marmota_b

I still haven't gotten around to reading all the stories, alas. Plus I'm not going to read all the smut and shippy stuff, which appears to have been in particular demand this year... Not really what I want from Narnia, myself - I don't mind the occasional ship (I'd be a hypocrite because I harbour a cracktastic crossover ship for Susan myself) but, well, for one thing I'm not into interfering with canonical pairings. *shrug*

BUT my gift is everything I wanted plus things I did not know I wanted and... I may have said that before, I've lost track, I love the dialogue, I love the worldbuilding and character interaction, I'm still incapable of coherent comment on that front, Liz wrote Sallowpad for me, Liz wrote Beasts for me, there's a DONKEY. *squee*
(I did not know I wanted a Donkey in this particular prompt. I absolutely wanted a Donkey.)

How Sallowpad came to travel in the lands south of Narnia.

I had to! I had to write something special for Syrena who wrote an absolutely breathtaking story for me last year! (Pretty much literally, as I remember the feeling of reading it.)
And we happen to share love for the X-Wing books, so that had to happen... Things turned out differently from what I intended along the way, the story majorly got away from me, and I ended up with a whole new AU and series on my hands, and the story I ended up publishing has less Narnia and less X-Wing influences in it than the story that did not get published.

It did not hurt that among the things Syrena asked for were languages and things lost in translation which, hey, if you want to get me going that's pretty much 100% guaranteed to succeed... Somewhere along the way of reading up on Mandalorians and reading Mandalorian fics on AO3, I had come to the conclusion that, not having English as my first language and having learned (at least the basics of) several different languages including non-Indo-European ones, I understood how Mando'a could not be approached just from an English-centric dictionary-based point of view much better than a lot of the authors who were peppering their stories with it, so... Mando'a had to happen.
(I mean, Mandalorians call their mates / pals "kids", WHICH IS WHAT MORAVIANS DO! How could I not fall in love with this stub of a conlang then?!)

I can't remember how exactly all the strands of the AU happened to come together; the majority of it actually happened in the scope of a single day and the rest followed that same week after the prompts were sent out! Syrena's prompts and wishes were that perfect for me. The original idea for the crossover, I do remember, was Kir Kanos getting stranded in Narnia after his last canonical (EU) appearance, as a pretext to get the other characters there, and because I have a thing for morally grey characters being dragged further into the Light - more on that in the original story later, of course. And I wanted to include my idea about a Calormene Underground Railroad, which slotted itself into Syrena's suggestion about Aravis and mobile libraries, and her wish for spycraft. And somewhere in there in my Wookieepedia browsings I came across the fact that Boba Fett liked reading books as a child. So bookish Boba Fett had to happen.

Myrtle walked in in the process of welcoming Kanos into Narnia and its cultural idiosyncracies, and then she decided to call Boba Uncle Boba because Boba does deserve to be flustered like that, and the whole Mandalorian family angle happened without my looking for it (but slotting beautifully into another of Syrena's likes). It's not entirely an accident that she's a Mole; while I've never seen a live mole as far as I can remember... it's definitely an archetypal childhood Beast for me, for more than one reason. (That particular reason, though, is totally responsible for Flaxie's name. ;-) )

And then, yes, the whole thing got away from me and I ended up with a whole AU on my hands.

Prill started out as something of a throwaway crack idea when the Wikipedic Effect landed me at the Wookieepedia entry for hoojibs. The crack idea of a cute furry creature that's basically a Star Wars bunny being a Mandalorian because a Mandalorian adopted them and that's how Mandalorian culture works. And because, yeah, I do love giving layers to characters / concepts from canon that tend to appeal to the wannabe macho, so yeah, Boba Fett's son is a bunny, yeah, there's a bunny Mandalorian. :D

Also Mole + Bunny continuing the Project and being holy terrors on slavers, yesss!

