I got my assignment and it’s pretty cool! I can think of things to do with it already: actually two separate stories for the one request that could both happen. Maybe I can do something complicated with alternating them in the narrative.
It actually wasn’t one of the Yuletide letters I’d been hunting up in the spreadsheet. One of those made me want to write for it too. So that’s three stories. Hrm. Um. Hrm. Recipient fic(s) first leaflitter, that’s the way to do it!
Archive of Our Own
Fandom: Harry Potter – J. K. Rowling
Relationship: Fleur Delacour/Angelina Johnson
This series is a birthday gift for brightthunder.
They say you do not win the heart of an Englishman without allowing him ample time to talk of Quidditch. And it will not surprise you when I say this is true of the Englishwoman also, for indeed they are very like their men, or the men very like their women.
But what they do not say is how very attractive an Englishwoman can be, not in spite of her beloved Quidditch, but because of it. Or at least how much one will enjoy the conversation of the Gryffindor Chaser, or indeed, her mouth on yours when Quidditch talk ends.
SB 206 by Lenore Edman
Archive of Our Own
Fandom: Harry Potter – J. K. Rowling
Relationship: Hermione Granger/Luna Lovegood
This series is a birthday gift for brightthunder.
“I bought you this,” she told me, and she radiated belief in her gift. “It made me think of you.”
Despite myself, I hesitated opening the present, which, in late April, was wrapped gaily in Christmas paper. It could so easily be gorse seedlings—meaning my hair—or similar. Everything is a compliment from her, or she means it to be. And sometimes I understand it, and sometimes, I, well, I sometimes don’t.
“I love you, beautiful,” read the teddy bear’s tummy. “Because I love you,” she explained. And my cheeks burned in shame before I gave her a kiss.
White fluffy teddy bear with red bow by Horia Valan
Archive of Our Own
Fandom: Harry Potter – J. K. Rowling
Relationship: Cho Chang/Ginny Weasley
This series is a birthday gift for brightthunder.
“Please, let’s not talk about him,” I asked her when we went for icecream for the first time after her game.
She shrugged and then grinned. “Well, neither of us got to show him the diadem of Ravenclaw in the end, did we?”
I pretend the joke has got old now, and roll my eyes when she pretends in turn that she really thinks it’s seductive to ask to see the diadem. But her terrible jokes are how I know she loves me, and my claims that I don’t find them remotely funny are how she knows I love her.
Icecream beauty by Ari Helminen
Dear Yuletide Writer,
Well, hello! I’m sorry things are a bit bare around here, I’m hoping between my prompts and this letter you get enough info to have fun writing a story for me.
General info
Things I am fine with: gen, friendship, romance of many kinds (het, slash, three-or-more-somes), character death, happy endings, bittersweet endings, sad endings, character-driven, plot-driven, Bechdel test-passing (women in the fic who talk to each other/do things that don’t revolve around a man)
Things I’m not so into: plotless porn, cross-overs
Please no: torture, non-consensual sex, sex with dubious consent
I recently wrote out a whole list of narrative kinks. I hope that’s not too offputting! Don’t take it too seriously, and since a bunch of them are world-building things hopefully you won’t butt into them too much anyway. Also, I don’t think I chose any fandoms with telepaths in them. So don’t worry about telepaths. (ETA: what was I thinking? The Hainish Cycle has telepathy, but Le Guin makes sparing use of it and suggests it is used sparingly. Feel free to go into that if you like.)
Cardiac Arrest (Any)
Gosh, if you have seen this television series I’ll gladly read anything you want to write in it. I’m especially keen for anything set after series 3.
A few specific prompts in case it helps, but feel free to go with your muse:
– Phil and Rajesh both owe Mr Docherty a major debt for saving their careers. Rajesh especially didn’t ask him to do so. Say one or the other of them starts to resent it; what happens then?
– anything where Claire gets inappropriately interested in a patient’s case (as with the boy who needs an organ transplant)
Oh my fandom of one. I wrote a whole post on this recently if you want to see what I like about it.
