The Life and Times of El

Finally I coded it properly and apparently LJ is using its backup hamster for speed, but here it is!

Title: Spare Me Your Pity, Lend Me Your Ears
Warnings:  PG-13 for swearing and non-explicit mentions of rape
Summary: The Downfall of Numenor was written by those of the Faithful who survived and fled to Middle-earth. The last Queen of Numenor thinks it’s about time someone told the other side of the story.

Fic is here

Post full of notes that did not fit is here

Hey, wonderful flisters! I have a fic that needs a beta, anyone want to volunteer? It's a Silmarillion one (of course), that one I mentioned a while ago about Tar-Miriel sticking it to the Faithful and the King's Men, about 2500 words. I went a bit Margaret Atwood on it so it's disjointed and there are references to a lot of Silm things that I didn't actually explicitly mention in the fic itself.

If you are intrigued then comment and I'll send it to you, I can reward you in crackfics?



I realise this is coming in pretty late for a ficathon that ends in early September. I only wrote this one tonight after it became apparent that the one I meant to post will not be ready for this year's femgenficathon, if ever.

Here is the sorry tale of The Fic That Will Not End.

So this time two weeks ago I was bemoaning to a friend that while I had 3000 words of notes for my fic, I had written a grand total of one hundred and twenty nine words of actual fic. Given that the minimum word count is 1000 words, I was worried. Especially as the ficathon opened for submissions two days hence.

Right, I said that friday night, I'm going to write the first part tonight if it kills me.

I wrote it and woke up alive the next morning, if a little groggy from lack of sleep.

Then I wrote more the night after, and after.

And then it started growing. I made bullet points for every little part I thought needed to be written, except they weren't little parts any more. They were reaching a thousand words each fairly easily.

I watched the word count climb to OVER NINE THOUSAND.

Well, I said, that's impressive, but there's no way I can break the ten-thousand word barrier with this fic.

Reader, I broke it that night.

I've never written a fic that's ten thousand words before. I'm surprised at how easy it is when you have an actual plot.

Eleven thousand. Twelve thousand. Thirteen thousand. I kept writing, and started to think of the word count as an enemy, not a target.

Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. This is ridiculous, I thought. How can I write this many words about Miriel talking about herself?

And then - on the next friday night, a week after I started writing in earnest, a week of late nights and predictable grogginess the next morning, I passed the twenty thousand word count.

I've learned that while it's possible to write enough for a Big Bang fic in a week, it's really not pretty.

After that I wrote for two more days, and then I actually had to be mentally present in the mornings so I haven't added to it since monday. And frankly, I'm afraid to. That fic is sitting in my laptop in all its dark glory, now grown to more than twenty-five thousand words and it is Still. Not. Finished.

I'm worried that the next time I turn my laptop on, the word count will have increased. At this point I think it has enough sentience to write itself. God help me if it actually manages to finish itself, because then you'll read about me in the papers as "Young Woman Found Dead In Home Choked With Living Words That Have Also Taken Over The House And Local Neighbourhood, Police Investigating Armed With Delete Buttons".

Let's be clear: these are not particularly good words. The entire thing is going to need a major overhaul before it sees the internet, and I have my doubts as to the number of readers it will attract. But still. Twenty-five thousand words. Welp.


So in light of that 2500 words sounds peachy! That's a whole order of magnitude below this monster! I realise I'm not doing a perfect job of selling it, but if anyone's game to look over this short fic (and it will stay short, even if I have to end midsentence with ROCKS FALL EVERYBODY DIES to keep it under 3000) I'll save you a space and a red pen in my fic-proof shelter I'm going to go and build as soon as I finish this post.

(If you missed the Feanorians post, it is here.)

Another day, more articles about calc-alkaline magmatism. Also writing about Elves in the Age of Sail for reasons I do not quite understand, especially because it is rapidly heading towards Finduilas/Celebrimbor.

Anyhow:

CORONATE, Merlin, no spoilers - Arthur's new bodyguards are determined to get him to his coronation one way or another. Arthur has other ideas.


Arthur peers at the ground. A single, bulbous globe looks back, and if the contraption of metal and glass could express any emotion, he's sure it would be looking exasperated. The thing lifts its arm-like prongs, shifting the royal robes slightly towards him, a clear invitation. Arthur declines to acknowledge it, and he seems to have the upper hand at present.

