Non-Actionable Puffery

Today's challenge is to talk about my "fannish origin story." My first fandom was Star Wars, especially the old Expanded Universe novels. Like many people, I was writing fanfic before I knew there was a word for it, and certainly before I knew about online fanfic archives and fan communities! (I actually had a secret ambition of writing a Star Wars novel myself someday.)

Someone pointed me toward fanfiction.net before too long. I joined FFN in 2012, and when I checked the dates on my profiles I was shocked to see that I only joined AO3 in 2013 - in my memory the stretch of time when I was on FFN but didn't know about AO3 is longer, for some reason.

When I was first entering fandom, a lot of the people I looked up to were active in journal fandom, and I was honestly pretty intimidated. It took until 2018 for me to get up the nerve to join the cool kids on DW, and I'm very glad I did! The conversations I've had here have shaped my attitude toward writing and fandom in a really positive way - and, of course, I've made friends <3

Hello! I am Ermingarden on AO3 as well. (Treats enabled and welcomed <3) I am so, so excited to see what you create!

General Likes and DNWs

I’m a big fan of epistolary fic, in-universe documents, casefic, outsider POV, only one bed, friends to lovers, magic, music, and general merrymaking. I like hurt-comfort, as long as there’s at least a little comfort at the end! I have a soft spot for holiday fic, so please feel free to explore any and all winter holidays that fit with the setting.

DNW: rape/sexual assault, non-canonical pregnancy or parenthood fic, PWP/porn without plot, BDSM, omegaverse, incest, setting-change AUs (canon divergence is perfectly fine).

Templar Knight Mysteries

Requested characters: Bascot and Gianni
Fandom-specific DNW: any romantic or sexual relationship between Bascot and Gianni, even if the fic is set when Gianni is an adult.

Found family, complex relationships with religion, and engaging mysteries, all in an impeccable medieval setting - what more could one want? I absolutely adore this series, and I'd love just about anything in this fandom!

I have a few prompts, but they are totally optional and you should feel free to ignore them if you have a different idea!

I'm interested in the role religion plays in the characters' lives, especially Bascot's difficult relationship with the Church and with the Templar Order in the earlier novels. I'd love to see a fic exploring what would have happened if Bascot had chosen to leave the Templars after all, whether that's to enter Nicolaa's service as a lay knight or even to enter a different monastic order as the Templar rule would normally mandate.

Gianni's relationship with the art of writing and his training as a clerk is another element of the story that I really love! Maybe a look at a normal day for him during his training, or at how Bascot first taught him to write?

Along those lines, I'm really interested in the sign language Gianni develops to speak with Bascot, and in what it felt like for Gianni to codify this intensely private language - spoken by one person and understood by one other person - into written form to be shared more widely! (And what was the afterlife of that book?)

I am interested in Bascot's experience of disability as well, and how he compensates for and comes to terms with his physical limitations - I love the little side arc with the boots in The Alehouse Murders.

Casefic would be fantastic if you're into that, but so would a slice of their ordinary lives when people aren't getting murdered! (And perhaps a much smaller kind of mystery?) Holiday fic would be amazing, especially about Christmas or Epiphany!

Dragonlance

Requested character: Raistlin
Fandom-specific DNWs: Raistlin/Crysania, evil Caramon.

If you feel like writing something shippy, I ship both Raistlin/Dalamar and Raistlin/Magius - but I am also just as happy with gen!

I have some prompts, but they are totally optional and you should feel free to ignore them if you have a different idea!

Brothers in Arms is one of my favorite Dragonlance books, and I'd love to see something about Raistlin and Caramon's time in the Mad Baron's army! I particularly love Raistlin's relationship with Horkin, and Horkin's unique teaching style. Perhaps something exploring Raistlin's apprenticeship assistantship after Hope's End? Or even Raistlin getting the chance to join one of Horkin's evenings with his divine drinking buddy! We also know that Raistlin and Caramon are very skilled at fighting as a team, melding battle magic and martial prowess, by the time of Autumn Twilight - how did they develop those techniques? It could be fun to see a bit of their practice, or just some highly competent butt-kicking once they’ve honed those skills.

