Dear Yuletide Writer
Dear Yuletide Writer,
Hi, and thank you in advance for writing a story for me! I'm pretty easy to please -- unless you write a context-free sex scene, I'll be thrilled just to get a fic in one of the fandoms I asked for. *grin* But I realize that's not terribly helpful, so here's the (very!) long version. (I am sorry for the tl;dr, but I like to talk about things I love and I figure more details are better than fewer.)
---------------
General Information:
1. I will read anything when it comes to pairings -- het, slash, femslash, threesomes, poly, whatever, so long as you put in a bit of character development so the relationships don't seem to come out of nowhere -- but I prefer gen, and I tend to skim sex scenes because the non-sex parts of the story are almost always more interesting to me.
2. I read all kinds of genres and moods, from schmoopy fluff to angsty deathfic, but my favorite endings are bittersweet and a little complicated.
3. When I said 'any' characters, I meant it. I fall in love with worlds and themes as much as I fall in love with characters, if not more. On that note, any world-building you can sneak in around the edges of a story will be received with great joy.
4. Stuff I really, really like: This can be boiled down to, 'Please treat characters as intelligent people who have understandable motives for their actions, please take the worlds seriously as settings, and please remember that there's more to life than sex. Also, ethics, metaphysics, and world-building are dead cool.'
The tl;dr version: I like character development; world-building; explanation of plot holes in canon; subtle humor; good spelling and grammar; a sense of wonder; writing that evokes an emotional reaction as well as telling a story; close relationships that don't necessarily involve sex (i.e., friendship, families, teachers and students, coworkers, traveling companions, soldiers in the same cause, etc.); the consequences of actions and choices; a sense of place and time; dialogue that conveys character as well as plot information; politics; ethics; people being intelligent even if they make bad choices; people trying to do the right thing even if they make bad choices; conflict because of opposing goals that both have points in their favor; a lack of simple solutions; female characters treated as people instead of plot devices; male characters treated as people instead of plot devices; ideas that make me stop and think; the nature of memory; the nature of truth; possession; soul-searching; non-gratuitous torture (...I have a kink, shut up); war and battles; hand-to-hand fighting; swordfights; peace and diplomacy; magic that's properly magical and strange or magic that's explained as a science (but not both at once); books and reading; people exploring a new country/world/city; linguistics and languages; early Industrial Revolution technology (or whatever technology is suitable to the milieu); people using logic to investigate a problem; and fires, floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.
5. Stuff I'm not so keen on: obvious authorial hatred for characters I like and/or find interesting (which is generally all of them); sex or romantic love with no in-story justification (unless the people in question are already a canon couple); gratuitous angst/torture/rape (i.e., bad stuff that comes out of nowhere and is not necessary to make the plot or character arc work); idiot plots (i.e., problems that could be solved in five minutes if the characters asked one or two obvious questions); and predestination, prophecies, and anything else that denies free will.
6. If there are ugly social issues inherent in these things I love, and you want to talk about them, that is fine by me. That falls under 'taking the characters and settings seriously,' and I am always pleased when a story makes me stop and think. (This is not to say that I don't love more straightforward squeeing as well -- because I totally do! -- but if you want to go deeper, I am with you all the way.)
Okay. On to specific fandoms.
---------------
The Lions of Al-Rassan:
(This is a standalone fantasy novel by Guy Gavriel Kay.)
Characters: any!
Request: Anything would be great, but I'm most interested in the canon gaps. For example, what else happened during the year Ammar and Rodrigo served in Ragosa? What was the Belmontes' marriage like before they had children? When and why did Ishak learn medicine, and how did he come to Almalik's attention? I like all pairing types, but I prefer gen.
I love this book because, while you can't call it anything but fantasy, it is not particularly fantastical. It's excellently written historical fiction that happens to be set in a made-up world. (I grant that Kay's secondary world is suspiciously similar to Spain during the Reconquista, but the fantasy aspect frees him to create his own characters and plot rather than being a slave to historical accuracy.) Kay also learned a trick from Tolkien that adds extra poignancy: the constant refrain of beauty shattered and fading in a harsh, mortal world. There's an aching sense of lost possibilities, the hope that if just one or two things had gone differently... but then you look again at the larger situation of the world, and you realize historical forces are aligned against your dreams, and nothing lasts forever. As Rodrigo says, "Even the sun goes down."
