lacrimae rerum

For _silverfox, who chose the prompt ‘Cat’ on my writing meme. This is a loose prequel to the Triangle prompt fill, where I wrote about the Plagues of Egypt. Since tomorrow (Oct 31st) is, in addition to being Samhain/Halloween, also one of Bast's feast days (although she shares this one with Sekhmet and Ra) I thought this was a fitting time to post this. :D Although please note that the Festival of Bubastis would have taken place in middle April.
 
Historical/mythological notes: While Bubastis reached its peak during the 22^nd Dynasty, the Plagues were believed to have taken place during the reign of Ramses II, of the 19^th Dynasty; I rather doubt Gabriel and Bast had talked things out by then, so this takes place sometime during the early 18^th dynasty.  Since the entrance hall, festival hall and hypostyle hall of the Temple of Bast were only built during the 22^nd Dynasty, most of the celebration here is outdoors. Tanis did indeed have a famous royal wine-producing estate, known as ‘Preserver of Kemet’ (though admittedly I don’t know if it was actually during this time period). Maahes is a leonine Nubian war god who was assimilated into the Egyptian pantheon and considered Bast’s son. And there is actually very little evidence supporting large-scale Hebrew slavery, so I avoid referring to them as a nation of slaves here.
 
Meme: Cat aka Bubastis, 1400BC
 
( It should be made very clear that Gabriel was not drunk... )

 
~*~

I've been on a cleaning/organisational frenzy at home since my job contract ended, and clearly it's extending to LJ. I thought I should try to collect all my fics (the ones I'll admit to, anyway) together in one place. I suck at ratings, so if you think something should be rated differently, please comment saying so. :)

Bear in mind that the earliest stories are most likely not all that good; I started writing fanfic in 2005 and I was only 12 going on 13 then. And that there is a fair amount of slash (male/male pairings: the pairings are stated clearly, so if it offends you, please don't read), and some of the role-play entries may be friends-locked (however, if you add my RP accounts as friends to read them, I will add you back ASAP).



( Harry Potter fanfiction  )

( The Chronicles of Narnia fanfiction )

 . Autumn reminds Susan and Lucy of Narnia.

Perfumes of Narnia - Pevensies, Peter-centric, PG13, 2010. Peter is a man in a boy's body.

Constellations and Promises - Susan and Lucy, Lucy-centric, PG, 2011. It was hard to see the stars in London. [Titled Promise on FanFiction.Net]


( The Black Magician Trilogy fanfiction )

( Good Omens fanfiction )

( The Sandman fanfiction )

( Miscellaneous fanfiction )

( Role-Play and Original Fiction )

Hopefully I remember to update this thing. :D

I thought angelology was bad - either there are a bunch of resources that copy one another or the sources all contradict one another. And it's hard to find something that's not aimed at the New Age crowd and involves crystals and phases of the moon and candles of particular colours that need to be burnt with particular scented oils to summon angels or whatever.

Demonology is even worse because I can't seem to find enough information that doesn't seem like it was written by spelling-challenged emo teenage pseudo-Satanists, or conversely, is not from a religious site on how we must all fight the temptation of these purely evil beings.  (Although this site made me laugh out loud; clearly someone has been watching far too much Supernatural instead of working on their spelling...) I see the same old quotes from the Dead Sea Scrolls and Paradise Lost and other sources I'm familiar with, and I found some interesting new sources, but... it seems like there isn't as much available info as there is for angelology. At least I don't have to deal with Doreen Virtue PhD's Angel Tarot cards or instructions on how to send letters to Gabriel.

  All I want is a name for Belial's assistant, damn it.

( Cut for characterisation and research woes )

Oh, by the way, I now have a part-time job. :D My friend Gena works at this shop called JU-AN which sells clothes (mostly cheongsams or Oriental-style clothing - Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese) and jewellery (jade and other crystals :D) and stuff, and she recommended me to her boss. I had an interview and filled out the paperwork and she seemed happy with me, but I said I couldn't commit to anything today since my dad wanted me to tell him about it when I came home and then we'd discuss it and decide, so I came home and talked to my dad about it and he agreed. Called the bosslady (apparently that's what they call her!) and she said she'd call me back with a schedule, since that stuff isn't fixed. So if it all works out, I will be able to afford more books! :D And being able to work with Gena makes up for the fact that I couldn't get a job at a bookstore.

