![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseI've been trying to get my fanwriting mojo back, and, well - I have these two massive projects that I've been carrying around for a while now, and I'd like to see them come to something before starting up anything else sizeable. So I'm looking for betas, cheerleaders, interlocutors, whatever - people who would be interested in reading one of these two works in progress. Chat in comments here would be great - even having a strong sense that the pieces have an audience would be motivational, but if any of y'all are interested I would also love to take it to email.
(And there's also the potential that I might weird out a little; asking for interaction and particularly for help is really really hard for me, and I get spooked and shy and disconnect. So, um, patience for the socially awkward?)
This one currently stands at 10,782 words, and will probably end up somewhere between 12-14k. I started it at about the same time I began A bed of daysided gold, which was finished and posted ages ago. If "Daysided" represented my sunshine-and-roses post-trilogy take, this fic, currently titled "Only the soldered mouth," was the opposite. It's the one where I assume that if communication wasn't shown by the films to take place, it didn't. So Han doesn't know about Luke's hand or the Skywalkers' relationship to Darth Vader; Leia canonically tells him that they're siblings, but that's it. And all the secrets are kept, and everyone gets very hard and polished and professional and internally fucked up.
So then there's a bioweapon threat from the Imperial remnant and Luke goes haring off to stop it, and - I have written so many versions of this thing that I can't decide what I want to happen next. I don't know if Luke is caught because the whole thing was a trap for him, or if it was legit and he was just captured; I don't know if the Imps know who he is/ who Luke Skywalker is; I don't know if Han goes after him because Luke is his and he comes for his own or if Leia sends him, him in particular, due to his status as an ex-Imperial officer. I don't know how much I want to make this a story where Han has to interrogate Luke, to go back to being the officer-self he left behind and make his frustratingly secretive friend spill his secrets, or a story where Han finds Luke already drugged to the eyeballs and like basically hallucinating his own past traumas, and so gives himself away unconsciously.
But the big thing I keep waffling with is what I want to do in terms of sexuality. I could see leaving the whole thing gen; for a while, when I was reading a lot of old-school Han/Luke fic that sort of tends to villainize Leia, I was doing the "Han went with the wrong Skywalker twin" thing. I will always ot3 this trio, but I don't know if ... this is an aftermath story, primarily, and ... is it maybe a bit much to also try to start up a queer incestuous polyamorous relationship?
I really like truth drugs as a forced intimacy trigger, and I have a real problem with Luke's failure, canonically, to ever tell anyone when he's fucked up and needs sorted out. I have this idea for a not-quite-sex scene that's about 1. people touching Luke's prosthetic lovingly and 2. people respecting Luke's comfort levels in intimate situations, and accepting his boundaries even if they seem extreme and not pushing him but just making the act of physical love completely safe. idek.
This one, longwindedly titled "Old enchantment lingers in the honey-heart of earth," currently clocks in at 11,850 words, and I think I've written almost a third of it. I've been working on this story for I don't know how long, and a lot of my problem working on it now is that it's a story about a young husband and wife and the last time I was really going on it I felt like a young wife, and now I don't. And when I write on it, things come out bitterer than I mean them to.
It's conceived of as a novel in three acts, dealing with all the residual issues the books didn't resolve. The first part, which I think is almost done(?), is about Taran and Eilonwy getting used to each other and Caer Dathyl and Caer Dathyl getting used to them, and is mostly about recovery and rebuilding and coming together in the aftermath. The second part, which starts with the cleansing of Spiral Castle, introduces a personal conflict for Eilonwy, who is becoming frustrated with everyone's gendered expectations, and is probably pregnant, which is only going to make that worse, but is getting back in touch with her power at the same time. Basically, Eilonwy becomes a witch in secret; marital tensions; moves from the Red Fallows (chipping away at absolute sterile despair with rediscovered hope) to Spiral Castle (hidden things, women's power), to Caer Dathyl in winter (unspoken tensions; secret rooms). The third part involves Taran getting poisoned, Eilonwy being accused of it, as a witch, Fflewddur Fflam finally concluding his long and arduous journey by coracle back from the seas at the world's end, and a baby being born.