This book makes me cry every time I read it -- literally cry, I mean, not just get a little sniffly. I never cry over stories like that. But Kay gets inside my heart, hooks it open, and leaves me raw and aching. I love that so much, that a fictional world and fictional people can be that real and true for me. I want them all to win, but there is no way for that to happen, and that's better than any old struggle between straightforward good and evil. Because it's real.
I particularly like the friendship between Rodrigo and Ammar, the way Jehane is an independent, competent adult, and the Belmontes' marriage.
---------------
Lucifer:
(This is a completed eleven-volume comics series written by Mike Carey and illustrated by Peter Gross, Dean Ormston, Ryan Kelley, et al. It is based on character interpretations developed by Neil Gaiman in The Sandman, but you don't have to read that series to understand this one.)
Characters: any!
Request: Lucifer is my favorite, but I love pretty much all the characters. What I am especially interested in reading is a story about families -- Lucifer and his brothers; Lucifer, Michael, and Elaine; Elaine's human family, or how Cestis copes with 'her' new wife and son after the series end; Rachel and her resurrected brother (is he healed? how does she cope if he is or isn't?); Gaudium, Spera, and Lumen; Mazikeen and Lilith; Jill and Noema; Izanami and her sons; or any of the other family units in the series. Failing that, why not tell me what Gabriel was up to during the series? He seems to have vanished off the face of the universe after the incident with Lilith, and I would love an explanation of what happened to him. I like all pairing types, but I prefer gen.
I have a thing for the devil, okay? Not in the religious/ethical sense of worshipping evil, but as a character. I empathize with feeling trapped and coerced, and with lashing out against that. I like Satan in Paradise Lost. I like Lucifer in Neil Gaiman's Murder Mysteries. I like Lucifer in Angel Sanctuary.
And I like this version of Lucifer, as envisioned by Gaiman in The Sandman and fleshed out by Mike Carey in Lucifer. He is cold and proud, solitary, self-centered, and cruel... but he doesn't compromise, he keeps his bargains, he returns faith for faith given (if cutting a bit toward the letter of the law rather than the spirit), he cares about Michael and Mazikeen as much as he's able, and he never, ever lies. He is the one who tells God, "No." And he makes it stick.
Of course, Lucifer himself is not the only reason I love the series. I love Elaine in her confusion, and the way she grows and becomes so much more (personally, not just professionally) than she ever imagined. I love Mazikeen, how Carey found a warrior queen inside the lovestruck demon Gaiman first showed us. I love Michael's tortured attempts to understand and justify the flaws in the universe, and to do right by his duty and his daughter. I love how human all the angels and demons and centaurs and old gods and playing cards and humans are. I love the wheels within wheels of the plot, and how the seeds of the end are inevitable from the beginning if you look. I love the world-building that makes hell a living, breathing society. I love the storytelling, the patterns and word choices, the little asides Carey stops and makes in the middle of his epic. I love the scale, and the horrible edge to the choices Lucifer makes and forces other people to make. I love the stupid humor Gaudium, Spera, and some other characters bring to the table. I love that an epic saga of metaphysical war is packaged as a kitchen table story about dysfunctional families, about fathers and sons and mothers and daughters and sisters and brothers. (I really, really like that part.)
But mostly I come back to Lucifer, and the idea of saying no. No lies. No compromises. No false choice between serving in heaven or reigning in hell. He insists there are other options, and he goes out and makes them. I respect the hell out of that.
(One note? If you write fic for this series, please, please, please use a light hand with italics. Yes, the comics are heavy on italics. But what works in one medium often falls flat in another, and excess italics make my head hurt.)
---------------
The Dispossessed:
(This is a standalone science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, though it is part of a rather haphazard universe called, variously, the Ekumen or the Hainish Cycle.)
Characters: Shevek, Laia Asieo Odo
Request: I love the entire Ekumen, but this year I want fic specifically and only for "The Dispossessed." I am not at all fussy about what you write -- I like the characters, the utopianism and related politics and philosophy, the crazy alien physics, the world-building for both Urras and Anarres, etc. I am also totally up for fic about "The Day Before the Revolution" and the rest of Laia Odo's life. (Note: you do not have to include Odo if you write about Shevek and Takver, nor do you have to include Shevek and Takver if you write about Odo, so please do not stress about them living in different centuries on different planets!)
