#traar

[anghraine]

Just wanted to let you know that your The Rich Are Always Respectable series has my favourite Darcy of all time, and really highlights all my favourite aspects of his character from the books. I am not a very emotional person and rarely cry, but every time I re-read it I have tears streaming down my eyes.

Oh hey, thanks! I wrote it a long time ago at a very difficult time of my life that it helped me get through, so I’m glad it still speaks to people.

[anghraine]

hey, i have been going through your ao3 (very slowly) and i am SHOCKED that 'the rich are always respectable' took me so long to get to (sorting by kudos). it's such a lovely series and i got to it at just the right time to read it. i love the concept, the characters, the excellent pining... you wrote a really good set of stories there. also, apparently it's your birthday? happy birthday! i love all of your writing (just wanted to express my specific appreciation for that set of fics)

Oh, thank you! That’s a really old fic—it’s one of my first longish ones (certainly that I finished), so it’s always nice to hear that people are still reading. I’m glad you enjoyed it, and my other stuff, too.

And thanks about my birthday. It is indeed today, and it’s been very nice :)

[anghraine]

hello! i chanced upon your excellent analysis detailing when lizzy's feelings towards darcy, and you mentioned that you wrote an angsty fic re: the two of them in netherfield. i wondered if it was available, because i'd be super interested in reading it!

Thanks!

Do you mean:

So it turns out that 1) Elizabeth, yet again, can’t stop thinking of this latest Darcy-provoked surprise, and 2) Elizabeth was kind of hoping that Jane and Bingley’s marriage would throw them together. A bit. Maybe. Just a possibility!

(perfect premise for a fluff fic, y/y? I wrote a really angsty one where that happens–like, one where ten people die–but it’d be nice to read something that’s just Darcy and Elizabeth stumbling across each other at Netherfield and being awkward and adorable)

It wasn’t at Netherfield, but an angsty fic where Lady Catherine never shows up and there’s a more-or-less forced marriage and blahblah, covering six or eight years or so. I wrote it a longggg time ago and it has plenty of flaws, but I do have some lingering attachment to it! It’s here (where I get the eternal joy that my melodramatic bloodbath is series #666 on AO3, haha).

[anghraine]

estherlyon replied to your post: hello! i chanced upon your excellent analysis...

was this posted elsewhere? because I seem to have read it a long time ago. I used to post JA fic and read at the DWG, so maybe there?

Yep. AO3 didn’t exist when I wrote it; I only posted it there when I got my account and started moving fics over. 

If I recall correctly, TRAAR was originally posted at Hyacinth Gardens (which basically became AHA), DWG, and ff.net. Most of my Austen fics (the longer ones, anyway) are probably still at DWG—Season of Courtship, Subsequent Connections, etc.

[anghraine]

Huh, it’s just struck me that the trope underlying one of my first longfics is also one of the tropes I most intensely dislike.

Specifically: OTP is separated for reasons. They never see each other again for years, despite their closeness and any number of common friends or family. It’s highly probable that their paths would cross with zero effort on their parts, and with minimal effort would be a certainty. They only have to reach out, and there’s nothing preventing them doing so.

Because “the person you love can’t do your growing for you” apparently equals “you have to indefinitely detach yourself from the person you love to grow as a person,” they’re severed emotionally as well as physically, and end up with other people as part of their growth or whatever while never resolving their own relationship. Eventually, the love interests that symbolize Growth are set aside by authorial fiat and they’re able to find love together as mature people. The underlying assumption is that they weren’t ready to be together at the earlier point and couldn’t have worked through things together. But it’s not exactly clear why, beyond some bittersweet sense that people have to deal with their issues all on their own to really get through them, and probably need a relationship trial run before they’re ready to reunite with the person they really love.

This is weirdly detailed, and yet it pretty much always hits those exact notes. I guess in fairness to ... myself?, mine skipped a few (I didn’t mean it to be didactic at all, so a lot comes down to sheer bad luck), but it’s still very much that kind of story. And yet I enjoyed it, where I usually hate writing things that I don’t like to read. IDK.

(I’m not sure why I hate the trope so much, in itself. Maybe the sort of—it’s almost never written as just how things happened to pan out, but the only way. There’s a sense that distancing themselves is necessary when someone is troubled, not just for the particular characters but people in general. And I know that the “healed by love!!!” narrative is a problem, but honestly, I see a lot more prioritization of isolated hyper-individualism in growth/healing than love fixes everything. Like psychological bootstraps or something. Bleh.)

[anghraine]

H, Q, X ?

H: How would you describe your style?

Hmm, spare yet prolix! I can’t write concisely to save my life, but I also am twitchy about … excess, I suppose—in descriptions, exposition, whatever. Definitely more cerebral than emotional: not that I don’t write emotion, of course, but not in a raw way. More reflective than visceral. Definitely heavy on dialogue and introspection.

I remember talking with @ladytharen about it a ways back … oh, I think it was in the context of how my Persuasion/RO AU felt so different from operaticspacetrash’s even beyond the reversed roles. And it was hard to put into words beyond … something like ‘I write emotions, but my style is colder, I think.’

Q: Do you have any discarded scenes/storylines/projects?

Hahahahahaha

Yes. Hundreds. I mean, there are things I gave up on midway (>_>), but probably just as many things I sketched out or wrote scraps of and then never bothered with. And I have entire docs just for bits and pieces that either didn’t work, or I found something I liked better, or whatnot—I save them because I’m a word hoarder sometimes they’re useful down the road, but mostly … not. 

More now than when I was younger, I think, I’m willing to scrap significant chunks that don’t work. Like, originally now we’re the future had another flashback to a conversion between Cassian and Chirrut after Eadu, and I wrote most of it and sketched out the rest, but I felt like two of them slowed down the overall fic too much, and that one in particular broke the pacing of the main scene.

X: A character you enjoy making suffer?

LOL, usually my faves. I once wrote one that was… 30k or 50k or something of Darcy suffering. 

[louismaximiliantimmreck]

KPK Traar beim Schützenfest 2023

[donmaking]

Laufen durch die Verberger und Traarer Geschichte

Die Riethbenden im Winter…

Aufmerksame Leser unserer Website werden es schon bemerkt haben: Zu den bisherigen Touren durch Krefeld, allesamt geschmückt mit vielen Hinweisen zur Geschichte links und rechts des Weges, hat sich eine weitere gesellt. Diesmal habe ich mir unsere wohl am meisten gelaufene herausgesucht: Durch Verberg und Traar, mit einem Ausflug zum Egelsberg.Eigentlich komisch, dass…

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