Hainish Cycle – Ursula K. Le Guin (Any)
I’m really into minor characters and lesser known worlds in this cycle! Anything with that emphasis would be great (truly!) but I’ve done some prompts in case it helps:
– characters from a world/culture with a rigid hierarchy and notion of honour (eg Teyeo or Ramarren) making a life in a world where there isn’t the equivalent
– characters shortly after nearly as fast as light travel, dealing with the loss of their friends, family or other things they loved on their home world
– off-worlders falling in love and becoming part of local relationship structures, eg sedoretu on O or the maz relationships on Aka
Wow, the Hainish Cycle. I love the sheer possibilities for human society, and the shared humanity of all the characters.
I had a couple of specific prompts for this on top of the general ones here they are in case you’re into specific prompts or just want a better idea of things I might like:
– Sutty (the Telling) finds love again on Aka, but needs to reconcile it with the maz’s tradition of monogamy even beyond death
– A sedoretu in the city, on O (Fisherman of the Inland Sea etc). We’ve seen how it works on the farms and serves their needs, how does it work in the urban areas?
Nochnoy Dozor | Night Watch – Sergei Lukyanenko (Any)
I like “grey” things in this fandom, moral ambiguity FTW! I’d probably prefer plot-drive to character-driven in this fandom.
Some possible thoughts, at least to give you a sense:
– anything Arina does!
– the Night Watch and the Day Watch reluctantly cooperating, especially if it’s to foil the Inquisition
– Svetlana distrusting the Night Watch, and turning out to be right to do so
– Zavulon deflating Anton’s or Gesar’s self-importance
– Zavulon being polite and helpful and leaving everyone wondering what that’s going to cost, exactly
A couple of notes: I don’t speak or read Russian, I’ve read these novels in translation. I only know the bookverse, I haven’t seen the movies! And finally, I know several of the characters are evil, but I’d probably prefer if the story stayed only about as dark as the novels.
I love the politics of this series. Everyone’s iron self-belief combined with their constant compromising with each other, and their adherence to the Great Compromise, by which I mean the Treaty.
Again, I had a couple of specific prompts I edited out of my request, but that you could use if you’re stuck:
– what did Arina do for Zavulon (or threaten him with) such that the Day Watch was uninterested in helping the Inquisition pursue her? (Twilight Watch)
– Anton’s or Svetlana’s next contact with Arina after she escapes at the end of Last Watch/Final Watch
– toddler Nadya’s casual use of her unconscious but immense powers
– Svetlana and teenage Nadya respond to Gesar’s attempts to recruit her into the Night Watch
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell – Susanna Clarke (Arabella Strange, Lady Pole, Stephen Black)
Arabella, Lady Pole and Stephen were thrown together in their horrible, weird prison and enchantment. I’d love to have some post-novel fic in which they are in some way thrown together again, and deal with each other as intelligent, free people who are still variously marked by their experience.
I’m find with any pairing or none among these three.
I don’t have a lot to add in this one. My imagination isn’t wild enough for this fandom, often. I’d like to see Stephen Black and Lady Pole now that they have some power over their lives though.
Started over at seanan_mcguire.
Yay:
Completely over-the-top levels of world-building, ie that Tolkien thing. I know from experience that it’s possible to do this at the expense of writing anything with an actual plot and I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but still.
Sexual frenemies. I’m guessing there’s a better term for this (“fuck frenemies” to parallel fuck buddies?), but I’m thinking of Holmes and Adler in Sherlock Holmes for example. They meet up, they have sex, they do their best to mess with each others’ lives, but no hard feelings right? You’d do the same to me with interest and you know it.
Functional relationships that have existed for a long time, be they marriages or colleagues or other such. People who know that she knows that he knows that she knows that his snoring bugs her, and can joke about it. Having established that, I like it when they get something done together.
Telepaths. I think Roald Dahl’s Matilda started me on that.
Redemption arcs, up to a point (onscreen brutal murder is well past that point, say). When I first read LOTR, for example, I fully hoped and expected that Saruman would get one, after the Council of Elrond chapter.
History or contemporary AUs with magic.
Eh:
Con artists. I have the same reaction to them that many people do to someone being embarrassed or humiliated on screen generally, ie, con artist squick I guess. Makes me cringe.
Plots that turn on someone not telling someone else things.
More than about a chapter of knowing something that the narrator does not yet know themselves (with rare exceptions, for example, if the narrator is supposed to be highly unsympathetic as in Pale Fire).
