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And it was all yellow?
Jul. 12th, 2020 12:09 pmI'm midway through my long, long (five-day) weekend, and things are going well. Matthias and I went out for a nice walk to Madingley, during which time we saw cows, horses, alpacas, lots of flat wheatfields, dramatic skies, and, apparently, a plague of crows and ravens. (Photoset here.) Madingley is only 6km outside Cambridge, but that is still the furthest I've been from home since January.
Normally I save my roundup of TV/films viewed until the end of the month, but I feel it's necessary to gush right now about the excellent The Old Guard, a Charlize Theron action film which has just been released on Netflix. It's based on a graphic novel (which I'm now fruitlessly trying to track down in physical format), and is about a team of immortals who (in the film at least) have spent centuries working as mercenaries for various wars, conflicts and causes — and the evil pharmaceutical company which is hunting them. If such things matter to you in media (these matter to me), there are multiple non-white characters, and one m/m couple, all of whom survive to the end of the film. It's received pretty mixed reviews, but I loved it.
Now, on to my latest offering for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
sunshine_challenge. This prompt is 'yellow,' and I have admit I cheated a bit and treated both fluorescent light, and the reflected light of celestial bodies, as being yellowish in colour when they're really nothing of the kind.
I'd been meaning for ages to revisit Galax Arena, Gillian Rubinstein's extraordinary 1990s dystopian YA novel (see this post on my reviews blog where I rave about Australian YA novels of that era, including Galax Arena), and in particular my beloved Presh. She is a character that exists very much in the margins of canon, more talked about by others than giving voice to her own experiences, and she has always haunted me. I first read this book when I was nine or ten years old, and it was the first time I realised that I didn't have to like a book's narrator, even if the author clearly intended for me to do so — and that instead I could latch onto a story's antagonists, and make up my own stories about them if the book didn't give me what I wanted. I've been in love with Presh (and, to a lesser extent, with Allyman, and with the tense, sad, grim relationship between the two of them) ever since.
I tried to write about her eight years ago in Of Moons, Birds and Monsters, and this new fic in many ways represents an ongoing conversation with myself, and with that earlier story.
The Light of Unfamiliar Stars, Reflected (1378 words) by Dolorosa
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Galax-Arena Series - Gillian Rubinstein
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Allan 'Allyman' Manne/Presh
Characters: Presh, Allan 'Allyman' Manne
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon
Summary:
Normally I save my roundup of TV/films viewed until the end of the month, but I feel it's necessary to gush right now about the excellent The Old Guard, a Charlize Theron action film which has just been released on Netflix. It's based on a graphic novel (which I'm now fruitlessly trying to track down in physical format), and is about a team of immortals who (in the film at least) have spent centuries working as mercenaries for various wars, conflicts and causes — and the evil pharmaceutical company which is hunting them. If such things matter to you in media (these matter to me), there are multiple non-white characters, and one m/m couple, all of whom survive to the end of the film. It's received pretty mixed reviews, but I loved it.
Now, on to my latest offering for
sunshine_challenge. This prompt is 'yellow,' and I have admit I cheated a bit and treated both fluorescent light, and the reflected light of celestial bodies, as being yellowish in colour when they're really nothing of the kind.I'd been meaning for ages to revisit Galax Arena, Gillian Rubinstein's extraordinary 1990s dystopian YA novel (see this post on my reviews blog where I rave about Australian YA novels of that era, including Galax Arena), and in particular my beloved Presh. She is a character that exists very much in the margins of canon, more talked about by others than giving voice to her own experiences, and she has always haunted me. I first read this book when I was nine or ten years old, and it was the first time I realised that I didn't have to like a book's narrator, even if the author clearly intended for me to do so — and that instead I could latch onto a story's antagonists, and make up my own stories about them if the book didn't give me what I wanted. I've been in love with Presh (and, to a lesser extent, with Allyman, and with the tense, sad, grim relationship between the two of them) ever since.
I tried to write about her eight years ago in Of Moons, Birds and Monsters, and this new fic in many ways represents an ongoing conversation with myself, and with that earlier story.
The Light of Unfamiliar Stars, Reflected (1378 words) by Dolorosa
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Galax-Arena Series - Gillian Rubinstein
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Allan 'Allyman' Manne/Presh
Characters: Presh, Allan 'Allyman' Manne
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon
Summary:
Nothing remained but her own feet, and eyes, and hands — the strength and certainty of her own small body. Here, she was on surer ground. She danced through the air, and learnt the span and shape of her new world.
This is the story of how Presh survives her earliest years in the Galax Arena.
This fic was written for the 2020 Sunshine Challenge, to the prompt of 'yellow'.
