isle of gramarye (the crystal goblet and the wine)

... okay, so Sarah Palin's resigning from what with the who now?

This entry was originally posted at http://lotesse.dreamwidth.org/156328.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

title: (bind you with love that is) graceful and green as a stem, 7-9/9
pairing: non-explicit Sam/Frodo – either fairly chaste slash or heavily romantic gen
wordcount(total): 22, 664
rating: pg

An au of the final chapters of RotK. Crack premise: if it were possible for Sam to take up the burden of Frodo's pain, and allow his beloved master to be free. Tolkien splits his ending evenly between comedy and tragedy, with Sam getting all of the one and Frodo getting all of the other. Sam has marriage and children and riches, the narrative of celebration, of life ascendant. Frodo has the tragic side: death, loss, all the things that never get better, and at last his martyr's end. But a different end to the story could be managed, if Sam and Frodo were to share both the joy and the sorrow of their victory and their adventure. drama, angst, hurt/comfort. thanks and endearments to my beta, lozlan.

1-3 4-6

( 7. Oh, I hope you run into them, you who've been traveling so long )

( 8. And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song )

( Epilogue: You can read their address by the moon )

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"The sick, irrational men, those who attempt to defend themselves against their disgustingness, when they see SCUM barrelling down on them, will cling in terror to Big Mama with her Big Bouncy Boobies, but Boobies won't protect them against SCUM; Big Mama will be clinging to Big Daddy, who will be in the corner shitting in his forceful, dynamic pants. Men who are rational, however, won't kick or struggle or raise a distressing fuss, but will just sit back, relax, enjoy the show and ride the waves to their demise."

I just - I want to stop the world and get off. This is -

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Hoo. Spent today doing business - trying to sort out my stupid loans, because my college is full of dips who don't think they need to continue sending out enrollment information, and panicking around about graduate financial aid. Apparently, the state of Indiana does things late - they've only just set this next year's tuition, and aid packets won't go out for another two weeks. I'd been freaking, because omg July! and I didn't know about my loan yet! but I think I should be okay.

Lauren, sent out your dwth invite code, sorry to have dragged my feet about it.

I've been watching Merlin on the telly with The Baby, and man, they weren't even trying. The whole "born like this" deal? So. Stinking. Queer. I continue to not like Gaius. King Uther yay!

I just finished reading Gene Stratton Porter's "A Daughter of the Land," and was shocked by how dark it was. And grown up - I'm used to her doing bildungsromans, but this was a novel about adults. Perhaps the cynicism came from that. It lacks her usual transcendentalism, but it's strongly shot through with a very Midwestern kind of work ethic, one that values honest craft and tasks well done over riches or beauty. Her heroines are always very restful for me, because they're so often not beautiful, and yet remain loved and lovely. Though "Freckles" does rather break that pattern, at least wrt the Angel. I suppose that Freckles himself isn't exactly pretty, when you come to it.

This entry was originally posted at http://lotesse.dreamwidth.org/155526.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

title: (bind you with love that is) graceful and green as a stem, 4-6/9
pairing: non-explicit Sam/Frodo – either fairly chaste slash or heavily romantic gen
wordcount(total): 22, 664
rating: pg

An au of the final chapters of RotK. Crack premise: if it were possible for Sam to take up the burden of Frodo's pain, and allow his beloved master to be free. Tolkien splits his ending evenly between comedy and tragedy, with Sam getting all of the one and Frodo getting all of the other. Sam has marriage and children and riches, the narrative of celebration, of life ascendant. Frodo has the tragic side: death, loss, all the things that never get better, and at last his martyr's end. But a different end to the story could be managed, if Sam and Frodo were to share both the joy and the sorrow of their victory and their adventure. drama, angst, hurt/comfort. thanks and endearments to my beta, lozlan.

1-3 7-9

( 4. When you’re not feeling holy your loneliness says that you’ve sinned )

( 5. Well I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned )

( 6. Yes, you who must leave everything that you cannot control )

title: (bind you with love that is) graceful and green as a stem, 1-3/9
pairing: non-explicit Sam/Frodo – either fairly chaste slash or heavily romantic gen
wordcount(total): 22, 664
rating: pg

An au of the final chapters of RotK. Crack premise: if it were possible for Sam to take up the burden of Frodo's pain, and allow his beloved master to be free. Tolkien splits his ending evenly between comedy and tragedy, with Sam getting all of the one and Frodo getting all of the other. Sam has marriage and children and riches, the narrative of celebration, of life ascendant. Frodo has the tragic side: death, loss, all the things that never get better, and at last his martyr's end. But a different end to the story could be managed, if Sam and Frodo were to share both the joy and the sorrow of their victory and their adventure. drama, angst, hurt/comfort.

