anghraine

So my best friend J and I were talking about creative writing, and how sapped I've been through the later part of graduate school and also am just a slow writer, and about what writing for joy would look like, etc. I thought about for a little bit, then:

me: I think I know what kind of writing would bring me joy once my brain reconstitutes.
J: Yeah?
me: ...I could never, ever try publishing it professionally and wouldn't want to.
J: *pause* Oh, so fanfiction?
me: Yes. I wouldn't want to risk the wrath of Disney.
J: That has to mean Star Wars.
me: Yeah. I—there's one—I mentioned a few years ago that I wrote a Rogue One fanfic that I'm fond of ...
J: The one where they escape but get stuck on the Death Star?
me: Yes! It's pretty long and I stopped seriously working on it a long time ago, but it's very close to being finished and ... pretty long ... and it's always nice when someone recommends it as technically unfinished but satisfyingly resolved, but lol I tagged it as slow burn in 2017 and they, they never kiss or declare their feelings to avoid complicating such a dangerous situation, so it's just uhhh yearning and camaraderie for thousands and thousands of words. But also there's some plot.
J: That honestly sounds really cool. I should read it some time, but anyway, I think you should do it! I bet that would make you happy.
me: :)

He's not into fanfic at all—he tried a couple of times and it always just morphs into original fiction—and I've rarely talked to him about it at all, so I was touched that he both remembered the premise and was supportive in his creative writing friend capacity! Also, he's a big SW fan (bigger of ST, but even so) and Rogue One is his favorite SW film, so I was touched! He even ended up asking if they get blown up with the Death Star, how they're involved with the "rescue" of Leia, if they're involved with releasing the tractor beam, etc.

I told him about how I really wanted to get the scale of the Death Star across with the long elevator trips and such, and a bit about how I wanted our heroes to be competent but also not to face no serious challenges or stakes, even though a lot of Imperials are pretty silly. I specifically wanted Cassian to face a situation where he had to set aside the big picture for the sake of some extremely flawed individuals and where Jyn, who sees the personhood in random strangers but can lose sight of the big picture, to face a situation where she has to sacrifice an individual for the greater good. The guy isn't meant to be likable but he is meant to be very decidedly a person with his own feelings and relationships, his friend worries about him even when the other Imperials just assume he fell into a bottomless chasm or whatever, and then she and Cassian are left with a very suspicious dead body in the detention center where they're working.

J: lol they should throw it into the garbage compactor!
me: Oh, they do.
J: WHAT
me: :)
J: Really?
me: Yes. So when Leia and everyone jump in, there's—
J: *bursts out laughing*

We'd been trying to figure out how exactly to entertain ourselves last night, since my mind was so melted from Dissertation Day that I wasn't really up to much, and then J had a brainwave.

J: You could do research!
me: ............I'm not sure I really have that in me right now.
J: No, not that kind! Let's watch A New Hope. It's not as heavy or complex as the others, but it's really good and fun, and it'll be research for your story :)
me: :)

So we did! It was great, as ever.

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Bad Moon Rising (Creedence Clearwater Festival)

My best friend and I had an interesting, fairly wide-ranging conversation about the distinctions between adaptation, retellings, fanfiction, other forms of directly intertextual storytelling (à la Wide Sargasso Sea, Lavinia etc), covers (as in music), heavily illustrated editions of texts, collage, sampling, novelizations, ekphrasis generally, translation, and inspiration.

The distinctions here are mainly ones that he makes and I do not. For me, all of these things are on a spectrum or scatterplot of something like intertextuality. As I was saying on Tumblr the other day (re: fanfiction), I don’t actually think that most of these kinds of terminology reflect coherently defined art forms at all. They reflect norms, values, and conventions shaped by laws and corporations and other economic/cultural concerns, not any consistent system of understanding intertextuality more broadly.

This is a frequent point of disagreement between him and me, because he prefers to refine terms like these into … philosophical coherence, I guess? So he’ll say, well, I think of the term as more specifically meaning X, not Y, and that lets us examine the different approaches that X and Y take in a more systematic, artistically formal way. (As in the linked post, this is formal in the sense of form not as in propriety.)

