Yuletide reveal
Jan. 2nd, 2025 07:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raspberryhunterThis year I wrote Kairos Series - Madeleine L'Engle, Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand, and Some Desperate Glory - Emily Tesh.
hidden_variable had some wonderful prompts for Meg Murry O'Keefe (and also her relationship with her mother and kids) that I'd looked at last year, and even done some canon review for, though I never really got as far as putting together a workable idea. Then, this year, I got those prompts as an assignment, so I had to!
known now in part, to be known in full (7155 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Kairos (O'Keefe) Series - Madeleine L'Engle, Austin & Murry-O'Keefe Families - Madeleine L'Engle
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Meg Murry O'Keefe, Polly O'Keefe, Kate Murry
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Multiverse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Choices
Summary:
It's always bothered me that Meg was such an icon for those of us who were prickly math-oriented adolescents, and then in the later books she's barely mentioned, except as a mother of seven. It's a bit infuriating in two different directions. My adolescent self would have preferred her to have done more with math (or maybe some other math-heavy discipline). My adult self understands a lot better that people make choices that sometimes aren't congruent with what an outside observer might have forecast earlier in their lives, and that this is not a bad thing, but I would have preferred that older Meg to be less of a cipher, that we knew more of her motivations and thoughts and dreams, and how she got here from there.
Anyway,hidden_variable said, "Feel free to go AU here—I’d rather not break up Meg/Calvin, but they can make different choices about kids and careers," and I thought it would be really interesting if the AU version and the canon version both got to interact and both be essential in moving the plot, and here we are. I also played with Margaret (or perhaps a third version, Peggy? Daisy?) having one or two kids, and perhaps Calvin being a stay-at-home writer dad, which would have been really interesting in some ways (especially in the sense of Calvin having to think about making the kinds of sacrifices that Meg does in canon; and would he have had to come to terms more with his rotten childhood?), but in the end I was worried about the pitfalls of identifying much more with one self than with the other, plus which I think there is an argument to be made that Meg does tend to commit really fully -- either seven kids or world-breaking math, eh? (I mean! I still think the Calvin stay-at-home writer dad AU is a fascinating one and a consistent choice she could make, I just wasn't getting it to work with the setting where they meet each other.)
Also in the letter was, "I’d love to see them encounter some aliens or have some other sort of cosmic adventure in their adult lives" -- which -- yeah, why does Polly get to have all the cosmic, or at least time-traveling (and otherwise) adventures just because Meg is older now? Why can't middle-aged women have cosmic adventures just like adolescents?
I do think there is a bit of this answer inherent in the books themselves. As an adolescent, it is really easy and natural to divide the world cleanly into the Cosmic Good (the Mrs figures, the Teachers, Gaudior/the wind) and the Cosmic Bad (the Black Thing, IT, the Echthroi), which is the pattern of all the Kairos books. (The only potential outlier here is Acceptable Time, where Zachary Gray is, well, he's not exactly a cosmic anything, is he?) And that's not a bad thing; adolescents are still figuring out the nature of the world and need those stories. But as an adult, and even an older adolescent, one has to come to terms with evil in the world being mixed with the good -- and even that sometimes the evil is in oneself. (My wonderful betasprocket gave me the advice that I should be thinking about the Diane Duane books as somewhat parallel to L'Engle, as they have a lot of the same considerations, and that's a theme that runs through her Wizard books as well.) So that was something I wanted to be a part of the fic as well, that as an adult, sometimes your cosmic adventure is going to result in your realizing that you, not some nebulous Evil Other, are the one who is in the wrong...
For this I had two betas, the always-amazing sprocket as well as another unnamed person who was supposed to science-beta, but in practice much of the latter's advice was along the lines of, "You're writing a L'Engle fic and you're worried about the science??" Which... okay, is a good point.
I also took a pinch-hit:
Glitter And Be Gay (1126 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Francisco d'Anconia/Hank Rearden
Characters: Francisco d'Anconia, Hank Rearden
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Dancing, First Kiss
Summary:
Okay, so, I was NOT expecting to write Atlas Shrugged fic this Yuletide, but this came up as a pinch hit basically immediately after I'd finished a lot of RL commitments, andglitterpig 's letter basically had all these super tropey and hilarious quotes for Francisco d'Anconia and Hank Rearden. Sample quote that recip put in letter:
"Tell me," said Rearden slowly, "that night at James Taggart's wedding, when you said you were after your greatest conquest... you meant me, didn't you?"
"Of course."
