Three pieces of nostalgia
My mom sent me a package a few days ago with a Folkwear pattern in it, sneaking in, as she often does, various pieces of nostalgia from my life.
There were three things of particular interest to me:
1) My financial aid letter from Vassar, dated March 1999. Holy crap. First of all, $28,000/year is positively cheap compared to the average cost of an Ivy League school these days. Secondly, Vassar footed the bill for most of it. I mean, in some sense I knew this, but I didn't recall they did this to the tune of $17k/year. There are loans in there, but most of the aid is grant aid. As a result I came out of four years there with less debt than most people get from one year of law school.
I am reminded I am extremely, extremely lucky, and that need-blind institutions are really amazing.
2) The first chapter from a novel I was writing in my mid-teens, A Dangerous Age. I remember this story as one I was writing on my Powerbook 5300cs, my first laptop, in in the mid-90s, and I believe this is all I have left of it--I tossed that computer in the trash in the Great Nonsensical Writing Purge of 2003-4. The story is told from the perspective of Emilia Farthingale, who, as you can imagine, is TOTALLY NOT A MARY SUE. She is supposed to be this brilliant wizard, precocious beyond her years. She's advisor to the Empress, and over the course of the novel, goes on a mission to fetch a great warrior-- the character I TOTALLY DID NOT AT ALL BASE ON SAMURAI CAT--from the obscurity he lives in, in order to win a war. In the course of it she manages to off the head of her magical order in a fit of pique, and also has to deal with the consequences of that.
... the theme of the novel, self-admitted at the time, was "being smart is haaaaard."
... wow, apparently I wrote female!Kvothe before Kvothe was ever a thing.
For all that, the chapter itself is... not bad? I mean, it's still got way too much exposition and the most unnatural, stilted dialogue you could ever want. But I'm really intrigued by the world-building I did, even if I am too "let me show you it." The Society Arcanas to which my Mary Sue belongs is incredibly detailed--four different schools of magic, seventeen degrees of achievement, a strict hierarchy, and enough ritual for any five Masonic orders. The world itself is fascinating, too--it was portal fantasy that was basically a pot into which I stirred everything I liked. As a result, it has some intriguing contradictions. I say it best when I exposit:
She loved this marvelous senseless city--Meskanino, caught between worlds.
Emilia, born to the Human World, knew this more. It was hard for one who had grown up in this land, Exilian Marquis, to realize how scrambled it was. While women bought eighteenth century fashions in Fashion Forever on Grand Street, the armies in the north still fought with bladed weapons, while a railway was being built between the Four Countries. What a world it was... but it was one that Emilia had gladly escaped to, years ago.
I immediately wanted to do something more in this world, as an urge to correct a mistake--as you might want to write fanfic around a certain concept in response to a bad fanfic on the same. There's definitely a there there, and I want to go back to it.
3) I found an essay I wrote for my freshman English course at Vassar, about "my kingdom... my home." The topic of the course was American Nature Writing, and of course I wanted to talk about the woods that were so important to me when I was a young teen. This essay strikes me as unnecessarily melodramatic, and full of the weasel words I've been learning to cull--but I also recall writing it at 4am, so that could be part of the problem.
What fascinates me about this piece is how closely it approaches that truth I was writing about last night with my Samurai Cat post: "the exalted, magical status I had known" at that age.
Anyway, it's things like these that made me buy a scanner. Perhaps I'll share them with you in full some day.
There were three things of particular interest to me:
1) My financial aid letter from Vassar, dated March 1999. Holy crap. First of all, $28,000/year is positively cheap compared to the average cost of an Ivy League school these days. Secondly, Vassar footed the bill for most of it. I mean, in some sense I knew this, but I didn't recall they did this to the tune of $17k/year. There are loans in there, but most of the aid is grant aid. As a result I came out of four years there with less debt than most people get from one year of law school.
I am reminded I am extremely, extremely lucky, and that need-blind institutions are really amazing.
2) The first chapter from a novel I was writing in my mid-teens, A Dangerous Age. I remember this story as one I was writing on my Powerbook 5300cs, my first laptop, in in the mid-90s, and I believe this is all I have left of it--I tossed that computer in the trash in the Great Nonsensical Writing Purge of 2003-4. The story is told from the perspective of Emilia Farthingale, who, as you can imagine, is TOTALLY NOT A MARY SUE. She is supposed to be this brilliant wizard, precocious beyond her years. She's advisor to the Empress, and over the course of the novel, goes on a mission to fetch a great warrior-- the character I TOTALLY DID NOT AT ALL BASE ON SAMURAI CAT--from the obscurity he lives in, in order to win a war. In the course of it she manages to off the head of her magical order in a fit of pique, and also has to deal with the consequences of that.
... the theme of the novel, self-admitted at the time, was "being smart is haaaaard."
... wow, apparently I wrote female!Kvothe before Kvothe was ever a thing.
For all that, the chapter itself is... not bad? I mean, it's still got way too much exposition and the most unnatural, stilted dialogue you could ever want. But I'm really intrigued by the world-building I did, even if I am too "let me show you it." The Society Arcanas to which my Mary Sue belongs is incredibly detailed--four different schools of magic, seventeen degrees of achievement, a strict hierarchy, and enough ritual for any five Masonic orders. The world itself is fascinating, too--it was portal fantasy that was basically a pot into which I stirred everything I liked. As a result, it has some intriguing contradictions. I say it best when I exposit:
She loved this marvelous senseless city--Meskanino, caught between worlds.
Emilia, born to the Human World, knew this more. It was hard for one who had grown up in this land, Exilian Marquis, to realize how scrambled it was. While women bought eighteenth century fashions in Fashion Forever on Grand Street, the armies in the north still fought with bladed weapons, while a railway was being built between the Four Countries. What a world it was... but it was one that Emilia had gladly escaped to, years ago.
I immediately wanted to do something more in this world, as an urge to correct a mistake--as you might want to write fanfic around a certain concept in response to a bad fanfic on the same. There's definitely a there there, and I want to go back to it.
3) I found an essay I wrote for my freshman English course at Vassar, about "my kingdom... my home." The topic of the course was American Nature Writing, and of course I wanted to talk about the woods that were so important to me when I was a young teen. This essay strikes me as unnecessarily melodramatic, and full of the weasel words I've been learning to cull--but I also recall writing it at 4am, so that could be part of the problem.
What fascinates me about this piece is how closely it approaches that truth I was writing about last night with my Samurai Cat post: "the exalted, magical status I had known" at that age.
Anyway, it's things like these that made me buy a scanner. Perhaps I'll share them with you in full some day.