Snowflake Challenge: Day 12

[narya_flame]

 

AKA the meme thing. Shamelessly swiping this one from Indy and Lilith.

1. Which is your favorite of the fics you’ve written for X fandom? 

2. Favorite piece overall?

3. Which was the hardest to write, in terms of plot?

4. Which has the most “you” in it, however you’d define that?

5. What is an image/set of images that you’re particularly proud of?

6. Idea that you always wanted to write but could never make work?

7. Least favorite plot point/chapter/moment?

8. Favorite plot point/chapter/moment?

9. Favorite character to write?

10. Favorite line or lines of dialogue that you’ve written

11. If I’m showing off just one of your pieces to someone, which one should it be?

12. What WIPs do you have going now? Are you excited about them?

13. Are there any things that might have happened in any of your stories, but you changed them at the last minute? (So-and-so dies, they don’t actually kiss, main character has long extended ballet-based dream sequence, etc.)

14. Would you want to write canon for any of your fandoms (like be hired by showrunner to do an episode)? Which one?

15. Does font matter to you when you’re writing a draft?

16. 3 favorite comments ever received on fanfic.

17. Any mean comments? How’d you deal with it? Who laid the smackdown?

18. If you could go back and revise one of your older stories, which would it be?

19. Do you make up scenes at work/on the bus/at the gym? Who are the characters that pop up the most? Do you write them down?

20. Go nuts, and talk about writing.

Comments

[spiced_wine]

3,

8

and 12 please 🙏🏼

[narya_flame]

3. Summer's Song is tricky because, while Maglor and Claire's story and arc is straightforward, there are other players on a very big board, so keeping track of what they're doing and weaving it together requires serious thought! (Which is why I was so frustrated about losing loads of draft material - another layer of tricky 😅)

8. I think probably Chapter 10 of Paradox, when Claire confronts Maglor about his identity and he starts to explain. I do wonder sometimes whether I went for the reveal too soon, but for me that chapter cemented a lot of what I already thought I knew about his past, and I enjoyed the dynamics of it. I think it still stands up.

12. I'm actively working on Summer's Song and The City Over the Mountains, as well as a couple of exchange fics - and the Paradox Christmas piece, which is now very late, but I'm hoping to publish it today. It's very nearly there, just some parts need fine-tuning.

And yes, I'm excited about them; I don't have time to write things I'm not excited about 😁

Things I'm not actively working on but that count as WIPs by virtue of being started as opposed to being stray ideas...loads 🤣 I'm not going to look too closely at them until after this round of exchanges, though, and then I might dust off some of the shorter ones to work on in between chapters of the longer fics, as a change of pace.

[paulamcg]

Thanks for this meme! ♥ 10 and 16, please!

[narya_flame]

10. Ooooh. OOOH. I don't have a favourite single line, I'm not very good at zingy wit, but I do rather like this exchange from my fic The Elf Who Saved Christmas, in which Maglor goes to the North Pole to rescue Father Christmas:

Ilbereth led the way back over the tundra to the place in the cliff he had opened before. He lifted a hand to the sheer frozen wall, and then paused.

“Oxford?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You're sure?”

“For now.”

“Very well, then.” A silvery archway appeared in the ice; it shone brightly for a moment, like Ithildin of old, only reflecting the soft pink and lilac wash of the Arctic dawn – and then it melted away without trace, opening back into Codrington Library. Ilbereth turned back to him. “We ought to thank you, I suppose.”

“Ilbereth...” Maglor paused in the doorway. “Did I ever know you? Before this, I mean. Elves shouldn't forget, and yet -”

Ilbereth shook his head. “Makalaurë, when I saw you last, you would not have known your own mother if she stood in front of you.”

Maglor felt the cool, withering touch of guilt in his stomach.

“Go.” Ilbereth gave him a gentle push. “You're letting snow into the library.”

It was true; the wind was blowing chunks of powdery snow through the archway and into the recess. The gallery smelled and felt as it always did – watchful, aloof, with the faded vanilla scent of old paper in the air. The chapel bells were still ringing the hour, and the light pooling on the floor was the hazy silver of an autumn moon.

“Oh, Maglor?”

He turned.

Ilbereth folded his arms and smiled – this time with genuine amusement. “I know what you have in your pocket.”

Maglor grinned and saluted, and stepped forward through the recess as the clock finished chiming twelve.

16. Unfortunately a lot of my favourite comments were on the Faerie archive, which I suspect is now sadly defunct; it's down, and the site owner isn't responding to queries. I did get some lovely ones on Paradox on AO3, though...



Oh gosh I had such a well put together comment in my head and now it’s all flown out the window trying to make sense of how much I love this fic. It’s 2 am now and I really spent all morning (yesterday morning now, wow!), glimpses of it throughout the day, and now well into the night. I can’t stop reading it! I had read all there was! Anyhow-

It’s so rare to find something so impeccably real and clear as this, that you can just laugh along to at the awkward moments at and feel dread at the dreadful moments. A lot of Silm fics are all mournful and sad - this gives it a bit more of a rounded, real-life look. And damn I really know nothing about musicals but everything around it was so enticing and hilarious I just might have to get into it more (I listened to With Cat-Like Thread And was cackling picturing Maglor singing it). And that cat - that reminds me - I know it’s going to have some symbolism, or parallelism, or something, but I just can’t figure it out. Its set up too neat. Too suspicious. It’s driving me crazy.