I think I could conceivably post the first of the three parts this year, but could just really sort of use some cheerleading, someone to natter over it with who shares my enthusiasm for this canon despite my desire to critique it.
(And there's also the potential that I might weird out a little; asking for interaction and particularly for help is really really hard for me, and I get spooked and shy and disconnect. So, um, patience for the socially awkward?)
This one currently stands at 10,782 words, and will probably end up somewhere between 12-14k. I started it at about the same time I began A bed of daysided gold, which was finished and posted ages ago. If "Daysided" represented my sunshine-and-roses post-trilogy take, this fic, currently titled "Only the soldered mouth," was the opposite. It's the one where I assume that if communication wasn't shown by the films to take place, it didn't. So Han doesn't know about Luke's hand or the Skywalkers' relationship to Darth Vader; Leia canonically tells him that they're siblings, but that's it. And all the secrets are kept, and everyone gets very hard and polished and professional and internally fucked up.
So then there's a bioweapon threat from the Imperial remnant and Luke goes haring off to stop it, and - I have written so many versions of this thing that I can't decide what I want to happen next. I don't know if Luke is caught because the whole thing was a trap for him, or if it was legit and he was just captured; I don't know if the Imps know who he is/ who Luke Skywalker is; I don't know if Han goes after him because Luke is his and he comes for his own or if Leia sends him, him in particular, due to his status as an ex-Imperial officer. I don't know how much I want to make this a story where Han has to interrogate Luke, to go back to being the officer-self he left behind and make his frustratingly secretive friend spill his secrets, or a story where Han finds Luke already drugged to the eyeballs and like basically hallucinating his own past traumas, and so gives himself away unconsciously.
But the big thing I keep waffling with is what I want to do in terms of sexuality. I could see leaving the whole thing gen; for a while, when I was reading a lot of old-school Han/Luke fic that sort of tends to villainize Leia, I was doing the "Han went with the wrong Skywalker twin" thing. I will always ot3 this trio, but I don't know if ... this is an aftermath story, primarily, and ... is it maybe a bit much to also try to start up a queer incestuous polyamorous relationship?
I really like truth drugs as a forced intimacy trigger, and I have a real problem with Luke's failure, canonically, to ever tell anyone when he's fucked up and needs sorted out. I have this idea for a not-quite-sex scene that's about 1. people touching Luke's prosthetic lovingly and 2. people respecting Luke's comfort levels in intimate situations, and accepting his boundaries even if they seem extreme and not pushing him but just making the act of physical love completely safe. idek.
This one, longwindedly titled "Old enchantment lingers in the honey-heart of earth," currently clocks in at 11,850 words, and I think I've written almost a third of it. I've been working on this story for I don't know how long, and a lot of my problem working on it now is that it's a story about a young husband and wife and the last time I was really going on it I felt like a young wife, and now I don't. And when I write on it, things come out bitterer than I mean them to.
It's conceived of as a novel in three acts, dealing with all the residual issues the books didn't resolve. The first part, which I think is almost done(?), is about Taran and Eilonwy getting used to each other and Caer Dathyl and Caer Dathyl getting used to them, and is mostly about recovery and rebuilding and coming together in the aftermath. The second part, which starts with the cleansing of Spiral Castle, introduces a personal conflict for Eilonwy, who is becoming frustrated with everyone's gendered expectations, and is probably pregnant, which is only going to make that worse, but is getting back in touch with her power at the same time. Basically, Eilonwy becomes a witch in secret; marital tensions; moves from the Red Fallows (chipping away at absolute sterile despair with rediscovered hope) to Spiral Castle (hidden things, women's power), to Caer Dathyl in winter (unspoken tensions; secret rooms). The third part involves Taran getting poisoned, Eilonwy being accused of it, as a witch, Fflewddur Fflam finally concluding his long and arduous journey by coracle back from the seas at the world's end, and a baby being born.
I think I could conceivably post the first of the three parts this year, but could just really sort of use some cheerleading, someone to natter over it with who shares my enthusiasm for this canon despite my desire to critique it.