If you want plot hooks, I am fascinated by the way marriage (or the lack thereof) plays out in Anarresti society, and what that means for Shevek and Takver. I am also intrigued by the hints of Odo's own relationship with Taviri, I enjoy the throwaway mentions of Urrasti legends and would love to see them turned into proper mythology, I am curious about the chaos in Benbili that was going on while Shevek was on Urras, etcetera, etcetera. There are infinite options! I like all pairing types, but I prefer a focus on plot, character development, and world-building instead of a focus on romance and sex.
What I love about this book is everything. No, seriously -- everything. Shevek fascinates me, and I love how real all his relationships feel, especially the family he and Takver create and maintain. I like how he slowly learns to connect with other people, that he and Takver have problems and work through them, that they're good and loving parents but their own concerns affect their children. I like how Shevek's relationship with Sadik is in some ways a direct repudiation of his non-relationship with his own mother, Rulag, while in other ways Shevek and Rulag are very similar -- both direct, abrupt, and work-driven. I like the glimpses we get of Shevek's friends over the years.
I love the alien conception of physics, where science is assumed to automatically include moral and philosophical dimensions, and to describe only the physical world is only doing a fraction of the job. I love the descriptions of life on Anarres, how the people work together to carve life out of a barren, inhospitable world -- the parts where Takver studies sea life, or Shevek marvels at the abundance of species on Urras, are very striking.
I love the way the utopian anarchism of Anarres is not perfect; it must be maintained, carefully, and the gains come with corresponding losses. I love that the Anarresti themselves disagree over the ideal shape of their society, and are fighting against the human tendency to settle into power structures and fixed patterns of behavior. I love the way Urras is so rich and so poor at the same time, so gentle and so cruel; there is such abundance, yet they hoard power and build fences to keep people (women, the poor, people from other countries) from sharing in that abundance. I love how the people of both worlds are shaped by their cultures so they keep talking past each other. Neither world is perfect, and there is a clear symbiosis between them; in some ways they need one another to act as the symbolic Other. I love the hints of geopolitics that play out on Urras during Shevek's visit. He only stays in A-Io, but there is a sense of a greater world beyond his limited horizon; I am curious about the parts of Urras he doesn't get to see, and how the existence of Anarres and Shevek's presence on Urras play out in other cultures.
I am fascinated by the implication that both Urras and Anarres are in a long, slow-motion social change caused by the intrusion of other human species into their worlds -- the idea that they are descended from the Hainish must shake them, and I really like that Shevek is inspired by reading some of Einstein's Terran physics, though he thinks Einstein is all wrong about any number of things.
As for "The Day Before the Revolution," Odo is a vivid, compelling character even in the brief glimpses we get during The Dispossessed, and she comes satisfyingly to life here. It's interesting that Le Guin chose not to write about the grand events of Odo's life, but to focus on a quiet day in her old age as she is learning (awkwardly, reluctantly, bitterly) to deal with physical and emotional loss, and realizing that the movement she inspired has grown beyond her. It's not the kind of story I'm used to reading in science fiction, which I think makes it more powerful than it would be in a different genre. Anyway, Odo is fascinating, so if you want to write about her instead of the later world, that would also be extremely cool.
I picked the characters to point out which parts of the Hainish Cycle I am interested in, not to force you to write about those specific characters. As long as you write about Anarres and Urras, please feel free to use whatever canon and original characters you want! :-)
---------------
Darkangel Trilogy
(This is a fantasy/sci-fi trilogy by Meredith Ann Pierce, which would probably be classed as YA if written today. The component books are The Darkangel, A Gathering of Gargoyles, and The Pearl of the Soul of the World. They seem to be out of print, alas.)
Characters: any!
Request: For this year and this fandom, the main thing I want is world-building! The secondary thing I want is a focus on supporting characters. For example, I would love to know more about the domains of Westernesse. What were they like before the darkangels? Why did the Ancients create a world so strictly segregated by skin colors and distinct climate regions? When and how did slavery become such an entrenched institution across the continent? A look at the lives of Irrylath's brides before he carried them off, or the lives of the other icari and their original families before they fell into Oriencor's power, or the lives of the various people Aeriel encounters during "A Gathering of Gargoyles" after she passes on her way could all be ways to fold world-building into a story.
