Fandom Snowflake Days 10 & 11
Skipping Day 9- create a fanwork- because I really can't do the fannish thing on the spot. My muse, she does what she pleases and cannot be coaxed to perform on demand. What a diva
Day 10- A creator you love
Let me put in a plug for the amazing works o netgirl_y2k. Netgirl doesn't write a bad fic. Ever. I've been following her since her Doctor Who days, she's since progressed on to Merlin, Warehouse 13, and ASOIAF/Game of Thrones. She's the type of writer who you consider picking up new canons just because you want to see the amazing things she's writing. As a writer myself, I really admire her stylistic choices and the way she seems to evoke so much with often very few words. I love her Doctor Who fic- she does an amazing spot-on Donna. Her fic The Ten Weddings of Donna Noble s probably one of my fave DW fics of all time. She does tremendous justice to the (often-bashed and neglected) women of Westeros and has written some amazing future fic where the ladies hold the throne. I'd recommend checking out The Reluctant Queen, a futurefic where Myrcella holds the throne, and Our Marvellous Inheritance, an AU where there is no primogeniture in Westeros- not that it makes anything easier. Really, if you like femslash or just female characters with some kind of agency and interiority, you should read all her things!
Day 11- My love for Kushiel's Legacy, or why I will knock on doors for Blessed Elua
“Let the warriors clamor after gods of blood and thunder; love is hard, harder than steel and thrice as cruel. It is as inexorable as the tides, and life and death alike follow in its wake.”
I think it's one of those life truths that you hear the message (or in my case find the right book) when you're ready. I passed up the chance to read the Kushiel books many times. I distinctly remember being in a bookstore, picking up Kushiel's Dart,reading the blurb on the back (because on some level, i knew it was a book that i should be reading..) and putting it back down in disgust. "She solves her problems by having sex with people?" I thought to myself. A book about a masochistic courtesan-spy named Phedre didn't really appeal much to me at the age of 20 or so.
Part of the issue I had then (and I suspect others may have too) is that I was and continue to be a self-identified feminist. At college age, I did not see kink or S&M as being compatible with a feminist POV. Now- post-grad school and lots of queer theory and more sexual experience later, I feel very differently. In fact before reading Kushiel's Dart, I would have self-identified as a very vanilla person. Actually reading those books changed my POV on kink and helped me to understand the appeal of the power dynamics, and how such things could take place in a consensual, loving relationship. The best books change your mind and expand your horizons, IMO.
So if you like sprawling epic fantasy, like reading about complex and powerful women and complicated relationships between women, (Kushiel features both a female protagonist AND antagonist, so take that Bechdel Test!) , thoughtful re-workings of myth and religion, imaginative world-building, you need to give this series a chance