Anghraine

Okay, #14 is: try something new! There were a lot of cool fannish suggestions that I do not have the time or energy for, unfortunately. But on a more granular level, I am trying something that I don't usually do with the ME/P&P AU (the mods did say #11 and #14 could be the same thing!). I usually stick quite strictly to 1-2 POVs to avoid the temptation to head hop, but I'm not doing that with this. We won't get everyone's perspective, but the prologue gave us a little bit of Elizabeth's POV (which of course will be the primary one) and quite a bit from Mira Gardiner, the Anderson-like mentor to Elizabeth in the AU. Mira is a significant character, but we won't actually get her POV that much—but it seemed right for the prologue. We're also definitely going to get significant POVs from both Illia/Darcy and Jori'Zanah/Georgiana and probably quite a few more. I'm going to see if I can juggle the POVs while still keeping Elizabeth central :D

Okay, let's see if we can power through the rest of the challenges in the next hour!

#12: Personal Win

Share whatever wins you’re comfortable with telling us all about. Found a new fandom that makes you light up? One of your creations has earned more kudos than you dreamed of? Wins from life, new job, new school, new adventure? You have a couple of wins you want to celebrate, we want to hear about them. Share a win or two so we can cheer for you.

I'm still very enthused about finishing the prologue to the Mass Effect/P&P AU I've been talking about for weeks. I actually powered through everything I wanted to do in the prologue while feeling like shit, didn't compulsively edit, didn't WIP-post it on AO3 for instant validation, didn't convince myself that it'd be fine to do it a bit later, nada. Go, me!

I've also made plans to move to a nearby city with a very close friend after I graduate, and I'm really excited about it.

Caught up to double digits! This specific challenge is pretty open-ended:

Five Things! The five things are totally up to you. Maybe you want to list your favorite 5 Friends episodes, or your Top 5 fandom friends, maybe you want to list all the Broadway shows you've seen or the 5 Times K-Pop fought global hunger. Go for it. This challenge is the epitome of You Do You (in 5-ish easy steps).

I've actually been thinking about this one for awhile, and while I had a few different vague ideas, I'm going to go with...

Five Favorite Fiction Tropes

In no particular order, some just for fic and some not, and subject to change:

1. Angst -> cathartic happy ending. This can be hurt/comfort, but doesn't have to strictly fit the traditional archetype—the pain can be entirely emotional, or a mix of angst and physical suffering of some kind, or whatever, as long as it's emotionally intense for my faves and then things are made right and looking substantially up by the end. This doesn't need to involve romance (nearly all my Psych fic reading was driven by wanting something terrible happening to Shawn, and Henry feeling really bad and not being a shitty father for more than 2 minutes at a time), but it certainly can (incognitajones's "no grave to bury sorrow in" does a great job of this with Jyn/Cassian).

2. I was talking a bit more about it earlier today, under f-lock, but romantic or intense platonic relationships between people who (when the relationship forms) can expect to live for significantly different lengths of time, or have different aging patterns, or whatever. It just adds a delicious touch of bittersweetness to things. It won't necessarily carry an entire ship for me, but if I already like it ... delicious (I adore both Aegnor/Andreth and Finrod/Andreth for this). I also just like it as a world-building thing, even if I'm not invested in the specific relationship, like in Mass Effect with small details like the random overheard conversation between a young asari (lifespan: ~1000 years) and her aging salarian stepfather (lifespan: ~40 years) as she tries to comfort him.

3. Chosen ones! Yeah, I know, I know. Whatever. I love well-intentioned characters who are just super special for reasons and this has effects (they don't need to be the literal chosen one of the whole story or universe, just very special and cool by fiat, esp if it involves awesome magic powers). Adora has ruled my heart since I was tiny (pretty sure there's a corner of my brain that just has the S5 reboot She-Ra asteroid sequence on constant replay) but my love for this can encompass less centrally chosen characters who are just really special for arbitrary reasons (like book Faramir).

4. My ostensibly cis male fave whose fandom reception is profoundly filtered through gender is now a woman. Or she's a girl, for younger faves, or she's not exactly a woman, but a mixture of feminine-leaning and does not really get gender but rolls with "woman" or "girl" as a useful approximation. Obviously this is partly about personal projection, along with just being something I find interesting to think about (in terms of how the essential personality of the character would be affected by patriarchal norms, mores, heteronormativity, etc). It makes my fave hotter to me personally, it discards the gender filter usually surrounding the character and/or their fandom reception, it mixes up a usually male-dominated cast, and (since I am a creature of spite) it aggravates very annoying people. Wins all around!

5. Quasi-femme fatales: beautiful female characters who are intense, ruthless, usually haunted or damaged by something in their history, and scary to oppose? Yeah, it's a good one, especially if a) they know perfectly well how attractive they are and don't feel the need to use it (possibly they have in the past, but that's not necessary any more, and possibly ever), and b) the narrative has some sympathy for them without them losing their edge.

And we're back with the Snowflake Challenge! #8 is:

Talk about a current fannish project (fic, art, vid, crochet, funko pop village) (that you are creating or enjoying).

If you've been reading my DW over the last few weeks, you know what it's going to be: I'm working sloooowly on a Mass Effect/P&P AU with Elizabeth as Commander Shepard Bennet (a technologically savvy sniper and victor of the battle of Torfan who is very committed to only thinking of the past as it brings her pleasure) and a crew of various P&P characters, including:

• Janani Hackett, a human gunnery chief who saw terrible things on Eden Prime but stubbornly sticks to her ideals;
• Illia T'Arzi (Darcy), an arrogant asari scientist whose real motives are never as transparent as Elizabeth would like;
• Sharra Lukarian (Charlotte), an exasperated turian security officer who finds a future on board the Normandy;
• a young quarian, Jori'Zanah (Georgiana), who is just trying to prove her worth and bonds with Illia;
• George Wickham, an Alliance lieutenant and reasonably skilled biotic trained in an asari-run initiative to help young biotics from other species. Definitely trustworthy!

