Reviews - Rosemary Sutcliff

The Light Beyond the Forest (Rosemary Sutcliff)

I do love Rosemary Sutcliff's writing style for this trilogy: gently magical, in a way that suits it very well. I actually like her Lancelot, which is a feat, because I'm not overly fond of Lancelot in general, and of his story, so the portrayals of him that I love are the odd ones out... I like the tenderness with which Sutcliff wrote about him and his feelings, and his difficulty with no longer being the best knight, and yet the relationship he builds with his son... It's lovely. I sympathised with him a lot, in this rendition.

I also like the way she treats Gawain -- he has the temper common to a lot of portrayals, and yet he's not unsympathetic.

I love the bittersweetness of this story: the brightness of Camelot and the honour of the knights and the sense of final great things before darkness. It's lovely.

The Road to Camlann (Rosemary Sutcliff)

This book is lovely, too. I didn't quite cry, really, but there was a certain tight ache in my throat at certain points. The bittersweetness is much closer to the bitter than the sweet in this book, but thankfully I didn't feel like I had to hate any character for the way they treated the others -- they were all handled carefully, their feelings justified. I loved the characterisation of Arthur, the way he wanted so much to show mercy and to be kind to Lancelot and Guinevere, but the way he also wanted to uphold his own laws.

When I was reading the battle scene, I really noticed how well it was done: well-described, but not gory.

I love the final page or so, with Lancelot's words: "We shall have made such a blaze that men will remember us on the other side of the dark."

Musing - On 'doodles' and my ficjournal

A quick thought, that I should perhaps spend more time with sometime soon -- I basically write two kinds of fics: the kind I work really really hard on, and try to craft carefully, and the kind that I write for a quick smile, as a little gift. And I think they're probably comparable to, say, a fully-finished piece of artwork and a quick sketch, a doodle. I share my 'doodles' all the time -- the things I write for feywood when she gets up on time are 'doodles'. There's an opinion I've come across, when getting concrit and from people on my flists, that 'doodles' aren't worth sharing: they're not fully finished shiny products, I don't really expect concrit on them, etc, therefore I shouldn't share them at all.

And yet. I know people enjoy my little 'doodles'. I often get more comments on the 'doodles' than on a completely finished fic. I'm sure I've had more comments on my short Firefly fics than on my 20k, carefully crafted Big Bang fic. They're brain candy for me, writing them, and probably for the people reading them. I don't see why that should be so illegitimate a thing, in fandom. I might not be using my talents to the best of my ability, and my fics might end up a little self-indulgent, here and there, or perhaps (dare I say it) a bit pointless. But people enjoy them. And every single one of them is practice, even if ultimately it's not as shiny and interesting as it could be, because it might find for me an idea that I want to expand, or make me focus on dialogue, or on a strong opening line or ending line.

It's true, really, that I wouldn't publish them. I wouldn't expect, say, Neil Gaiman, to post little snippets of what he's working on while he's still working on it, or his practice pieces, or the things that didn't ultimately work out the way he wanted. That's true. But that's not what edenbound is for -- edenbound is an archive of everything I write, as long as I completed it and could stand to let anyone read it at all. It suddenly clicked with me that that's the case, and that I've openly stated that's the case, on the userinfo of the journal, and so people don't really have any right to come into my journal and tell me that I shouldn't post my 'doodles'. Which people have.

(It would be different, on a comm. I only post things to comms when I think they're worth spreading to a wider audience. And my Archive of Our Own account is the same thing.)

So I've just now realised that it's okay for me to write 'doodles', and to post them, because I know people are interested and enjoy them. And that I shouldn't feel slightly ashamed of it, because if you've friended that journal you can check the userinfo to see that that's what it may sometimes contain.

I can use my own ficjournal the way I want. What a revelation.