Dear Fic Corner Scribbler 2017
Jun. 21st, 2017 12:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doranwenIt's Fic Corner time again! I'm looking forward to it. :D I did a lot of describing the awesomeness about each character, and gave a few prompts in case you find them useful. I hope you have a lot of fun writing for me. :)
I love characters who are strong, characters who have quiet depth, characters with an active inner life, characters who think and feel… You'll probably see this in the characters I requested. :)
I once made up a 101 favorite tropes list (in no particular order), so feel free to make use of those if any of them get your muse going: http://doranwen.livejournal.com/246063.html
Besides those tropes, here are my general likes:
deep platonic friendship, romantic friendship, asexual romance, found families, apocalyptic fic, hurt/comfort, nonsexual physical touch (including cuddling), self-sacrifice, characters being vulnerable, character redemption, survival fic, positive treatment of religion, characters dealing with trauma, trust building, missing scenes, canon divergence AU (especially fix-it fic)
DNWs: sex or sexual feelings, supernatural/fantasy beings (elves, vampires, werewolves, gnomes, zombies, etc.), AUs other than canon divergence or alt beginnings, deathfic or horror, calling an adult "baby" or "darling", mpreg, crackfic, gore (mild violence is OK, just not as graphic as a surgery documentary), uncensored profanity, first/second person fic
Don't worry if someone's written a similar idea before. My first real fandom was one where people used to write a dozen versions of the same TV ep, and I loved reading them all. There are never too many versions of the same story, in my opinion.
If you're crossover-inclined, you're welcome to cross these with a fandom I know; if I've requested it or listed it as a possible crossover fandom in one of my other exchange letters, you can totally use it!
And now to the requests (in the order of which I found them in the tagset):
The Changes series - Peter Dickinson
Basic premise: England is suddenly plunged back into medieval times as people all over the island suddenly begin abhorring and destroying every bit of technology they can find. Young Nicola Gore, or Nicky, is left behind by accident as her parents flee for France, and she ends up living with a group of Sikhs, who are not affected by the sudden hatred of technology.
This trilogy is extremely interesting for the concept: what happens to society when technology is all of a sudden anathema? I requested only Nicky because I find her story more interesting than the rest. (I've also watched the TV series the BBC made, which used Nicky all throughout, mixing her story with the other two books in order to create one 10-part series that focused on her but still used the plots from all three books.) I really like the concept of her having to learn to live with a different culture, learning their customs and adapting to them.
The one thing I didn't care for was at the end of the book, where they sent her back to her parents. I rather liked the idea of her having to stay with the Sikhs and maybe even learning their language, becoming part of them in a sense. So that's one idea for a fic, writing an AU to that ending. Or you could go into details about her adapting to their life, or more in-depth about some of the events in the book. Whatever you can come up with. Basically, take Nicky, the situation she's in (living with the Sikhs), and run with it; I'm sure I'll love the result. :D
Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Basic premise: Does anyone still not know this one? ;) Basically, four children from London are evacuated during WWII to a home out in the country where they stumble through a wardrobe (not all at once, at first) and end up in another world called Narnia, where magic from an evil witch has kept it always winter and never Christmas. They conquer the witch and become kings and queens for years before stumbling back through the wardrobe by accident and being dumped back into their child selves.
Narnia is such a vast world and there's so much that can be done with it, so I'll try to give you some parameters to work within, if that helps. Of the five books that any of the characters I requested are present in, my favorites are (in this order): The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; The Horse and His Boy; The Last Battle; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I would rather not have fic set in the last two books of that list, and there are distinct differences in the levels of enthusiasm I have for the storylines in the other three.
As for the general story, the aspects that intrigue me the most is the fact that they grew up as adults - and then were sent back to live as children. Lewis was vague about how much they remembered, particularly about their emotional and mental states (did they come back thinking and feeling like adults, or did some of their previous child personalities get dropped back in?), and glossed over much of the difficulties they would have experienced. To that end, I find fic set in England post-Narnia to be even more interesting than any fic set in Narnia itself. Which leads me to some of my favorite types of Narnia fic…
I will always love stories where the Pevensies are adjusting to England after ruling Narnia for years, or fics from others' POV where they observe the differences in the children. If I'd had another slot, I'd have nominated Mrs. Pevensie as an option for that very premise; you'd think a mother would notice something drastically different about her children like that! I'm totally OK with making them be fully adults in children's bodies and all of the issues that entails, as long as they don't hate Aslan for it.
