raspberryhunter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
raspberryhunter) wrote2014-02-10 09:53 am
raspberryhunter) wrote2014-02-10 09:53 am
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dear invisible-ficathon writer
Wow, thank you for writing me a fic! I am sooooo excited to get a fic about any of these canons. Please don't feel bound by any of my words -- I want to know what you think of these canons!
[Some bookkeeping before I start talking about canon. What I have here is the maximum I expect you to have read to write the prompt -- these should all be five-minute-ish fandoms. If you just read a paragraph and see something that sparks your interest, don't even feel like you need to have read the entire excerpts I quote (e.g., don't feel like you need to have read the entire excerpt of Melusine). I mean, if you want to read more, knock yourself out -- I love all these books and think they're certainly worth reading more of -- but I definitely don't expect it.)
The Horn of Joy is from A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle (particularly Chs 4 and 11).
The Book of Gramarye is from The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, in the chapter of that name.
The Fairy Melusine is from Possession by A.S. Byatt (the most relevant bits are the excerpt at the very beginning of Ch 16 and the discussion in the last couple of pages of Ch 3, from which I've taken the "cosmic battles").
Coriakin's Spellbook is from Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, Ch 10.]
Now for the canons! (I always write staggeringly varying amounts; be assured I want all of these very much, just -- the ones that live in the academic world are easier for me to get wordy about.)
The Horn of Joy, Matthew Maddox - This book, of course, was the pinnacle of Maddox's career, too soon cut short by his early death. I love how he was ages ahead in anticipating the idea of multiple universes and alternate histories, and even though some of it is heavy and dark, I love the sense of wonder and sense of joy -- it almost reminds me a little of (e.g.) Zenna Henderson. And I love the characters most of all -- Madoc, his brother Gwydyr, and the long, long enmity between their lines, going down the ages. And even a unicorn! And I also love how he was stumbling towards the idea of time travel paradoxes, even if he never quite got there.
Horn postulates a fairly stark divide between good and evil, where both are passed down, practically genetically, from generation to generation. I'm a sucker for difficult redemption paths, and I'd love an alternate take where Gwydyr and his line is redeemed in the end -- Gwydyr himself doesn't necessarily have to be redeemed, not totally, but I'd love it if there were some facet of his character (perhaps reflected in his descendants?) that struggled towards that kind of redemption.
Or -- Horn is also very concerned with the idea of brother fighting brother, brothers hating brothers. (All the biographical accounts I've read assert that Maddox was very close to his own brother, but sometimes one wonders...) What about sisters? Is there a way in which sisterhood could bridge that gap between brothers?
Or -- Basically anything you'd like to write for this canon I'd love to read! Anything you'd like to bring in by the way of Welsh or Irish myth would be awesome, of course, but by no means required :)
The Book of Gramarye -- The Book of the Light. Does the Dark have a Book like this? What does it say? What's its take on things? How does it see the history of the world from the point of view of the Dark? The Book of Gramarye seems to have a penchant for quotations from Anglo-Saxon poetry and Robert Graves. Does the Dark have similar tastes? Are the spells of the Dark different or similar to those of the Light?
If that is not something you feel like writing, then really anything would be great -- other spells that Old Ones never knew, but should have? Do all Old Ones experience the Book the same way?
The Fairy Melusine - I'm so excited that the poetry of Christabel LaMotte is making a comeback. I got my copy from the used section of my college bookstore and never thought I'd see it back in print - I gobbled up the new Bailey-Michell edition as soon as it was available on Amazon! In college, I fell in love with the weirdness of this retelling of the legend, especially the cosmic space battles (well, okay, not exactly Star Wars, but stars are a major theme in this work, and when you're talking about the "far-flung starfields" and the "voids betwixt the flaming stars," come on). These days, I appreciate Melusine much more as an exploration of the two-edged sword of female power. Anything that spoke to either of these would be amazing.
I especially would be interested in a story that explored Melusine's relationship with another female being -- in Melusine, we mostly just see how she interacts with Raimondin. Feel free to bring in characters from other mythologies or fairy tales. LaMotte's take on Melusine is as a very sexual creature, both with masculine and feminine beings (though of course her main relationship is with Raimondin), and you would be totally within your rights to write either het or femslash with her -- but I find myself leaning more towards gen: would a female nonsexual friendship based on equality, as opposed to a male sexual relationship based on hierarchy and domination, have had a happier ending? Or be a completely different story? Or: how would LaMotte have written this story in a more egalitarian world, where women weren't always struggling against a male power structure? Or: speaking of cosmic battles and flaming stars: I'm starting to wonder if LaMotte was familiar with Mozart's Magic Flute... is Melusine related to the Queen of the Night?
For this one, I'd be totally okay for you to stay in canon time/place, and I'd be equally okay with an AU. Cosmic space battles in actual space would be totally awesome, now that I think about it :)
Coriakin's Spellbook - I... kinda just want more canon here. More, more! What were the stories and spells we didn't see when we read it? If Susan or Jill had read it, what would it say?
