Fan Fiction of the Day: Mr. Mellark Visits Seamfirth

Hunger Games Fan Fiction of the Day:  If self had to guess, she would say that the writer was channeling Pride & Prejudice.  It’s actually pretty clever.

A week had passed since Mr. Mellark’s visit to Seamfirth, leaving behind not only the unexpected cactus flower but the note that now lay open on a page from her favorite book.  She had positioned his sketch opposite the note and found herself smiling, admiring the elegance of his signature.  Whenever blessed with a moment to herself and away from the prospect of prying eyes, she would revisit his words, along with the other notes she kept tucked away safely amongst the worn pages of her book.

*     *     *

Her response had been short but to the point, which is not to say she hadn’t agonized over her every choice of word, hopeful that she did not come across as too cold or too eager.  It began with the confirmation that her favorite color was indeed green . . .

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

Friday Wisdom

This bit of advice comes from Robert Greene, whose The 48 Laws of Power is self’s “go-to” reading — after fan fiction.

The thing about reading fan fiction is that, if self stays up late reading — which is often the case (Please do not look away, dear blog readers, as it will take self just 1 minute to get past this bit) — her eyes get very red and swollen and she looks like a mess the following morning (Oh the angst, the angst! Self is a furious

Sweetness/ Fan Fiction/ Café Irreal

Self is reading something based on a fairy tale.  It’s really sweet, Hunger Games AU, based on the tale “East of the Sun & West of the Moon.”

Peeta whisks Katniss away from her house in District 12, in a broad heavy sleigh, and they arrive in a house at the edge of a lake.  It’s enchanted, like all good houses should be.

It’s really clever, how elements of the fairy tale are woven in, such as in this description:

“. . .   it isn’t the ancient palace from my dream, with its high stone walls and dusty rooms, filled with silence and nameless fears.  I didn’t ride here on the back of a white bear . . . “

The two are tended by Avoxes, which is another thing that fits in with the sense of unreality.

*     *     *     *

On August 1, a fable of self’s is going live on Café Irreal.  It’ll be her second story in the magazine.  Her first, which appeared a few years ago, was a flash fiction called “Appetites.”

Here’s an excerpt from the story soon to be posted, called “The Secret Room”:

One day, during a fox hunt, her husband fell from his horse and broke a leg.  His squires carried him into the castle.  A monk came with healing herbs and made a poultice.  A surgeon set the bone.  But in spite of everyone’s best efforts, the King continued to scream with pain.  For days everyone in the castle was frozen by the sound of his shrieks.

There you go.  Even when writing fables, self always heads straight for “dark.”

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

 

 

The German Peeta

Oh, fan fiction.  Why have not one of self’s favorite authors updated since she left California?  She checks practically once — no, twice — a day.

There is nada, nada, y nada.

Anyhoo, as self explained to Joan McGavin during our meandering stroll along the banks of the Serpentine River in Kensington Gardens, last Sunday, there are so many AUs on fan fiction.

In one, Peeta is a galley boy and Katniss is returning to America after many years studying in the Panem School for Proper Girls in London.

There is Katniss as a therapist and Peeta as a member of a support group.

There is Katniss as a World War I nurse.

There is even a Katniss as a World War II nurse.

And now she has encountered a fan fiction that puts these words into Peeta’s mouth:

Es war laut und die Wachen dachten das wir tot waren.  Vater rannte Zuruck zu mir und sah das ich noch lebendig war, also zog er mich hoch und wir rannten los.  Sie schossen auf ihn.

He also says “Vat — .”  A lot.

They come upon Peeta’s family farm, somewhere in the German countryside.  Ach!  Murdered, all of them.

One of the American soldiers (whose name happens to be Odair) tries to comfort Peeta by saying:  “It’s OK, it was quick.  One bullet to the head for each.”

Mein Got!

Self was going to double-check that there wasn’t a typo in the above, but realized — So what if there’s a typo?  This might not even be German!  For all self knows, it could be Albanian.