Inexplicable prolonged failure to act on mutual attraction. Failure to act on mutual attraction is fun in the case of, eg, existing relationships, class or other power barriers, strong social mores forbidding some trait this coupling would have, blackmail, uncertainty whether other person is in the first person’s oppressed sexual minority or not, all kinds of various similar things, but not so much in the case of “um, he sure is hot but… um? [handwave] not sleeping with him until the end of the novel! now [sigh, lust, sigh]”
Ancestors and descendants who are very very alike, as in how Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle characters resemble their 500-years-on descendents’ personalities in Cryptonomicon.
History or contemporary AUs with magic where it’s really not all that plausible that a world with magic that works that particular way turned out so much like ours.
Epic journeys with sore feet, narrow ledges, sleep deprivation, forced marches, the need to run for an entire night and a day, and so on. Or rather, it’s fine for it to happen but I don’t want to feel like I was in the party at the time. Less bothersome if only the most dramatic interludes are shown. (“DRAMA then they sailed for 40 days without incident then DRAMA”.)
Redemption arcs in which a redeemed man ends up with the same woman he badly hurt, pre-redemption. Part of redemption (in my narrative kink world) is realising that sometimes, you have to forge new relationships rather than continuing to inflict yourself on the person you hurt worst of all. (As such, it doesn’t apply to, eg, a situation where the woman knew the man only slightly pre-redemption.)
Ambivalent motherhood. I know it happens and happens a lot. And I know perfectly well that you can’t break up with your kid, but even so I end up reading long-running ambivalent mother stories and it doesn’t do anything more for me than 300 pages about a woman who should break up with her partner.
Three years since The Stone Key, that’s short for Carmody. Let’s hope that The Red Queen is in final edits. I wonder if the nine year publication gap between The Keeping Place and The Stone Key was her trying to stuff everything into that?
I wanted to get these down before reading other people.
Disconnected thoughts:
Carmody is clearly winding things up, so for the first time, I really believe she can finish the series with the next book. Plots wound up now: Domick’s, Kella’s, Angina’s (and I think Miky’s too although I don’t expect that she dies), I think the governance of the Land and Obernewtyn give or take details. Most of the remaining plots are pretty clearly tied up with the Red Queen’s land: the slavery plot, Gilaine’s and Lidgebaby’s plots, Jakoby’s plot, Matthew’s plot, Dragon’s plot and of course Elspeth’s and Ariel’s plot. Mind you, that’s still a lot of plot.
I will be glad to find out how old Lidgebaby is now, because I find the series very difficult to count time in. I guess it’s about ten years now since Obernewtyn? Lidge will perhaps be eight or so if that’s right.
I’m glad Carmody managed to work her way out of the “you will leave everything you love” trap with Dameon’s solution about it not specifying what the people she loves will choose to do then. (Although choice is not the right word, it’s really what Cassandra and Atthis decided needs to happen.) Purely narratively, Elspeth+beasts do not a very interesting party make. The beasts’ self-completeness doesn’t generate a lot of conflict, and Elspeth is inclined to brooding endlessly. It would be 700 pages of her sulking and them ticking her off constantly. She needs a team of variously petty, grieving, skilled, sulking, catty humans.
Carmody is good at generating vivid secondary characters. Maybe too good, it leads to plot explosion. But Analivia and Ahmedri are worthy new additions.
I really struggled with the journeying aspect of the book. It was nice to see Carmody taking care to show everyone’s skill and experience in expeditions, but much of it was frankly dull nonetheless and it reduced a lot of the character interactions to “we need to find water/food/somewhere less radioactive to sleep/somewhere with less killer bats” (that’s Maslow’s hierachy of needs, right?) which is realistic but not gripping. I would much rather have been at sea with the minor characters taking care of navigation and setting sail, and more time for interpersonal tensions to play out. And even then, maybe half the pages.
It’s interesting that Elspeth is quite fond of Cassy, given her massive ambivalence and at times hostility to Maryon and Atthis, both of whom are perhaps lesser futuretellers (given what a distance Cassy was working at). It may help how much Cassy suffered for the plot too, in fact considerably more than Elspeth has. Neither Atthis nor Maryon has had to go through anything like it.
