#and secondly authors shouldn't have to share the writing they think isn't good enough?

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia

You mentioned on a past ask that you wrote a lot even before creating a Ao3 acc.

Would you ever share those stories with us on Ao3 or tumblr?

I'm really interested in reading more work of yours 😅, xoxo

Tbh a lot of it isn't online! I wrote at a time when there wasn't even online places to put writing.

But like... *thinks* I did write a few longfics under another account name and I'll never share that (and no one's ever guessed it either which is great). That was back in the day when people published on individual fansites and not big archives.

Both Science of Fear and Inmates I started long before AO3 on Livejournal, and then I put them on FF.net, and finally I put them on AO3 - so some of the stuff I was writing before I had an AO3 account is actually stuff that is on the AO3 account. Everything before From the Darkness We Rise comes from an era where I was actually initially publishing on Livejournal, and the fics are older than AO3 indicates.

There are a couple of Ziva/Gibbs (oh back when I was writing het) NCIS and also Profiler fics on Livejournal, but I don't use Livejournal anymore, lol. Also its het, and I don't want to share my het writing with anyone these days x.x

I have like 6 complete novels on my computer that I started writing when I was about 11/12 and just kept writing. I'll never share those anywhere because they're the writing of an 11-16 year old and it's a) just not something I want to share and b) I'm a better writer now and I'd like to keep that up, lol. I have like another 20 half-finished novels on my computer as well that will probably stay there. Me being prolific started at a young age, lol.

And then I have some short stories that I've published under another name (which is on my Patreon description but I limit where people can see it, so if you want to find that out, you'll have to read my Patreon description), and all of those short stories have won awards. They're more serious (and sad) science fiction and are published in anthologies. So those you can find, but they're short, and they have sad or bittersweet endings.

Oh and I published two novels under the name Pia Foxhall! :D

But aside from having the two AO3 accounts (thespectaclesofthor + not_poignant) and like nearly 5 million words freely available, everything else is like...staying on my computer for a good reason, or staying under a hidden username for a good reason lol. There's always the possibility of rereading anon!

#asks and answers #pia on writing #pia on fanfiction #i wrote like a hard science fiction novel #and a fantasy trilogy #i still really like the ideas #in fact Augus' character is loosely based off a character #i developed and wrote literally 28 years ago #but it's like... #firstly i find het stuff squicky so you couldn't pay me to share that in the first place #and secondly authors shouldn't have to share the writing they think isn't good enough? #if i thought it was good enough #i would've shared it kfljsadfdsa #there are other novels i think *are* good enough but aren't fanfiction #like Every Day Awake #and Tradewinds #which are shelved for different reasons #i might release them as novels one day

[princesssarisa]

This post is a few days late into A Dickens December, but I'll share it anyway.

I remember from last year's Dickens December that many people disliked the final Christmas Past scene in the original book of A Christmas Carol, which shows Belle with her many children and her husband on Christmas Eve many years after she left Scrooge.

I was surprised by that distaste, because I've always liked that scene and wished more adaptations would include it.

But they offered valid reasons to dislike it. First of all, because of Dickens' obvious "male gaze" regarding Belle's pretty grown-up daughter, and his talk of envying how freely her little siblings can touch her lips, her hair, etc. (I agree about how questionable that part is, although I think it's typical for a 19th century male author – some of Victor Hugo's passages about women and girls in Les Misérables have a similar tone.) Secondly, Belle herself gets less emphasis in this scene than her children and husband do; some people feel as if it reduces her to just a baby-maker, and changes Scrooge's regret from "He lost the love of his life" to just "He lost a woman who could have given him kids." Then there's its apparent portrayal of married life with lots of children as the ultimate happiness, and of Scrooge's missed chance to have that life as a great tragedy for him. Readers who are happily single and/or childfree sometimes find this annoying.

(I remember one post that dealt with the latter issue by arguing that the scene can be read symbolically. The large number of children signify that Belle and her husband have lots of good sex, so the point is arguably less "Scrooge missed his chance for the joy of fatherhood" than "Scrooge's mistakes have left him a 60-year-old virgin." Dickens just couldn't overtly write that in the 1840s.)

Those are all valid perspectives that I had never considered before. But I still think the scene can be defended.

First of all, it's good to see that Belle found happiness. Not only was she heartbroken over Scrooge, but for a poor girl with no dowry, it was a risk to walk away from a marriage that would have brought her financial security. So it's nice to see Dickens reward her by letting her find another man, have children, and be reasonably well off too, if less rich than she would have been as Scrooge's wife.

Secondly, even if you ignore the arguable "children mean sex and Scrooge isn't getting any" subtext, what's wrong with letting Scrooge regret that he lost his chance to have children? It doesn't mean that a childfree life is a great tragedy. Scrooge is happy at the end of the book, even though he'll presumably never have children or a wife: his newfound bonds with the Cratchits, his nephew, et al, are enough. But at this point, when he's alone in the world in his old age, why shouldn't he have a moment of pain when he sees Belle, her husband, and their children so happy together, and realizes that if not for his greed, that joy could have been his?

This brings me to the last reason why I've always appreciated this scene: I've always thought it adds more depth and maturity to Scrooge's regret than just the broken engagement. His greed didn't just cost him a youthful romance, it cost him a full life. Feel free to disagree, but that's the way I've always viewed it.

Still, I'll say one thing: if you're going to adapt the scene, the large number of children doesn't need to be an outlandish number. Last year when I rewatched the 1935 Seymour Hicks movie, I counted all the children in this scene: that movie has seventeen of them! I only hope Belle didn't give birth to them all! Just for the sake of her health and comfort, I think I'll imagine that her husband in that film version was a widower and that the older kids are her stepchildren. Fortunately the George C. Scott version shows more restraint and only gives her six children. That seems slightly more realistic.

#a christmas carol #a dickens december #belle (a christmas carol) #ebenezer scrooge