If Westernesse is not your thing, I'm also interested in stories about Isternes, particularly focused on Syllva, Eryka, and the matriarchal nature of the city. Why did Syllva agree to leave her role as Lady and live in Avaric with her first husband? How did Eryka convince her people to let her "go merchanting" when she was supposed to be serving as Syllva's regent? All of Syllva's children are sons; does that mean their eventual wives will be the ones who hold power when Syllva dies? And so on. Really, anything that reveals more about the world and the characters we only see in passing would be wonderful.
I like all pairing types, but I would prefer a story centered on something other than romance.
I chose "any" in my request rather than selecting Aeriel, Irrylath, Erin, or Ravenna because I am not interested in a story about Aeriel's relationship with Irrylath, Aeriel's relationship with Erin, any sort of love triangle, Ravenna's relationship with Aeriel, Ravenna angsting over Oriencor, or Irrylath angsting over his admittedly horrific childhood. Those are all rich fields for potential stories, but that's not where my heart is this year.
However, the secondary characters aspect of my request isn't anywhere near as important to me as the world-building aspect, so if you have an idea for a story that explores Pierce's world while using one of those four characters, please go for it! For example, Ravenna could be the focus of a story about how the Ancients built and shaped the world -- maybe you could use some actual lunar geological features and figure out if there's any way they could correspond to the geography Pierce describes. Irrylath could travel through Avaric as part of his role as king. Aeriel and Erin could investigate some mysterious Ancient machinery in some part of the world Pierce didn't dwell on -- perhaps in the Sea-of-Dust so as to give Erin a chance to meet the people she never knew. Also, any use of those four as supporting characters in someone else's story would be fun.
Pierce creates such a lushly textured universe and describes it so beautifully that I would like to debark from the guided tour, as it were, and just wander through the backstreets of the cities and the narrow country lanes that the plot of the trilogy only had time to show in glimpses before rushing onward toward the climax. If you can mimic some of her prose style and the seamless interweaving of fairytale elements, that would be awesome, but please don't stress about those aspects.
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And that is that.
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comments)
Hi, and thank you in advance for writing a story for me! I'm pretty easy to please -- unless you write a context-free sex scene, I'll be thrilled just to get a fic in one of the fandoms I asked for. *grin* But I realize that's not terribly helpful, so here's the (very!) long version. (I am sorry for the tl;dr, but I like to talk about things I love and I figure more details are better than fewer.)
---------------
General Information:
1. I will read anything when it comes to pairings -- het, slash, femslash, threesomes, poly, whatever, so long as you put in a bit of character development so the relationships don't seem to come out of nowhere -- but I prefer gen, and I tend to skim sex scenes because the non-sex parts of the story are almost always more interesting to me.
2. I read all kinds of genres and moods, from schmoopy fluff to angsty deathfic, but my favorite endings are bittersweet and a little complicated.
3. When I said 'any' characters, I meant it. I fall in love with worlds and themes as much as I fall in love with characters, if not more. On that note, any world-building you can sneak in around the edges of a story will be received with great joy.
4. Stuff I really, really like: This can be boiled down to, 'Please treat characters as intelligent people who have understandable motives for their actions, please take the worlds seriously as settings, and please remember that there's more to life than sex. Also, ethics, metaphysics, and world-building are dead cool.'
The tl;dr version: I like character development; world-building; explanation of plot holes in canon; subtle humor; good spelling and grammar; a sense of wonder; writing that evokes an emotional reaction as well as telling a story; close relationships that don't necessarily involve sex (i.e., friendship, families, teachers and students, coworkers, traveling companions, soldiers in the same cause, etc.); the consequences of actions and choices; a sense of place and time; dialogue that conveys character as well as plot information; politics; ethics; people being intelligent even if they make bad choices; people trying to do the right thing even if they make bad choices; conflict because of opposing goals that both have points in their favor; a lack of simple solutions; female characters treated as people instead of plot devices; male characters treated as people instead of plot devices; ideas that make me stop and think; the nature of memory; the nature of truth; possession; soul-searching; non-gratuitous torture (...I have a kink, shut up); war and battles; hand-to-hand fighting; swordfights; peace and diplomacy; magic that's properly magical and strange or magic that's explained as a science (but not both at once); books and reading; people exploring a new country/world/city; linguistics and languages; early Industrial Revolution technology (or whatever technology is suitable to the milieu); people using logic to investigate a problem; and fires, floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.
