Back where the sea meets the ground

[sovay]

I spent most of my day baking honeycakes with my mother, but I also spent a portion of my day discussing fanfiction on the internet, and I am therefore delighted to report that my niece has reached the stage of investment in How to Train Your Dragon where she has declared that she and Hiccup have taken each other's last names. Her parents have gently put it to her that first grade may be a little early for marriage, but she is adamant. It is unclear as yet if she is also married to Astrid, but she has firm opinions about the kind of dragon she rides. I should start figuring out now what dragon-related thing I can give her for her birthday. She is not quite reading at a level where I could just deluge her with books, although I am told she enjoys having books read to her that she can't yet read herself. Recently she asked my mother if a children's fantasy was real and my mother answered that the people are a story, but the ways they feel are real. I like that wording very much. I remember few self-inserts from my own childhood, but I famously put myself into the Chronicles of Prydain as the daughter of Arawn and Achren, the princess of the underworld, fostered with the triple goddess in the Marshes of Morva. My self-esteem was a lot healthier then. That said, I had a day of not feeling terrible about the aesthetics of my physical embodiment, so spatch took a picture.

Comments

[asakiyume]

First grade might be slightly young--but probably not, for your niece--for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin. The protagonist in that makes friends with, and is accompanied for the rest of the adventure by, a dragon. The story weaves in folktales that people tell, represented in the book in a different font, and there are illustrations by the author. I loved it (reading it as an adult, but my nieces-in-law--which is to say, the daughters of my brother's sister's brother) read it/were read it at an appropriate age and loved it. If she likes it, there are two more books in the series.

You look beautiful in the photo!

Also, you were so cool to place yourself in that manner into the Prydain chronicles. When I was reading them, I hadn't yet intuited the power (and emotional truth) of choosing such an ambiguous lineage on the D&D alignment scale. I took the most crippling straight-edge characters and wanted to be them (but in my own gender)--so, a female Adaon or a female Gwydion. (This abruptly ended in adolescence.)

[sovay]

First grade might be slightly young--but probably not, for your niece--for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin.

I love that book and have been troubled by the fact that I can't find my copy when the two sequels are sitting right here on my shelf! I also want to try her on Laurence Yep's Dragon of the Lost Sea (1982) and sequels, although I would need to sound out her tolerance for passages of weird horror and eventual war. Unsurprisingly, she has been much more sensitive to upsetting content in her books and movies this year.

When I was reading them, I hadn't yet intuited the power (and emotional truth) of choosing such an ambiguous lineage on the D&D alignment scale.

The liminality kicked in early.

I took the most crippling straight-edge characters and wanted to be them (but in my own gender)--so, a female Adaon or a female Gwydion. (This abruptly ended in adolescence.)

I don't think that's limited at all. Did you change identifications when you reached adolescence, or did you stop imagining yourself as people in extant stories?

You look beautiful in the photo!

Thank you!