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Open Thread: Writer Workshop |
A couple of you have requested a special monthly open thread dedicated to talking about writing projects (and other artwork-creation). So here it is!
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| Pencil by Elisa Xyz |
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Open Thread: Summer Field Flowers Painting |
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| Summer Field Flowers Painting by George Hodan |
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Narnia: You Will Never Come Back |
[Narnia Content Note: Genocide, Religious Abuse, Chivalry, Racism, Slavery]
[Extra Content Note: Suicide, Isolation, Loneliness, Loss]
Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Chapter 16: The Very End of the World
We might as well finish this chapter (and the book itself) out today. I have a lot of feels on this because, again, Lewis has cram-packed what could have been several chapters into one whoops-time's-up-pencils-down chapter that literally feels like his publisher called and said to wrap shit up now, but is probably just a function of the fact that I care about his characters whereas he seemed to care more about his plots and theologies.
About two o’clock in the afternoon, well victualed and watered (though they thought they would need neither food nor drink) and with Reepicheep’s coracle on board, the boat pulled away from the Dawn Treader to row through the endless carpet of lilies. The Dawn Treader flew all her flags and hung out her shields to honor their departure. Tall and big and homelike she looked from their low position with the lilies all round them. And even before she was out of sight they saw her turn and begin rowing slowly westward.
...and off the ship goes, back home for Narnia. Welp.
I mean, I know that Aslan apparently told them to do it this way, but I just still feel like this is a terrible plan. I would at the very least wait there until they couldn't see the boat anymore before turning around, but I'm sentimental like that, I guess.
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Twilight: Two Too-Permanent Solutions |
[Twilight Content Note: Murder, Abusive Relationships, Winning At Patriarchy.]
[Extra Content Note: Kidnapping, Physical Abuse]
Twilight, Chapter 18: The Hunt
When we last left our lovers, Carlisle had perfectly maneuvered Bella to be considered a threat to the regular / non-vegetarian / murdering vampires that had come into town for a visit, and had then ordered her out of sight (though not, obviously, out of mind) lest prolonged contact with the murderer-vampires cause them to personify her into someone they might not want to eat. Thanks, Carlisle!
This whole time I’d been rooted in place, terrified into absolute immobility. Edward had to grip my elbow and pull sharply to break my trance. Alice and Emmett were close behind us, hiding me. I stumbled alongside Edward, still stunned with fear. I couldn’t hear if the main group had left yet.
Far be it from me to impugn the strategies of the Cullens, and I also realize that this would be totes immoral and also there are those maybe-exist / maybe-don't Volturi to think about, but there's a point in all this where I'm genuinely trying to work out why they don't just kill the three visiting vampires. (We need a term for them. I assert we shall call them the Traveling Trio.)
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Open Thread: These fifteen *crunch* TEN! Ten commandments for all to obey. |
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| How it was whittled down to ten. |
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Narnia: Gods and Lovers |
[Narnia Content Note: Genocide, Religious Abuse, Chivalry, Racism, Slavery]
Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Chapter 16: The Very End of the World
I have to admit, I'm a little apprehensive about VoDT ending for us soon, because my plan is to segue into the film adaptations like I usually do, except I'm not entirely sure how that's going to work because there is no way I'll be able to fit the Disney movie into one post, as I have vast and epic feels about it.
And I don't know how long Chapter 16 will last because Lewis had kinda this habit of rushing the final chapters like whoa. (See also LWW which was like "and then they had all these adventures and grown-up things and then the end" in the space of a single paragraph.) So let's take a deep breath and dive in.
REEPICHEEP WAS THE ONLY PERSON ON board besides Drinian and the two Pevensies who had noticed the Sea People. He had dived in at once when he saw the Sea King shaking his spear, for he regarded this as a sort of threat or challenge and wanted to have the matter out there and then. The excitement of discovering that the water was now fresh had distracted his attention, and before he remembered the Sea People again Lucy and Drinian had taken him aside and warned him not to mention what he had seen.
We've already discussed this and won't belabor the issue, but briefly: Reepicheep is a menace to all the things. He doesn't even fit the ridiculously over-enthusiastic chivalry mode anymore since, as I understand it, Chivalry absolutely had a paradigm for everyone making menacing postures in order for all the involved parties to go, yep, you're totes manly, man-guy, without people necessarily killed over the posturing. I don't remember who brought it up--and Disqus isn't cooperating--but I more and more love the stellar idea that Reepicheep is an NPC who was embraced by Peter Pevensie's player a touch too enthusiastically.
And this is probably the last time we'll get to talk about it, but it's never entirely clear to me how Lewis felt about this character. On the one hand, Lewis' love affair with chivalry seems pretty obvious to me, so in some ways this may be the favored character--the one who is allowed to act out all the chivalric impulses that sadly have to be set aside for things like Prudence and Plotting and whatnot. On the other hand, Reepicheep is a Talking Animal and therefore well-established as silly and empty-headed, so it's possible that he's some kind of cautionary tale for going overboard (literally!) with chivalry when Good Christians of course only go to the Caspian level of chivalry.
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Open Thread: How're You? |
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| Thermometer by Petr Kratochvil |
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Twilight: How to Win Friends and Influence People |
[Twilight Content Note: Murder, Abusive Relationships, Winning At Patriarchy.]