After it had been a whole day and it was still lingering, I asked my beta what they thought and linked the letter, andsprocket was like YES THIS IS VERY GAY, told me I should pick it up, and gave me the idea for the fic, so here we are. I also really enjoyed writing John Galt and Richard Halley's incredibly pretentious development of disco balls and electric guitars/synthesizers and rock and roll.
It was fast enough to canon-review (since Francisco/Rearden only get, like, 20 pages of the entire book, though it's a very intense 20 pages) and write that I still had a couple of days left, and I'd been eyeingserenity_ribbon's prompt on the Wisdom.
In the Days of the Wisdom (1870 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Some Desperate Glory - Emily Tesh
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: The Wisdom (Some Desperate Glory)
Additional Tags: Artificial Intelligence, References to mass murder, POV Nonhuman
Summary:
If Some Desperate Glory is a novelization of "Humans are Space Orcs," and the majo zi are the elves, then the majo zi's AI probably thinks like the Silmarillion, right?
Beta's response to "soooo, what would you say if I hit you up for a super last minute beta" was, "There's totally time for another fic!" Have I mentioned lately thatsprocket is THE BEST BETA EVER?? Not only did they then go into canon for me and find lots of really interesting and relevant bits, but also pointed out a draft problem with voice that required a major rewrite to be more Space Elves (and suggested a way to make the rewrite easier) with less than twenty-four hours to spare, and then did a full-throttle hatchet beta job on the resulting second draft which made the fic immeasurably better, with less than twelve hours to spare :P In conclusion, YAY BETA :D
hidden_variable had some wonderful prompts for Meg Murry O'Keefe (and also her relationship with her mother and kids) that I'd looked at last year, and even done some canon review for, though I never really got as far as putting together a workable idea. Then, this year, I got those prompts as an assignment, so I had to!known now in part, to be known in full (7155 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Kairos (O'Keefe) Series - Madeleine L'Engle, Austin & Murry-O'Keefe Families - Madeleine L'Engle
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Meg Murry O'Keefe, Polly O'Keefe, Kate Murry
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Multiverse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Choices
Summary:
Meg realized that the woman seemed very familiar. She had glasses and shorter hair, but otherwise looked very much like Meg herself; indeed, almost identical. "Hello, who are you?" Meg asked.
"Margaret Murry O'Keefe."
Meg blinked. The woman also had her voice. She said slowly, "That's... a bold claim. Who do you think I am?"
"Margaret Murry O'Keefe, of course!"
It's always bothered me that Meg was such an icon for those of us who were prickly math-oriented adolescents, and then in the later books she's barely mentioned, except as a mother of seven. It's a bit infuriating in two different directions. My adolescent self would have preferred her to have done more with math (or maybe some other math-heavy discipline). My adult self understands a lot better that people make choices that sometimes aren't congruent with what an outside observer might have forecast earlier in their lives, and that this is not a bad thing, but I would have preferred that older Meg to be less of a cipher, that we knew more of her motivations and thoughts and dreams, and how she got here from there.
Anyway,
hidden_variable said, "Feel free to go AU here—I’d rather not break up Meg/Calvin, but they can make different choices about kids and careers," and I thought it would be really interesting if the AU version and the canon version both got to interact and both be essential in moving the plot, and here we are. I also played with Margaret (or perhaps a third version, Peggy? Daisy?) having one or two kids, and perhaps Calvin being a stay-at-home writer dad, which would have been really interesting in some ways (especially in the sense of Calvin having to think about making the kinds of sacrifices that Meg does in canon; and would he have had to come to terms more with his rotten childhood?), but in the end I was worried about the pitfalls of identifying much more with one self than with the other, plus which I think there is an argument to be made that Meg does tend to commit really fully -- either seven kids or world-breaking math, eh? (I mean! I still think the Calvin stay-at-home writer dad AU is a fascinating one and a consistent choice she could make, I just wasn't getting it to work with the setting where they meet each other.)Also in the letter was, "I’d love to see them encounter some aliens or have some other sort of cosmic adventure in their adult lives" -- which -- yeah, why does Polly get to have all the cosmic, or at least time-traveling (and otherwise) adventures just because Meg is older now? Why can't middle-aged women have cosmic adventures just like adolescents?