In this particular AU, Katniss is very forthright: she propositions Gale (while his unit is doing reconnaissance, no less) and he says, gulp:  “I have a girlfriend back home.  Her name is Bristol.”

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

 

 

Tomorrow’s Game of Thrones (Season 4, Episode 3)

In preparation for the last episode of Game of Thrones Season 4 self will get to see before she embarks on her latest travels, self is re-watching (for the fourth time) Game of Thrones 4.2

This is self’s most favorite episode of Season 4 (because there are no scenes of

Spawn of THE HUNGER GAMES

Self can hardly wait for Sunday night, when she and The Man will be riveted to the HDTV for Game of Thrones 4.2  Mebbe Yara Greyjoy will put in an appearance, finally?  Could we have more of the Brienne/Jaime interaction, please?  Mebbe Tyrion and Joffrey do a little arm-wrestling?  Mebbe Jaime Lannister feels in the mood for another bath?  Mebbe Jon Snow undergoes an inititiation ceremony requiring — another bath?  Mebbe Khaleesi also feels in the mood for a bath, like the one last season where Daario surprised a malevolent intruder and offered his sword and everything that entails to naked-in-the-tub Khaleesi?  Does Sansa end up running away with Littlefinger?  When is the Purple Wedding?  Hopefully, not too soon.  The show would lose a tremendously rousing villain in Joffrey.

Anyhoo, self is as usual on her fanfiction.net site.  It’s just so great that there are also authors who do the Brienne/Jaime shipping and write fabulous fan fiction about this pair.

But nothing so far has dislodged her devotion to The Hunger Games match-ups.  Peeta/Katniss is still her favorite (Though, self must admit, Four as played by Theo James is pretty delectable. She’ll hunt up Divergent fan fiction shortly).

This morning, the fan fiction she’s reading has an arena:  Prim has volunteered to take Katniss’s place in the Reaping, because Katniss is preggers with Gale’s baby.  Peeta gets reaped per usual.

There is an eye-watering scene (Angst to the nth power) where Peeta swears (on national television) that he’ll do everything in his power to send Prim home.

So, from the very first scene in the arena, while everyone else starts running for cover away from the Careers and the Cornucopia, Peeta stops to pick up an exceedingly bulky backpack.  Then he follows Prim (and her ally Rue) to the shelter of the forest.  But the girls get separated from Peeta because even though they are using the four-note Mockingjay signal to alert him to where they are, Peeta doesn’t know how to whistle back.  That is, he is terribly out of tune.  So the girls and Peeta wander around, looking for each other.

Then the Game-makers start a huge forest fire.  Then Peeta gets horribly burned but still carries the bulky backpack.  Then the girls find Peeta, who’s passed out.  Then Prim attempts to heal his burns.  They open his backpack, and discover the following items:

• several packs of dried beef and fruit
• a few packs of hard crackers
• three grain-and-nut bars
• a bag of walnuts and a bag of almonds
• several thin protein bars
• two dried sausages
• a hunk of cheese
• three cans of soup with pull-tab lids
• a box of tea (What need there would be for tea in the arena is — well, never mind)
• a “largish” bag of rice
• a blanket
• some rope
• a cooking pot
• a sewing kit
• and, at the very very bottom of the backpack, a medical kit

YAY!  YAY!  YAY!  Which means Peeta will live — for at least another day!

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

 

 

1st Saturday of April (2014) Reading

First, there is The New Yorker of January 16, 202 (Don’t ask.  Self just can’t explain), a short story by Said Sayrafiezadeh called “A Brief Encounter with the Enemy.”  This story is the first post-“Things They Carried” war short story self has ever read.  And since she first read Tim O’Brien ages and ages ago, she thinks it’s high time!

Here’s the narrator describing a mission:

To get to the hill you have to first take the path . . .  I was loaded down with fifty pounds of equipment that clanged and banged with every step.  I might as well have been carrying a refrigerator on my back.  But after the first month the fear dissipated and the path started to become fascinating, even charming.  I was able to appreciate the “beauty of the surroundings” . . .  even the trees that I was constantly bumping against.