Continuing the teaching theme, I'd also love to see something from Dalamar's apprenticeship - either before the events of Time of the Twins or, if you want to do a canon divergence where the whole Legends situation doesn’t happen or happens differently, after. If the latter, I’d be interested to see how Raistlin and Dalamar work through the whole spy situation, and I’d prefer a positive resolution. What kind of fascinating arcane research are they doing in that tower?

This is such a great canon for magical shenanigans! Polymorph problems? Sex pollen? Bodyswap? (I feel like a Raistlin and Caramon bodyswap would be emotionally devastating in the best way - would Raistlin even give the body back?) Go wild!

If you like sickfic/whump, I'd welcome something about the Elistan incident or similar situations as well.

There are a lot of amazing stories about Raistlin figuring out how to break the Curse of Raelanna, and while I love that, I'm more interested in ways of adapting to the curse, or mitigating its effects, if it ultimately can't be broken outright.

I really enjoy Raistlin and Tika's interactions - they’re so hilariously catty in Dwarven Depths! - and I'd like to see them forced to work together and perhaps get to know each other a little better. Maybe Raistlin and Tika have to team up to rescue Caramon? Perhaps in a world where the events of Legends played out a little differently, or where Raistlin never set his plan in motion at all.

This is another canon I'd enjoy holiday fic for - perhaps a Yule celebration, or the Night of the Eye!

Note: The last few prompts contain some spoilers for Dragons of Fate and Dragons of Eternity.

I kind of lost my mind over Raistlin and Magius when I read Dragons of Fate - I love their friendship, and I also immediately started shipping them so hard. I just really enjoy their relationship, that for the first time in both of their lives, here's someone else who really gets it - a true kindred spirit. I'd love anything with these two, shippy or gen, from fun magical shenanigans to angst (I shed actual tears at Magius' death scene), whether a missing moment from canon or an AU.

The relationship between Raistlin and Magius in Dragons of Fate has me thinking about the Staff of Magius! Is it possible that the reason the staff took such a liking to Raistlin that it remembered him? (After all, the staff was just going through time in the usual direction.)

I'm also intrigued by what we're told about Raistlin and Caramon being part of an undercover resistance movement against Takhisis in the Chaos Timeline! Anything exploring that, or their backstories in Chaos Time generally, would be really interesting.

The Once and Future King

Requested characters: Galahad and Lancelot

So, funny story: my teenage Arthurian obsession began with, of all things, the Queste del Saint Graal, the Cistercian fever dream that first gave us Galahad. I've been fascinated by the Grail narrative ever since, and I absolutely adore the way T. H. White tells it, piece by piece after the fact, everyone making different attempts to figure out what it all meant and make it make sense!

I would love something with Galahad and Lancelot set during the Grail Quest! I really enjoy the glimpses we get of Lancelot and Galahad's time in the boat together, and would love to see more of that. We know Lancelot comes to understand Galahad better than any of the other knights by the end of this - how did that understanding grow between them, and did Galahad also have to learn to understand Lancelot?

I love the parallel between Galahad teaching Lancelot about the animals they encounter and Arthur's education by Merlin. Maybe some more detail on some of those "adventures with animals on the out islands"?

I am generally interested in how they interact with each other as adults, especially with the almost role reversal that takes place during the Quest - not just in Galahad teaching Lancelot things about nature that Lancelot never learned as a child, but also in Galahad's status as a kind of moral exemplar while Lancelot is a penitent. (And is this connected with the idea we see throughout the book of animals being in some ways morally superior to humans? Is it Galahad's quasi-angelic inhumanity that makes him a moral paragon?)

I'd be really interested to know how Lancelot, after he has returned to Guenever and when everything goes wrong, might look back on his time with Galahad and his experience of moral correction during the Quest in general. How might his perspective change once more time has passed? How often does he think of his son during the rest of his life?

Wow, it has been a hot minute since I posted here! It's been a busy couple of months. (Happy Easter and/or Passover, as applicable!)

I had an absolutely marvelous time with worldbuilding_exchange this year!