Written for this writing challenge.

 Many thanks to sunflower_mynah  for betaing! <3

 
Snowman 

  

( Winter is death, you think, but for us winter is life... )

 

 

Sivaroobini Kalaimani

17^th/18^th January 2011.

 

Snegourka the Snow Maiden, if you're curious about the reference.

This is one of the very few original pieces I've written that does not involve angels and is not part of a bigger arc, so reviews/concrit would be appreciated. <3

This was meant to be posted for my birthday; it was meant to be a tiny drabble looking at my RP character Belial, lordofsin , when he was still an angel. It grew and grew and I only finished it in August. I posted it as his LJ here, but somehow never got around to posting it here at my own LJ as I had originally meant to.

A/N: A huge thank-you to steadfast  and sunflower_mynah  for betaing!

I apologise for the italics; it was originally meant to be a very short piece with brief flashbacks and then grew into this. And when I tried switching the formatting, it insisted on being in italics. Untitled for now, but suggestions welcome!

PG13 perhaps, for religious/mature themes. I'm horrible at ratings.

Disclaimer: Carasel and Saraquael are the property of Neil Gaiman in his Murder Mysteries, as is the concept of the Hall of Being and the Silver City, and Gadre'el is my take on Crowley from Neil Gaiman's and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens. Aziraphale makes a tiny cameo too. Otherwise, all angels mentioned are my own takes on Biblical characters.

  *

( It would have been inaccurate to say that Belial had never meant to Fall; he had. He just hadn’t known what it was like, at the time; what it would feel like, what it entailed. What he would Fall from.  )

 

 ~*~

So I roleplay the Archangel Gabriel as cattygabriel , and I'm doing a writing meme for him here.

rhaeii , aka halosphere , requested the prompt Tears, and the resultant fic, betaed for me by the wonderful steadfast  aka angelofawesome /stillnotfallen , is one I'm rather proud of. So I'm also posting it here. <3

Warning: dark subject matter, mentions of torture and rape, slight religious themes.

Meme - Tears

   

( It is warm and humid, and the heat is not helped by the huge bonfire burning in the middle of the town... )



Feedback/concrit is as always much appreciated! <3
 

Disclaimer: The characterisations of Michael, Raphael and Uriel belong to steadfast , as seen in her fabulous fic Manchester Lost (and the sequel Paradise Thwarted). Zizi is her take on Aziraphale, creation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Gabriel is my own character ( I roleplay him as cattygabriel ; it just happened that he insults Michael almost like the way Jen's does. One can't help it, with Michael being the way he is xD), and Lucifer is mostly mine, but with a little bit of input from Jen.

A huge thank-you to sunflower_mynah  and steadfast  for betaing! <3

 

Bedtime Stories

 

 

( Night didn’t exist yet, not as it would come to be known, but the soft glow of Heaven was muted... )



 

 

Title: Memos from the Messenger
Summary: Of the overall series - The life of the Archangel Gabriel, from his creation right up to the Apocalypse.
Of this installment - In the beginning, the archangels were created.
Prompt 001 - Beginnings.

Disclaimers: The Silver City is my take on the one introduced by Gaiman in his Sandman series and short story Murder Mysteries. Gabriel, whom I claimed for this fanfic100 challenge, is mentioned by name in Good Omens, where it’s implied that he is Aziraphale’s supervisor, but other than that I am taking free rein with the appearances and personalities of him and the other archangels. Aziraphael and Gadre’el are my take on what Aziraphale and Crowley were like in Heaven before the Fall; they are the property of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

Thanks to my dear beta Jen for helping with ideas, editing and the idea for the Michael-Gabriel interaction, and to my best friend Lakshmi for being supportive.

Chapter 1: Prompt 001 – Beginnings.

( In the beginning... )

Feedback/concrit would be loved. <3 Next installment: Prompt 021 - Friends.