His new bodyguards move through wood, crowds and even stone with little to no trouble. He has seen them work around the issue of stairs, after a moment's consideration.

They have not yet, however, solved the issue of trees. Or rather, the issue of the tree that contains the heir to the throne and so cannot be disintergrated like all other problems (and trees. If they ever grow tired of being bodyguards, clearing forest ought to be their next job of choice.)

'CORONATE,' the thing intones, and yes, that's definitely a note of exasperation in its grating voice.

'The ceremony isn't for another three hours,' Arthur points out. 'The robes would get all crushed and messy if I put them on now.'

'CORONATE,' it repeats.

'You are being tiresome,' says Arthur in his haughtiest voice.

'CORONATE,' says his bodyguard, with a lingering flavour of right back at you, mateSire.

'I can see that there's no point in continuing this discussion until you decide to be reasonable,' Arthur says, and reaches for the next branch.

He can hear the Dalek grumbling 'CORONATE' to itself as he climbs, and he wonders how long they can live off leaves, rain and the birds that Merlin convinces to land in their tree.

I finally posted it, Lise! Hope you've finished the college essays of doom by now.

This is all metafandom 's fault. No, really.

SOMEONE ON METAFANDOM: *calls Tolkien-style Elves "prissy"*
minviendha: *makes a post expressing extreme confusion about how any Tolkien elf could be prissy*
EL: Certain Feanorians think Fingon is prissy. Fingon is just trying to salvage what's left of our family's good name, unlike some people who seem to revel in sinking it even further into the mud. He's not unlike GUC!Edward in that respect, albeit with less obsession about cleaning products.

And it all went downhill from there.


Title: Growing Up Finwean
Fandom: The Silmarillion (or our version of it, anyway. Warning: vast amounts of fanon ahead.)
Rating: R for Celegorm swearing and Caranthir's questionable taste in music.
Pairings: background Aredhel/Celegorm
Characters: Fingon-centric + Maedhros, Galadriel, Aredhel, Celegorm, Caranthir
Word count: ~2800
AN: Modern AU based, of course, on the amazing, the spectacular Growing Up Cullen, and you should read that first because a) it is hilarious and the best thing to come out of the Twilight fandom, and b) you may not understand much of what is going on here unless you know the source material. Regarding the names: completely my fanon, but I'm going on the idea that Fingon addresses people he likes by their Quenya names, and those he doesn't like so much by their Sindarin versions. So this is why there is Maitimo and Caranthir in the same fic.
Summary: Vague threats of violence, cleaning bathrooms, conversations about insects, cleaning, tea with a stressed step-cousin, more cleaning, and interrupted bedtime reading. It's a typical day in Fingon's life.

---

( Growing Up Finwean )

Something I found in my WIP folder:

( ELF TREK )

For minviendha , for helping me begin this madness and because writing college application essays is an evil that I hope never to encounter personally.

( Fingon and Caranthir have always had these sorts of fights; co-modding a fandom community website just gave them a more convenient place for it. )

So a few days ago I heard from minviendha who heard from metafandom a rant that there are no strong women in the Silmarillion apart from Luthien, and my approximate reaction was excuse me, are we reading the same Silmarillion? And I was going to clutter up Lise's journal even further with my list of awesome Silm women, but I thought it deserved its own post, and also this might get long.

( IT DID GET LONG. EPIC POST BENEATH. )

Since it is finally december I feel justified in breaking out my absolute favourite christmas icon, although since my Discworld icon is from Hogfather I guess I have a christmas-themed icon all year round. But I am not a major retail company so I am not low enough to start putting up red and green in october, for chrissakes. I think it would be almost alright for Australia to have a major holiday in November just so there would be a buffer between the last holiday, which is Fathers Day I think, and Christmas. Even though I hate turkey, because really.

< / scrooge >

To be honest I am going a bit stir-crazy despite not being imprisoned in any way shape or form, I think it is because my brain has lots of little fic ideas but none of them are clear right now. It like my head is a pot full of water that is on a stove, and there are bubbles at the bottom of the pot but they're not making it to the surface yet, or possibly ever. (I really hope it's not ever.) So right now I am not a happy pot, not at all. Is anyone else having a problem like this? We can team up as Pot and Kettle and fight crime make each other write!

Also I woke up yesterday and thought it was a good idea to ship Celebrimbor/Finduilas, minviendha what have you done to me



( Also I have been trying to sort through my photos from geology fun tiems, it looks something like this: )