lacrimae rerum

Fic can be found here on AO3.

Man, writing a fic about depression while I myself was depressed was... not ideal, and way too meta. I do not recommend it. :P 

While looking through my folders, I found this. I have a very vague memory of staying up late one night two years ago, half-asleep but wanting to write something about Susan, but I don't actually remember writing this. Still, a quick Google search didn't reveal this story as already existing, so I'm going to assume I did write it and forgot about it. XD It's about Susan's reactions to finding the chess piece by the well at the beginning of Prince Caspian.

Chess Piece (because I fail at titles)

Disclaimer: Narnia belongs to CS Lewis, and all dialogue between the Pevensies is lifted from Prince Caspian.

Notes: There's a minor bit of internalised sexism at one point, when Susan thinks that as a queen she was selfish for not giving birth to an heir. That does not reflect my views in any way.
 

 

~*~ 

AO3 link here.

 

While explaining some stuff about Anubis to a friend, I dredged up an article I'd written in my first semester at uni (early 2012) for a Science Communications assignment, where you had to explain some sort of scientific process clearly and simply for a target audience who knew nothing of your subject. As the lone ancient history student in a class full of science majors (it was a broadening unit for me), I decided to write about the mummification process. And upon rereading it just now I decided I was actually pretty proud of it, so I'm posting it here.

Remember, it was a uni assignment (I had to deal with word limits and stuff) and written over a year ago, so if you think anything needs to be changed or dislike any part of it, or want more information, please let me know. XD

The Mummy: The Prequel

 

 

 

Dawson, W.R. (1927). Making a Mummy. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 13 (1), 40-49.

Hamlyn, P. (1965) Egyptian Mythology London: Westbrook House

University College London (2000) Digital Egypt for Universities

Retrieved from: http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/Welcome.html

Wallis Budge, E.A. (1895) ed. Baldock J. (2011) The Egyptian Book of the Dead London: Arcturus Publishing.

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

The lovely jolantru  has recently published a book, Wolf at the Door, and last night I attended her book launch party at a nice little place called The Garden Slug. Other members of the Speculative Fiction Writers of Singapore were there too, and a lovely time was had.

Sadly, I didn't have the presence of mind to snap pictures of the food before we attacked it (June did take pictures though, and when/if I see those, I'll post them here if she gives me permission). Everything looked good, and the vegetarian pizza I shared with Mint Kang and a couple of other people was delicious. But the best thing was the dessert. *__*



Sadly, this is just what was left when Mint and I stopped long enough for rational thought and realised a picture would have been a good idea; before that, we were in a happy dessert-induced daze. This dessert platter was ambrosial.

The brown chocolate thing on a popsicle stick was a brownie popsicle, coated in fudge and deliciousness. The remnants of brown powder and cream next to it were all that was left of the tiramisu. That lump of white ice cream scored by our forks is actually vanilla gelato. And the stem attached to a tiny piece of brown flesh, with another piece of flesh nearby, is all that was left of the amazing stewed pear. According to the menu, it was stewed in white wine and cinnamon. It arrived still warm and soft and cinnamon-scented and it was SO GOOD. Especially when you ate a piece together with a forkful of gelato; you had a heavenly explosion of sweetness in your mouth. The grapes and strawberries were sweet enough, I guess, but after several mouthfuls of stewed pear and gelato, the berries seemed too sour. XD

Joyce held a mini quiz and I won signed cover art and a bag of chocolate. :D I passed the chocolate around and, sadly, forgot to get it back before leaving. XD Unfortunately I'd had to leave early, it was already nearing 9.30 by then and I'd told my family I'd leave by 9 plus, so I had to miss Joyce's reading.

