The Middle Distance

So, because I'm a procrastinator...

Will anyone be around on Saturday to do a quick and dirty beta of my lgbtfest fic? It'll probably be about 3,000 words (absolutely no more than 5k).

LOTR, with allusions to the Valar and events in the Silmarillion time-frame. Rating probably PG-13.

Slashy, sad, and ENT-CENTRIC. (Major characters: Skinbark, Quickbeam, Treebeard. At this point in the writing there is about a 93% chance of a brief Tom Bombadil appearance.)

I deliberately requested a posting date as close to Beltane as possible. Although it is unavoidably turning out to not be a happy-happy-joy-joy kind of story, it is still my gift to Yavanna and the Green Man.

Am working on lgbtfest fic, which is in LOTR fandom, and remembering that what I loved to write about most in Middle-earth are the characters on the edges and corners and margins who never got anything resembling their full stories told, because they are the ones who made Tolkien's worldbuilding as vivid and deep and enduring as it is. Every fictional world should be like that: the sense that the main narrative is by necessity only a tiny tip of the iceberg.

I'm feeling melancholy, though. Often, writers say that they look at their old stories and are embarrassed by how bad they are. Sometimes, I look at my old stories and think, "I wrote that?" and start to feel that I was once so much more confident and imaginative than I am now, and worry I might never be that good again.

Here's a great post linked from metafandom on the FanLib controversy.

Hmm. A fanfic "company" that has a board of directors with no women on it? Riiiiiight. Who are they trying to kid? The gullible, clearly.

I've realized that the reason I felt so quickly comfortable in fan culture even coming to it later in life than a lot of people is this: my main subcultural background is in indie-rock/DIY-scene culture. Where news that a band has been signed to a major label is greeted not with unqualified congratulations but deep worry, trepidation, and morbid snark - it's been the beginning of the end for ten times more great bands than have ever found fame and fortune that way (and fame and fortune isn't all it's cracked up to be, is it, Kurt?). Lots of people in that scene feel it's better to keep the day job so that the music can stay among friends and on its own terms. Lots of small labels feel it's better to stay small and equitable than grow rich and rigid. And if it means that listeners have to work a little harder to find what they want rather than having it spoonfed to them on the radio and TV, well, that's fine. (The fans have a hunter-gatherer mentality anyway: they like the chase.)

Lack of money, career pressures, and recognition under my own name are the reasons why I enjoy fanfic so much. It's a feature, not a bug. It's freedom. And the "sisters doin' it for themselves" culture is what makes this possible--it's a potluck/barter economy, not a centralized one, and that's what keeps it free, in both sense of the word "free." And I much prefer a smaller, smarter audience to a corporatized one lured in by advertising. (If that makes me an elitist, so be it, but I think it's more of a natural human tribalism, related to the way folks naturally form affinity groups and carve small neighborhoods out of big cities).

Anyway, these are just random thinky thoughts, not any kind of coherent essay.

In other very sad news, Lloyd Alexander has died. bellatrys, tartanshell, and lixtetrax have written beautiful tributes to him in their LJs. Me, I just remember how he stirred my imagination and love of stories when I was very young (he and Evangeline Walton were directly responsible for my intense literary Cymruphilia). I hope he's gone where the stories go on forever and are dazzling.

So there's been some fresh fic at lower_tadfield lately, but still in her entry above her bit of bookshop smut, katilara says: "and linnpuzzle was right, the fandom is slowly collapsing like a flan in a cupboard."

( Some Very Likely Skewed Observations and Opinions )

Get your motor running: oxoniensis's Third Porn Battle is off to the races!


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xylodemon has just started theadvertiser, a Good Omens fandom newsletter, now in its second week. (Does GO need as many newsletters as HP fandom? Of course not. Did it need one? You betcha.)

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From metafandom: rydra_wong has a post looking for lists of Under-Represented Erogenous Zones.

Like lots and lots of people, I've been reading the ongoing revelations about truly trainwrecky onionlike layers of malicious batshittery in the HP fandom a few years ago...

metafandom has been chock full of essays lately on what this says about interpersonal dynamics in fandom, the cult of the BNF, the justifiability of anonymity. All of them, I find absolutely fascinating reading. Sometimes I nod vigorously, sometimes I shake my head just as vigorously.

On occasion the point has been made that the cult of the BNF is so overwhelming in HP that everyone can't help but fall prey when the situation goes bad. I disagree, kind of. It's really a matter of where one might have the good or bad luck to "live."

( For length, and a tortured Urban Life metaphor )

And in other news, my fun with the Ultimate Fandom OTP Generator continues to bear fruit.

Check the comments for fabulous crossover crack:

catherinecookmn wrote 2001:A Space Odyssey/Discworld

very_improbable wrote Neverwhere/The Daily Show.

They work.

I'm starting to recover from the jet lag, I think. Now's where I admit what I want - a new iBook. One that's light and small enough that it would have been feasible to take on this trip, one that's better equipped to take advantage of wireless connections where they exist. Because there were so many hotel nights when I couldn't quite sleep yet, and my fingers itched to type.

