#wizardysseus

yeah that's one of the marketing conceits of the myth retelling novel industrial complex that bothers me, it's the framing as if no one has ever paid attention to these female characters who are buried unnoticed in the myths when often the most complete or the most authoritative version of the character's story that survives from antiquity is in tragedy, a genre that is notoriously interested in bringing female characters out of the house and putting them on stage in active roles, and in using those female characters to explore issues of gender and the place of women in contemporary society.

Thank you for the encouragement! Chapter 6 of the thing (in which Patia first meets Nydas!) is nearly half written it's just a matter of stringing it together (and then I get distracted by other projects)

Thanks Anna!

Ah Blood Magic Hamlet…the albatross around my neck… (I'm kidding. It's an albatross I'm fond of.)

This was my capstone my my undergrad creative writing major, intended to be a novella, but AS USUAL I underestimated how long it would actually be and realized 10,000 words in that I was very much writing A Full Novel. It's sort of been simmering for the past couple of years because 1) I wanted a slight break from writing and thinking and editing it for a full semester so I started writing a completely different story instead and 2) turns out the idea of writing a novel about grief and political upheaval is unappealing when you keep attending family funerals and the world keeps going to shit. But it's been creeping back into my mind recently so I keep writing down notes and buying books to read as research and there's a twist a the climax I cannot WAIT to write so I will hopefully get back to it some time this year.

The basic premise is that it's an adult gothic fantasy lesbian retelling of Hamlet told from the POV of the Horatio character. There's a creepy castle and a lot of desperate devotion and ancestral magic (the blood magic in question is probably more aptly "DNA magic.") Also Ophelia has a sword.

Here's a snippet about the castle the book takes place in.

tagged by @wizardysseus

rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! Then tag as many people as you have WIPs

Roses and Lavender (Chapter 15)

MOUNTAIN GOATS NO CHILDREN DOT MP3

Little Mermaid Alt Ending

As The Sun Will Rise

sapphire and steel prompt meme

well it is morgwen inasmuch as anything I write for merlin bbc is morgwen but it is actually more focused on a time when they aren't in the same place, which is to say it's basically me going "the show didn't do enough character work to justify morgana's transformation between seasons 3 and 4 so I guess I've gotta do it for them!" and going from there, particularly exploring the relationship between morgana and morgause during that period of time.

it's the character development from mostly good to evil that morgana deserved and didn't get, as written by me. is the plan, anyway.

and yeah it's going to be at least subtextually morgwen because, well. me

@necro-divergent:

that post’s got some weird conflation between “writing for marketability” and “thinking about audience interpretation and enjoyment” that i do not understand. not a fan of it either

It's conflating a lot of stuff, frankly. Leaning into one's kinks without apologetic scaffolding in the narration is different from, uh, "two people feeling the biggest craziest feelings of their entire life and they cannot do anything about it except bang it out". There are a lot of different things being clustered together here, and I frankly think it would have been served better by talking about register, rather than author motivation.

But yeah, you're right to point out that considering one's audience on any level is different from aiming to be maximally marketable. Do I "write for myself"? Sure, and one reason I got into writing fanfic was because I was burned out on public fandom interaction and needed to retreat into my own head and interpretations. But if I am putting the effort into writing at all, I am usually thinking on some level about how it will be read, even if it's just on the level of "would this paragraph be comprehensible to someone who doesn't live inside my head and already know what I mean by it?"

@wizardysseus:

i dislike it in a different way? being that: i do not really enjoy reading about fucking, and am made constantly aware in fandom spaces that what is self-indulgent for me may look like holding back the good stuff to someone else. so ultimately the same reason: you're talking about how you don't want writers to give a shit but how do YOU know if a writer gives a shit? based on whether their writing is tailored to YOUR preferences?

I feel this sooo much, if for different reasons. It's actually a point of insecurity I have about my current fic, so, cool post to see at this particular moment in time!

@aeide-thea:

ugh tumblr ate my first reply but. agree, & basically i think that post has the same problem as #ownvoices in that it thinks you can necessarily deduce things abt an author's positionality/attitude/&c from a text. which is just. not in fact true! sometimes your thin-slicing will be right, yes, but sometimes people are operating according to a pattern you don't personally recognize, and your assumptions about them are in fact totally off-base in erasive, dangerous ways!