And I’m like … it does, yes, but I don’t think that kind of re-definition corresponds to the meanings of those terms in actual usage. Narrowing the definitions imposes a coherence and logic to these distinctions that I don’t think actually exists. It’s more like a grab bag of imprecise, overlapping categories defined by values and customs and legal practice than anything they’re doing artistically.

Him: inconsistent laws and customs are kind of arbitrary and uninteresting in terms of theorizing categories of art, though.

Me: not to me, but anyway, I think the way we theorize art is very profoundly shaped by modern customs and laws to a degree we often can't even see, and words are defined by usage, not philosophical convenience.

(Yeah, we’re super fun at parties. But seriously, this is how we’ve talked since high school.)

Regardless, his theory is that adaptation is actually a narrower category of intertextual art than in casual (or academic) usage. His view is that an adaptation is an attempt to represent the actual source; there may be new material added, and some of the original material may be removed, but there is an effort to preserve not just character outlines or plot structure or elements of setting, but considerable amounts of the original source, usually in a different medium than the original. A re-telling, on the other hand, is a work that re-casts the source material into new language and sometimes generic (as in genre) form.

This is all according to him, not me. I think all storytelling of this kind = re-telling and that there is no hard line separating these approaches, just gradations of variance.

( Read more... )

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Old Time Rock & Roll (Bob Seger)

An anon asked:

firiel anon here. You write rebelcaptain too???? My god you’re just tackling all of my favorite ships... back to AO3 I go!

I replied:

I do! I wrote nearly 100k of a fic where Jyn, Cassian, and Bodhi escape Scarif and Jyn and Cassian fall (more) in love, and also … uh, around 18 others. The only ship I’ve written more for is Darcy/Elizabeth :)

Thanks!

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Style (Taylor Swift)

I was looking at my AO3 page, and … I have a pretty jumbled mix of feelings about what I’ve written, honestly.

I don’t expect many people to care, but going with the top 11:

1. Season of Courtship (Austen): I wrote it at 19 alongside The Rich Are Always Respectable, alternating on a schedule, in fits of depression and mania. A few years later (in a better frame of mind), I revised it—some sections quite substantially. I’m glad people like it but feel kind of weird about it being The One.

2. per ardua ad astra (Star Wars): I wrote this in a haze of Rogue One feelings between early 2017 and mid-2018. I was dealing with some mental health issues, but not 2005 hell, and it helped with them. I feel vaguely bad about the perpetually unfinished half of a chapter on my Drive, but I am fond of the fic generally.

3. But Thou Didst Not Leave His Soul In Hell (Star Wars): I was listening to The Messiah and had the idea of a bunch of short SW fics set to various lyrics; this is one of them. It was a strange but fun project and super soothing after Austen fandom, so it’s nice to see such a short thing up here.

4. we get dark, only to shine (The Borgias): I wrote this during my MA, and the academic and fic research crossed over heavily, which made both easier. I’d finally gotten diagnosed as bipolar and put on mood stabilizers, I was getting A’s in everything, and its fandom was the absolute nicest I’ve ever been in. Best fandom experience bar none.

5. tolerably well acquainted (Austen): I had some P&P feelings and started self-indulgent drawer fic that just kind of grew. Slowly. Very slowly. But eventually it reached the point where I decided to post what I had, and … it’s still ongoing.

6. Contradictions and Varieties (Austen): this comes from my better Austen fandom days. There was a prompt at Firthness and the first half of the fic was my fill for it, and then I tacked on an ending later. I feel like the division is very obvious and it’s pretty uneven, so I’m kind of meh about it.

7. Anomaly (Austen): the ace!Darcy fic, inspired by the ace manifestos community on Dreamwidth. I thought of actually writing a manifesto for him, and then just wrote fic instead. It’s not my best fic, but it is my precious child and every nice comment warms my heart to this day.

8. Ten Facts About Harry Potter (Harry Potter): my take on Slytherin!Harry, something I’ve always deeply loved in concept and very rarely in execution. It’s … eh.

