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 got an idea almost immediately after receiving the prompts (that must be a first, they were incredibly well matched to what I felt like writing this year), and during a routine day at work, it developed almost fully, I thought.

It also meant I didn't write it down, and then didn't get around to it, and through more routine days at work, it has percolated through my head and been reshaped a bit. I jotted down a couple of things on my phone. Part of it I later realised would be better left out of the story this was shaping up to be.

So I sat down at my computer, downloaded the file into my computer, and decided that redundant part should be moved into the file with random ideas for The Peridan Chronicles...

... and while I was there, I realised another of those ideas had long had a place in the actual Peridan Chronicles, and moved it there and...

Yeah, I think you can guess where this is going. I spent an hour or two polishing off something quite a bit ahead in The Peridan Chronicles, not writing the NFE story.

*shrugs*

P.S. Also I completely forgot about the tea I'd made myself. At least I got luckier than this dinosaur and only forgot about it after I'd taken out the teabag...

(Link leads to shittydinosaurdrawings, one of the few Tumblr blogs I read, which I wholeheartedly recommend for fluff and cute idiosyncratic humour with mostly feathered dinosaurs and questionable spelling, and general making of days. The tea comics is the crowning glory of it, but it's all good.)

Well. The snow helps; we've been having hot and dry weather for way longer than is natural.

But the main reason I'm sharing this song (this instrumental arrangement) is because it's an old, old favourite. We've had an LP of this Polish band all my life, we used to love it as children, I still love it, even in its faded scratched LP-into-computer state; and now this clearer version... yeah. It's perfect.

I got not one, but two remix stories!

And to top it off, they picked two of my favourite of my stories to remix.

There's "Condiments", a remix of "The Morning After" which I wrote during the Three Sentence Ficathon. "After the Battle of New York, the Avengers indulge in a little friendly bickering over pancakes." And over the different condiments to put on them (or in them), drawing on my Natasha's sour cream. :-)

And then there's "Pack Rat", a fun expansion of "Packing for the Journey" which I wrote for Ariyah in the Secret Santa over at FanFiction.net last year. "Sometimes, Cor can be a little too prepared. And Corin, though an exasperatingly bad packer, is paradoxically something of a hoarder." Both are nice logical conclusions of the relationship and details I hinted at in the original piece. And it much funnier. :-)

This, once again, goes to show me that the best pieces often come from a challenge - both of the remixed stories (which, as I mentioned, are among my favourites) were written in response to a prompt. So I'm glad to see that passed on.

There will definitely be a Take 3 after the reveal. For now, go and enjoy these if you haven't already!