Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

I’m Taking A Poll

words-writ-in-starlight:

All right, so, those of you who’ve been around long enough may or may not recall that my practice when I hit a round number of followers is to post some original writing (see: Methods of Inheritance and Sabbatical).  And I’m coming up on 400, so I’ll be doing that again!  But!  I have…a lot of original fiction.  A lot of original fiction.  So I’m going to offer a list of options, and you lot can tell me which one you’d like to see!  To vote, you can reply to this post or reblog it, or send me a message, although I’d prefer the ask box over a private message just because it’ll be easier to collate the answers that way.  For the novels, obviously, you’d be getting an excerpt, probably 2-5 pages.  Any short stories, though, you’d get all of.

Polaris: the revolutionary girlfriends with superpowers novel (as yet incomplete).  Like.  There’s more detail, obviously.  But that’s pretty much what we’re dealing with there.  There are a bunch of LGBT characters and a few superpowers and a revolution, thus: revolutionary girlfriends with superpowers novel.  Tag is here if you want more detail.

Falls the Shadow: my best beloved novel about the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, led by Sam, the Horseman of Death and Antichrist.  This one’s complete, but it is H E F T Y at 250K words.  I’m editing it down.  Tag is here, but no one asks me about it, so there’s not much there.  First of a trilogy.

Battalion: the novel where angels happened and fucked everything up, and humans have been fucking them over in response for about 70 years (incomplete).  Yep.  That’s here, and there is exactly one post.

Stories From the Second War: a triad of short stories technically set in the FtS universe, about Heaven’s war against the Nephilim.  Um…they’re dark.  The Nephilim are monstrous.  But I think they might be some of my favorite writing I’ve done.  They are Tell All the Truth (But Tell It Slant) and To Fight Aloud, Is Very Brave (Uniforms of Snow), both from the perspective of the leader of the Nephilim, and The Stillness in the Air (Between Heaves of Storm), from the perspective of her hunting partner.  I’d put all three on here as a set, because I think they work best that way.

Deorum (Of Gods): a short story I wrote for that writing class I hated.  Jack, the main character, lives in a city populated partly by mortals and partly by the gods of the world’s pantheons–Idunn owns a coffee shop, Apollo teaches art at an elementary school, Ninkasi runs a bar, and dark things live in the woods.  Jack attracts more gods than he’s strictly comfortable with, and they all seem to know him remarkably well….  I don’t know if it’s my best work in terms of quality, but I definitely think it’s up there as the most fun.  This is about forty pages, so I’d have to post it piecemeal.  

So…yeah.  Anyone have a preference?

sroloc--elbisivni asked: *whispers* your original fic slays me it is lovely and gorgeous and the characters are so alive and vivid and downright delightful would it be presumptuous to ask for some of your favorite headcanons re: Polaris characters?

H O N E Y, I love you so much right now, fucking YES you can ask me about my original writing.  Original writing is everything to me, and my ridiculous gay revolutionaries are just…I love them a lot.  Also the best part is that I’m the author, fuck the man, my headcanons are fucking CANON.  OKAY.  This got HELLA LONG, I’m so sorry, I ramble about this shit.  Let this be a lesson about asking writers about their original characters: it leads to LENGTHY responses.

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Shattered Glass and Sandstorms

An AU with Rey as part of the First Order, based on this photoset by the immensely talented @greyjoyss.  In case you were curious, this is why I ask for short prompts, because this is SUPER LONG and got WILDLY OUT OF HAND.  Crossposted to my AO3 here.

She isn’t a Skywalker—or maybe she is.  She can’t remember, so does it matter?  She is herself.

Her mothers scream when she’s born.  Her human mother screams in effort and pain. The other screams in ecstasy, and somewhere in the galaxy the last Jedi’s flesh-and-blood hand shakes as the Force writhes with the birth of a new sun.  To the eyes of the minimally Force-sensitive nurse, the baby girl is wreathed in starlight, her wide and tearless eyes wandering over things unseen.

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Honestly I feel sort of ridiculously lucky re: potential ships in the upcoming Star Wars movies, and I’m realizing that it’s possibly just me?  But LET ME LAY THIS OUT FOR YOU.

