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It might draw back some of the absent gods, after all. But I am somewhat biased. ;)

hS

The new Board does have a "let's pretend this was posted at a time other than when it actually was" feature, which can be used for keeping threads alive and for banishing them off the front page.

but Estril stopped him. It's a trap, they said.

Huh? Julia's hand was awkwardly frozen halfway out.

I'm pretty sure She's tried this on those mobiles we read about a while back... Estril turned their thoughts to pulling up the relevant information from the Powers, and Julian moved his hand back as he listened in.

Soon enough, Julian realized what he'd been about to sign up for. Thanks, buddy, he said.

It's nothing, Estril reassured him. You'd have done the same for me.

By the time Julian got around to replying, the silence had gotten awkward. "No thanks," he said. "I know how that one goes."

First off, I loved the performance. Though, be warned, there's probably an "... and it gets everywhere" joke coming in the logo circle, because. Sand. The archiving should be fine; I'm just gonna copy directly from your GDoc to mine. ^_^

Anyway, cover!

This cover may wind up swapping out; if the Tash mission goes ahead, I might need to switch it to that story. Basically depends on which one produces the best 'substitute for a god' for the cover; at the moment it's probably Jadis, since I can at least get a reference picture for her.*

*But would it be Disney or BBC Jadis? And would they even look different after I drew them?

This cover was originally earmarked for the finale, as a "The End" gag, but I already had an alternate lined up for that. ^_^

hS

Edit: Putting together the archive version... I think the sand-explosion at the end of the performance has been knocked out of the timeline, which is a shame, because it was kind of cool. Let me know if you want me to put it back in somewhere in the RP section. ~hS

... I'd love to see what El-Ahrairah and Yavanna get up to. I put the partial RP (with new reply from me) up... somewhere. Uh... here, found it, complete with El-Bunnyface cover image.

hS

. . . This is a creature that inhabits your own world, is She not? And thou . . . Thou do stand against her." A very small smile crept across Tash's face. "Very well. I shall grant thy wish, servants of the Lion—for thee do serve the Lion, I think, though thee may know Him not. Bring me to thy world, and I shall remove this Author of Entropy for you. Thy world shall be safe forever, and thee shall be known evermore as the heroic young wizards who vanquished death."

Tash reached forward, and offered her hand. "Let me help thee."

—doctorlit

I've never really baked with dried apricots, but depending on the recipe and your tastes, they'd probably be pretty good. I believe they're also used in some rice dishes, though that's no longer strictly baking. The RL version of these apricots are very fresh, quite soft and sweet, so they should work well for pretty much anything, I should think. Me, I just tend to eat them as they are, for the most part.

~Z

They stumbled a bit over their reply. "Uh, we're wizards?" Then, with Estril handing Julian the voice box, they continued, more confidently, "We're sworn to stand against entropy and death, and She who created them, in all their forms. And that's you."

A moment later, since Estril couldn't quite shake the feeling that something was off here, they added, "Right?"

"Two," she muttered quietly. She leaned in closer still, peering into the human eyes, and perceiving the Yeerk inside. "Two threads, twined together so closely. And the ends . . . But those ends are long from now, and far from here. Thee are not mine to take." She flung her arms out, swishing her dress dramatically. "I ask thee again, then: Why do thee greet me with defiance?"

—doctorlit

"and we know You. You are,"

The two wizards then ping-ponged through a list of titles.

"the Collapser of Caverns," Estril began.

"the Prince of Lies," Julian continued.

"the Muddler,"

"the Author of Entropy,"

Then, they finished together, "and many other names. We know You, and we defy You and Your so-called inevitability."

They squared up to look Tash in the eyes with the thoroughly inflated confidence of teenagers on a mission to save the world (for that is, indeed, what they were).

Tash's form on the stage abruptly collapsed into a pile of sand.

Not an instant later, smoke rose from the floor directly in front of the speakers, taking Tash's human shape before re-solidifying into flesh and clothing.