5. Stuff I'm not so keen on: obvious authorial hatred for characters I like and/or find interesting (which is generally all of them); sex or romantic love with no in-story justification (unless the people in question are already a canon couple); gratuitous angst/torture/rape (i.e., bad stuff that comes out of nowhere and is not necessary to make the plot or character arc work); idiot plots (i.e., problems that could be solved in five minutes if the characters asked one or two obvious questions); and predestination, prophecies, and anything else that denies free will.
6. If there are ugly social issues inherent in these things I love, and you want to talk about them, that is fine by me. That falls under 'taking the characters and settings seriously,' and I am always pleased when a story makes me stop and think. (This is not to say that I don't love more straightforward squeeing as well -- because I totally do! -- but if you want to go deeper, I am with you all the way.)
Okay. On to specific fandoms.
---------------
The Lions of Al-Rassan:
(This is a standalone fantasy novel by Guy Gavriel Kay.)
Characters: any!
Request: Anything would be great, but I'm most interested in the canon gaps. For example, what else happened during the year Ammar and Rodrigo served in Ragosa? What was the Belmontes' marriage like before they had children? When and why did Ishak learn medicine, and how did he come to Almalik's attention? I like all pairing types, but I prefer gen.
I love this book because, while you can't call it anything but fantasy, it is not particularly fantastical. It's excellently written historical fiction that happens to be set in a made-up world. (I grant that Kay's secondary world is suspiciously similar to Spain during the Reconquista, but the fantasy aspect frees him to create his own characters and plot rather than being a slave to historical accuracy.) Kay also learned a trick from Tolkien that adds extra poignancy: the constant refrain of beauty shattered and fading in a harsh, mortal world. There's an aching sense of lost possibilities, the hope that if just one or two things had gone differently... but then you look again at the larger situation of the world, and you realize historical forces are aligned against your dreams, and nothing lasts forever. As Rodrigo says, "Even the sun goes down."
This book makes me cry every time I read it -- literally cry, I mean, not just get a little sniffly. I never cry over stories like that. But Kay gets inside my heart, hooks it open, and leaves me raw and aching. I love that so much, that a fictional world and fictional people can be that real and true for me. I want them all to win, but there is no way for that to happen, and that's better than any old struggle between straightforward good and evil. Because it's real.
I particularly like the friendship between Rodrigo and Ammar, the way Jehane is an independent, competent adult, and the Belmontes' marriage.
---------------
Lucifer:
(This is a completed eleven-volume comics series written by Mike Carey and illustrated by Peter Gross, Dean Ormston, Ryan Kelley, et al. It is based on character interpretations developed by Neil Gaiman in The Sandman, but you don't have to read that series to understand this one.)
Characters: any!
Request: Lucifer is my favorite, but I love pretty much all the characters. What I am especially interested in reading is a story about families -- Lucifer and his brothers; Lucifer, Michael, and Elaine; Elaine's human family, or how Cestis copes with 'her' new wife and son after the series end; Rachel and her resurrected brother (is he healed? how does she cope if he is or isn't?); Gaudium, Spera, and Lumen; Mazikeen and Lilith; Jill and Noema; Izanami and her sons; or any of the other family units in the series. Failing that, why not tell me what Gabriel was up to during the series? He seems to have vanished off the face of the universe after the incident with Lilith, and I would love an explanation of what happened to him. I like all pairing types, but I prefer gen.
I have a thing for the devil, okay? Not in the religious/ethical sense of worshipping evil, but as a character. I empathize with feeling trapped and coerced, and with lashing out against that. I like Satan in Paradise Lost. I like Lucifer in Neil Gaiman's Murder Mysteries. I like Lucifer in Angel Sanctuary.
And I like this version of Lucifer, as envisioned by Gaiman in The Sandman and fleshed out by Mike Carey in Lucifer. He is cold and proud, solitary, self-centered, and cruel... but he doesn't compromise, he keeps his bargains, he returns faith for faith given (if cutting a bit toward the letter of the law rather than the spirit), he cares about Michael and Mazikeen as much as he's able, and he never, ever lies. He is the one who tells God, "No." And he makes it stick.
