Dear Yuletide... (2014 requests)

[aishuu]

Thanks for signing up for yuletide! This year I'm asking for fics for books I loved and obsessed about, and I can honestly say I will be thrilled with whatever series you matched with me on since there's less than 20 fics for each of these. Any additional fic for any of these series would make my day

Comments

[sakon76]

Wait, someone in the universe besides me knows and loves the Blossom Culp books? ^_^

[aishuu]

OMG, yes! :) I love your taste in the obscure and wonderful.

[edenfalling]

Ahahaha, so you also think McCaffrey's universes are a totalitarian nightmare with only a tiny shift in perspective? I knew there was a reason I liked you. *evil grin*

It's been ages since I read those books, but I might add them to my offer just to see what happens...

[aishuu]

I never really thought of them because I started when I was a kid, but the more I thought on it... I was originally going to request Talents Being Awesome, but the more I thought on it, the more creeped out I got. I like what the Talents were to my teeny self, but when I started trying to get my prompts together, I realized how scary the universe could be.

[edenfalling]

All of McCaffrey's series are like that, when you start looking at them closely. I loved her books when I was, I dunno, ten to eighteen-ish? But as an adult, I realized that every single one of her universes is fundamentally broken. The only reason her societies function is because her chosen Special protagonists make them function, regardless of how many rules they break and other lives they trample in the process. It's the Divine Right of Kings disguised by dragons, or psychic powers, or crystal singing, or sentient spaceships, or decades in coldsleep + dinosaurs, or shapeshifters, or unicorns IN SPACE, or whatever her latest gimmick was. And I don't think she ever recognized that at all.

(I wrote an essay to that effect several years ago, which started as a critique of McCaffrey's attitudes toward sex, romance, and sexual consent, but broadened both as I wrote and in the comments.)

ETA: This is not to say that I don't still appreciate a lot of stuff in her books. They are still full of interesting people doing cool and

[aishuu]

We had the same realization. Rereading McCaffrey is like rereading Mercedes Lackey. So many things which went over my teeny head are now bothering me. I still love the general concepts (yay dragons! yay Talents!) but I find the worlds "problematic." And I hate using the word, but there's no other way to describe how these relatively simple societies wouldn't stand up to any close scrutiny

[issen4]

Yay, you're doing Yuletide! I was just thinking the same. ^__^

[aishuu]

Heeee.... I see you signed up with The Changeover! Yay for book fandoms!

[lazzchan]

You know, I'd write you Blossom Culp fic without Yuletide attached. I adore that series (and I agree, The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp was odd) and always putter about that world in my head.

[aishuu]

REALLY? I'm loving how fans are coming out of the woodwork! Putter away...

If you want some attention for the fic, you can always "treat" me at yuletide. I think there's a bigger audience for it than I thought!!

How's life, chere?

[lazzchan]

Life is... going along. *laughs* But yes-- I loved his books and had a lovely attachment to Blossom and ho she didn't stand for anybody's nonsense about herself. :)