Twilight, Chapter 18: The Hunt
Things are happening now! It's all very exciting! Maybe? When we last left our star-crossed couple, it was kinda confusing because non-vegetarian vampires were about to visit the Cullens in their baseball clearing and they were arriving at a rate that made it impossible for Edward to just carry Bella off to a safe distance, but not at a rate that made it impossible for the Cullens to go back to playing their game after talking for a bit.
It was especially weird and frustrating because we all recognize that vampires might not be okay with taking the Cullens' word on the human being okay with all this and not informing the other humans and/or the very vengeful Volturi who might not have existed at this point in the series, but the actual Cullens themselves seem incapable of figuring out that might be a possible response to introducing a human to the non-vegetarian vampires.
And, I mean, this pisses me off. Because even if they legitimately couldn't hide Bella, they could have strolled out to the visitors and said, "Hey, wait, here's the thing. We wanna meet you, but we have a human with us. She's safe, we have her enthralled, and there will be turning later, but we have to wait for the right timing because of our established-in-society cover story. So if you don't want to meet her because you don't want her to see your faces, or don't want to get in trouble with the V-men, that's cool. We'll just take you to our house from here."
You know, this might not have worked. But it would probably have worked better than what is actually about to happen. (And I really cannot parse out how Carlisle thought his actual plan could have worked at all since it hinged on the vampires not noticing that Bella is human, i.e., not noticing the one thing Edward said they couldn't fail to notice. So.) But whatever, I think we've all agreed this is just a plot device to make vampires scary again. Fine.
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Metapost: Wendy Davis Transcript Update |
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Narnia: Sweet Sea Waters |
[Narnia Content Note: Genocide, Religious Abuse, Chivalry, Racism, Slavery]
Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Chapter 15: The Wonders of the Last Sea
Okay! Phew! Feels like forever since we were here last, and I'm sorry about that. For a good cause, I know, but I still hate leaving everyone hanging like that. Still, I'm hopeful that being more restful and more focused will only improve the deconstruction posts, ha. Now where were we? I remember: Reepicheep had flung himself into the sea in order to plot-reveal that the sea isn't salty anymore.
But when the dripping Mouse had reached the deck it turned out not to be at all interested in the Sea People.
“Sweet!” he cheeped. “Sweet, sweet!”
“What are you talking about?” asked Drinian crossly. “And you needn’t shake yourself all over me, either.”
“I tell you the water’s sweet,” said the Mouse. “Sweet, fresh. It isn’t salt.”
And here is, of course, where the Telmarine lack of experience on long voyages becomes sadly relevant, because the point at which sailors start throwing themselves overboard in order to drink sea-water is never a good thing. What you do not want to do in that case is haul up a bucket of sea-water and hand it to your king to take a big hearty gulp, so of course that is precisely what the Dawn Treader crew does. I think we need someone to math-up how many assassination attempts this is on King Caspian at this point.
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Open Thread: I get it now! |
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| Hosted by a light bulb |
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Standing With Wendy |
| Book (eBook) Retailers Written by: Ana Mardoll Published: May 2014 Language: English Available from retailers below. • Books2Read • Amazon Kindle • Apple Books • Barnes & Noble Nook • GoodReads • GumRoad • Kobo • Overdrive --- • Angus & Robertson (AU) • Indigo (CA) • Vivlio (FR) |
Book (eBook) Download Written by: Ana Mardoll Published: May 2014 Language: English Available to download directly. • epub • mobi • Patreon ($5 tier) |
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Metapost: Next-To-Last Transcript Update |
Volunteers will have gotten the email last night, but I am basically done with the transcript project. (YAY! SO MANY TIRED YAY!) I've jammed all 266 transcribed segments into a single epub document, which was by far the bear share of the work. The only things left for me to do is to put words on the cover, finish putting in the full list of volunteers, and upload the thing onto Amazon and Barnes&Noble. I hope to have that finished THIS WEEK, at which point the following will happen:
1. I will sleep for a week. This project has been going on for, no joke, almost a full year. I have basically not been sleeping for the past month, just from wanting to get this done. (YAY!)
2. Normal posting should resume next Tuesday (5/13) and with my apologies for taking off at all.
3. I will put up a final transcript update letting people know where they can get a copy, etc. Then a part of me hopes to never talk about this again, lol, not because it wasn't a good project (IT WAS. IT IS.) but just because now I have to move forward and live with the day-to-day of being in New Gilead right now and that's a lot of feels to work through.
I know some of you have asked me about a paper version of the transcript, and I gotta go thresh out some feels on that. The PDF version of this thing ended up being, like, 2,000+ "pages" long (for a large definition of "page", probably larger than a book would use), and I'm not even sure Amazon's Print on Demand service provides for something of that scope. I'd have to research that... and almost certainly pay my POD formatter that I used for Pulchritude, and...
...I honestly don't know if I have the brain for that right now, or if there's a corresponding level of demand to off-set the cost. I could Kickstarter it, except that too has an activation energy cost--I'm not sure I'm in a peppy-enough plce for a Kickstarter right now. So, long story short, we'll see on paper and I might need to gauge interest on that but for right now we're looking at ebook only for the near future.
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Open Thread: The Movers and Shakers |