(I think this would be super difficult to pull off, but obviously Coriakin's spellbook and the Book of Gramarye have some similarities... a crossover might be amazing. Just throwing that idea out there :) )
Thanks again! :)
[Some bookkeeping before I start talking about canon. What I have here is the maximum I expect you to have read to write the prompt -- these should all be five-minute-ish fandoms. If you just read a paragraph and see something that sparks your interest, don't even feel like you need to have read the entire excerpts I quote (e.g., don't feel like you need to have read the entire excerpt of Melusine). I mean, if you want to read more, knock yourself out -- I love all these books and think they're certainly worth reading more of -- but I definitely don't expect it.)
The Horn of Joy is from A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle (particularly Chs 4 and 11).
The Book of Gramarye is from The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, in the chapter of that name.
The Fairy Melusine is from Possession by A.S. Byatt (the most relevant bits are the excerpt at the very beginning of Ch 16 and the discussion in the last couple of pages of Ch 3, from which I've taken the "cosmic battles").
Coriakin's Spellbook is from Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, Ch 10.]
Now for the canons! (I always write staggeringly varying amounts; be assured I want all of these very much, just -- the ones that live in the academic world are easier for me to get wordy about.)
The Horn of Joy, Matthew Maddox - This book, of course, was the pinnacle of Maddox's career, too soon cut short by his early death. I love how he was ages ahead in anticipating the idea of multiple universes and alternate histories, and even though some of it is heavy and dark, I love the sense of wonder and sense of joy -- it almost reminds me a little of (e.g.) Zenna Henderson. And I love the characters most of all -- Madoc, his brother Gwydyr, and the long, long enmity between their lines, going down the ages. And even a unicorn! And I also love how he was stumbling towards the idea of time travel paradoxes, even if he never quite got there.
Horn postulates a fairly stark divide between good and evil, where both are passed down, practically genetically, from generation to generation. I'm a sucker for difficult redemption paths, and I'd love an alternate take where Gwydyr and his line is redeemed in the end -- Gwydyr himself doesn't necessarily have to be redeemed, not totally, but I'd love it if there were some facet of his character (perhaps reflected in his descendants?) that struggled towards that kind of redemption.
Or -- Horn is also very concerned with the idea of brother fighting brother, brothers hating brothers. (All the biographical accounts I've read assert that Maddox was very close to his own brother, but sometimes one wonders...) What about sisters? Is there a way in which sisterhood could bridge that gap between brothers?
Or -- Basically anything you'd like to write for this canon I'd love to read! Anything you'd like to bring in by the way of Welsh or Irish myth would be awesome, of course, but by no means required :)
The Book of Gramarye -- The Book of the Light. Does the Dark have a Book like this? What does it say? What's its take on things? How does it see the history of the world from the point of view of the Dark? The Book of Gramarye seems to have a penchant for quotations from Anglo-Saxon poetry and Robert Graves. Does the Dark have similar tastes? Are the spells of the Dark different or similar to those of the Light?
If that is not something you feel like writing, then really anything would be great -- other spells that Old Ones never knew, but should have? Do all Old Ones experience the Book the same way?
The Fairy Melusine - I'm so excited that the poetry of Christabel LaMotte is making a comeback. I got my copy from the used section of my college bookstore and never thought I'd see it back in print - I gobbled up the new Bailey-Michell edition as soon as it was available on Amazon! In college, I fell in love with the weirdness of this retelling of the legend, especially the cosmic space battles (well, okay, not exactly Star Wars, but stars are a major theme in this work, and when you're talking about the "far-flung starfields" and the "voids betwixt the flaming stars," come on). These days, I appreciate Melusine much more as an exploration of the two-edged sword of female power. Anything that spoke to either of these would be amazing.
I especially would be interested in a story that explored Melusine's relationship with another female being -- in Melusine, we mostly just see how she interacts with Raimondin. Feel free to bring in characters from other mythologies or fairy tales. LaMotte's take on Melusine is as a very sexual creature, both with masculine and feminine beings (though of course her main relationship is with Raimondin), and you would be totally within your rights to write either het or femslash with her -- but I find myself leaning more towards gen: would a female nonsexual friendship based on equality, as opposed to a male sexual relationship based on hierarchy and domination, have had a happier ending? Or be a completely different story? Or: how would LaMotte have written this story in a more egalitarian world, where women weren't always struggling against a male power structure? Or: speaking of cosmic battles and flaming stars: I'm starting to wonder if LaMotte was familiar with Mozart's Magic Flute... is Melusine related to the Queen of the Night?
For this one, I'd be totally okay for you to stay in canon time/place, and I'd be equally okay with an AU. Cosmic space battles in actual space would be totally awesome, now that I think about it :)
Coriakin's Spellbook - I... kinda just want more canon here. More, more! What were the stories and spells we didn't see when we read it? If Susan or Jill had read it, what would it say?
(I think this would be super difficult to pull off, but obviously Coriakin's spellbook and the Book of Gramarye have some similarities... a crossover might be amazing. Just throwing that idea out there :) )
Thanks again! :)