Of course, Lucifer himself is not the only reason I love the series. I love Elaine in her confusion, and the way she grows and becomes so much more (personally, not just professionally) than she ever imagined. I love Mazikeen, how Carey found a warrior queen inside the lovestruck demon Gaiman first showed us. I love Michael's tortured attempts to understand and justify the flaws in the universe, and to do right by his duty and his daughter. I love how human all the angels and demons and centaurs and old gods and playing cards and humans are. I love the wheels within wheels of the plot, and how the seeds of the end are inevitable from the beginning if you look. I love the world-building that makes hell a living, breathing society. I love the storytelling, the patterns and word choices, the little asides Carey stops and makes in the middle of his epic. I love the scale, and the horrible edge to the choices Lucifer makes and forces other people to make. I love the stupid humor Gaudium, Spera, and some other characters bring to the table. I love that an epic saga of metaphysical war is packaged as a kitchen table story about dysfunctional families, about fathers and sons and mothers and daughters and sisters and brothers. (I really, really like that part.)
But mostly I come back to Lucifer, and the idea of saying no. No lies. No compromises. No false choice between serving in heaven or reigning in hell. He insists there are other options, and he goes out and makes them. I respect the hell out of that.
(One note? If you write fic for this series, please, please, please use a light hand with italics. Yes, the comics are heavy on italics. But what works in one medium often falls flat in another, and excess italics make my head hurt.)
---------------
The Dispossessed:
(This is a standalone science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, though it is part of a rather haphazard universe called, variously, the Ekumen or the Hainish Cycle.)
Characters: Shevek, Laia Asieo Odo
Request: I love the entire Ekumen, but this year I want fic specifically and only for "The Dispossessed." I am not at all fussy about what you write -- I like the characters, the utopianism and related politics and philosophy, the crazy alien physics, the world-building for both Urras and Anarres, etc. I am also totally up for fic about "The Day Before the Revolution" and the rest of Laia Odo's life. (Note: you do not have to include Odo if you write about Shevek and Takver, nor do you have to include Shevek and Takver if you write about Odo, so please do not stress about them living in different centuries on different planets!)
If you want plot hooks, I am fascinated by the way marriage (or the lack thereof) plays out in Anarresti society, and what that means for Shevek and Takver. I am also intrigued by the hints of Odo's own relationship with Taviri, I enjoy the throwaway mentions of Urrasti legends and would love to see them turned into proper mythology, I am curious about the chaos in Benbili that was going on while Shevek was on Urras, etcetera, etcetera. There are infinite options! I like all pairing types, but I prefer a focus on plot, character development, and world-building instead of a focus on romance and sex.
What I love about this book is everything. No, seriously -- everything. Shevek fascinates me, and I love how real all his relationships feel, especially the family he and Takver create and maintain. I like how he slowly learns to connect with other people, that he and Takver have problems and work through them, that they're good and loving parents but their own concerns affect their children. I like how Shevek's relationship with Sadik is in some ways a direct repudiation of his non-relationship with his own mother, Rulag, while in other ways Shevek and Rulag are very similar -- both direct, abrupt, and work-driven. I like the glimpses we get of Shevek's friends over the years.
I love the alien conception of physics, where science is assumed to automatically include moral and philosophical dimensions, and to describe only the physical world is only doing a fraction of the job. I love the descriptions of life on Anarres, how the people work together to carve life out of a barren, inhospitable world -- the parts where Takver studies sea life, or Shevek marvels at the abundance of species on Urras, are very striking.
I love the way the utopian anarchism of Anarres is not perfect; it must be maintained, carefully, and the gains come with corresponding losses. I love that the Anarresti themselves disagree over the ideal shape of their society, and are fighting against the human tendency to settle into power structures and fixed patterns of behavior. I love the way Urras is so rich and so poor at the same time, so gentle and so cruel; there is such abundance, yet they hoard power and build fences to keep people (women, the poor, people from other countries) from sharing in that abundance. I love how the people of both worlds are shaped by their cultures so they keep talking past each other. Neither world is perfect, and there is a clear symbiosis between them; in some ways they need one another to act as the symbolic Other. I love the hints of geopolitics that play out on Urras during Shevek's visit. He only stays in A-Io, but there is a sense of a greater world beyond his limited horizon; I am curious about the parts of Urras he doesn't get to see, and how the existence of Anarres and Shevek's presence on Urras play out in other cultures.
