The Republic of Heaven

In one way this belongs in the fanart section of the main board, but in another it doesn't. Why's that?

Well, because this is a set of drawings Kyrillion made of some of my characters, together with one PP's. I can't claim to be canonical (yet )so it wouldn't be quite right for Kate's super drawings to appear on the main board's fanart page - unless the Powers That Be decide differently. Anyway, here they are (can you tell I'm really rather chuffed by them? )

From the top down they are:

Lyra's half-sister Elizabeth Boreal (with the boat from A Gift of Love)
Lyra (and Pan eating a biscuit)
Old and young Arthur Shire (with Sal perched on his shoulder)
Arthur's friend Maggie Doyle
Will Parry and his wife Judy
Giancarlo Bellini

Dude.

Let me reiterate. Duuuuude!

Those drawings bring out things that I saw in the characters you created, Ceres, hence the dudes. Wow! I'm a little shocked tis all.

Anyhooch. Kyrillion, very nice sketches, I especially liked Elizabeth and Giancarlo - gosh it's been so long since I read the early ones (not counting the King's Councillor, I haven't gotten round to that yet).

And what's wrong with my fanfictions? Why do I get the feeling that, with a couple of honourable exceptions, they're dismissed as dross? I haven't had a single review in over a year Perhaps somebody would like to tell me what's wrong with them?

Um..nothing, its just this thread isnt about them...

We can cover them in passing can't we?

Nice to see you again, Enitharmon. All your HDM fanfics are excellent, our fandom is just going through a low patch in readers on FFN. They've got buried under more recent 'cough' Will/Lyra 'cough' stories as well. They are certainly not dross. That 'Shadows at Morning' fanfic, for example...seriously, heaps of reveiws generally go to people who write huge amounts, rather than people who are necesserily good.

Sorry, Ceres, forgot to mention, the pictures are still excellent, and that''s one mean-lookin' avatar. Is it a quote from '1984'?

Sorry, Ceres, forgot to mention, the pictures are still excellent, and that''s one mean-lookin' avatar. Is it a quote from '1984'?

No - it's from (The) Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

The mean-looking guy is the astoundingly camp English actor Ernest Thesiger, who played the mad scientist Doctor Pretorius in the same film.

Nice to see you again, Enitharmon. All your HDM fanfics are excellent, our fandom is just going through a low patch in readers on FFN. They've got buried under more recent 'cough' Will/Lyra 'cough' stories as well. They are certainly not dross. That 'Shadows at Morning' fanfic, for example...seriously, heaps of reveiws generally go to people who write huge amounts, rather than people who are necesserily good.

Danny, thank you for that reassurance - we writers are notorious for being insecure and feeling unloved. Do you think I should really press on with Shadows At Morning? Because I think my crime-writing style went down like a bottle of Peshach wine at the local mosque!

But I think you've touched on something that I'd missed in my naievety about the nature of 'fandom'. I write stories based on minor characters and speculation about the HDM universe and its inconsistencies. What fans want is 'news' about Lyra and Will, who are almost real people to them, as their daemons are real, and they have a real destiny that they want to know about. I want to play with the possibilities of the universe, and experiment with daemon writing as a literary tool. You probably noticed that I steer clear of armoured bears and witches; although Serafina Pekkala makes an appearance in The Cassington Scholar I think she comes across as a doughty feminist rather than a witch, and her cloud-pine branch is just a useful device to get her away when no longer needed! I also prefer to work with human nature rather than magical knives and machines that fly without explanation. I don't think that's what fandom are looking for.

I loved the books but there are thousands of books yet to be read and I've moved on. I'd no more think of going to a convention dressed as a witch or Mary Malone than I would of flying to the Death Planet. I'm not a 'fan' in that sense. I'm a fan of Ian Rankin's books but that doesn't make me want to dress up as Gill Templar (although I might reconsider that if it got me in the sack with Rebus! Or - be still my beating heart - John Hannah!)

Where does that leave me, I wonder? Does it matter?

Thinks: Shut up, woman....

Where does that leave me, I wonder? Does it matter?

Thinks: Shut up, woman....

No, don't do that....

It leaves you exactly where you are - writing what you want to write - or what you have to write - because you want to write it - or because you have to write it.

It matters as much as you want it to because the stories that people like you and Danny write are well off the scale when measured against the standard of the vast majority of fan fiction (no offence intended to any other writers of ff). Quality, not quantity, eh?

Bride of Frankenstein...Dr what?...still a great quote. And thanks for the compilment, Ceres.


Enitharmon, that's an astute way of looking at things. I think it might leave us in a similar boat to obsessive fans, in that we're writing unpublishable stuff, for the appreciation of a smaller group. But I'm sure a Crime reader, or someone who just liked stories, could look at Shadows at Morning, and feel included, which is a big difference. In the end, like Ceres said, I think we write them mainly for ourselves.

I'd like you to continue SAM, because I want to read the rest of the story. I could recomend it to people in a limited way, but I really couldn't say how much it would be reveiwed. It depends whether you want to write it enough for that not to matter.