t collapses in a heap

I finished. The entire thing is posted, all 258K of it. Jeez, what a lot of work that is in a fandom without an auto-archive like Shrift uses. Oy.

At any rate, if anyone here reads XF, Fimbulwinter is a long story in an ongoing X-Files post-colonization series. Only one more big chunk and then I'll be done. Oh, and there's a summary at the beginning, kind of a "previously, in Life During Wartime", if you haven't been reading along.

Lots of angst & shit like that. Also the looming death of billions, a gun battle, alien invasion, and eleven copies of The Lord of the Rings. Enjoy.

Vonnie-- thanks!

I have only read a few so far, but I did especially like the Gilmore Girls one!

Question for those of you who teach (or anyone)--

I keep thinking that a modified version of fanfiction might be a good learning tool. Either something like "Write an episdoe of your favorite TV show -- which might let students focus on plot, rather than developing characters, or teach them how to develop a charactr's voice very specifically OR "we've read The Scarlet Letter, write a new scene" which would allow them to think about something they've read in a new way or teach them to delve into a character's thoughts.

Is that weird? It seems better than the completely blank "write a short story" or "write a newspaper article about The Scarlet Letter.

Perhaps, though, students get less lame assignments now that I am not in high school.

Sophia, that's a brilliant idea!

Sophia, my young brother (young as in under-16-still-in-compulsary-education) gets things like that all the time. They read a few stories by an author in class, and they they have to write one in that style. Even when I was in primary school (about 11-12, for non-UK people) a fairly open-minded teacher had us writing an episode of a TV show, an extra chapter for a book, and extra scene for a play, whatever fitted with what we'd been doing.

My fifth grade teacher had us do stuff like that a lot. I remember writing newpaper editorials on events in Little House on the Prairie, and extra chapters to the Great Brain books.

That's a fairly common exercise, actually. I once had to rewrite a myth/fairy tale-- I don't mean Jack in the Beanstalk, these were obscure-- from a modern perspective; and my mother regularly takes a published short story, lops off the last four hundred words, and makes her class write new endings. Then they pass them in blindly, reshuffle, and have a contest to try and pick out the original-- or best-- ending. She usually sends the results to the author of the story. (!)

Back in the bad old days, I had my ninth graders choose and re-write a fairy tale. One student asked if he could use a thermonuclear device somewhere in the story*. Before I could say anything, another student chimed in with: "Well, that gives new meaning to the name 'Cinderella', doesn't it?"

*Unless something was truly warped or disturbing, I tried not to censor content too much in student assignments. The school where I taught was a fairly conservative (but not insanely so) Christian school. One girl, who was in the full throes of teen rebellion, asked if she could do her term paper on Aleister Crowley. "Sure," I said.

Pause.

"You know who he was, right?" she asked.

"Self-styled 'most evil man on Earth' and a big influence on Led Zeppelin. Speaking of which, Dean's doing his term paper on them, so you may want to share some sources," I replied.

I think she was expecting to get in trouble. The final paper included a rather graphic retelling of an incident involving a goat. I honestly think this girl was hoping/expecting to get suspended or expelled. IIRC, I think I pointed out that she used improper formatting for an extended quotation.

Bwah.

Thank you, fic enablers. That toolbar at the top of the screen never loaded.

"He was acquitted on all charges."

"I like that in a man," Mrs Longbottom observed dryly.

Oh, my god. I'm trying to guffaw quietly.