I am fascinated by the implication that both Urras and Anarres are in a long, slow-motion social change caused by the intrusion of other human species into their worlds -- the idea that they are descended from the Hainish must shake them, and I really like that Shevek is inspired by reading some of Einstein's Terran physics, though he thinks Einstein is all wrong about any number of things.
As for "The Day Before the Revolution," Odo is a vivid, compelling character even in the brief glimpses we get during The Dispossessed, and she comes satisfyingly to life here. It's interesting that Le Guin chose not to write about the grand events of Odo's life, but to focus on a quiet day in her old age as she is learning (awkwardly, reluctantly, bitterly) to deal with physical and emotional loss, and realizing that the movement she inspired has grown beyond her. It's not the kind of story I'm used to reading in science fiction, which I think makes it more powerful than it would be in a different genre. Anyway, Odo is fascinating, so if you want to write about her instead of the later world, that would also be extremely cool.
I picked the characters to point out which parts of the Hainish Cycle I am interested in, not to force you to write about those specific characters. As long as you write about Anarres and Urras, please feel free to use whatever canon and original characters you want! :-)
---------------
Darkangel Trilogy
(This is a fantasy/sci-fi trilogy by Meredith Ann Pierce, which would probably be classed as YA if written today. The component books are The Darkangel, A Gathering of Gargoyles, and The Pearl of the Soul of the World. They seem to be out of print, alas.)
Characters: any!
Request: For this year and this fandom, the main thing I want is world-building! The secondary thing I want is a focus on supporting characters. For example, I would love to know more about the domains of Westernesse. What were they like before the darkangels? Why did the Ancients create a world so strictly segregated by skin colors and distinct climate regions? When and how did slavery become such an entrenched institution across the continent? A look at the lives of Irrylath's brides before he carried them off, or the lives of the other icari and their original families before they fell into Oriencor's power, or the lives of the various people Aeriel encounters during "A Gathering of Gargoyles" after she passes on her way could all be ways to fold world-building into a story.
If Westernesse is not your thing, I'm also interested in stories about Isternes, particularly focused on Syllva, Eryka, and the matriarchal nature of the city. Why did Syllva agree to leave her role as Lady and live in Avaric with her first husband? How did Eryka convince her people to let her "go merchanting" when she was supposed to be serving as Syllva's regent? All of Syllva's children are sons; does that mean their eventual wives will be the ones who hold power when Syllva dies? And so on. Really, anything that reveals more about the world and the characters we only see in passing would be wonderful.
I like all pairing types, but I would prefer a story centered on something other than romance.
I chose "any" in my request rather than selecting Aeriel, Irrylath, Erin, or Ravenna because I am not interested in a story about Aeriel's relationship with Irrylath, Aeriel's relationship with Erin, any sort of love triangle, Ravenna's relationship with Aeriel, Ravenna angsting over Oriencor, or Irrylath angsting over his admittedly horrific childhood. Those are all rich fields for potential stories, but that's not where my heart is this year.
However, the secondary characters aspect of my request isn't anywhere near as important to me as the world-building aspect, so if you have an idea for a story that explores Pierce's world while using one of those four characters, please go for it! For example, Ravenna could be the focus of a story about how the Ancients built and shaped the world -- maybe you could use some actual lunar geological features and figure out if there's any way they could correspond to the geography Pierce describes. Irrylath could travel through Avaric as part of his role as king. Aeriel and Erin could investigate some mysterious Ancient machinery in some part of the world Pierce didn't dwell on -- perhaps in the Sea-of-Dust so as to give Erin a chance to meet the people she never knew. Also, any use of those four as supporting characters in someone else's story would be fun.
Pierce creates such a lushly textured universe and describes it so beautifully that I would like to debark from the guided tour, as it were, and just wander through the backstreets of the cities and the narrow country lanes that the plot of the trilogy only had time to show in glimpses before rushing onward toward the climax. If you can mimic some of her prose style and the seamless interweaving of fairytale elements, that would be awesome, but please don't stress about those aspects.
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And that is that.
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