Post on T. E. Lawrence's Sexuality 'Cause, Why Not?

Lawrence’s Sexuality: The 2012 Edition
Because every once and while, we need to revisit this question.

I just watched Lawrence of Arabia: The Battle for the Arab World, a documentary I highly recommend. Among other things, it features a couple of Lawrence biographers: Mack, who I could listen to all day, and some guy who kept recurring to expressions like, “Was he a closet homosexual? Who knows, but...”

Positing that Lawrence might have been a closet homosexual is a bit like positing that Jack Harkness can sometimes be straight. If by “sometimes straight,” one means that Jack sometimes enjoys sleeping with women, the statement is defensible, but it doesn’t really tell you anything you need to know about his sexuality.

So here follow my latest thoughts on Lawrence’s sexuality, poorly substantiated by vague paraphrases from recollections of writings I’m not going to look up right now. ( Read more... )

Little post to self on my writing

I had a strange, quiet revelation last night that I may be coming to the end of my Continuation stories. Now, at my current rate of writing (which really needs to pick up), I have more than enough open projects to last till the end of my natural life. And at a good clip, I have, oh, 20 years of projects left. But I haven't developed a truly new idea for a story in the Continuation universe in something like 6 years.

I find this kind of comforting. While I love the Continuation, there's a certain "light at the end of the tunnel" feeling about imaging a time when I'll move on to writing something truly different--probably related to Japan--or maybe just a lot more fan fic.

The Continuation stories I want to finish, in roughly the order I ought to be working on them, are (pardon the list that means nothing to anyone but me):

1. Broken Song (web show)
2. The Forwarder (to be published along with web show)
3. Mercy ('Eblia's story)
4. The Dying Cycle (of which Mercy is a sub-story) ('Ghanior et al.'s story)
5. Convention
6. (needs title) Dhri and Nerin's story
7. Málorvat (The Kiri Gilgamesh)

Less important, smaller projects:
1. Revise "The Eater" into some decent form
2. Maybe a novella of "The Impossibility of Death"
3. Finish that short story about the Ybian making friends with the human
4. Codify some reference materials (including War's End)

That's about it. I mean, that's a lot, but it's recognizably finite. It will be nice to be done with all that someday. It will be kind of freeing. Maybe I'll write that long fan fic about Elrond...