"Thou speak," she croaked, apparently leaving her feminine voice behind with her musical performance. "Thou say, 'Fairest.' Thou say, 'Fallen.' I am neither. What mean thou by these words?"

—doctorlit thinks the Old English pronouns are the hardest part of all this, and is probably getting them wrong

Despite the different presentation, they recognized Her from previous encounters - if nothing else, the message was quite familiar.

We're standing together here? Estril asked Julian. (Being wrapped around his brain made it easy to keep the question private)

Yep, same as before! Let's do this!

Julian got the sense that his partner was, yet again, sighing at his enthusiasm.

"Julian Anders," the young teen near the back of the crowd said.

"and Estril 447." continued the Yeerk sharing his head. Attentive observers would notice that Estril deliberately gave themself a distinct accent.

She turned her head very slowly, back and forth, scanning the entire audience. "Who hath spoken?"

—doctorlit is incredibly down for this Narnia/Young Wizards/Animorphs/PPC crossover

It's recently come to my attention that fanfiction.net has disabled copying of fics on the mobile site. This is a real pain if you, say, want to copy the contents of a fic from fanfiction.net for some reason.

Fortunately, this is solvable through the magic of browser extensions and five minutes of my time making it work.

• Download GreaseMonkey for Firefox. Alternatively, download ViolentMonkey, which works with most browsers. I haven't tested ViolentMonkey but there's no reason this shouldn't work with it. Probably.
• Download the ffn-yescopy script. Click "Raw" on the linked page, and greasemonkey or violentmonkey will prompt you with the option to install the script. You can click install, and it will be installed.
• ???
• Profit.

No, really, that's it. The script will autorun whenever you browse to fanfiction.net and undo that pesky copy disabling. Of course, you are letting me run code on your computer (it should be properly sandboxed, but still), so hopefully you trust me. Although the code should be short enough to read (my code is one line and then it relies on 30 lines of other people's code, and jquery, which is so widely used that you can probably trust it).

Hopefully this is useful.

It's not exactly the sort of thing this blog is about, given that I plan to review and rec non-derivative published fiction (and I'm really not a Star Wars fan besides), but it's definitely interesting to know that something like this is out there. I'm sure the resident Star Wars fans and Shakespeare nerds of the PPC will be glad to know of it.

There is a series of goodfic called William Shakespeare’s Star Wars by Ian Doescher. It is basically 'what if somebody turned the Star Wars movies into Shakespeare-style plays'. My dad discovered it a few years ago, and these stories might be part of the reason why I like Shakespeare so much now.

I started this short-lived blogging project last year called Oculus Reviews (under a different name back then, but I've gone back and changed it since) whose goal was to feature lesser-known genre fiction books, movies and the occasional video game or other medium. I have a lot of love for speculative fiction and I've discovered some pretty rare and interesting stuff during my frequent bookshop, library and Kindle store trips, as well as forays into other genre blogs like the excellent Too Much Horror Fiction. The blogging enthusiasm didn't carry me very far because 2020 Sure Was A Year, but I'm feeling like going back and restarting the entire thing because I do miss being able to analyze and talk about interesting stuff. So, er, if you're into vintage or simply lesser-known sci-fi, horror and similar stuff, you can peek in at Oculus Reviews here, I guess.

> Then, she croaked, “What hast thou to say?”

From near the back of the crowd, Estril-and-Julian called out, with one voice that nevertheless gave the distinct impression of belonging to two people at once, "Fairest and Fallen, greetings and defiance!"

(( How they'd made it out of the fic I'm writing into HQ is very much not relevant here, this timeline has enough weirdness in it as it is. ))

Do you think the apricots would be good in cookies or some other kind of baked goods? I like to bake/cook whenever I have free time and I'm not getting distracted with other things.

"Ah. A... god."