I do think there is a bit of this answer inherent in the books themselves. As an adolescent, it is really easy and natural to divide the world cleanly into the Cosmic Good (the Mrs figures, the Teachers, Gaudior/the wind) and the Cosmic Bad (the Black Thing, IT, the Echthroi), which is the pattern of all the Kairos books. (The only potential outlier here is Acceptable Time, where Zachary Gray is, well, he's not exactly a cosmic anything, is he?) And that's not a bad thing; adolescents are still figuring out the nature of the world and need those stories. But as an adult, and even an older adolescent, one has to come to terms with evil in the world being mixed with the good -- and even that sometimes the evil is in oneself. (My wonderful beta
sprocket gave me the advice that I should be thinking about the Diane Duane books as somewhat parallel to L'Engle, as they have a lot of the same considerations, and that's a theme that runs through her Wizard books as well.) So that was something I wanted to be a part of the fic as well, that as an adult, sometimes your cosmic adventure is going to result in your realizing that you, not some nebulous Evil Other, are the one who is in the wrong...For this I had two betas, the always-amazing sprocket as well as another unnamed person who was supposed to science-beta, but in practice much of the latter's advice was along the lines of, "You're writing a L'Engle fic and you're worried about the science??" Which... okay, is a good point.
I also took a pinch-hit:
Glitter And Be Gay (1126 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Francisco d'Anconia/Hank Rearden
Characters: Francisco d'Anconia, Hank Rearden
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Dancing, First Kiss
Summary:
Hank Rearden and Francisco d'Anconia go to a ball.
Okay, so, I was NOT expecting to write Atlas Shrugged fic this Yuletide, but this came up as a pinch hit basically immediately after I'd finished a lot of RL commitments, and
glitterpig 's letter basically had all these super tropey and hilarious quotes for Francisco d'Anconia and Hank Rearden. Sample quote that recip put in letter: "Tell me," said Rearden slowly, "that night at James Taggart's wedding, when you said you were after your greatest conquest... you meant me, didn't you?"
"Of course."
After it had been a whole day and it was still lingering, I asked my beta what they thought and linked the letter, and
sprocket was like YES THIS IS VERY GAY, told me I should pick it up, and gave me the idea for the fic, so here we are. I also really enjoyed writing John Galt and Richard Halley's incredibly pretentious development of disco balls and electric guitars/synthesizers and rock and roll.It was fast enough to canon-review (since Francisco/Rearden only get, like, 20 pages of the entire book, though it's a very intense 20 pages) and write that I still had a couple of days left, and I'd been eyeing
serenity_ribbon's prompt on the Wisdom. In the Days of the Wisdom (1870 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Some Desperate Glory - Emily Tesh
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: The Wisdom (Some Desperate Glory)
Additional Tags: Artificial Intelligence, References to mass murder, POV Nonhuman
Summary:
Before the Wisdom, the people of that day found that the universe was cursed. So they built a machine that would tell them the least cursed path to take, to minimize suffering and doubt.
If Some Desperate Glory is a novelization of "Humans are Space Orcs," and the majo zi are the elves, then the majo zi's AI probably thinks like the Silmarillion, right?
Beta's response to "soooo, what would you say if I hit you up for a super last minute beta" was, "There's totally time for another fic!" Have I mentioned lately that
sprocket is THE BEST BETA EVER?? Not only did they then go into canon for me and find lots of really interesting and relevant bits, but also pointed out a draft problem with voice that required a major rewrite to be more Space Elves (and suggested a way to make the rewrite easier) with less than twenty-four hours to spare, and then did a full-throttle hatchet beta job on the resulting second draft which made the fic immeasurably better, with less than twelve hours to spare :P In conclusion, YAY BETA :D
no subject
Date: 2025-01-03 06:04 am (UTC)Zachary Gray is, well, he's not exactly a cosmic anything, is he?
Zachary Gray is a cosmic hangnail and I want to punch him. I don’t remember finding him quite so annoying when I was younger, but on my most recent reread I was just, like, wow, Zachary, why are you here?
no subject
Date: 2025-01-03 08:50 pm (UTC)On the Wizard books: Yeah, that's a really good point and one I hadn't thought about consciously. Interestingly, I had been so primed by books with parents never really knowing what their kids were up to (which I think was something of a staple of kids lit at that time -- it wasn't just L'Engle, though her books were sort of interesting in that the parents did know about at least the Wrinkle adventures, they just never talked about it) that the first time I saw this in the Wizard books, I had a reaction of, "What do you mean her parents KNOW that she's a wizard?" :)
Zachary Gray is absolutely a cosmic hangnail, I love this description. I think when I was a teen I found him sort of fascinating, like Vicky and Polly do, at least the first couple of times. Though I'm pretty sure that I was done with him by the time he turned up in Acceptable Time. Just stooooop, Zachary!
no subject
Date: 2025-01-04 02:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-04 06:55 pm (UTC)