As for as the actual characters, it was a bit trippy to read at first, since, strangely and coincidentally, I know three people with the same names as the main characters. Weird. Regardless, they’re each so developed and themselves that I feel like I really do know them, and gosh do I want to know more about Claire (the pranks in school? Hilarious)! And Maglor - yours is probably my favorite version of him. He has this power and confidence that I haven’t found with many others, that fits him so well it’s hard to picture him the way I used to anymore.

(A side note: I’ve googled and looked up so many slang things and anything of-the-such because I’m a small-town American and I don’t understand a lot of this. It’s very entertaining.)

Well, that was a long rant! Thank you so much for writing this and sharing it with us all, and I’ll be on the edge of my seat waiting for more. :)



I've spent half a decade reading Silmarillion fanfic maybe nonstop, and this one right here, this is in my top five favorites that I've ever read.

It's both domestic and epic; it's both silly and serious; it's heartfelt, it's grave, it's full of both tragedy and hope. And, like in Tolkien's stories, the setting comes alive. There is no silence in this fic: when the characters reach that unspoken covenant that words are neither wanted nor needed, it's St. Andrews' turn to speak. A ray of light coming through the window, the cry of a gull, the cavorting of college students living out their years of innocence. It's Tolkien's works that made me fall in love with writing setting as a part of the story, and you continue that very fine, very magical tradition in this fic in a way that takes my breath away.

You made me fall in love with your characters. I am INVESTED in Harrison, Rosie, Theo and Claire, and I want them to be HAPPY. I want them to have full, happy lives, and I am PROUD of the young adults they are becoming. You made me fall in love with St. Andrews. I had to pull up the little seaside college town on Google Maps and scroll my way around it, to mentally map out all the streets and stores and beaches that make up the living backdrop of the story, to imagine these places in snow and rain and hail and ethereal golden sunlight. You made me want to visit it. BADLY. And I am a warm-blooded Californian, absolutely allergic to cold in all its forms. So sparking that desire in me is not an easy feat.

And, you made me fall in love with Maglor all over again. He is without question my favorite Tolkien character, and I know I'm not alone, being that he's something of a fandom darling. I've read countless fics with countless different interpretations of him, but yours is special in a way that I can best sum up as balanced. He is not broken, but he is fading. He is not cold-blooded, but he's not innocent, either. He's warm, and caring, and sweet; he's thoughtful and kind, but with a strength to him that goes beyond human language to describe. Seeing him through Claire's eyes was like meeting him all over again, and I loved that. I LOVED it. Like her, I want to hold onto him and tell him everything's going to be okay, despite how ethereal and faraway he seems. He's both real and unreal, human and divine. I love him to death, and you should be proud of the way you've written him.

Naturally I had to go through and read the entire Wanderer series, and I confess myself eternally hungry for more. You could probably just keep on writing fluffy one-shots set in St. Andrews with Maglor and the gang for FOREVER and I'd read every single one the day it came out, happily rolling around in the feels. This fic is definitely going to be on my list of "fics I'll re-read forever," right up there with The Starless Road, which made me cry for hours. Thank you, so much, for posting this fic.



And this one on the very belated Christmassy fic I posted yesterday made me sniffle, because I noticed it's from someone who leaves a lot of kudos but rarely comments, so it was lovely to hear from them and it was such a sweet thing to say:

I love these people so much, reading about them is therapy all by itself.

Your writing is so beautiful and vivid, I adore this universe so much



(Thank you for asking that, btw, going back through my old comments made me so happy.)

[paulamcg]

Oh, a wonderful dialogue! And amazing comments! Real treasures. I'm so glad looking for the answers ended up making you happy!

[elwinfortuna]

1, 13, and 15, please? For Tolkien fandom obvs.

[narya_flame]

1. Favourite Tolkien fic I've written...oooof. I was going to go straight for Auld Acquaintance, which has been my default response to this question for a while, but it's older than its AO3 posting date would suggest, and while I'm still very fond of it, I do think I've got better since then.

Actually I'm very soft on the two Father Christmas Letters crossovers I wrote in 2019, Snow Bears and The Elf Who Saved Christmas. I was very fond of the central concept for both of them, they gave me the opportunity to expand a bit beyond my usual milieus and play with some new concepts - plus, incorporating an extra Tolkien fandom in there has to put them fairly high up the "favourite Tolkien fic" listing, since they're drawing on more of his body of work!

13. Things that might have happened and didn't...actually I wasn't sure that Maglor wouldn't leave at the end of Paradox. It wasn't what I'd planned for him to do, but he kept acting like he might leave anyway. Until he told Claire he would stay, I wasn't 100% sure what would happen - that felt much more like his decision than mine.

15. I tend to draft by hand, but when I get to typing up, I just need something plain and clear, and that doesn't remind me of school! I don't have a specific font that I must use, but equally, curly scripts and 3D effects and so on are verboten!