So, 30_lemons, bwahahah, what have I done?

Help me, friendslist and lurkers.


HP Readers:

Best answer (or justification for a ticky box click) gets a credit and a custom drabble. ("Best" is defined as "what feels the most right to me/makes me laugh the hardest", so don't expect an objective scoring system).

[Poll #720037]


Thank you!

GO Readers:

Same terms, same prize, but no ticky box here. Get creative; make my day!

So Aziraphale and Crowley are giving free rein to their inherent kinkiness. But of course, safe, sane, and consensual!

[Poll #720038]

Thanks in advance for your brilliance.

Awfully frivolous, isn't it? That's what I can handle right now. I'm holed up in my office where Mr. Weed is watching Yet Another 9/11 Documentary and I just stuck my head out long enough to describe what Kabul looks like from the air. Digory is being very needy and I know why. I don't want to go back to work tomorrow.

It may be just a virus. Yesterday was a solid 8 on the death-warmed-over scale, today's more like a 6.7. We'll see. More tea.

Good thing, as I'm busybusybusy.

In other news, a fic of mine made GAFF!!

Finally! I was starting to feel like the most obscure NNF (No-Name Fan) ever.

It is, of course, an intentional crackfic--and a smutty one at that-- and it is three years old (but then I wouldn't have put it up at Skyehawke recently if I were nearly as ashamed of it as I should be), but hey! The biggest ego-stroke was the poster who said it was actually well-written and in-character, and that made it worse.

Heh.

Now, stories of mine have been mentioned in their "The Antidote" section twice that I know of, but that's just not the same. (And what amuses me about that is that the two stories were "The Ring and the Crown" and "Wrong Turn at Yesod." Not only can I not think of two pieces of anything I've ever written more different from each other, I can't conceive of how two pieces could be more different. I guess only if one of them lacked porn...)

More pseudoephedrine, please!

Also, congratulations to the first person to finish her go_exchange assignment. She knows who she is, and she rocks.

Ah, dear sweet little GO fandom. You're a full-time job today!

First off: afjs;kldfdkjljk!! Remember The Circular Argument? That Aziraphale/Crowley/Adam fic (PWP = Porn With Philosophy)?

quantum_witch illustrates: Heat.

Wow. So PG-rated, and yet so scandalously erotic...it's all in the expressions. Their eyes...oh, just go LOOK at it.

(She's got two other new ones too: Angel Sense, a cute comic, and Be-Bop, a scene from the book which only made me giggle inappropriately because of my post yesterday.)

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Meanwhile, waxbean and I are watching signups for go_exchange roll in. We'll have a fine, fine snarl of matchmaking to do after signups close tomorrow night, and no, that's not a complaint. Currently we've got around--50, is it? Still plenty of room for more!

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New fic is roaring along, although it's proving one of the most difficult ones I've done because of its damn intricacy. It also has an emotional intensity to it I wasn't fully expecting, and every conversation the characters have seems to carry multiple meanings. This one also has a couple of historical figures with actual speaking parts.

Man, the friendslist was bringin' it today!

Multifandom recs.

Harry Potter, but with mucho mass appeal:
I'm sure most people know this by now, but mctabby has commemorated the 30th installment of the cracktastic Summary Executions series with a Greatest Hits edition. 300 luscious horrors inflicted upon the poor defenseless English language, and of course the characters we know and fuck with mercilessly love, only some of whom are defenseless. Some are almost Zenlike: "Nagini plans to take matters into her own hands." "A story told by the eyes of someone unwanted."

Crossover crack, sort of; LOTR AND The Princess Bride. mollyringwraith posts a collaborative effort: The Lord of the Rings Movie Scripts, Done Entirely in 'The Princess Bride' Quotes. Not only is this a geek apotheosis, it works so brilliantly, terrifyingly well.

Good Omens AND Harry Potter: If you're a lower_tadfield regular, you probably saw blue_phlox's gorgeous portraits of four sexy Supernaturals. But if you only saw that one, and didn't follow the link to her own lj, you probably didn't see the gorgeous portrait of the young Sirius and Regulus Black, all decked out in their proud-Pureblood vintage. They're both here.

Good Omens proper, although it's quite improper: professor_mary presents very unusual SMUT: All Mine, in which the connections between the Horsepersons and the Them get explored in a very erotic and very creepy way. Is it a pairing or a three-way? Bit of both, really. (Adam/Brian/Implied Pollution, NC-17)


Harry Potter AND Lord of the Rings: thrihyrne has written a HP/Tolkienverse crossover that's just bloody brilliant: Of Dwarves and Stewed Lucius, here. Dodges and skewers all possible thought of cliche: Lucius Malfoy and Second Age Dwarves. Also more references to needing to relieve oneself than are found in the entire Tolkien corpus.


Go enjoy, and give these geniuses the love like it's your last rear at Hogwarts!