If you like writing AUs, then there's all kinds of interesting possibilities. For instance, what if they all came back from Narnia in their adult bodies? (What if they had children in Narnia - either staying there or that came back with them?) Or what if their parents are killed by a bomb before they return home from Professor Kirke's house? I'm totally OK with angst as long as there's some hope or comfort to be found.
Girl Who Owned a City - O. T. Nelson
Basic premise: When all people older than twelve years old die, ten-year-old Lisa and her younger brother Todd find themselves struggling to survive in a world where bullies rule. Their friend Jill Jansen joins with them in a big project to create a city - a city that Lisa owns.
This book I loved purely for the sheer concept. I used to create my own imaginary versions of the story (early "fanfic", I guess) where I tracked the kids' names and ages on pieces of scrap paper. I love these characters and would love to see more of them, which is why I requested them, but I also love worldbuilding so feel free to run wild with that too if you enjoy it.
Mostly for this I'd love to see future fic - how is Lisa's city doing years down the road? How do things change as the children grow into adults? How many skills are mastered that would allow the children to survive once the warehouses are exhausted of supplies? (Do they learn how to print new books, for instance, so they can reproduce the important information for later generations?) Do any of the three requested characters get married eventually or have their own children?
I've read a fanfic or two for this that went into some of the repercussions of everything down the road, and really enjoyed them. This fandom I'm happy either keeping it light-ish like the original (where bad things happened but the kids didn't really think about things as adults would) or with darker overtones as they grow up and realize just how primitive their world is, and how limited resources are, as they live off eventually dwindling supplies, and struggle to figure out farming, and all that. You could go into the farming bit that was discussed at the end, too, or education (I'm a teacher, so would love to see more about their education system, if you have any experience in that area or a good beta who does). So there's more ideas. Pretty much anything for this fandom will make me really happy. :D
Invitation to the Game - Monica Hughes
Basic premise: Eight young adults (later ten) find an escape from their jobless existence by playing a virtual reality game - which turns out to be preparation for dumping them on a new planet to survive there, in order to get rid of surplus people on an Earth where robots do nearly everything necessary.
I nominated this with no characters because I'm not particularly tied to any of the characters in the book - I just love the whole idea. You could show a glimpse of a different group of people's experience (complete with their own landscape, flora and fauna), or go several more years into the future of the ones in the book. Note, for instance, that if there are only ten families, at some point they would need to encounter new groups to mix their genetics up a bit more… I wish I had more ideas for you, but I'm sure I'll love whatever you come up with! :D
Running Out of Time - Margaret Peterson Haddix
Basic premise: Jessie Keyser is thirteen and believes it's 1840 - but it's really 1996, and she's living in a historical preserve that turns out to be a dangerous prison, as children begin falling sick with diphtheria and Jessie has to be sent for help.
The book already shows us what Jessie's current life is like in Clifton, and we can easily extrapolate her earlier years, so I would love to see more of Jessie adjusting to life on the outside. Anything from her first day at school to her finding a future career to her interacting with her father, who wants to stay in the 1840s…
Worldweavers - Alma Alexander
Basic premise: Galathea Winthrop (aka Thea) is a Double Seventh, a seventh child of seventh children. This should mean she's good at something really special, right? Except she can't do magic at all. And Ars Magica is part of the curriculum of every school in the entire nation—except for one: the Wandless Academy (which is sometimes called the Last Ditch School for the Incurably Incompetent). But between a summer school (with a class of one) like no other, and various unusual events, Thea begins to discover the gifts she has never known she had. Oh, and save the world in the process.
I didn't nominate/request any characters because I'd like to leave things open for worldbuilding. The sheer idea of a world where Ars Magica is part of the entire school curriculum—really, where magic is so woven into the way things happen that coffeeshops use spells to keep people's orders straight, you can buy a spell to keep gardens tidy, and a magic allergy is extremely life-threatening. Oh, and throw in the feral libraries, with elevators that act like four-year-olds! I fell in love with the world with that part. Just pure awesomeness! I also enjoy that part of it is set in my region of the US (the Pacific Northwest). I also love Thea's story, so if you're feeling more of a character-driven story, I'd love fic about her! For this fandom I'd love OCs, especially since I'm more interested in the way things work than in the specific characters' stories (other than Thea).
