raspberryhunter

I wrote Magic Flute fic for my Yuletide assignment!

Who Fears Not Night and Death (2960 words)
Summary: Roses always have thorns, but still Pamina chooses the roses.

Yeah, so, writing this one was interesting. I think I put more of my heart in it than any other fic I've ever written. I'm not saying it's actually necessarily any good: my heart being, probably, not particularly that appetizing. I find myself, for this reason, completely unable to assess how good or bad this fic is, which is part of why I was so relieved that lignota didn't hate it. (The other reason for relief is that I was using a two-year-old DYW letter; while I don't mind writing without extended prompts/info in general, I like L'Ignota very much and really wanted to write something she would like.) As usual, many many thanks to my betas, in this case greenlily, who was a useful voice of telling me whether I was hitting any terrible squicks, and sprocket, who did her usual stellar job of pointing out all the places where Things Did Not Work, often over my strenuous protests.

I also ended up, despite the fact that I told myself the fic was Not Going to Be About That, doing some amount of trying to make quasi-logical sense of canon (I love this opera more than I can describe, and yet I feel like the plot and characters Make No Sense), because I CANNOT HELP MYSELF that way. I'm not sure how much of it is apparent to the reader, but I now have this complete headcanon about the backstory to this opera, which I am liable to start ranting about at a moment's notice, about how the Queen and Pamina's father were a flawed version of Pamina/Tamino that succeeded briefly in making the flute together, but in the end failed through their flaws making it impossible for them to understand each other, where Pamina/Tamino succeeded by forgiving each other; and how Sarastro's canonical hatred of women, and the Queen in particular, stems from his total incomprehension of how his best friend, Pamina's father, could go with the Queen. And about how the Queen has this tortured relationship with the truth where she thinks it is very important to tell the truth (hence the whole punishment of Papageno and Pamina's insistence on the truth to Sarastro in canon) but gets around this by telling half-truths. Ahem.

By the very nature of it, I feel like this fic is extremely dependent on my own personal interpretation/reimagining of this opera. (In terms of recordings, I followed closely, or more closely than anything else, the interpretations given on the Gardiner recording and the BBC (2003) video.) I mean… I wrote operafic last year for Yuletide, but that was less writing from my particular interpretation (although I did have one) and more arguing meta with source. This… was different. I feel like I should apologize to lignota in case it isn't her interpretation. (I'm reasonably sure that she doesn't disagree with much of it, but still.)

So I also wrote a couple of other treats. First, The Dark is Rising fic:

And all the flowers that in the springtime grow (2781 words)
Summary: Jane lives her life in the mortal world, and it is not possible to think in the old ways here; but sometimes there are glimpses.

I wish that I had had another month for this one, and then I feel like I could really have edited the crap out of it. (As it is, I am indebted to my betas sprocket and slowmercury for beating it into shape as much as it already is.) But the prompt was so perfect that I had to write for it — Jane, my OTP Will/Jane, and a recipient that enthusiastically welcomed depressing and major character death and so on. Because I have been writing the headcanon for this in the back of my head for about twenty-five years. My first ship that I even remember was Will/Jane, and as a kid (obsessively re)reading these books I was very clear on how Bran wanted the ship to be Bran/Jane, but it so was not, Jane and Will clearly belonged together even if Will totally didn't realize it, darn it all! (Being a sheltered and not particularly imaginative kid, Bran/Will didn't even occur to me until I read lightgetsin's excellent Bran/Will many, many years later. But I digress.) I was also clear that Bran saved the world and that was why he had to stay behind.

I wrote both this treat and Who Fears Not Night and Death at about the same time, working on this one when my assignment was being recalcitrant, and apparently it rubbed off a little; a couple of people commented that this had a theme of choices, which was a conscious theme of my assignment but which I didn't notice at all in this one until it was pointed out to me…

I also quickly wrote this Wicked treat:

Bridges you didn't know you crossed (2117 words)
Summary: Around the time that Glinda first hears Elphaba's song sung around the palace, she starts having dreams of Elphaba.

…this year is apparently my year for post-canon fix-it (or break-it, I guess, in the case of Will/Jane) fic. That is to say, it has always got on my nerves that Elphaba asked Glinda not to clear her name, and Glinda accepted, because it makes no sense. So then of course I had to say something about how Glinda would eventually realize that it made no sense, and the fic followed.

And this quick fix-it for Watson always being annoyingly dense in the Mary Russell books:

The Beekeeper's Doctor (1283 words)
Summary: It does not take a Sherlock Holmes to deduce what is likely to happen when a girl who is about to achieve her majority leaves Jane Austen novels lying about, even if said girl is usually hard-headed and devoid of romanticism.

But, judging from the surprise on my friend's face, perhaps it took a John Watson.