9. First Impressions (Austen): also not my best fic, but I planned it for a year and then wrote it for a big bang, and it largely turned out the way I wanted it to turn out. That doesn’t often happen! And I had friends who were super encouraging the whole time, and was in a good place mentally, and … it was a joy, really.

10. The Talk (Austen): It sure exists. (More seriously, it’s not really “me” and feels very remote.)

11. Redemption (Star Wars): this was my first SW fic ever and I shoved a lot of my ambivalence about ROTJ and the PT into it while trying to stay away from fix-fic implications. It was really fun to write for a new fandom, so I just did whatever popped into my head, and … it doesn’t bother me, since I had such a good time writing it, but in retrospect it’s a strange little thing.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ETA 2/28/2024: I don't think my top 11 by kudos looks exactly the same now, though it's similar: 1) Season of Courtship, 2) But Thou Didst Not Leave His Soul in Hell, 3) per ardua ad astra, 4) we get dark, only to shine, 5) Contradictions and Varieties, 6) Anomaly, 7) tolerably well acquainted, 8) The Talk, 9) Ten Facts About Harry Potter, 10) A Cunning Plan, and 11) First Impressions.]

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: All Dead, All Dead (Queen)

Snowflake Challenge promotional banner with image of metallic snowflake and ornaments. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31.

Aaaaand as January 2024 closes out (it's actually a little past midnight but NEVER MIND), here's my last Snowflake entry!

#15: Fandom Snowflake Challenge's 2023 Fandom Wrapped!

Your top 5 fandoms for 2023 were: just guessing, but I'm sure Austen (mainly P&P), Tolkien, SW, complaining about grad school, and video games in general (esp GW2/BG3/ME).

Your top 5 fandom spaces (Discord, Twitter, etc.) in 2023 were: Tumblr, Dreamwidth, and ... no, that's pretty much it.

The top 5 things you did to contribute to fandom in 2023 were: I wrote a bunch of meta, esp earlier in the year. I updated my f/f Darcy/Elizabeth fic and per ardua ad astra, though the former still has a long way to go. I've tried to reblog things I like more and post on Dreamwidth more. I ditched Twitter (yes, I feel this counts as contributing to the general fandom good).

Your top 5 most appreciated fandom contributions were: various Austen meta posts, that damn tiers of headcanon post on Tumblr with thousands of notes, updating ad astra, and ... um, I'm sure there were other things that got spread around a bit, but that's what I recall right now!

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Dust In the Wind (Kansas)

Fic title meme, grabbed from glorious_spoon on Dreamwidth!

Look at the most recent 20 fanwork titles on your AO3 account. (I’m assuming this isn’t the most recent begun/completed fics, but the most recently updated for any reason.)

1. How many are you happy with? Twelve-ish.

2. How many are … not great? Five. >_<

3. How many did you scramble for at the last minute? Six. I thought it’d be more, tbh!

4. How many did you know before you started writing/creating, or near the beginning? Nine or so, though leaning heavily on “near the beginning.”

5. How many are quotes from songs or poems? Ten!

6. How many are other quotes? Five. I definitely lean on quotes for my titles! (Otherwise titling things is the WORST.)

7. Which best reflects the plot of the story/content of the fanwork? Probably the last day, which is about the canonical last day of normal life in Ascalon before a genocidal attack that devastates the people and land.

8. Which best reflects the theme of the story? Oh, it has to be the gift of men, which is about Eldarion and death, known in Middle-earth as “the gift of men.”

9. Which best reflects the character voice of the story/POV of the fanwork? I think this one’s got to be the words are all escaping, an AU where Jyn and Cassian survive and are now together, but struggle to put it into words, instead largely leaving their actions to speak for themselves; when Jyn talks at all, she talks around what’s actually going on and what she really means. (In fairness, this is how I generally write her.)

10. Which is your favourite title? Hmm. It’s probably per ardua ad astra, which is both pretentious Latin and a joke (it means “through adversity to the stars” and Jyn, Cassian, and Bodhi indeed get through the adversity of the RO plot to reach a star—the Death Star).

I'm cross-posting three years later, but feel free to do it if you'd like!

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Twist and Shout (The Beatles)

Oh damn, just realized that I went back and revised the AO3 version of ad astra for continuity, and never did the fixes over here. Eep.