This book is not as rapey as the previous one (in this universe, rape probably is in inverse correlation to the physical distance of the point-of-view from Ariel at any given time), but still with the rape.
I very much doubt that narratively anyone is going to push back on Atthis’s various harms, most notably now organising Dragon’s capture and assaults. Well, other than Elspeth in her own head.
Speaking of beasts and their actions, Maruman’s seliga saved Dragon for Elspeth’s quest, but saved Rushton from his own death wish for Elspeth. Which is very very Maruman. The book’s sweetest note.
Memo to Rushton: your low opinion of your own Talent is becoming increasingly petty. It’s clearly very powerful, and unique in type, probably meaning that you share status with Elspeth, Dragon, Atthis, Gavyn-Rasial and Maruman as one of the series’ more mentally unique and powerful characters. (And interestingly, you, like Maruman and Gavyn-Rasial, are unnoticed as such by Obernewtyn, which instead of course makes use of your also unique levels of charisma and leadership skill. I suspect that Obernewtyn’s neat and increasingly ill-fitting guild system is causing a lot of very powerful talents to be under-identified, particularly but clearly not only in beasts.)
Memo to Rushton #2: given this, stop displaying your Talent only in order to carry out your own death wishes. The series is running out of people strong enough to save you.
Memo to Rushton #3: I suspect that you’re in luck, and that your Talent is essential to Elspeth’s quest at some point. After that, no more whining about poor Talent.
Why is Rasial mis-gendered twice (referred to as “he/him”) in my edition? That seems a clumsy error.
I think at this point I’d rather not see Matthew/Dragon (although not a lot of details were added about his manipulation of Dragon, they aren’t flattering to Matthew), although I think Carmody is going there. At least she’s making him put some serious work into Matthew’s redemption before Dragon sees him again. Years as a slave, rebel and leader far from everyone he loves and everything that supported his more selfish moments? It’s a decent redemption arc as they go. In fact I love a redemption arc, except that you only get one chance at the girl/boy/other. Post-redemption, you need to find another one.
This is apparently a rather unusual opinion in the fandom, but I continue to favour Elspeth/Rushton over Elspeth/Dameon. I tend to go for the pairings with the clear spark of sexual attraction and mischief. Dameon is very kind, but very solemn. Elspeth/Dameon would be the least smiley love affair of all time.
That said, Rushton’s life to date would be vast improvement without Elspeth/Rushton. And his attraction to Selmar before that, too. He wouldn’t agree though, or rather, he doesn’t believe in life without Elspeth/Rushton.
I wonder a bit about the mechanics of consensual sex here: does a full mind-merge and memory dump occur every time two people have sex? This was implied in The Farseekers to some extent too, but if so, how on earth did Domick keep secrets from Kella?
Sometimes I feel like a fandom of one on this one. I’ll nominate it for Yuletide, but will there be any takers?
Cardiac Arrest, television series. Aired on the BBC from 1994–1996, available on DVD since 2007.
Setup: it’s an NHS hospital, full of overworked junior doctors who are variously catty, idealistic, mean, careless, frustrated and always always sleep deprived.
Things going for it:
Basically, if you like the idea of unvarnished black humour about doctors, I recommend this.
Things you might not like (I realise some people are cool with these, or enjoy them, but for those who don’t, here’s some warnings):
I enjoyed tree_and_leaf‘s And After Darkness, Light a lot, which really crosses two fandoms: Narnia and Anglo-Catholicism. The latter is not a community I’m actually involved in, but I have family and friends who have been deeply involved as ministers and lay leaders, one of whom died this year, and so it reminds me of a lot of people I have affection for.
Why?
Autumn is my favourite season.
What?
This is a fandom journal for fandoms including but not limited to the works of Ursula K Le Guin, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Isobelle Carmody’s Obernewtyn series, Sergei Lukyanenko’s Night Watch series, Firefly and Jane Austen. I have long term low-level fannish interest in Harry Potter, the works of Tolkien, and The Problem of Susan but not a lot of desire to write about them.
There will be occasional reviews and occasional fic and occasional recs. There might be a lot of radio silence. I don’t have the kind of life space for serious fandom involvement. If you notice me volunteering to run anything for anybody anywhere, point me back at this entry for a reminder not to do that.
Leaf Litter 