I've written a little of it and I'm determined that this time will be different and I won't post it as a WIP on AO3, I'll just keep poking at it in my spare time until it's either finished or not posted there at all. (I will definitely put bits of it here so I don't internally combust, lol.) Not sure of the ultimate length because, even just going with ME1, there are a lot of moving parts that I'm still figuring out. But it's very exciting!

Hey all! This challenge was:

In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a show, a specific TV episode, a storyline, a book or series, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much.

I thought of a lot of different things I could bring up for this challenge, and I kind of wanted to go for one of my less broadly popular ones, but the one that kept coming back to me is extremely famous and I've talked about it plenty of times before. Nevertheless, my pick: the lightsaber duel between Anakin and Luke Skywalker in the carbon-freezing chamber in The Empire Strikes Back.

I was recently talking with my best friend about why it's my favorite lightsaber duel in all of SW. It doesn't have the flashiest choreography (though I do think the choreography is very good; I love the way you gradually realize just how outclassed Luke is by Vader and that Vader is stringing this thing out for his own reasons, but it's also visually interesting to watch—a very evident step up from the Vader-Obi-Wan duel in ANH). It doesn't even have my favorite emotional moment in a duel (that's Luke staring at his hand in ROTJ).

But the integration of the mechanics of the duel with the setting is so good. The superb lighting of the chamber (the use of color in this scene as an extension of the duel!!!), the practical uses of the paraphernalia of the chamber (Luke climbing out of the carbon-freezing device, Vader using the Force to throw random nearby objects that Luke has to try and evade), the phases of the duel being fused with the physical surroundings as Luke passes through different parts of the chamber—things like the creepy tunnels where Vader surprises him, the window that nearly sucks Luke out, and of course, the railings they're on at the end when Luke throws himself to fate. The choreography, the music, the dialogue, the setting, the visuals, the emotional dynamics of the duel, all culminating in the loss of Luke's hand and the disruption of his understanding of the world—it all flows together in a visually spectacular way that provides a perfect framing for Vader's reveal.

The reveal would be a bombshell regardless, but I think it's the framework of the damn near perfect set piece around it that lends it the full weight it gained in pop culture and in the arc of the films.

Okay, this one is also weirdly, well, challenging!

IceBreaker Challenge! Tell us about yourself.

It feels like I do that all the time, lol, but (even though I'm not posting in the community's comments—lingering shyness, I guess) I guess it can be handy to have in one place. Okay. I think I'll do this one as a bulleted list for convenience. Stuff about me:

• My name is Elizabeth (most people know me as Anghraine and a few know my family nickname, but any of these are fine).
• I'm in my 30s. (Still. Somehow.)
• I'm a PhD student in English literature, hopefully in my final semester. I complain about my dissertation pretty regularly.
• Like many people in fandom, I'm very opinionated, frequently about things that seem trivial to other people.
• I'm US American and politically a progressive Democrat.
• My home is the Pacific Northwest and love it dearly.
• I don't like most of my appearance, but I do have dark hair and grey eyes, which give me a bit of joy as a Tolkien fan.
• I'm a grey-ace lesbian & she/her or they/their pronouns are both fine. My sense of gender is both very clear (no intrinsic gender) and very muddy (AFAB and in the habit of alignment with women for various reasons, but it's complicated), so I tend to veer between "eh, whatever" and "????????" as far as gender goes.
• I have three parents—my mother, my (adoptive) father, my (biological) father, and since I have ties to all of them (though much stronger to the first two), it's not always clear which father I'm talking about. My adoptive father is Mexican-American and my bio father is Greek/Irish-American, both of which come up sometimes for family reasons.
• I don't talk about it a whole lot, but I was raised Mormon (by my mother and adoptive father), while my bio father is Catholic, and this has definitely impacted my particular experience of US Christianity. I'm personally agnostic.
• I'm bipolar and autistic, and relatedly, tend to veer between not doing much and super-intense posting.
• I've been active in fandom since about 2003, when I delurked at the Faramir/Éowyn Emyn Arnen forums (I also stealth shipped Faramir/Aragorn, but didn't admit it then :P). My main OTP is Elizabeth/Darcy (book versions). I also love the Star Wars OT (with the prequels and, some days, TFA+TLJ along for the ride) and Rogue One a lot (I've had various SW ships over the years, but nothing really compares to the greatness of Jyn/Cassian; my other SW faves are Luke, Anakin, and Leia). I only intermittently still talk about Legend of Korra, but it's never left my heart (Korra, Noatak/Amon, Tarrlok, and Kuvira <33333).
• It's not the only thing I do, but I especially love genderbending my favorite male characters to women.
• Dreamwidth is not the place I post most often, but it is my favorite place to post (icons, f-lock, normalizing long-form conversations...).

Hi again, all! Today's (and yesterday's) challenge is—

In your own space, set yourself some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.

Unsurprisingly, my main goal is to finish my damn dissertation and (damn) PhD program. I just want to be free!!

I do have a very minor fannish goal: if you follow me on Tumblr, you may have seen my posts about playing Mass Effect (the trilogy) with my best friend and having ideas for a P&P fusion with Mass Effect with Elizabeth in Shepard's role (Darcy roughly occupies Liara's role). It's still percolating, but I'd like to get the story nailed down in my mind. I don't know if I'll actually write it, but I'd like to at least have it clear for myself—I've written some notes on how it works, but it's still quite foggy. I'll probably post a little more about it today.