Mmrrowl said the word, with its slight upward glance to indicate one above the speaker, with visible discomfort. It wasn't disbelief, but more a feeling that, as a cat, no-one should be above him.

"I know little of gods, though there was one once, in a dream..." He flicked his tail, dismissing the thought. "If that is how gods are loved, may it give you much pleasure/entertainment/pride." The concepts were difficult to separate, but Mmrrowl didn't even try. "For myself, it seems like a lot of work - but I will still listen to your song, if I may."

"Games, now..." The black cat dropped to the floor, rolling onto his back for a moment before leaping back to his feet. "We play only one game, the Game, among my people; I don't know if it is the same. Though, if it is chasing you want, there is someone you must meet."

He flashed his teeth, showing the irony of his last words, but then his ears pricked up as a faint jingling echoed down the hall. "The Ironic Overpower," he grumbled, the same look upward as 'god' paired with the barest show of his fangs. "I apologise for this."

"Mmrrowl!" Another cat scampered up the corridor, her fur long and white, a small golden bell on her collar. "I found you! Oh!" She skittered to a halt, staring at Stone. "I know you! My human loves you!"

Mmrrowl rolled his eyes, one of the few gestures he had adopted from the two-legged agents. "Stone," he said, "meet Aunt Sam."

(("one once, in a dream" and "the [Cat] Game" are both somewhat oblique references to different things.

((Aunt Sam is a mini-Mogget. I'll mention this in narrative next time if you don't cover it, but her feline speech is much more exaggerated than Mmrrowl's - it might feel like a kitten speaking, maybe, or maybe like she's shouting - or just clumsy. The bell on her collar is a mini-Kibeth, which when rung, eg by her jumping about, gives people an impulse or urge to move. I think that can be either walking or dancing, but it can be resisted by force of will as well.

((Mmrrowl really doesn't like Aunt Sam, partly because she's a mini, and partly because she just really winds him up. ^_^

((hS))

((PS: Most cats I've known played the Cat Game, but my parents' current pair are sibling house-cats, and they love to chase from end to end of the house.))

...but "Of Spoons and Scones" certainly isn't badfic. It's a sweet little vignette. I can see a place to give gentle constructive criticism, but it's certainly not even mild badfic.

I'm also rather amused by the idea of Gandalf drinking his tea with a soup spoon, and how Bilbo isn't even remotely as bothered by the idea as some people he knows probably would be.

Funnily enough, I've actually written a similar sort of short fiction (flash fiction? I forget the exact definitions for that)--Bilbo translating "Gil-galad was an elven-King." Yours reminds me of it a little bit. It's here if you're curious, though, uh, obligatory disclaimer that I wrote and originally posted it back in 2010. Which is apparently eleven years ago now. Wowza.

Anyway. Good luck, I hope you get your classes sorted out without too much trouble, and don't worry too much about what you're writing. Pretty much everyone here has likely written both bad things and very silly things at some point. The important thing, really, is to continue to grow, as it is in most areas. If you end up writing something you later decide is badfic, that's okay! You got some writing practice, you did something fun/de-stressing, and now you get to choose what you want to do with it. Edit/rework it? Get Permission and send your agents into it? Put it away? Ask for concrit? Whatever you do with it, you'll be a little more practiced for having written it, and that's great. For both your creative and your academic writing, actually: an essay and a fanfic don't follow the same formats or conventions, most of the time, but being able to communicate an idea well is definitely a transferable skill. So, seriously, whatever you write? Especially since you're concerned with quality and improving as a writer and so on? It should be perfectly fine. Relax and have some fun with it. Whatever you think of it after, whatever feedback you get, it's good to keep writing, and, if you want the big picture, it's another step in your journey as a writer.

~Z, who may not have said hello yet? Hi! Welcome to the Board :) If you like dried apricots, have a welcome gift of very good dried apricots! In case you don't like dried apricots, have a secondary welcome gift of one of those pens that writes in multiple colors of ink!