[independence1776]

6, 8, and 14, please.

[narya_flame]

6. When I fell down the Maglor-in-history rabbit hole, there were three big fics I wanted to write. One was Paradox. One was Maglor as Robin Hood in medieval England, which I'm fairly confident I can write, with a bit of time spent on research first. Before I attempt it, I want to finish Summer's Song first (crossover with Spiced Wine's 'verse); I can't have two Maglor longfics on the go at once, I need a little variety :D

The third was about Maglor's friendship with Tolkien, and what the backstory to the texts is in my 'verse. I'm really, really glad I didn't attempt this when I first had the idea over ten years ago, because there's no way on this planet I'd have done it justice, and I'm not sure I can now, either. I think I can get away with alluding to it a little in other fics, like I do in Paradox, but I suppose what I'm wary of is taking away from JRRT's own awesome power as a creator, in a bid to make sense of the texts' existence in the world I write in. I am also acutely aware that I would need to go through every bit of canon I can possibly get my hands on with a fine toothcomb, and even then I'm likely to make mistakes. It's a mammoth undertaking.

I might do it, eventually. One day.

8. Spiced asked this; I picked Chapter 10, from Paradox, when Claire realises who "Mark" is and he starts to explain. The other part I really love, though, is Chapter 20, when it isn't just Claire accepting him - it's the others too, even though they don't know the Tolkien connection, and ultimately it tips him into staying with them. Like I said to Elwin, until that point, I wasn't 100% sure he would stay. I planned for him to, but, well...characters!

14. I wouldn't want to go near the Amazon LOTR show, that's for sure. I'm quite happy playing in my little fandom corner!

I'd love to write an episode of Doctor Who, though. And if anyone ever gave me the chance to fix Season 3 of Penny Dreadful, and tie it properly through to City of Angels, I'd snap their hand off.

[lilith_lessfair]

2, 4, 11 and 20. I’m greedy.

[narya_flame]

2. Favourite piece overall...actually on a technical standpoint I'm going with Comfort and Joy. In just over 2k words I managed to both tell a story and fall in love with a pair of characters and their relationship, from a complete standing start - I'd never even thought of the pairing before I got the prompt. I do have more fics that feature them, both published and in draft, but this just stands as a bittersweet not-quite-love-story by itself, IMO.

4. There are two pieces I've written where, more than for any others, I flayed my soul bare and offered it up to the fandom gods. One is Second Chance, which I wrote when I was 18/19 and grieving for a friend killed in a riding accident. I probably needed therapy; instead I wrote a story.

The other is The Ways of Paradox, which I started posting in a fit of nostalgia for my university life. So many of the little moments in Paradox have direct parallels in my own experiences - although contrary to popular belief, I'm far more like Rosie than Claire. And I had to save Theo, because he was/is very like somebody else I knew who I couldn't save.

11. Provided they weren't keen to avoid fics about Christmas, I'd probably say The Elf Who Saved Christmas. Like Comfort and Joy, it tells a complete, standalone story, and even if you're not familiar with the more obscure details of the Silm and/or haven't read The FC Letters, it should still stand up. Plus it's just fun.

20. Oh Lilith, you opened Pandora's Box.

OK, writing. Narya, do not compose an entire essay here.

I'm actually a bit of a snotty cow when it comes to writing. I don't think everyone has a book inside them (I am counting novel length fanfics and collections of short stories as books). It annoys me when people say that - "Oh, I could write a book, if I only had the time." FIND the time. Few people who write can do it as their job. Everyone else has to make time somehow. If you can't make time, if you can't motivate yourself to make time, then you can't write a book - and honestly you probably shouldn't even if you suddenly found the time. Don't bother, unless you feel like you have a story that needs to get out.

I don't think just anyone can write. I do think, to misquote Ratatouille, that a great writer can be anyone - but I think writing comes from an absence of contentment, a need to change things, or explore, or understand. It's a mindset, it's a need - and it's also a craft, like anything else. It can be honed, and bettered. I don't hold with the snobs who rail against creative writing courses, insisting it can't be taught at all, and that to attempt to do so is stifling to creativity. I don't think you'll ever teach someone who has no ear and no hunger to play with words to be a brilliant writer, but I think with practice and dedication, most people can become at least competent. I do believe that anyone with a natural talent (for anything, not just for writing) benefits from having an environment where they can focus on that, and learn from others, and I don't at all buy that anyone who is really original, really brilliant, will be somehow flattened or made less by being encouraged to apply a bit of discipline and effort.

I also believe that, for people who want and need to write, however good or otherwise they may be, it really is a need and that their lives will be worse without it. I know so many adults with no hobby, no drive for anything beyond their everyday lives, no space for their bodies or minds to play like they used to when they were kids - even those who had a passion as teens or as students, like music or sport, or science - and I think that's so sad. As Ursula Le Guin said, "As for the free play of an adult mind, its result may be ‘War and Peace,’ or the theory of relativity." What are we losing out on, because we tell people to shut off parts of themselves that are so utterly fundamental?

So there you go, a weird mix of snobbery and battle cries...!

[lilith_lessfair]

<3
Thank you.