So it was, at first, just a throwaway line in the academic text part of the story, but then Prill got angry at me for making just a joke of him, and Tyria demanded a section in her own voice, and that part of the story happened.

Also, to my utter delight, Mando'a is far from a complete language but you can actually translate Stone Table into it. And they really do appear to have some connotations of equality / meeting at equal terms to tables, which nicely met in the middle with some worldbuilding ideas of mine for Narnia and The Order of the Table... once again, more on that later, hopefully.

Plus, yeah, I share Kil's conviction that Fenn Shysa would fit into Narnia.

I really struggled this year. I felt like doing all kinds of things but writing. In part because of long vacation time dedicated to visiting family and places around the country. In part because of a big sewing project, and in part because I really need to organise my room and my sewing supplies.

In part because I hit on inspiration, early on, for a story I definitely wanted to tell, which (hopefully) fits the recipient's requests very well, but which somehow I then felt very uninspired to write right now.

It was HOT the past couple of days. I hate hot weather, my skin hates hot weather, my brain hates hot weather. This summer had, so far, been very nice to me, finally being more like the summers I remember than the summers we've had the past couple of years (which includes me considering pouring rain during a trip as the weather actually being nice to me), and it seems like hot weather is trying to go out with a bang and make up for that.

(Thankfully, just as it was getting very hot, I bought myself a linen-rayon blouse in end-of-summer sales, deciding that my summer blouse situation was getting unbearable, and... OOOOH. Why on Earth did I get a linen thing for summer only now when I know what linen is supposed to be like. IT'S EVEN BETTER THAN COTTON. Off to ponder Sartor's offer of lightweight linens...)

I finished and uploaded the story pretty much literally at the last minute. Strictly speaking, I uploaded it after my midnight, and it's currently unbeta-ed, and immediately after sending it to my beta I realised I had completely forgotten to include a detail I wanted to include that isn't at all necessary for the plot but kind of necesary for the character.

It's also almost twice as long as my previous entries, which probably explains some of my trouble with writing it.

Phew. The worst part is over.

P.S. I was looking through my profile on AO3, idly trying to remember what challenges I've participated in before, and there was suddenly this thing sitting there in the Gifts section, saying "Mystery Work, Part of Narnia Fic Exchange 2019, This is part of an ongoing challenge and will be revealed soon!", and suddenly I realised that I'd completely forgotten that I'm getting something out of this, too.
Huh.
:D

To Anonymous Writer, Marmota, Greetings,

Thank you very much for taking on the task of supplying a story to fit my tastes. Once upon a time, I agreed to do that for my sister's birthday and it grew into what was probably my first fanfiction, of book proportions, and took several years to finish; agreeing to do such a thing in such a short time frame means a lot.

I always have a craving for more stories about the smaller players in the Narnian world; you can see my previous request letters, and the wonderful stories I've received both as regular & Madness entries, to get a pretty good grip on that side of my tastes!

This year, I'm mixing it up with an additional craving for a story about the friendship between Aravis & Lucy. I welcome other characters into the mix, too; family welcome, older friends welcome, minor characters welcome, original characters welcome, exploration of various cultures welcome; romance (except for minor Aravis/Cor, I guess) should preferably stay well outside the budoir door for this one, though (or alternately inside it, if it turns out to be an outdoorsy kind of story - which, with those two, it well may).

Or maybe a story in which a) someone else travels to Narnia; b) someone from Narnia travels to our world; or c) a crossover. I won't list my fandoms; there are many things I don't write but am familiar with, and besides, I think I wouldn't even mind one with a fandom I'm not familiar with, because that's actually how I discovered some of my fandoms!

If you somehow manage to combine it all, that would of course be awesome; but it will be wonderful even if you don't. :-)

All in all, whatever you do, I enjoy stories of friends and family, stories of faith (you don't have to venture there if it makes you nervous, and I do rather hate stories that run too far with the "allegory" of Narnia and lose sight of Narnia itself in the process) and hope (the latter I think I perceive much the same way Václav Havel did); stories that end on an uplifting note.

