Age: None of your darn business

Sex: Yes

Occupation: Fortunate to have a job

Likes: Fandoms of all sorts, canon, A/U, and crossovers, history, literature, natural sciences, liberality, sci fi, fantasy, and anything that makes me go "wow, I wish I'd thought of that/done that/written that."

Dislikes: Tree pollen, drivers who don't use turn signals, math, smut with the word "access" in it

rthstewart@gmail.com
http://rthstewart.livejournal.com/

I remember vividly the first time I read fan-based slash/incest. In the same story. There were illustrations. There may have been a cease & desist order. I've never recovered. Whatever floats your boat (see above liberality). I just flounder on the shoals and so don't go there.

The LJ account is where I babble about things I've done, things I decided not to do, and things I'm thinking about, all fic related.

At the Narnian Fan Fiction Revolution (NFFR) site, http://narniafanfiction.com/ , you will find lovely (screened!) stories, terrific people and great conversation. Check out their forums at http://narniafanfiction.com/forum/ and a terrific podcast, As Cast, http://ascastpodcast.com/ and http://narniafanfiction.com/ascast/.

In September 2009 I appeared as a guest on the NFFR AsCast podcast and you can download it at iTunes, the above links, or Podcast Alley. You can find the interview in their 4th Episode, the Moose and the Carbuncle.

Voting in the annual Revolution Awards is underway. Follow the links above to the main site. A couple of my things and characters are on the ballot, which astonishes, astounds and embarrasses me. My deepest thanks to those who made the submissions. I can't quite believe anyone is at all interested in this twisty view of Narnia and from one who is as new to this fandom as I am.

“Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.” The Last Battle, Aslan to Emeth a Calormene

“Now, Bree,” He said, “you poor, proud, frightened Horse, draw near. Nearer still, my son. Do not dare not to dare. Touch me. Smell me. Here are my paws, here is my tail, these are my whiskers. I am a true Beast.” The Horse and His Boy, Aslan to Bree.

The last time I did this, you may not have been born. I'm playing in Narnia fandom right now as it appears, for the moment, that my children are playing in other ones. I can only play in the places they aren't.

About By Royal Decree -- complete
It started as a bit of silliness, a spin off of Edmund's rant about corsets in The Stone Gryphon. It's humor, mostly, set about 10 years after the fall of Jadis. It does also expand things that are hinted at in The Stone Gryphon. The two very much occupy the same space, and the thematic elements are the same. The word most often used to describe it: bawdy. The T rating is there for a reason.

About The Palace Guard -- complete
By Royal Decree and The Stone Gryphon feature the Good Beasts of the Royal Palace Guard and the Night Guard. It continues the consistent thematic element of both works that the Beasts are true Beasts. It underscores a bad habit of mine -- Digressions Is Us. If a reviewer says, "You know, I'd really like to hear about how Jalur became Edmund's Guard" and "Why does Peter have such young Guards?" I tend to say, "Great idea! I don't know! Let's find out!" It is set in Year 2 and Year 7 of the Golden Age.

In Chapter 5, I was inspired by an article on the phenomenon of Mary Sue in fan created works. See P. Pflieger, Too Good To Be True: 150 Years of Mary Sue (presented at the American Culture Conference, 1999, updated in 2001)http://www.merrycoz.org/papers/MARYSUE.HTM

About The Stone Gryphon, Work In Progress
Part 1 Oxfordshire 1942 --Complete

Part 2 The Queen Susan In Tashbaan -- in progress
A Key to the people and places of The Queen Susan In Tashbaan is at my livejournal account at: http://rthstewart.livejournal.com/2894.html

A illustration regarding boots and squirrels from the 1932 and 1962 versions of The Joy of Cooking can be seen here at my LJ, http://rthstewart.livejournal.com/6782.html

Part 3 Title to be determined

Generally
So the bunny bit, and what I had intended as a little Golden Age romp (see By Royal Decree above for a hint of the direction I'd initially intended) has become a great big thumping tome in Spare Oom. The Stone Gryphon story cycle is the result. No plot. Lots of conversation. Some angst, and more humor. Spirituality. Theology. Evolution. Zoology. Dinosaurs. Espionage. Mythology. Cultural imperialism and its opposite, multiculturalism. Observer bias. Democracy building.

Parts 1 and 3 are an outsider's view of England during a critical time, as that country changed from an Empire to Commonwealth. The BBC refers to the years from the Nazi surrender in 1945 to 1955 as "The Lost Decade." It was a time of enormous upheaval and hardship. I've theorized the roles that Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy might play in such a radical transformation. As I've explained to some of my kind reviewers, I don't believe that the Pevensies returned to England after all they had accomplished in Narnia and sat around until 1949 waiting for a train wreck. Rather, and this is a point made very strongly in The Queen Susan in Tashbaan, Narnia is very, very relevant to Spare Oom.

I occasionally revert to the mental images that one now has of the characters as a result of the films. For the most part, however, for those of you who dislike the films, I think you can omit a sentence or two, ignore a few names here and there, and otherwise pretend that Movie! never happened. Or not. It's not really relevant. The stories definitely adhere more closely to the books than to the films.

A couple of things about this have really vexed me, including the status of the English educational system from about 1942 to 1949. It doesn't help that that there was a major educational reform in 1944. According to the UK Railway Archive, which details railway fatalities going back to 1750, that there were only 5 or so railway fatalities in 1949, and they were scattered over 4 or 5 accidents.

And really, what the heck was Mr. Pevensie doing taking his family across the Atlantic to America in the summer of 1942 at the height of the War in the Atlantic? Well, as it turns out, a number of British men were in America at that time, including Roald Dahl. In another fandom I played in for a time, we called the efforts to explain such holes as "spackle." This "spackle" has now become the whole of Part 2.

Real names and events abound in this. Some are quite obvious, such as the election of Clement Attlee as PM in 1945. In Part 2, The Queen Susan In Tashbaan, the conceit is different, in that I have placed real people, events and places in a Narnia setting. Some of them are, frankly, too colorful for Narnia fan fic and I discuss this extensively in my LJ entries.

None of it is remotely real; although what these characters participate in, theorize about, and experience certainly was. This includes a mixture of genuine history, scientific fact, guesswork, extrapolation, and pure invention. What is historical fact, what is fiction, and what is just plain error, I'll leave to the truly determined reader.

Speaking of which, I am not English, nor of a Commonwealth country and I spell accordingly.