MOST LIKELY: Finn/Rey.  These two children are cute as shit.  They’re just so damn excited about the world and the universe and green and the Force and each other.  Finn is all star-eyes and bear hugs, and Rey is all toothy grins and fierce protection.  It’s fucking precious.  Sit with me and think about Rey coming back from Fuckety Nowhere to find Finn recovered from his injuries and learning how to be Resistance, and she bounces off the Falcon and runs up to him and throws her arms around his neck for a hug like they did in Starkiller, and when she pulls away she holds onto one of his hands and they smile at each other like the adorable little fucks they are.  BONUS: interracial relationship between a white woman and a black man, which is still something that’s considered more than a little taboo.  Racism is a thing guys, and it’s SO IMPORTANT that representation of this sort of relationship be in the media, especially in such a big-name franchise as Star Wars.  Finn is affectionate, self-determining, and allowed to show emotions like fear and anxiety without any in-narrative penalties, and that is NOVEL, unfortunately.  And Rey is…well, Rey.  Come on, guys, I want to be Rey when I grow up and I’m sure you do too.  She’s able to be the hero, and not in the sense a lot of us are familiar with: there’s no assault, no rape, nothing like that.  She just finds a droid, and then she finds a lightsaber, and then she has the Force, and then she fights for the people she cares about, which is the same way that Luke became a hero.  No one criticizes her for being female.  THIS WOULD BE A GREAT COUPLE.

SECOND MOST LIKELY: Finn/Poe.  The jaCKET?  That is all?  No, seriously, though, this would be a great ship: the dashing pilot and the rogue Stormtrooper.  The entire base would ship it.  Poe would shout down anyone who talked about Finn being a spy, and Finn would learn Droid to talk to BB-8, Poe’s best friend.  This would be a ship with a lot of teasing smiles and laughing, arms around shoulders and warm support.  It would be about Finn learning to be an independent person and Poe welcoming someone new into his family.  BONUS: interracial gay relationship between a Guatemalan man and a black man, which is a little taboo in a different way.  Homophobia is a thing guys, and it’s SO IMPORTANT that representation of this sort of relationship be in the media, especially in cuh a big-name franchise as Star Wars.  Finn is everything I described above, and Poe is dashing, confident, intelligent, skilled…and caring toward his squadron, kind to a stranger, and respectful toward women, including those who have authority over him like Leia (insert battle hymn about the greatness of General Leia here).  Poe is a whole other thing from the standard cocky bastard of a pilot we know from movies and TV.  And please sign me right on up for this new type of dashing heroic gentleman, I am on this bullet train to a brighter future and you should be too.  THIS WOULD ALSO BE A GREAT COUPLE.

OTHER MORE UNLIKELY COUPLES: The Damerons (Finn/Poe/Rey).  It would be great for all of the reasons above, with the addition of the Poe-Rey dynamic of, I imagine, “Look at how beautiful and powerful and glorious this girl is” from Poe’s angle and “You are nice to me and handsome and I’m not sure what to do with any of that” from Rey’s.  Technically the best of all worlds (interracial! everyone is bi except possibly Rey!), but unlikely because, well, it’s a threesome, and that renders it frankly improbable for Hollywood to make it a thing.

And of course, THE ONE PAIRING I’M NOT EXCITED ABOUT: Kylo/Rey.  Um.  No.  Not least because things are looking like she’s going to be Rey Skywalker and that makes them EITHER first cousins OR siblings, depending on which twin is Rey’s parent, and yes, Luke and Leia were almost a thing, but let’s just take a hard line on No Incest this go-round, shall we?  But also because that would, I think, be wildly unhealthy unless they pulled off some sort of miracle.  And because honestly my main interest in a redemption arc for Kylo is the one that is Entirely For Leia’s Benefit, and I’ve read enough stories about poor damaged boys whose actions weren’t their fault at all being saved from themselves by the purity of love and…like…give the man the dignity of his own choices, okay?  I can feel sorry for Kylo because of the way he’s so clearly been manipulated and groomed by Snoke, but unless there’s evidence of actual legitimate mind control it’s still his choice to side with the Dark.  I have a lot of firm opinions about human dignity and free will and even though he’s currently a spectacular bastard, Kylo Ren still has free will and he has exercised it and as a human being he deserves to have his choices recognized as his own.

ANYWAY.  My point here is that no matter what you ship hardest, it needs to be recognized that either of the two most likely ships to happen will be almost groundbreaking in the representation they’ll offer.  I will make no judgements and fight no wars about what kind of representation is ‘most important’ because, you know what, it’s ALL important.  It matters that kids see interracial relationships on the big screen, presented as grand sweeping romances rather than comedy or tragedy.  It matters that kids see gay relationships that way.  It is important that teenagers and adults and children look at the characters they love and see themselves there, see the people they love there, see their friendships and relationships there.  Duking it out about who is more oppressed and therefore more deserving of that representation lessens us as people.  You, as a person reading this, deserve to see yourself in a character, in a hero, and so do the other people on the street, friends, strangers, enemies.