Oh, that is fabulous writing, simply fabulous. Hilarious. She wonders (since she hasn’t yet finished reading the story) if it ends in tragedy.

The other thing self is reading is of course Hunger Games fan fiction.  She landed on this story just yesterday.  It’s no use hiding the fact from dear blog readers:  in the past few months (probably since last December), self has completely surrendered to the charms of Alternate Universe Narratives.  She reads one every night before she goes to bed.  Her filters are “Angst” and “Peeta.”

In the one she is currently reading, charming Miss Katniss Everdeen has been summoned home to America, a country she had not seen since the age of eight (Self is all too cognizant of the fact that the tone of the particular piece of fan fiction she is reading — it’s set in 1832 — is beginning to bleed into her blog post, but anyhoo), not since she was enrolled by her parents in a very ritzy London private school called Panem’s Better School for Girls.

The ship she books passage on is called the Mockingjay.  Her chaperone is a ditzy woman named Miss Effie Trinket.  Just as she boards, however, Katniss discovers that Ms. Trinket has to go, and there is no other female presence on this dastardly ship.  Worse, the captain’s name is CORIOLANUS SNOW. The first mate, a man with mutton chops and “dark, glittering eyes” is called SENECA CRANE.  Before you can say BOO, our heroine encounters yet another unsavory sort, a sailor named ROMULUS THREAD.  Sailor after sailor attempt to warn her that she would be best getting off the ship and embarking on another — say, The Virginian.  But our Miss Katniss is an extremely stubborn soul.  It appears she is more terrified of appearing weak than of actually experiencing any sort of physical (or moral, or emotional) harm.  The last doleful warning comes from a rheumy sort who begins addressing her as “Sweetheart.”  Still our plucky Miss Katniss refuses to budge.

Self’s heart was pounding a mile a minute — that is, until Miss K happens to make the acquaintance of the cook.  This man — or boy — happens to have eyes of cerulean blue and the longest eyelashes she has ever seen.  At which point, self felt like standing up and screaming:  KATNISS, STAY ON THAT SHIP!  YOU DON’T WANT ANYONE TAKING YOU OFF THAT SHIP!  BELIEVE ME!

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

Fan Fiction, Sherlock and Self

In Edinburgh, in the Surgeon’s Museum (which is located in the University of Edinburgh Medical School), there is a special exhibit on the man who served as the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes (Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh).  Since self is extremely nosy, she decided to open a closed door that was at the far end of the exhibit area, and saw an empty amphitheater, with rows and rows of wooden desks all facing a proscenium.  Class was not in session.

Today, self is thinking about Sherlock Holmes because she is once again tackling her Pile of Stuff (which is absolutely exploding with unread magazines).  The January 27, 2014 issue of The New Yorker is what she is looking at this afternoon.  There’s a very interesting article by Emily Nussbaum called  FAN FRICTION:  SHERLOCK AND ITS AUDIENCES.

As self proceeds through the article, she learns that a particular scene in Sherlock Season 3 was inspired by Sherlock Holmes fan fiction.  Can you guess which one, dear blog readers?

One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand four, one thousand five . . .

Time’s up!

We’re at a critical moment:  Holmes is on the roof of a building, preparing to jump. Somehow,  Moriarty winds up there, too, and leans in for a kiss.  Self’s jaw almost dropped to the floor.

Self knew it!  She knew it!  Because it’s in the same episode where a group of London geeks (fan fiction practitioners) sit in someone’s cramped and cluttered apartment and conjecture about the two years Sherlock was thought by everyone to have perished.  (They also tweet theories using hashtag #sherlocklives)

Anyhoo, self loves the Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock.  The first time she saw the actor was in a movie called Amazing Grace, where he played anti-slavery parliamentarian Pitt.  At that point in time, there was only one reason self wanted to see the movie, and that was Ioaon Gruffud.  She had absolutely no idea where the filmmakers had picked up the beady-eyed Cumberbatch.  Only years later, after watching her first episode of Sherlock, did self finally “get” the Cumberbatch affect:  the lankiness!  The floppy, messy hair!  The cigarette pants!  The sexy!