(I chose the icon randomly but ... I actually did the same with the Lucy fics, only more thoroughly since most are older. Arrrrgh, self.)

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Princess Leia's Theme (John Williams)

I shocked myself by actually finishing the chapter of per ardua ad astra that's been moldering in GoogleDocs for ~5 years. And revising it! And posting it at AO3! If you're (...still) reading it, the new chapter is here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9223013/chapters/119508970

Emphatically, *\0/*

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Étude in C Minor "Revolutionary" (Frédéric Chopin / Vladimir Horowitz)

Apparently, I’ve been plagiarized, so I looked at my AO3 (sorted by kudos) to see if it was at least from my top five fics, since people don’t always realize how much they’re picking up and re-using.

No, it was not! But in fairness, I’m pretty ????? about what logic governs which ends up at the top. It’s currently:

Season of Courtship—Darcy/Elizabeth engagement fic I wrote at 19 (though I revised it later). It hadn’t been in my #1 slot for a really long time, but got a bunch of kudos over the last few months for some reason.
per ardua ad astra—Rogue One AU where Jyn, Cassian, and Bodhi escape Scarif only to get sucked into the Death Star. So close to being resolved, and yet, not. Def my most popular for a long while, but I posted most of it in the RO fandom heyday.
But Thou Didst Not Leave His Soul In Hell—ROTJ AU where Anakin/Vader seriously considers Luke’s offer to leave with him. It is 841 words and I desperately wish I had it in me to write more.
we get dark, only to shine—my longest fic ever at 168k; an AU for The Borgias that tries to bring in history and stay essentially true to the show’s dynamics. Another one that had its time as my #1 fic (despite being a problematic checklist, including incest).
tolerably well acquainted—canon-compliant fic expanding on Elizabeth’s time at Pemberley and afterwards. It’s actually something I’m invested in right now, so it’s been nice to see it climbing past most of my old fics.

Anyway. That happened!

( cut )

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Don't Stop (Fleetwood Mac)

I was ranking my fics by bookmarks to see if that affected the general ranking, which is how I found out that Season of Courtship now has exactly 500 bookmarks.

...I don't even know.

(It does affect the ranking, btw! Courtship reigns over all my fics regardless, but my second most bookmarked is per ardua ad astra, which I think is only #3 or #4 by kudos. My weird first SW fic—it's an "Anakin gets redeemed earlier and doesn't die" fic that's also AU for ROTJ+the PT—makes it in the top 10, too, and my pre-Disney, EU-ignoring post-ROTJ headcanon scraps series even squeaks into the top 20. I'm never sure how to judge these kinds of differences between kudos and bookmarks; kudos are a bit lower-investment, I think, so insofar as they measure anything, they seem maybe a metric of general approval, while bookmarks are more like "I'm intrigued" or "I'll want to read this again.")

Current Location: Washington

In response to this, icamelatetothenewsiesparty said:

*quiet whining noises at the idea of a new chapter of per ardua ad astra* ♥️

I replied:

Heh, thank you! I have … four pages of one. Here’s a little bit:

“You mean Erso,” said Leia, down-to-earth again.

“Jyn was like Han?” Luke exclaimed. “And then she stole the Death Star plans? See—”

“Jyn is extraordinary,” Cassian said repressively. “I wouldn’t pin your hopes on Han Solo.”

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Summer of '69 (Bryan Adams)

I just saw that I got another bookmark on pro patria. Now there's a whole SEVEN.

And someone on Tumblr just recced ad astra, and honestly my attachment to the two fics are about equal, so it was super nice to get both at once :)

(I mean, ad astra is better IMO and less restricted by its canon and format, but I have so many ~feelings~ about Tyria and Ascalon and my version of the PC in the specific storylines I chose that pro patria manages to be equally dear to me and its seven bookmarks weigh a lot.)

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Killer Queen (Queen)

I did a meme awhile back that includes listing your most popular works by kudos, and it's like:

1. Season of Courtship: just over 2000 kudos. Nothing I've written out of my teens will ever compare, apparently. [Dated to 2006 on AO3, but actually written earlier.]

