raspberryhunter

I wrote a story for rarewomen:

The Company of Camelot (5248 words) by raspberryhunter
Fandom: Le Morte d'Arthur - Thomas Malory
Rating: PG-13 (mostly for themes)
Characters: Morgan le Fay, Nimue (Arthurian), Lancelot du Lac, Guinevere (Arthurian)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Corporate, Genetics, Friendship, Rivalry
Summary: Morgan should have been the heir to Uther's gene-cleaning empire. But now it belongs to Arthur, and Lance and Gwen... and Nimue.

morganstern's prompt asked for Morgan le Fay as a legitimate claimant to power, mentioned a preference for politically-oriented, and suggested a modern-day corporate AU. I read the ending of Le Morte d'Arthur and asked: how did Morgan and Nimue get from here to there? And then this story happened.

My betas sprocket and ollipop were terrific. sprocket especially did a lot of heavy lifting in helping me work out the worldbuilding (including basically all the genetics; any remaining errors are mine) as well as reading the first draft, told entirely from Nimue's POV and in which Morgan and Nimue were enemies, and forcing me to confront that it didn't work at all (well, she said it much more nicely than that, but that was the basic idea), with some great ideas to help me write the blasted thing again from scratch. (I think I saved two paragraphs out of that first draft, bah.)

And I got a present! batchsan wrote me a Gunnerkrigg Court story: Say It, a missing scene where Kat and Anja talk about Paz. In my opinion, there can never be too much GC fic, nor can there be too much fic about mothers and daughters. And of course I'm a big fan of Kat/Paz :)

Apparently... I... am... signing up for rarewomen, against my better judgement. (sprocket, I blame you.) But work should have either exploded or not by the time I have to get around to writing a story, I guess!

I have used the "or" matching to its fullest extent. Anything with any of these characters would be awesome!

Fandoms:

Gunnerkrigg Court (Any) - I loooooved the Yuletide fics this year. I cannot get enough of GC! Jones being her phlegmatic self! Or: Janet -- what would her father do if he learned about her romance? Why is it such a big deal? What secrets does she know, being the headmaster's daughter? Or: what mysteries about Surma do we not know? Or: friendship between Surma and Anja. Or: Anja noticing something that turns out to be important. Or: do Anja and Jones ever talk? About what? Or: show me something of the mother-daughter dynamic between Anja and Kat. For more on what I love about GC, see this post.

Alliance-Union - C. J. Cherryh (Ariane Emory I, II) - ARI. Let me see Ari I being her deliciously horribly-practical, super-intelligent self. Or Ari II learning to be horribly practical and super intelligent. Or Ari II learning from Ari I. Or, well, anything. I've only read Cyteen, and have not read Cyteen II. For more about what I love about Cyteen, see this post.

Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold (Lotus Durona, Ekaterin Vorsoisson Vorkosigan, Alys Vorpatril) - ollipop hooked me, last rarewomen, on Lotus Durona, and I love ollipop's story very much and want more. Tell me more about Lotus' Deal with the Baron, or why she hates Lilly so much as to name her clone after her (or is it hate?). Or: I desperately want Ekaterin to be the heroine of her own story! Let her get to do something awesome, something that owes nothing to Miles (or where Miles plays second fiddle to her). Or: we know Alys is awesome already! Let's see more of it! (I don't have a post on why I love the Vorkosigan saga... it's just been part of my life for so long that it just never occurred to me to post on it... the closest is my dear author letter here.)

Muuuuuch beta credit to sprocket and elementals_ao3 and seekingferret, because they are awesome and wonderful and these fics would not be nearly so good if not for them. (And special awesomeness credit to sprocket, who probably wrote at least the number of words I did in her betas, and was very gracious when I said things like, “So I need this done tonight, is that okay?”)

My assignment was Norse Myth, Who Gathers All Things Mortal (1504 words), which drove me completely bonkers to write — despite it being the shortest of the three, I spent way, way more time in canon review and in writing/edit than probably both of the others combined -- but which I think turned out well, mostly because my betas showed me how to beat it into shape when I was despairing of how to fix it properly. The prompt was Hel and Angrboda. I really liked the prompt; I don’t think there’s enough on mothers and daughters in media in general.

