Unthinkable Wings

It's probably a good idea that I have never particularly been the type of fanfic writer who goes in for the high-school AU type of story, because after all, if the characters don't have their canon pasts, are they really the characters? A strict AU where one thing's changed and you go on with the consequences from that is one thing, but "The crew of the Enterprise work for a fashion magazine!" is just ... not my sort of thing.

So I shan't be writing the Church of England AU version of Deep Space Nine, and not merely on grounds of taste. You should all be jolly grateful that you are not having a story inflicted on you which would involve Sisko as the reluctant new incumbent of a small, struggling urban parish, Kira as his curate and a militant member of WATCH, Dukat as the priest of the next door, Forward in Faith, parish, Miles as the luckless parishoner and PCC-member who - due to his technical expertise as an electrical engineer - gets to stop the church falling down, Odo as the churchwarden, and Garak as a newish parishoner who used to go to Dukat's church but has left for murky and unspecified reasons. Sisko would be a widower, and have had his arm twisted into taking the parish by the bishop (Picard?) It would also feature Bariel and Winn as incumbents of other nearby parishes - Bariel has SCP written all over him; I'm not so sure about Winn, but she would become Archdeacon after Archdeacon Opaka dies unexpectedly (possibly in unexplained and vaguely murky circumstances).

So, as I say, you've been spared dialogue like:

"Dear me, these frontals really are in a shocking state. I can repair them, of course, but." Elim pursed his lips disapprovingly. "Are you sure you wouldn't like me to run up some new ones? I would be happy to. When I think of S. Chad's, Father, all that gorgeous Watts stuff..."

Ben gritted his teeth. "I think these are more than adequate for our needs. I'm sorry we don't live up to the glories of Chads."

Elim smiled, "Oh, tat isn't everything, I'm much happier here than at Chad's - at least these days. Though I must say, I may not like the man, but Fr Dukat does say a lovely Mass."

Fifteen books which will stay with you:

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien.
2. The Silver Chair, CS Lewis. Oddly enough, despite the fact that as someone interested in mystics, you'd think I'd go for Voyage of the Dawn Treader, this is the Narnia I really identify with. Or maybe it's not odd: it's the one that seems to relate most closely to what life is like most of the time.
3. Gaudy Night, Dorothy L Sayers. In so many ways....
4. Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich. Julian is such a fantastic theologian.
5. The Way of Paradox, Cyprian Smith. Secondary literature on Eckhart (I haven't picked any Eckhart because picking 'a book' for him is problematic). But this is a wonderful book on Eckhart as a guide to life, by a wise man, and I wish I'd read it years ago.
6. Possession, AS Byatt. Recently I've been reflecting a lot on the idea of the things that matter being the ones that 'survived our education'...
7. Witch Wood, John Buchan.
8. Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson. Both this and Witch Wood are seminal books about the Scottish identity (though WW is unjustly neglected these days); they're both also evocative and very exciting.
9. The Daisy Chain, CM Yonge
10. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott.
11. The Allegory of Love, CS Lewis. Actually I think this book is one of the reasons I became a mediaevalist, and I still think it's a very good study, even though there are lots of places where Lewis' thinking on allegory has been overtaken (in part, of course, because of the questions he opened up).
12. The Christian Priest Today, Michael Ramsey. "Today" is in this case the late sixties (I think), but it's still a beautiful and inspiring book.
13. "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics". Seminal article on Beowulf criticism by Tolkien. I tend to think New Testament scholarship needs something similar. You can't recover the lost sources or even reconstruct the archetype, so stop trying to reconstruct the stock, and eat the soup!
14. The Mind of the Maker, Dorothy L Sayers. This was the point at which I realised that Trinitarian theology is both interesting and important.
15. Christianity Rediscovered, Vincent J Donovan.

I'd also kind of like to do the "Ask My OCs" meme, ( but )

( Oh, and the Which Fantasy Writer are You? Quiz )

Name a character from one of my fandoms and I'll give you (a) three facts about them from my personal canon/fanon, (b) a reason I dislike him/her, (c) a reason she/he is brilliant, (d) five things that never happened to that character or (e) five people that character never fell in love with and why. You pick the character. I pick the letter.

I am irritated to note that I have about €5 in library fines. I really hate the German system of giving you a stupid little computer printout with the date on it - which I instantly lose - rather than putting a stamp in the back/ front of the book where you can see it at a glance. I also haven't had the postal 'Mahnung' - as I set my preferences to 'contact by e-mail', I assumed if I didn't get an e-mail nothing could be overdue, but apparently they just send out overdue notices by post. This strikes me as expensive and inefficient, but is probably a good way to increase fine revenue....

I had an odd plot bunny the other night; it involved Romana escaping the time war through judicious use of the chameleon arch, and ending up as a don and part time novelist at Somerville (probably, heaven help us, with Inkling-based snark). At one point she would see Five and be baffled at meeting someone she had invented (I admit that this is ripped off from Sayers' running into Roy Ridley and failing to remember that she'd used him as a model for Wimsey). Unfortunately I can't think of any plot other than that.

This joins, of course, the partly written Granger-Nott in post War Oxford fic; as well as Memoirs and Confessions of A Justified Snape, not to mention the bunny I offered as a prompt for the Omniocular crossover challenge, and which remained unloved: Moody investigates a series of disappearances in the 70s and runs into UNIT and the mysterious Doctor Smith.

I think I need to take some fic writing time. Of course, I also need to take some paper-writing time, some thesis writing time, and some filling in Ominous Forms Of Doom time....

I've just been listening to a programme about Peter Wimsey on BBC7's Listen Again - thanks to harriet_wimsey for the heads-up.

Interesting stuff, especially Iain Carmichael's interview about making the TV and radio adaptions (I'd forgotten Simon Brett was involved in the latter which, along with the vocal talents of I.C. and the wonderful Peter Jones, goes some way to explaining their success).

But what really grabbed my attention was the fact that Peter Wimsey was first written as a minor character in a Sexton Blake story which DLS wrote and, for obvious reasons, never published.

Yes, that's right. Lord Peter originated as an OC in a fan-fic. I think there's encouragement for us all, there, don't you?