Today I went for a job interview at Kinokuniya! The interviewers were nice, but I'm scared I might have been too nervous and talked extra-fast. There were probably too many 'Um's too. And I wasn't expecting the mathematical questions at the end - silly of me in retrospect since I was applying for the positon of cashier, but I didn't think I'd need to convert Japanese yen to SGD! I haven't done Maths since the end of my O Levels in 2008; I'd better brush up on my mental arithmetic. I really hope I get this job; I'd love to be able to work in a bookstore. Kinokuniya is an amazing bookstore with a fantastic selection and I'd be surrounded by books and aiding the cause of getting people to read more and... *____*

In other news, I'm poking at my fanfic100  challenge again; I edited some of Chapter 2 but I'm still stuck at the end, as I was over a year ago. I'm going to beg steadfast  for help. XD I'm also considering joining the 2011 rs_games  writing challenge; I haven't written Harry Potter fanfiction in aaages (this was my last piece, I believe) even if I lurk and read quite a bit, so I should probably write a few drabbles as practice or something before tackling the challenge itself.

Meanwhile, it's time for my annual re-read of irisbleufic 's Crown of Stars series. *goes to read*

Aargh. My A Levels were finished at the end of last November and I have a break until university starts much later this year. I'd been looking forward to this period SO MUCH last year, and planning what I'd do kept me going.

Now the months stretch ahead of me and I have so many things to do but just can't bring myself to finish them. Would the word ennui be appropriate? There are times when I just walk around the house, unable to motivate myself to finish any of my current projects or start a new one. None of them seem to appeal to me; sometimes they do but I don't feel like doing them anyway. When I'm on the computer, instead of writing or doing anything productive, I spend hours faffing about on Facebook or reading (in some cases, rereading) fanfiction.

Maybe a list will help. Things that are in progress will be italicised, things I've completed will be struck off.

( Reading )

( Movies/TV )

( Music )

( Writing/role-play )

( Craft Projects )

( Miscellaneous )


*stares at list* This is going to end up like that post-O Level list of mine, isn't it? Lakshmi and I wrote up a nice long list and we only did a few things on it. Sigh.

Tried a few different samples of my writing. (Because clearly the cure for writer's block is memes - this one is from irisbleufic ) Since I experiment with different styles for different stories every now and then, I expected diverse results, but these...

( o_O )

Look, alliteration! XD

Most of my writing recently has been almost wholly for role-play. Besides RP itself, there's incidents in the history of my characters, future what-ifs, dabblings in darker AUs, detailed nightmares etc. And this morning I was planning something focusing on Gabriel during the Ten Plagues of Egypt.

One of the things about my Gabriel that's both a strength and a flaw - in my own opinion, at least - is his dedication to his duty. He does whatever God asks of him, no matter what; I turned that into a drabble here. There are a lot of times when his love for the humans and his mercy clashes with what he has to do in the name of God, and it really hurts him, but his love for God is such that he does it anyway. He carries out his duty, no matter how much it may hurt him.

So as I typed the first line of today's story, I suddenly realised how much that particular aspect of him has got in common with my own religion, Hinduism. The Bhagavad Gita came about because Prince Arjuna faltered on the Kurukshetra battlefield in the Mahabharata, seeing his cousins and teachers and the elders he respected at the head of the opposing army. He wanted to throw down his weapons and simply not fight them, and said so to Lord Krishna, who was his charioteer.

Sri Krishna then revealed Himself in His true form to Arjuna, and taught him of his duties as a warrior and a prince, and of dharma or duty in accordance to divine law. He refers to the upcoming battle as Dharma Yuddha, or a righteous war fought in the name of justice, to fight evil, and He says that as a warrior, Arjuna has a duty to uphold dharma through warfare. 

I'm going to end the religious discourse here. In a nutshell, Hinduism teaches that you have to overcome these ties to material things, to people and things that you love, and uphold dharma or your duty to God and His law. And my Archangel Gabriel, too, has often had to deny his own more merciful urges to simply carry out whatever duties God asks of him. There's a common legend that he was exiled to Earth for twenty-one days, but a gazillion different versions regarding the reason, so I chose the Islamic version that while reciting the Quran to Muhammad, one of the last suras involving horrific calamities or something of the sort made him pause and question God. Ever since that experience, he's been even more unquestioning.

I certainly didn't intend the similarity, but I'm quite amused at the fact that apparently somehow it subconsciously influenced my writing. :D

In other news: I'm signing up to translate this video into Tamil. :D

And now I should get back to writing. XD