In the series, “when Sherlock reads a crime scene, enormous words appear on the screen, like an on-line word cloud.”

Sherlock, Nussbaum writes, “has inspired reams of slash fiction.”  Today, “you can find slash fic about almost any character you can imagine, from Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy onward.”

Self recently registered for membership in fanfiction.net, and she can attest how addictive it is.  There are actually people who leave comments like these:

“I work as a waiter and I’m right now in an alley behind the restaurant, hoping for an update to your story before my boss comes out and catches me . . . “

“I’m on a cruise of the Mediterranean and I keep thinking up excuses to go back to my room so I can check for any updates of your story.  My family thinks I’m nuts . . . “

Never, ever will self reveal her fanfiction.net identity, because she’s doing very fluffy writing.  She follows seven writers.  She hopes with all her heart they don’t turn out to be 14, but they might be.  Because they still worry about getting “caught” during chemistry class or skipping math class to do some urgent reading in the bathroom!

She’s heard it so many times:  The internet is the death of books.  It may be the death of books, but it is definitely a clarion call to the imagination, and to the power of the simple act of reading.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

How the Hunger Games Fan Fiction Replicates Self’s Advice . . .

Still in son’s house, the house he and Jennie rent. Every night, we gather in front of the TV to watch the figure skating. Self makes horrible, taunting remarks — about the lace top of one of the male Russian skaters, about Putin sitting grim-faced rink-side, about how the medal counts are broken down by country (“Isn’t the whole point to stop thinking of individual countries, isn’t the point WORLD PEACE?” self whines)

When everyone else has gone to their room, self begins searching for Hunger Games fan fiction. She always finds good ones. The one she began reading earlier is called Good Again. It is 32 chapters. Whoever wrote it, he/she is good.

What makes self burst out laughing is a line from Chapter 7.  Katniss is still suffering from PTSD, it’s been less than a year since she returned to District 12.  She calls Dr. Aurelius, the doctor in the Capitol, and he tells her she needs to go back to hunting.  Here’s an excerpt of their conversation:

“Would you be avoiding hunting?” he asked.

I was absolutely avoiding hunting.  I went sometimes, when Peeta asked for squirrel.  It used to calm me, but now it just reminds me of . . .

“Gale,” I said quietly.  “It reminds me of Gale.”

“I see,” the doctor paused.  “Gale was your hunting partner, as I recall.  Do you love hunting?”

“I do.  Not just hunting.  Being in the woods, walking, climbing trees.”  I was becoming nostalgic.

“Would you say it was a major part of your identity before the reaping?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Katniss, I will now assign you a bit of homework.  I want you to go hunting.  Be sure to take a notebook with you.”

Dear blog readers, self is teaching an on-line creative writing class.  And since Day 1 of the class, she has been repeating, over and over:  “Bring a notebook with you wherever you go.  Writing is like a muscle.  It gets better with use.” (Katniss, if you were one of self’s creative writing students this quarter, you wouldn’t have to be told of the value of bringing a notebook with you wherever you go)

To have her words echoed by Doctor Aurelius in Hunger Games fanfiction is beyond priceless.

Self has learned that there’s a new character in the Mockingjay movies:  Antonius.  Why oh why did this new character have to have a name that sounds so much like Aurelius?  Only now, while typing this, does self realize it is perfect:  Antonius, a possible Capitol torturer, is responsible for breaking people.  If this is correct, he’d be a perfect foil to Dr. Aurelius, whose specialty is healing Katniss’s and Peeta’s devastated psyches.  (As usual, self has spoken too soon:  Tonight she reads on Hypable that Antonius is likely “a doctor from District 13.” The mystery deepens. All she can say is, Knepper does a great broody face)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.