I want us to have it all, guys.  I want you to have everything: trans characters who are fierce and strong, women who can save galaxies, men who can be gentle and emotional and heroic, gay and lesbian romances full of light and laughter, racial diversity because, hey, when your copilot is covered in ten inches of hair what’s a little melanin between friends.  I want you to have ace characters with adoring husbands and wives, nonbinary characters and genderfluid characters whose friends would die for them no matter what their pronouns are today and vice versa, aro characters with badass spaceships full of loyal crew they love, characters with ADHD and autism and schizophrenia and depression going out to save the world with the people who care about them, physically disabled characters with blasters concealed in their prosthetics or souped up hoverchairs.  ALL OF IT.  And this movie series isn’t going to give us all that, because all of that is…it’s a lot to ask, and I know it, but I want it anyway.  But this movie is virtually guaranteed to give us something, some starting point, and you know what?  I’m ready to take what I can get while I work on finding a way to give you guys everything.

Mulan means a lot to me, okay

When I was a little kid, Disney’s Mulan was one of my very favorite movies (between that and my unwavering love for Robin Hood, a lot of my current personality traits should be easy to guess).  And there were a lot of reasons, not least of which are:

a) the gorgeous animation (the avalanche, the smoke, the fire, it’s just so incredible);

b) the music (LET’S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS); and

c) Mulan, come on guys, it’s a girl who cheats her way into the army and becomes a hero even when no one–not even herself–believes in her, you had to know that was going to be my JAM.

But…like…it was also one of my favorite love stories (I also really love Beauty and the Beast, which will get its own rant someday), which I recently discovered is not a standard opinion.  A lot of people spend a lot of time making smart remarks about Shang’s gay crisis.  And…this might have just been me, but the change between Ping/Mulan never struck me as the pertinent part of the relationship.  I figured that, yeah, Shang was 100% Here For That even though Ping was his subordinate and therefore off-limits.  And then I figured that Shang was still 100% Here For That after watching Mulan dismantle a palace and light a warlord on fire, with the added bonus that she wasn’t his subordinate.  So my assessment was that Shang was in love with the person, the earnest but slightly awkward person who almost flunked out of the army and specializes in haphazard plans based on blowing shit up and looks startled whenever people like them.  And since he was in love with the person, his anger was because that person lied to him, not because that person had a different set of bits than he’d originally assumed, and his interest was in the person, not in their face or their clothes.

And that meant a lot to me as a kid for reasons that I wasn’t really sure how to articulate.

Here’s the thing.  I am conventionally fairly attractive, through a combination of good genes and good fortune, and I recognize the inherent advantage that entails.  I’m not a show-stopper or anything, but my features are symmetrical and my skin is usually clear and…well, to be honest, the triple-D cup size means that the rest of that stuff almost doesn’t matter.  My shoulders are too broad to look like a pinup and I’m too short to look leggy and curvaceous and I’m too curvy to be ‘petite’, but I did okay on the physical end of the spectrum.  I could probably understand if someone came up and asked to buy me a drink or something.  I consistently cannot understand when someone shows interest, romantic or otherwise, in me once I’ve opened my mouth.  You know the running joke of ‘well I’m not stopping traffic but at least I have a good personality’?  Yeah, my assessment of myself is the exact opposite.  None of my self-esteem issues related to the way I look, they’re all about the person who lives under my skin.

And Mulan is pretty, she’s lovely, no one questions that, she doesn’t ever seem to question that.  But she always looks surprised when people like her, and she tries so hard to act the way people expect her to act, and she looks ready to take punishment for acting outside the expectations, even when she’s been killing armies and slaying warlords and saving emperors.  I like to think she’s like me: she knows the skin is pretty, but she’s terrified that the person underneath isn’t lovable.  And then she goes to the army and breaks laws and dishonors her family.  And she makes friends who risk their lives for that person, and she gains respect for that person, and Shang falls in love with that person, and it’s all done on that person’s merits, whether you want to call that person Mulan or Ping or whatever, not on the merits of how pretty her face is or how busty she is or how elegant or well-mannered she can act.

And…that meant a lot to me as a scared, damaged kid.  It means a lot to me, now, currently, in my differently scared, differently damaged almost-adult self.  I probably haven’t made a lot of sense here, come to think of it.  If you persevered all the way to the end, I tip my hat to you.

writing tip #700:

danekez:

gallifreyanlanterns:

gr8writingtips:

your characters are like geodes

if you want to see what they’re really made of

you must break them

this is the best writing tip ive heard in ages

Rebecca Sugar may have taken this a little too seriously

(via words-writ-in-starlight)