My pinch hit was SGU - Camile Wray, Enhancing Organizational Productivity (2245 words). The thing about Camile is that, with the exception of maybe one or two episodes, she gets completely wasted on SGU. As sprocket kept reminding me, she has this HR background which ought to be really really useful on the Destiny for all kinds of things, but it never actually is. Probably partially as a result of this, I haven’t ever read any SGU fic where she gets a chance to win. And she’s awesome! So, yeah. Camile gets to use her skills to win, yay! (But not win everything, because this is SGU.)

And then there was The Family Business, the 5100-word near-future SF-VR-corporate Greek Myth AU that I gifted to ollipop, who asked for 1000-5000, mentioned catholic tastes in her letter, and also mentioned not liking dubious SF tropes in another venue. (Uh, I still want to have that conversation!) I allllllmost didn’t post it, but I sneakily asked her about AU’s, and she said it was okay for general things like myth, and then the big theme turned out to be Families and How They Mess with Your Mind, which coincidentally turned out to be the big theme of ollipop’s awesome fic (Lotus Durona! Jackson’s Whole!), so I risked it after all. She seems to have liked it! :)

It did lead to this hilarious beta exchange:

Me: So Beta B told me the theme was X, and it’s really not.
Beta A: Yeah, the theme is obviously Y.
Me: No, the theme is Z!

(All three of us were right, but Beta A was more right.)

Someday I will have recs (besides my awesome Aeneid presents I squee about here; you need not know the Aeneid to read it; all that you need to know about Dido is here and here), when I get around to reading the whole rarewomen archive, but there are lots of goodies in it! Go read!

ETA: links fixed, I think. If not, let me know.

[Edited 3-5-13 to add a link to my book discussion of the Aeneid. Edited 3-4-13 to take out inaccuracy in Susan Calvin and to give People prompt ideas. Sorry!]

Dear rarewomen writer,

Thank you so much for writing for me and my wacky fandoms! I am so excited that you, like me, love these wonderful women, and I am excited for whatever you write!

I, uh, don't have much to say that I didn't say in the prompts, but let me see:

The Aeneid - Virgil (Dido): Dido is awesome! But she doesn't get to be awesome in the Aeneid. Make her awesome! I'd love the AU where she never falls in love with Aeneas, but joins forces with him and does something cool -- take down her brother, or a god or two? (I'm not real excited about the gods in the Aeneid.) Or really anything where she got to be awesome and politically savvy, the way we're told she is -- maybe the story of how she led her people to freedom, the story of how she got married in the first place... anything would be great, except for Dido/Aeneas (I am not a huge fan of their Doomed Romance). Crack AU's (spaaaace, post-apocalyptic, ivory-tower academia, whatever) would be fine for this one :)

ETA 3-5-13: Oh, I should also link to my ongoing discussion of the Aeneid so you have more details as to what I think of it: here. Life sort of got in the way, but I'll probably post on the last half in the next couple of weeks.

Robots - Isaac Asimov (Susan Calvin): I love how smart and capable and no-nonsense and snarky Susan Calvin is -- she is one of my childhood heroes. More! Casefic along the lines of the original stories would be awesome, but really anything showing off her smarts and snarkiness :)

Oh, actually I have a little more to say about this one re the childhood hero stuff. Susan Calvin may have been the only awesome female scientist I read in my classic-SF days when I was a kid, and even though I didn't realize it as a kid, looking back on it, I think she had an influence on me. She was so very good at what she did that she needed no other justification. The others (mostly men) ragged on her, but they also admired her. I think she's great! And she and Byerly in "The Evitable Conflict" are awesome, and I would definitely not say no to more of their interaction.

The People - Zenna Henderson (Any): I adore Zenna Henderson's People stories and always have, and just want more! The thing I love most about it, I think, is the effervescent joy, the childlike wonder, that permeates each page. But also... the moving depictions of familial and mentoring relationships; the utter sense of belonging: to a people, to a community, to a family (and which also plays into the teacher-child relationships she depicts); the drive to make things whole; the lovely understated way she's constantly drawing from Biblical imagery and quotations and tropes for the themes and images of the stories.

If you need ideas... I'd love to know what Shadow's story is; she's always been in a secondary role as Bethie-too or Remy's Shadow; how does she step into her own rightful place? Did Dr. Curtis learn anything from Dita? What's up with the Kroginolds' story -- they were always troublemakers; I imagine there's a story in how they grew up? But really anything with any character (or none at all, a new story with original characters would be quite excellent), with some of that joy and wonder in it, some of that exuberant borrowing and flavoring with Biblical tropes and quotes, would be totally lovely.