Note: forgive my elision of Rose. By setting my story in the first March after the Quest, I’ve effectively cut off poor Sam’s courtship of her. But there are only three ways, as I can see, for things to work out once she’s introduced into the mix. The first way is Tolkien’s, and clearly I’m diverging from that here. The second is Mary Borsellino’s, and I love PGY with all my heart and soul, but she’s already written it. The third is the one where Rose is the opponent, the Other Woman, the one who has to lose her man, and I really don’t want to write that story. I’ve no quarrel with Rose, and I believe very firmly that she was a nice lass who loved Sam. But Rose gets the canon. She won't mind my sending her off to marry some other lad for this au.

thanks and endearments to my beta, lozlan.

( 1. If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn )

( 2. It begins with your family, but soon it comes round to your soul )

( 3. They were waiting for me when I thought that I just couldn’t go on )

4-6 7-9

This entry was originally posted at http://lotesse.dreamwidth.org/155121.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

1.

fingers slowly lifting away from the curve
of the surface, yellow translucent

the weight falling into my other hand
soft, an outsized drop of well-water
palm-sized against the sunlight

once I fell down into the well,
diving to the pale and grassy


2.

keeping them all aloft is the trick,
keeping the stars reflected
in the bay


3.

the book of miracles told me
to put my loved ones in an egg
of light
to protect them with

I put my lost cat in there, in
the eggshell gold, and sometimes my lover,
I put my chickens back in the egg
in April, when the hawks were circling and they
had a tendency to die
and once or twice I tried to cram in all the world

make something of it, or perhaps un-make
reverse the course of generation, and thus reverse that
of decay


4.

did the eggshell break? the circles
fall and splat on the face of the planet, liquid
flowing back down infinite rivers to the lake

my toes tip down into the well,
nails scraping on wet stones

I was watching the stars, and so dropped
the ball

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I'd thought that the next fic I finished was going to be the big LotR thing, but then I found this lurking at the back of my head. Erm, first Stargate fic, go me? As always, I seem to be late to the party.

title: your voice is pomegranate wine
pairing: Daniel/Teal
rating: non-explicit
wordcount: 1,125
summary: Daniel's voice winds around them like an opiate, sweet and lulling and filled with secret promise, and Teal'c draws in a long breath to catch the strange words in his body. The poetry of his own youth beats through him like a drum, and he desires. Set in early Season 1.

( whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth )

This entry was originally posted at http://lotesse.dreamwidth.org/154423.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

five questions meme, from idlerat. Comment for five topics of your own - rat gave me: Lotesse (your name!), Tolkien, Jane Eyre, Spike!Elizabeth Bennett (your icon!), Oregano (your motto!)

( Read more... )

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omigosh fandom, stop it, I can't get sucked back into Potterverse! I have trauma! I have issues! I've been getting better!

And. Yes Remus/Sirius was my pairing back before all of that, but oooh maaan I don't wanna dredge all this up again. But. But. I can't help it. The power of squee compels me.

Remus/Sirius LovePost. I'm off to read PoA-era fic. And hate myself. And curse my fate.

This entry was originally posted at http://lotesse.dreamwidth.org/153996.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

was huge storm last night. power out for almost twelve hours. exceptionally hot without a/c and fans. back now, thanks be.

(Did something in the Transmogrified style change last week with the overall styles overhaul? The margins seem to be far too wide for comfort - all my journal text is squished down into narrow little colummns, and I have to drag my window out way wider than I like it to get things properly proportioned. Please tell me there's any easy fix for this - otherwise I might have to commission someone who knows css to help me, because I can't really manage with it like this.)

This entry was originally posted at http://lotesse.dreamwidth.org/153721.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I keep feeling like I'm not the fan everybody's looking for, at least wrt the warnings debate. Because while I'm fortunate enough to not have any real-life triggers, I also prefer my fic plastered with warnings and spoilers of every sort.

I do this with all narrative, actually, because I don't like suspense, and I find the first reading/viewing/hearing of a piece to be the least interesting. I connect much harder to characters once I know where they're going - and often I love sequences in hindsight that bored me the first time around, because I've since fallen in love with the people in them.

I also have fairly ironclad characterizations and interpretive patterns - so what ratcreature's been talking about with the deeper issues relating to the Blair Sandburg haircut warnings definitely applies to me. I often have a very inflexible vision of canon - I'll read exceptionally good fic that falls outside it, but I'll put up with a lot more mediocrity when my preferred tropes are active. So my Daniel Jackson needs to be a gentle civilian geekboy, and my Jim Kirk is really damn smart and personally withdrawing, and my Frodo Baggins is unquestionably an adult as opposed to a teenager, and my Faith Lehane is something more than an evil bitch, and my Edward Elric is weird about his little brother.

Most fics that deviate from those characterizations get closed out of - they have to be really, really good for me to keep reading. And I like it when it's fairly obvious from the outset what character facets particular writers subscribe to, because I hate it when I read far enough in to get invested in the plot before I find out that an author's characterizations are just too different from my own for her story to work for me. And when warnings, descriptors, summaries, and author's notes give me such information right upfront, well, the happier I am.

