots. Well, they do, but the incidentals are all largely the same (like, say, details about what most characters were doing when), or the AUs diverge so wildly that nothing is the same, and it flat can't be run up through later canon.
This AU is requiring a major, major reshuffling of everything - but what it's requiring reshuffling of are those minor background details, like what minor characters are doing what when, and it's turning out that those things have a much more major impact on things like, oh, plot, or the unfolding of Jon and Thayet's progressive changes in Tortall, than I anticipated when I started this.
Also, so many characters are out of place, compared to canon, that I honestly don't know if I can even hash out how the Immortals War happens in this 'verse, let alone anything else. (Which is too bad, 'cause I really, really want to write this 'verse's Kel.) The weird thing is, most of the changes that need to happen by displacing Alanna are really minor - and yet, they build up. If Alanna's not Champion, someone else has to be, which gives a whole different flavor to Jon's reign, and a whole different tool for Jon to use. If Alanna's got a different role, a more constructive one, requiring her near-constant presence in the palace, then other things are similarly displaced, and there are a whole host of minor changes that her being a fixture of palace life brings - such as her children being there, too.
It's the ripple effect, but it's gotten so out-of-hand I don't even know that I can follow this fic through, despite how caught up in it I am. I'm doing my usual thing - writing one scene, taking the plot a tiny step further along, writing that scene - and in each scene, a whole host of new wrinkles are cropping up, and I don't know that I can iron them all out.
Which is vexing me. I just tried to actually plot this thing out - like, in an outline, which I never do - and I got so tangled up in it I deleted it and went back to my baby-steps approach. XD
I think what has me truly consternated is this: how far do these ripples echo? I think, looking over the above, that what my real problem here is is that in most of my AUs, it's obvious where and why things diverge from canon, even later on. Wyldon's still training master in one AU because nothing's happened that would change that; Wyldon's not in another because someone else has the job. And so on.
Here, I keep running into scenarios where I could easily see either happening, and have good reason for either. Like with Wyldon: I could easily stick with canon and make him training master still, which would lead to interesting plotty things, or I could easily stick another character in as well, for very solid plot reasons, and that would also lead to interesting plotty things. It's like keeping Alanna from being Champion sets everything adrift, and while it causes - like with any divergence - all these subsequent divergences later on, it also is so unimportant to later canon that it's hard to figure out how the change propagates.
...And that's more than enough self-indulgent rambling for one day. XD Back to fic.
Entry tags:
I rather can't believe it.
I just wrote a sympathetic Aly-centric fic. *jaw drops* It's not my best work - it feels a bit, hm, like it isn't quite properly molded. But there you go: Reconciliation.
Entry tags:
Or dinosaurs, in this case.
So. I may or may not be doing a few more ficlets for my Dinotopia/Tortall fusion this week, and Carmarthen may or may not have talked me into doing a similar fusion with Emelan. Is there anything in particular anyone really wants to see? About the only two things I know I'll be doing are Kel meets Neal and Jessa, and possibly the Circle foursome's meeting. IDK.
Why yes, I am on another fic spree, and unlike when I churned out MTBOT, this one is gearing up to be really random. Not that I mind in the least. XD
Why yes, I am on another fic spree, and unlike when I churned out MTBOT, this one is gearing up to be really random. Not that I mind in the least. XD