throbbing light machine

new fic yay!

On Orchids (3086 words) by lotesse
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Kairos (O'Keefe) Series - Madeleine L'Engle
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Meg Murry/Calvin O'Keefe
Characters: Meg Murry | Meg O'Keefe, Calvin O'Keefe, Branwen Zillah Maddox O'Keefe
Additional Tags: Motherhood, Time Travel, post-A Swiftly Tilting Planet
Series: Part 2 of Start over at the wires, use lions! use thunder!
Summary:

The essentials of the story were unchanged; Beezie Maddox had married Paddy O'Keefe when she was still too young, borne his children in neglect and poverty, and finally suffered his abandonment when Calvin and his siblings had still been small. So, Meg wondered as she sat in the kitchen of the O'Keefe house, what had Charles Wallace changed that could account for the appearance of all these new aunts and uncles for her baby? What had the unicorn done to mend the schism that had always separated Calvin from his family?

Heard a great lecture from Suzanne Keen today - I think I need to my by own copy of her book Empathy and the Novel.

my answers to the ten-questions meme from this weekend, each comprising a nice little babble: Fullmetal Alchemist, SG-1, the Aubreyad, The Dark is Rising, Prydain, Eight Cousins, Star Wars, Downton Abbey, and Westmark.

I am sitting here morbidly avoiding the tab in which I have opened today's Mark Reads - it's the Choices of Master Samwise today, and I can't take this chapter, I can't, just thinking of it makes me start tearing up, I couldn't read this chapter aloud to my little sister when we were kids because it made me cry so hard. I love it so, it's the most beautiful thing that's ever happened to me. And I have the tab open and I keep, like, accidentally switching to it and then covering it up again really quick.

...

Oh, hell. Now I am crying. God, Samwise, Samwise, Samwise. Further inarticulate muttering and general weeping & gnashing of teeth will continue until morale improves.

The Boy's been reading Tamora Pierce's Immortals Quartet. Oh gods above but I loved - love - those books so much. I read them for the first time as a little teen, and they were just so completely the thing that I wanted. Awhile ago, thefourthvine wrote a gorgeous meta on being part of the audience - the Immortals books were one of my first real experiences with being front and center in a writer's audience. To this day, I still have a strong desire to draw little tiny hearts around Tamora Pierce.

So he's been reading them, and we've been talking about them, and I seem to have nerded out and made a ship fanmix. Um.



( behind the cut: Fair Strange Lover, a Daine/Numair Immortals Quartet fanmix )

(I will start making eeping noises about yuletide signups once I've had the chance to do some notebooking and figure out what on earth I'm going to offer and request this year. November already! It snuck up on me this year.)

For anyone who speaks German - or for anyone who's a Hoffmann nerd - is there a standard English translation of "Nussknacker und Mausekonig"? One that's trustworthy? I'm making plans to take the Baby to the University ballet next month, and I wanted to beef up on the Hoffmann story. Besides which, I remember liking it a great deal as a kid, and it would be fun to read again. But from my fiddling around on the net, it looks like there's a bunch of "based on"s and not very many faithful translations. And I don't want a kiddie version!

It got so cold these last few days that I ended up turning back to Susan Cooper to cope with it! And oh dear me, I do love her books. The Dark is Rising books are sweet as honey, and I get all heart-clenchy over them. They're the sort of books that have me gasping out characters' names in peak narrative moments, just to somehow give voice to the abundance of love I end up feeling for them.

Question: did anyone else ever read Cooper's book Seaward? It was one of my best beloveds as a kid, and I haven't seen nor touched in for years, now - it tends to be hard to find. I remember that it was one of those books that were a big deal for me in early adolescence: the ones that were still pretty much children's lit, not YA - classic high fantasy, not hip or modern or anything like that - but that had sex bits in them. And not porn or anything, but just sort of an awareness of the body as a subject. Seaward and Many Waters and Tehanu, and Freckles. Before Song of the Lioness and Mists of Avalon. I loved those books so very very much.

The letter meme, from tiamatschild, who gave me "L":

( Laurie Lawrence, Lucy Pevensie, Luthien Tinuviel, Leela, Leia Organa, & Remus J. Lupin )

So. This whole Prince Caspian movie thing.

( rambling hopes and anxieties, some possible spoilers )

Supernatural finale in two hours, Narnia in twenty-two. It's going to be a good weekend!

I think that part of what I love so very much about Miyazaki films is that they use symphonic music the way I remember it from going to concerts as a child. Ordinary movies use symphonic scores, but they're always kind of John Williams-esque. They work in their own particular way. They're meant to underscore, not to lead.

Miyazaki could almost be using classical symphonic compositions unrelated to his films as scores. The instrumentation is free and unconventional and empowered. It really does make me feel like I'm back home, going to symphony concerts with my father, and telling myself stories about the music. The instruments matter just as much as the vocal performances do - sometimes even more.

Also, I love Miyazaki's tendency to draw big, capable women with massive bustlines. It makes me all happy inside.

As it's rainy and I'm going to be alone all night, and as I don't have any classes tomorrow, I'm going to mainline Miyazaki, and then maybe watch Fullmetal Alchemist. Safe warm lovely things, with pretty music. It took me a few years, after I moved out, for me to realize how much I needed orchestral music. As a kid, it was always playing around me, and so I played my own stuff. Without daddy to provide the Bach and Copeland, I have to remember to play those things myself. They make me so awfully happy.