5 moar drabbles (4x 100 words (one's 130) and all suitable for all ages)
Okay, this is going to be a massive post, with a bunch of drabbles, a whole lot of rambling about those drabbles, and the femslash100 academia prompt table (I’d already linked it once, but since I’ve switched back from that ’verse to this one, I’m reposting it).
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‘It’s certainly unconventional,’ her mother says with a wry smile.
‘But it’s not unheard of,’ her father adds, although it is her mother who has the final say.
‘And she is a good match,’ her mother continues.
(And her mother’s father leans toward her father’s mother, and loudly whispers, ‘That’s what we said!’)
‘Yes,’ she says, and thinks of all the things that they are not saying.
Her father nods. Her mother does, too.
‘We accept,’ says her mother. ‘And we’re happy for you,’ adds her father.
(And her father’s mother says something to her mother’s father, and they laugh.)
--- --- --- ---
Atissa didn’t wear a wig at all on prayer days (she’d asked her why not, once, and Atissa’d said that she could do with a longer time of exposure to the wisdom of the gods, and that hadn’t made any sense to her, so, well, whatever), and it drew attention to her: a bare-head adult, the lines of her wig-lace dark against her skin (don’t you mind, she’d asked; no, she’d been answered, let them stare).
It was different, here, in another city, where they didn’t seem to know Atissa’s status, where they saw a foreigner with a wild mess of hair who just didn’t care and a foreigner who tried but failed to fit in properly.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Atissa said, ‘I know who I am. Let them stare.’
--- --- --- ---
It was not a discussion she enjoyed having to have, because she knew what she wanted and what she had no desire for and it was tiring to have to listen to others telling her she did not in fact know herself because what she was wasn’t in line with what they thought she was supposed to be, but she wished to be honest in herself about this. And she did always try to tell herself that it might be different this time, even though it almost never was.
(It was, this time: ‘Huh,’ said Lan, and that was that.)
--- --- --- ---
‘So,’ asks the man behind them, with an appreciative hint to his voice, ‘what do you think of this fine specimen?’
‘He does nothing for me,’ she says, too annoyed to consider the lecture she’s certain to receive in return for her honesty. ‘Men do nothing for me.’
‘Yes,’ says the man, ‘nor for me,’ he whispers in her ear, ‘but I meant the piece.’
(Lan bursts out laughing.)
‘Oh,’ she says, because, well, oh, ‘uhm,’ and looks back to the sculpture, which is certainly very artful (she’s a writer; she doesn’t actually have to know anything about this), ‘well….’
--- --- --- ---
‘I don’t think it makes sense that an undead horde can simply overrun society like that.’
‘What? Why not?’
‘It’s not very realistic, is it; I mean, they couldn’t very well get around on their own. Although I guess it could work if there was a horde of controllers following just behind them, or something, but that wouldn’t be very practical. And it wouldn’t be at all scary.’
‘…’
‘It doesn’t work like that.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s a sickness.’
‘How could it have spread so easily? Someone should’ve noticed!’
‘They didn’t. They can’t.’
‘But-’
‘…’
‘It’s fiction. It’s not real!’
--- --- --- ---
Context!
In There’s Always Someone…, Lan is nitpicking the idea of a zombie apocalypse, because while necromancy might be technically possibly, it’s just not very practical, and a zombie-causing illness could be detected by the medical establishment (they can read “auras”, which are for this purpose basically magical versions of stuff like MRI machines, only better). She’s also just teasing, of course, but hey. I think it’d be interesting to look at how feasible/plausible our standard SFF scenarios would be within SFF settings, but then I’m a massive nerd, so.
Proposal, Standard Deviations, and …Art… all deal with the different distribution of sexuality (previously mentioned in a footnote here): the people on katarka are actually around 90% bi/poly/pansexual, so the monosexualities get lumped together as minority sexualities, and at best will be faced with the same condescending disbelief that greets polysexualities IRL (and, yes, I know it’s petty but I don’t care; I’ll freely admit it). However, I also think the difference would be interesting: in …Art…, with a straight dude confiding his heterosexuality to a lesbian, that has massively different connotations in that situation (I should mention in another case of wish fulfillment, there is far less physical difference between men and women as a group-to the point that there aren’t specific men’s and women’s leagues in sports-and that gender-based oppression can go both ways or no way at all *cough*), instead of being a creep and coming on to her, he’s commiserating because they both know the you-just-haven’t-met-the-right-one-yet/you’re-just-naïve/-a-romantic talk. Lan, as a member of the majority group sexuality-wise, just finds the whole thing hilarious, even though she’s supportive, because in this case, she doesn’t really get it.
Proposal (and Assimilation), is also about the culture Atissa comes from, which expects her to take over her parents’ (her mother is legally in charge, though, because her family is more prominent) business, as the oldest child (both her parents were the eldest, so their marriage was atypical as well, hence the giggly grandparents in Proposal). She doesn’t really want to, because she’s a writer, and she does have siblings (who don’t really want the responsibility either), but it would reflect badly on the family. Lan’s a good match because she, too, is a businesswoman, and would handle things in Atissa’s name whenever mom and dad retire.
Also, Atissa was adopted by her parents and isn’t ethnically fake!Egyptian (more like fake!Northern-European-ish), because as a baby she was abandoned at the docks, but culturally she’s entirely fake!Egyptian. Where she lives, everyone knows her (and also knows she’s a weirdo that won’t wear her wig on caturday days they’re expected to go to the temples-where you don’t go without a wig-not because she’s a foreigner who doesn’t get it, but because she’s… Atissa), but even though her family is prominent, in the country people just see an out-of-place foreigner who doesn’t get it. (Also, also, the wig-lace is actually a tattoo with magical ink. It’s not really supposed to be visible, but she’s so light it shows anyway. I swear, this one isn’t about me.)
1
Astronomy
★10
History
★25
Archaeology
★8
Literature
★12
Linguistics
★9
Journalism
★20
Politics
★11
Medicine
★Academia Table of femslash1003
Law
★7
Biology
★13
Visual Arts
★23
Performing Arts
★14
Psychology
★24
Anthropology
★18
Philosophy
★2
Sociology
★5
Chemistry
★[original (speculative/fantasy) fiction: Atissa/Lan]15
Business
★19
Physics
★16
Meteorology
★22
Geology
★17
Architecture
★21
Engineering
★6
Statistics
★4
Economics
★