I wrote "The Earliest Years of the Sun" for narya_flame, which is a funky little piece of in-universe meta I summarized as "A Gondorian academic in the Fourth Age explores the development of a solar calendar system among the Noldor in Beleriand." Unsurprisingly to anyone who knows me, it has footnotes *g*

And I received a magnificent gift from Callmesalticidae: "Notes Toward a Proposal for Renovating the Temple Refectory System" is a fun and extremely clever look at the logistical challenges of a multispecies society like the Jedi Order. I'm over the moon at such a great gift!

Here's a non-exhaustive list of other fics from the collection I particularly enjoyed:

"Into the Wood" by elementalraven is a beautiful canon-divergent Narnia fic about Jill and Eustace in the Wood between the Worlds, offering intriguing glimpses of many other worlds.

fiona15351 wrote delightful casefic for Robin McKinley's Sunshine: "Never Fall Far from the Tree" is a supernatural police procedural in the vampire-killing-stake orchard, with an engaging and endearing OC narrator, and I can personally attest that it's a lot of fun even canon-blind!

"Bullies, bugs, and birds: a case study on competition between introduced Squawkabilly and a native Fletchling population" by crowloft is Pokémon in-universe meta that's an uncanny recreation of an academic paper – right down to a "Retrieved March 11, 2023" timestamp at the top! Plus, it has graphics.

"burn for what you believe in" by flyingfanatic is a Locked Tomb fic about Pyrrha, the early days at Canaan House, and the founding of the Houses that had me unhinged.

And "Grown Deep" by Hokuto is a lovely Earthsea fic about a wizard reluctant to leave Roke; Hokuto recreates the Earthsea vibe really well!

I love this exchange just as much in its second iteration as I did last time – I can hardly wait for next year!

Slightly abridged version of the meme I did last year.

Fics posted in 2022:
January: Classical Reception, 700 words, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
March: On the Transmission of the Red Book of Westmarch, 1k words, Tolkien
July: nidicolous, 200 words, Tolkien
September: Deep Roots, 5k words, Tolkien
October: Lament for Halwen, 500 words, Tolkien
November: sorrow for sea-fare, 600 words, Tolkien; and stands yet the wallstone, 300 words, original work.

Total posted wordcount: 8.3k
( Read more... )

Rules: If you'd like your own questions, let me know in the comments! I'll ask the first five commenters five questions each. Answer them in your own journal, offer to give the first five commenters their own sets of questions, and let the cycle continue! (Meme originally from ursula.)

Questions from independence1776:

1. How do you not get annoyed by the fetch quests in SWTOR?

I'm sorry to say I don't have an answer to this one! I do get annoyed by the fetch quests.

Like many people, I got into gaming during Covid lockdowns, and I don't think I would put as much time into SWTOR if I started now as I did starting spring 2020. If I weren't already invested, the fetch quests might put me off, too. At this point, I'm playing each story expansion on my main as it comes out, but I don't see myself playing through any of the class stories again or anything; I look back at my past self, who completed all eight class stories and played through the consular storyline five times, and I really don't know how I did it. Escapism was a powerful motivator that year.

If nothing else, mindless fetch quests give you time to think about fic ideas?

2. Favorite Jedi who isn't Tionne?

…Indy, you know me too well.

After a lot of going back and forth, I'm picking Kam Solusar! I love Kam's perspective as someone who was a child in the old Order, was forcibly turned to the Dark Side and spent decades as Palpatine's enforcer, and is now trying to be a Jedi again, learning from Luke – who was never a member of the old Order – at the same time as they work to rebuild the Order. Kam seems to be an eternal background character, despite his incredible potential, and I sometimes wonder if Star Wars fandom would look a little different if behind-the-scenes drama at Dark Horse hadn't scuttled the planned Kam-centric graphic novel.

I'll confess that one of my ambitious, probably never going to happen fic ideas is to write my own version of the Lightsider novel, fleshing out Kam's backstory leading up to his official introduction in Dark Empire II.

3. Why did you decide to go to law school?

Until the summer before my senior year of undergrad, I planned to go into academia; I was a Classics major and Medieval Studies minor, primarily researching medieval Latin literature. But I realized that although academic research is worthy and important, I wanted to spend my life helping people in a more concrete way, and I thought law school would give me the tools to do that.