I realized, in talking with my beta about my (almost finished I swear!) big postquest LotR fic, that the direction of the ending is not actually obvious in the narrative climax. And I thought about trying to hide the outcome, to keep any eventual readers in suspense. But then I realized that I would absolutely hate it if such a thing were done to me - particularly, in this case, because the question at hand involves the Grey Havens, which are traumatic enough that I need to have fair warning going in if they're going to happen as read. If I read through a whole novella thinking that there was hope only to have it snatched away from me - or vice versa - I remember, about two years ago, reading Middlemarch for the first time having only previously done Eliot's depressing stuff. I was sure until the end that everybody was going to die horribly, and I was shocked when they didn't. And I was less involved in Dorothea/Will than I might have been otherwise, because I was bracing myself all the time for a blow that never fell.

At any rate. As a rule, I don't click through to stories that don't have posted summaries, warnings, and indicators as to length. I want specific data before I commit! Am I really that unusual?

eta: just to make clear, I'm not making a political argument, or one of social responsibility, though I think those are important. I'm arguing from the practical - if your story doesn't have information tags all over it, why would I click that link? I'm arguing that information tags are good for fanwriters and fanreaders, as advertisements.

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Anybody want a Dreamwidth? *tempts with shinies*

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I've been watching LotR movie documentaries, and I’m sorry, but I just can’t get with their rationale that what they did to Faramir was in any way necessary. I've tried to see their point, read around, tried to fall in love with the filmic vision of my characters at this narrative point, and pretty much totally failed. Mainly because I think the Henneth Annun chapters of the book have plenty of tension, drama, and anxiety.

( Frodo’s tone was proud, whatever he felt, and Sam approved of it; but it did not appease Faramir )

The films' messing up of things galls at me, because those are my absolute favorite chapters of the whole epic. We go from "What's taters?" to "I love him, whether or no," and then on to "do not love the bright sword for its sharpness." Sigh.

This entry was originally posted at http://lotesse.dreamwidth.org/153064.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Hokay, guise, Dreamwidth question.

Wasn't there supposed to be a way that you could read people from your eljay flist on your dwth reading page? How do you make that go? I've done the flist import feature, and that's got everybody's names up in my profile, but I'm not getting through to content. Halp, plz?

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The desktop meme, ganked from telesilla:

1. Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper on their Livejournal/Dreamwidth.
2. Explain in five sentences on why you're using that wallpaper!
3. Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on!

( here's mine: )

Mmmrph. Brain falling out of ears.

I'm editing/proofing a Master's thesis for a friend of a friend on foster care and family systems, and man. A hundred and fifty-odd pages of (sigh) not very dynamic writing. Blarph.

But! It is making me want to go off and read foster care fic! So here are some recs:

Oye Como Va by Micah. The Sentinel. Not straight foster care, but a great look at Blair Sandburg's itinerant childhood and the connections he formed in that time. Fabulously atmospheric, prettily emo.

Nilchance's shelter-verse. Supernatural. Winchesters and foster care: not an easy combination.

little rattle stilt by hope.Supernatural. "He’s not afraid. He’s angry. Dad always told him it was better to be angry than afraid. Dad told him he only had to be afraid of the things Dad couldn’t kill, and Dean laughed and said that was nothing."

Moon by kalimyre. SG-1. Daniel has psychic whammy, Jack has to watch his dreams, less than pleasant bits of Daniel's history with the foster care system are revealed.

Legacy by Anglachel. Lord of the Rings. A fascinating look at Frodo's relationship to his blood family, his lost parents' memories, and Bilbo.

oh, and speaking of, does anyone know where Willow-wode's Rites of Passage has scarpered off to?

(this is what I love about fandom. Work boring? Solution is obviously fictional hunters, archaeologists, Guides, and hobbits. We are so collectively odd.)

This entry was originally posted at http://lotesse.dreamwidth.org/151903.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Good morning, Dreamwidth! So I spent all day yesterday on journal design - lotesse - what do you think? It's fun to have Snow White back around; she was my first icon, back when I got my livejournal, so it's all nice and circular.

I feel all excited and wiggly about this.

We're watching the original Star Wars trilogy with The Baby, who's never seen them before. I suppose he's not really a baby any more, as he turns nine next month, but he's an orphanage child and he's this tiny little loveball who wants snuggling all of the time. Anyway. We got through Empire days before yesterday, and it was fantastically fun watching him watch it. Lots of interesting questions re: Luke and Vader. We have a date to watch Jedi next time we get the chance.

The Boy's parents are here for a visit, which means lots of fun restaurants. And they brought me my desk! It's a thoroughly excellent desk - it belonged to my maternal great-grandmother, but it was originally made for a select boy's prep school, and the desk part folds into a pretty little oak bureau. I adore it.

This entry was originally posted at http://lotesse.dreamwidth.org/151773.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

because I haven't been able to stop playing with this shiny Dreamwidth toy! The layout is still a work in progress, and I have to look through my eljay flist and figure out feeds and dwth usernames, but the import seems to have worked nicely, and we'll see about the crossposter.

Questions for people who have already played with the dwth layout system - is there seriously no ability to change fonts on this thing? Also, does anyone know how I can turn off the header text?

eta: whaa, I don't think the flist importer worked. rss feeds not showing up on reading page! whut?

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