For some reason it won't let me edit this entry in HTML O.o so here's the link to the prompt table: sirius-luva.livejournal.com/34881.html

I got an e-mail a few hours ago.

fanfic100_admin (fanfic100_admin) replied to a comment you left in a LiveJournal post. The comment they replied to was:

Name of Fandom: Good Omens
What your Fandom is: A book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
What you are claiming: The Archangel Gabriel
What your claim is: Character

Their reply was:

Subject: Re: FANFIC100 CLAIM
Thank you. Your claim will be added to the table shortly. Sorry for the delay

I swear, when I saw this I literally went, "AAAAHH!" in excitement. I had this humungous grin on my face. Then I called my best friend and talked at her (yes, at) about this for a couple hours. Being my best friend, she was nearly as excited about it as I was. I'd been worried that they might not accept it as Gabriel's name is mentioned ONCE in the book.

And then I began to panic after the initial elation. I had had some ideas, vague plot bunnies running about in my head, but now that I've been accepted, evidently Elmer (or Elmo?) Fudd has been on a 'kill the wabbit' rampage in there. My mind has gone completely blank. I KNEW I should have written them down somewhere. At least the title's on a tiny Post-it somewhere under a pile of junk on my table.

I don't know if you're reading this, lumelle , but your fanfic100 set, A Hundred White Feathers, has sort of set a standard to follow, to me at least.

*raises glass* Here's to the excitement, headaches, frustration, relief, knotty plot points and characters, typos, drama, crushed papers and HTML buggery I foresee as I take on the task of writing a hundred short stories about Gabriel, the Strength of God.



(Why, yes, I made that myself. ^_^)

One more exam to go... Tamil Literature Paper 2 on Wednesday, and then in the next two days I will have to clean the large house, bake some snacks, and do henna for myself, my sister, and my friend who wants to learn (she is Chinese) before Deepavali on the 17th.

And I also have a HUGE reading list for after the exams, involving the entirety of DC Comics: Lucifer, the collected works of Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen's Emma and Northanger Abbey, Titania Hardie's The Rose Labyrinth, Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, Milton's Paradise Lost...

Also, I have bitten off more than I can chew for the Good Omens Holiday Exchange 2009, methinks. Note to self: Next year, do not get overexcited about the new fandoms you have discovered and stick every single thing in the 'What you're willing to write' field. If you want to add cameos from Dream or Delirium or John Constantine or Shadow or Odin or Gabriel, then just add them in while writing. Don't advertise it in the application.

Obviously, I am pretty excited about my prompt, as I was last year (this is only my second time participating). I love writing. It's just that thus far, most of my work is oneshots. Fluffy oneshots, at that. My two longest works are Recuperation and Cassandra's Prophecy, which are also probably the only things that actually have an actual setting-buildup-climax-winding down sort of proper plot. Any chaptered works I attempted are abandoned.

And now I am working on a prompt/assignment that calls for plot things, and cameos and crossovers/settings within a certain 'verse (I don't know the recipient, so I doubt she'll be seeing this, and anyway I'm trying to be vague). Now, while I am obviously familiar with most of those canons I have never actually properly written for them before, and the first plot idea I came up with and stuck with for a while made extensive use of Hellblazer canon which I am only slightly familiar with. In the end it would leave too many loose ends and angst issues so I abandoned it and am now trying to think of a bloody plot which will fulfill the first part of the prompt. The rest I can handle, eventually, but the first part of the prompt is a little problematic.

I have a vague idea, but... now I'm trying to think of something, and the things I come up with usually end up consigned to the metaphorical wastepaper basket. Damn writer's block. Damn the fact that I was always too lazy to do actual plotty things.

On the bright side - plot practice! I may try some practice pieces, which is bad news for my poor betamuse steadfast. (Prepare yourself, Jen!!) And now I have no excuse not to write plotty things.

Now... *goes back to scribbling plot ideas on paper, drawing outlines, and crossing things out* Yes, I still write in longhand, on paper ;P


Edit: I completely forgot that Scepticism and Of Promises and Warmth actually do have plots. Maybe I'm not completely useless after all. xD I never thought the day would come when I had so many stories written (relatively speaking) that I'd forgotten half of them. *dance* Also, thank you for the support, Jen! *points to comment thread*