2. But Thou Didst Not Leave His Soul In Hell: 1429 kudos. 841 words, so ... okay. [2012]

3. per ardua ad astra: 1354 kudos. Yay, a longfic that I wrote in the comparatively recent past made the list! It definitely benefited from being for what was then a big ship in a megafandom, but I was mostly pretty happy with it despite some issues and continuity errors. [updated 2018]

4. we get dark, only to shine: lol, I knew it'd show up here somewhere. 1301 kudos. It used to be far and away my most popular fic, actually, despite (because of?) centering problematic characters on the problematic train to Problematicville. (The canon sibling incest pairing is but one of the dubious features.) I did put a lot of fairly serious historical research into it, though, which overlapped with my RL research enough to get a paper written and sort of published. *\0/* [updated 2016]

5. tolerably well acquainted: 1141 kudos. And here's one that I'm uncomplicatedly happy about. It's just canon expanded from Pemberley onwards, but I pored over the novel to try and make sure everything fit well enough, and tried to strike some middle ground between a pseudo-Austenian style and my own (which, despite my many Austen fics, I always find fairly difficult). But I'm very, very fond of it and hope to finish it one day. [updated 2020]

Current Location: Washington

I mentioned it on Tumblr, but I just re-watched Rogue One and apart from the general AHHhhhhhHHHHHH, I'm having strong ad astra feelings. T_T

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Counting Stars (OneRepublic)

A year later (>_>), I made some progress on ad astra!

Jyn and Cassian both nodded at Leia. This was her call, Jyn felt, and at a look, she knew Cassian felt the same.

On Solo’s other side, Luke shuffled; Jyn had no idea why, beyond the obvious. Nerves, perhaps.

For a few seconds, they just waited. Then Leia straightened up to her full height, such as it was, and squared her shoulders.

She said, “Set the coordinates for Yavin Four.”

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Walking on Sunshine (Katrina and the Waves)

(Stolen from

shadaras)

List your top fanfic on AO3 for every year, sorted by kudos.

I wasn't sure whether to list them by the date posted or updated, but it was easier to go with updated, so that's what it is.

( Read more... )

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: I Want to Break Free (Queen)

Occasionally I look at ad astra.

And then hide my head under a pillow, obviously.

(How have I been sitting on half a chapter for THIS LONG, JFC.)

Current Mood: guilty

The date is purely because I posted various short things on the 13th that don't merit separate crossposts, but I am a completionist.

[warning: fic-spoilery references to canonical sibling incest]

( Read more... )

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Pompeii (Bastille)

Stolen from

lizbee!

( Read more... )

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: Portland, OR
Current Music: We Belong (Pat Benatar)

Per ardua ad astra just passed 60k (I think it's around 62k), which kind of stuns me just on the face of it, but especially considering that I've dedicated a significant amount of time to another AU (which is currently at *squints* 18k).

Like, I've been working on ad astra for seven months, and it's longer than all the Lucyverse fics combined! If AO3 is to be trusted, it's the longest individual fic I've written after wgdots, and it's 2nd or 3rd for kudos, comments, bookmarks, etc. Out of everything I've written, ever, which would be... 168 fics, not counting the ones I never crossposted. o_O

It continues to be really fun to have something where people respond and talk to me and there's constant encouragement without guilt trips, and doubly so in this context. I mean, it's not even remotely the most popular fic in the fandom, so it's not like I have to feel uncomfortably BNF-ish! But pretty surreal, all the same. Especially as—I do love ad astra, but it's not even my personal favourite of my RO fics. And yet, here we are.

(My ultra-revised chapters go on Dreamwidth, eventually. Honestly, my biggest hurdle is ... I haven't been able to find many Jyn/Cassian icons to post with. I am really that petty.)

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Portland, OR
Current Music: Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Queen)

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Anghraine

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Entries tagged with fic talk: per ardua ad astra

:)

Thinking about adaptation and fic and other stuff

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Snowflake Challenge #15

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I am all astonishment! (at myself)

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AO3 meme!

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[crosspost] Feb 13th, 2019

End of year round-up!

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