Written in South Moravia, on the fifth day of the month of Greenroof, in the year 2019.

Dear Anonymous Writer,

I would like to thank you for participating this year, and apologise for having such a specific, un-taggable request.

You see, I've been craving more stories of the smaller nameless inhabitants of Narnia probably ever since I found out there was such a thing as fanfiction. One of those is the Robin in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: it plays such a vital role (I'm pretty sure it's the same little bird that saw Tumnus' capture, too), and yet it doesn't even get a name, and is never heard of again. Add to it the fact I've learned that the Czech Ornitology Society, which has been naming Birds of the Year since 1992, bestowed that honour on the European Robin this year... I really do want to read her story now.

Hers. You see, "robin" is default female in Czech. So the Robin of my childhood is female, and I would very much like it to remain that way.

I've just learned, thanks to the Bird of the Year article, that robins are pretty fierce fighters. Even the females.

The females look the same as the males, so that's easy.

I do not insist on the story concerning what happened in the Winter. It could very well be happening afterwards. I just really, really want her to have a name.

So. It can easily be a fluffy story without a plot if that's what you do better. It can involve other characters. I think I actually would like it very much to involve other characters, because there's so much scope that remains uncovered in most Narnian fanfiction. Are there talking Frogs? Newts? What are the songbirds up to? Do Dormice get along with Squirrels? Do Squirrels pay attention to the colours of their coats? (I bet they do.) Do other Narnians complain about the noise Hedgehogs make? Do Marmots emerge from their burrows hyperactive of a Spring, and get on the nerves of those who do not hibernate, or are they sleepy and disoriented? How did the hibernating species live through the Winter?!!!

How do these smaller Narnians get along with the bigger ones, and do they pay attention to what's happening in the Big Picture? Oh, let me rephrase that - what roles do they play in the Big Picture? Or maybe the other way round - can we see that even the Small Picture is important?
 

Thank you in advance for taking all this into consideration. And don't feel bad if inspiration strikes elsewhere. As I said, what I want most is the name. To make the Robin a person.
 

Good luck with your writing, and good luck in receiving the kind of story you crave!

Marmota

To Anonymous NFE Writer, Marmota, scribbler from the Czech Lands, Greetings.

Thank you very much for generously offering to lend your time and talents to my whims.

I have long been wishing for a greater number of stories that tell of the smaller and less known inhabitants of Narnia rather than the famous kings and queens (not that I find the reasons they are famous unimportant). I would like to hear the story of the Robin that led the Pevensie siblings to the Beavers. And to know her name (see my previous post as to why "her"). I would like to know what Pattertwig's journey to the Lantern was like, and when and how he came back, and whether he had a family. I would like to read of the exploits of Narnian Frogs, and what the Kestrels are like. Or I would like to know if there are Dormice living in Narnia, and what their culture is like. Or whether the Jackdaw who became the first joke became wise in old age. That kind of stories.

I would also like to know if there are other creatures, considered mythical in our world, living in Narnia or the world around. Did they, perhaps, travel to our world at some point, to account for the existence of the myths and folklore? Or were the myths and folklore, in some inexplicable way, the basis for their creation?

Come to think of it, how did the Marshwiggles come to be, and what are their relations with Water Rats like?

Basically, I am really interested in what the NFE tags deem Narnian Subcultures and Backstory, with a dose of Worldbuilding, Mythology & Folklore or Mythical Creatures thrown in.

I prefer stories of friendship over romance (but I like a good, character-based romance, too, when it comes to it); I prefer not to read slash, definitely do not want incest, and would prefer for my story to stay in the area up to T.

Thank you, once again, for listening to my ruminations, and good luck in trying to accommodate them - and may you receive just the kind of story you wish for!

Written in an undisclosed location in the Czech Lands, on the twenty-fifth day of the month Redthrive, in the year 2015.