Good Morning, Golden Girl

Woke full of beans at something past four, and put in a first 380 words on Golden Kate's exploratory chapter in Fairfields. I used her point of view quite a bit in Katy Elflocks, but in the second half of the tale I've deliberately maintained my distance until now.

That has been an artistic decision - this is the first time in Killer-Kate when I think it's right to see things through her eyes, though it won't by any means be the last. As to the matter of craft, it's... a new kind of challenge: my attempt at a Crone's Journey. Proud, stubborn, intolerant, and trailing disasters behind her as a comet drags its tail, this is the story where she finally achieves the greatness that she thought she had when she was only the villain. But first I must break her heart again with certain small kindnesses, so that it can set right at last.

Hard going. I love my old dragon dearly, but hers is not an easy or a pleasant mind to inhabit. It is, however, an exhilarating one.

Today I learned something new about her: that she knows the old dale-country dances, and that it is new leaves in springtime to her to see them and to speak of them.

Take Two, Knightly

Over in the LJ version of the comments to this fine article by Zeborah, the author raises the spectre of 'Lancelot as Frensshe troubadour's Arthurian Marty Stu' - a spectre which makes such wicked sense, I'm not sure I shall ever be able to banish it.

Worse thoughts are following in its train.

If Arthurian fandom busied itself with creating stroke-for-stroke renditions of duels between knightly pairings who failed to fight in the source material, would that be 'hack-and-slash fiction'?

The Damosel of the Tourmaline Tower by nim4balin - Lamorak/Alisander (mtd, ft, skill<>, angst, magic, implied woman)...

AAAAAAAGH! Makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop!

Oh, and what we should make all of those tournament scenes in Malory...