It's also worth noting that I do have quite a few lawyers in my family, and I'm not sure I'd have thought of going into law if I hadn't been exposed to the profession that way. That's not to say that there was any familial pressure to go to law school; just that I had a good idea of what both law school and (some areas of) legal practice were like, and could be confident I was decently well-suited to the profession.

4. Assuming all colors are available, what color would your lightsaber be?

Green! Not that color always corresponds to calling, but I'm 100% a consular at heart.

5. Favorite place in your hometown?

I was lucky enough to grow up on a beautiful part of the California coast, and my hometown has some magnificent beaches. No good for swimming – unless you brought a wetsuit! – but marvelous places for walking, wading, watching the seals and otters, and tidepooling.

Well, help me pick her surname, anyway.

The OC in question is my SWTOR trooper, Ruta:



The names I've been considering are Ruta Filumen and Ruta Abnik. Each is a little bit punny:

Filumen gestures at three different etymologies, two Latin and one Greek:
– Latin flumen, meaning "river" (since, you know, she's a Nautolan);
– Greek φιλομένα (philomena), meaning "beloved";
– and Latin filia luminis, meaning "daughter of light."

(As a side note, the philomena/filia luminis pun also shows up in the strange history of St. Philomena, who...well, it's not that she wasn't a real person. We can be pretty confident that (a) there was an early Christian named Philomena, who may have been martyred, and (b) the bones identified as St. Philomena's bones belonged to an early Christian, who also may have been martyred, so at least one real person is involved. Whether the bones in fact belonged to a person named Philomena, and whether Philomena, and/or the owner of the bones, was in fact martyred, is the subject of heated debate. Also, a Neapolitan nun in 1833 claimed Philomena came to her in a vision and told her details about her life, which is where the iffy "filia luminis" etymology for "Filumena" comes in; make of that what you will.)

Abnik is more straightforward: It's a pun on the Latvian abinieks, which means "amphibian." (Again...Nautolan.)

Anyway, I can't decide, so I figured I'd outsource it to you all!



And I'd love to hear why in the comments!

ETA: independence1776 has pointed out that the poll is a lie and these are not ticky boxes! My apologies to the ticky box lovers among you. The last option should be interpreted as "No opinion, but I love answering polls."

Saw these "Limited Time Flavors" at the drugstore the other day, and of course I had to try them!

Funyuns Flavored Wavy Potato Chips
Rating: ★★★☆☆

A mediocre onion-flavored chip. Pleasant, but one-dimensional. Doesn't measure up to a more traditional sour cream & onion or sweet Maui onion chip.

Doritos Cool Ranch Potato Chips
Rating: ★★☆☆☆

This is the more interesting crossover chip, because what they seem to have done is literally put the same flavor powder from the Cool Ranch Doritos onto potato chips instead of corn chips.

Unfortunately, it's not very good. (...I still finished the bag, though.) But I'm not a massive fan of Cool Ranch Doritos to start with, so someone who adores Cool Ranch might like these chips a lot more!

I'm so excited to say that fiona15351 and I have just posted our poetry/art collab "Lament for Halwen"! Fiona's art is totally gorgeous, so check it out for that if nothing else!

Summary:
Halwen the Spearwoman was a Avarin elf who joined the service of Maedhros Fëanorion shortly before the Dagor Aglareb and died fighting against her lord at Sirion. The untitled Sindarin text commemorating her, known today as the "Lament for Halwen," survives in a single manuscript now preserved at the Library of Rivendell.

Halwen is an OC from my 2021 TRSB fic, "Letters from Himring", and this fic only exists because of the folks who told me they'd like to see more of her <3

Pumpkin spice...kefir?!


Photo (c) Lifeway

Well, I needed to get some kefir (I drink it for breakfast), saw "Pumpkin Spice" flavor, and thought – why not?

It's one of the absolute strangest things I've ever eaten or drunk, and I'm still struggling to decide, an hour later, if it tasted good or bad.

ETA: Photo is from the Lifeway website – though I'm flattered some of you guys think I'm that good a photographer!