Comments | halfshellvenus: LJ Idol Season Nine: "Moon Garden" (Home Game)

halfshellvenus

LJ Idol Season Nine: "Moon Garden" (Home Game)

Feb 12, 2015 10:14

Moon Garden
idol season nine | week 37 | 475 words
Shibusa (Home Game ( Read more... )

original_fiction, my_fic, real lj idol, home game

Comments 11

bleodswean February 12 2015, 20:11:57 UTC

Oh, brava, brava!!! This is a nice tight little piece of writing! I really enjoyed it! XP or albinism....compelling subject matter!

halfshellvenus February 12 2015, 21:02:45 UTC

Yes! I had thought about albinism, but it's XP and porphyria that are completely inflexible about light exposure.

The combination of the beauty of a moonlit garden, with the sadness of that being the only choice and the choices getting more difficult over time, was irresistible, and I think the prompt actually helped focus the story on simple things we take for granted and how the simple things that remain can still be truly wonderful.

bleodswean February 12 2015, 21:47:59 UTC

Have you read Elizabeth Graver's "Awake"? I can't rec it but it is about XP and children.

Albinism is something that has long fascinated me. I had an albino neighbor for a decade....

Nice job on this. Glad to see you writing!

tsuki_no_bara February 13 2015, 02:12:07 UTC

awww. melancholy, but such lovely images.

(what's xp?)

halfshellvenus February 13 2015, 18:47:01 UTC

Thank you! XP is Xeroderma Pigmentosum, a genetic condition in which sunlight (even a small amount) burns the skin. You need special shades/filters on the windows and everything. It's just tragic. :(

adoptedwriter February 13 2015, 13:33:51 UTC

I enjoyed this. It's a little spooky yet not. AW

halfshellvenus February 13 2015, 18:47:52 UTC

Thank you! I'd hoped it would be spooky and beautiful and sad all at once, and yet the love would come through as well. :)

i_17bingo February 15 2015, 12:22:43 UTC

I have planted new ones over the years, Chinese lanterns and fringy foliage to tempt the touch of your fingers, and white, blue, yellow and pink flowers to show a hint of true color despite the dampening effect of the gloom.

I couldn't tell you at the point the importance of darkness to the second-person character here, but I didn't care. This was such a beautiful sentence I just let myself get swept up into the words.

As I did grow to learn more, I was sad, but still touched by the beauty.

halfshellvenus February 16 2015, 18:45:24 UTC

I hope that sentence showed how far a parent will go to make things better when they cannot fix them. It's such a hard position to be in.

I'm glad you liked this piece, bittersweet as I know it was.

Thanks, as always, for reading and commenting.

similiesslip February 18 2015, 00:48:49 UTC

Hugs to you, I can't imagine.

I'm sure your dad was an amazing man.

halfshellvenus February 18 2015, 18:51:46 UTC

Thank you. Yes, he was. We're sure going to miss him.