I will say that I tend to be more interested in the Earth stories than in Home or New Home, and I didn't like "Return" as well as some of the others (I guess I just don't like whiny narrators?), but hey, if your muse takes you there, go for it. I have a strong preference for a story that is at least mostly gen, but I'm open to either het or slash as long as canon pairings are respected (e.g., Valancy/Jemmy as a long-standing relationship is canon, and I'd rather Valancy didn't run off with Karen or something).

General: I love plotty fic because I can't write it myself, but by the same token I know it is hard to write and I certainly don't expect it. I love character-driven fic that thinks hard about the ramifications of characters' choices. I love for there to be some sort of character arc or characters (and/or the reader) coming to a greater understanding of something or someone during a fic. I love and adore friendship/partnerships, especially platonic ones, of all gender-variety. I am more a fan of gen than anything else, but I'm open to both het and slash, though I tend to be respectful of healthy overt canon pairings (which, um, basically means that I respect the Zenna Henderson pairings, and I'd rather Dr. Calvin not be in a romantic long-term relationship unless it's motivated really really well; Dido/Aeneas is not healthy and I'd rather not see that; I do respect Dido/Sychaeus).

Things I don't like: gratuitous violence or gratuitous character death. (If it's logical, then okay, but for these fandoms I'd prefer only minor character death. Aeneas would be okay; Dido, please not.) I'm not a huge fan of anything above PG-13 and will probably skim over anything really explicit unless something about the explicitness itself plays into character or plot development, in which case all bets are off :) I usually like darkfic, but not for these particular fandoms, please (the Aeneid is quite dark enough!) I would not mind a crack AU for the Aeneid (though am also fine with canon time/place), but I don't want AU for the Asimov or Henderson.

If you get stuck with your match, I think all three of my fandoms this time are a fairly small body of work. Basically only cantos 1 and 4 of the Aeneid are relevant to Dido (though knowing the whole thing might give a little more context); most of the Susan Calvin stories are all collected in I, Robot, which is easily available at libraries and online (the comment below reminded me that there are more sprinkled here and there -- I think All the Robot Stories has them all -- but the ones in I, Robot would be enough to go off of; my favorites are "The Evitable Conflict" and "Intuition," the latter of which isn't in I, Robot); and The People is a large canon of work, but the stories are a fast read, and you could probably read a couple of them ("Ararat" is probably a must, and perhaps "Shadow on the Moon" to get the second-gen perspective) and get the feel of it pretty quickly -- I don't think Henderson herself worried too much about keeping everything strictly canon-compliant detail-wise.

Thank you again, and I'm sure I will love whatever you write!

Ha, the npt MONSTER is safely out to beta and I can relax a bit while waiting to hear back, so have some recs from rarewomen! (I know, only a month late...) I thought that there was some really nice stuff produced for rarewomen. Here are some of my favorites:

( Recs from The Secret Garden, Greek Mythology, Inception, Vorkosigan Saga )

...Finally rarewomen reveals are out! Yay! I wrote two, both queen-centric (not sure what was up there). First, my pinch hit for meganbmoore, Ygraine-centric. I'm much happier with how it turned out than with a lot of things that took me longer to write. It was a perfect pinch hit, as the prompt was quite thoughtful and really gave me the whole gestalt, and I just had to fill in.

( Prompt from meganbmoore )

Title: The Monstrous Crying of Wind
Fandom: Malory: Le Morte d'Arthur
Rating: PG-13 (for themes)
Characters: Ygraine, Morgan, Morgause
Word count: 1889
Warnings: Mentions of rape/noncon, nothing explicit
Summary: Ygraine tells her daughters about her lost son.
Notes: Many thanks to vana_tuivana for a lovely and time-constrained beta!

AO3 link here.

( We must all survive in whatever chinks and crannies we can. )

Notes: Where there is a difference between Malory and other traditions, I have almost completely followed Malory (so, for example, Morgause is rather nicer than many other traditions paint her *cough*thanks a lot, T.H. White*cough*). The only exception is that Malory posits a third sister, Elaine, who then completely disappears from the narrative; I've taken the liberty of assuming she is an interpolation and not considered her here.

The title is from W.B. Yeats' "To a Child Dancing in the Wind."