I like how Thea's friends grow over time, and you can totally throw them in, but I'd prefer that the fic not focus on them. I'm less interested in the Anasazi, Grandmother Spider/Tawaha/the Trickster, Tesla and all of that; feel free to leave them out. The Alphiri and Faele are not my thing, and we know little of the Dwarrowrim, so I'd prefer if the fic not focus on those polities, as they're called in the books.
I'd love something about the education system, from a child starting their first Ars Magica classes to the creation of the Wandless Academy. I'm a math teacher, and the mention of mathemagic, spell-solving of equations, and fractionators had me wishing I could see more of those. Or write something about magic run amok, like feral libraries, or magic as used in crimes and criminal justice, etc. Or explore some of the other types of magic (the ones mentioned in the list of all the things they tried in order to find Thea's magic). Or maybe something with society setup, like the Federal Bureau of Magic, or how it's integrated into the everyday lives of people (note the bit in the first book about people not using cars much due to portals, slipways, transfigurations . . .), even as regards to having magic allergies (the medical profession would be interesting!) Use whatever you know well. I'm not into sports (the only possible exception is Olympic gymnastics or ice skating which I watched back in the '90s, mainly) or fashion, but I'll find just about any other industry fascinating; I like complex systems and how they work (hence my fascination with air traffic control and airports in general). The world of Worldweavers feels familiar but there are so many interesting changes!
If you find yourself inspired by Thea, I'd love something set after Dawn of Magic, where she settles into her full power, finishes at Amford, etc. Does she create anything really special in her life? Like the Elemental houses, for instance. Something that no one else could do.
If you're into crossovers, feel free to cross this with just about anything! It makes for an excellent fusion fandom. If I've requested it or listed it as a possible crossover fandom in one of my other exchange letters, you can totally use it (noting, of course, that children's book fandoms should be the main focus of the fic to keep to the spirit of this exchange).
Happy writing! :D
I love characters who are strong, characters who have quiet depth, characters with an active inner life, characters who think and feel… You'll probably see this in the characters I requested. :)
I once made up a 101 favorite tropes list (in no particular order), so feel free to make use of those if any of them get your muse going: http://doranwen.livejournal.com/246063.html
Besides those tropes, here are my general likes:
deep platonic friendship, romantic friendship, asexual romance, found families, apocalyptic fic, hurt/comfort, nonsexual physical touch (including cuddling), self-sacrifice, characters being vulnerable, character redemption, survival fic, positive treatment of religion, characters dealing with trauma, trust building, missing scenes, canon divergence AU (especially fix-it fic)
DNWs: sex or sexual feelings, supernatural/fantasy beings (elves, vampires, werewolves, gnomes, zombies, etc.), AUs other than canon divergence or alt beginnings, deathfic or horror, calling an adult "baby" or "darling", mpreg, crackfic, gore (mild violence is OK, just not as graphic as a surgery documentary), uncensored profanity, first/second person fic
Don't worry if someone's written a similar idea before. My first real fandom was one where people used to write a dozen versions of the same TV ep, and I loved reading them all. There are never too many versions of the same story, in my opinion.
If you're crossover-inclined, you're welcome to cross these with a fandom I know; if I've requested it or listed it as a possible crossover fandom in one of my other exchange letters, you can totally use it!
And now to the requests (in the order of which I found them in the tagset):
The Changes series - Peter Dickinson
Basic premise: England is suddenly plunged back into medieval times as people all over the island suddenly begin abhorring and destroying every bit of technology they can find. Young Nicola Gore, or Nicky, is left behind by accident as her parents flee for France, and she ends up living with a group of Sikhs, who are not affected by the sudden hatred of technology.
This trilogy is extremely interesting for the concept: what happens to society when technology is all of a sudden anathema? I requested only Nicky because I find her story more interesting than the rest. (I've also watched the TV series the BBC made, which used Nicky all throughout, mixing her story with the other two books in order to create one 10-part series that focused on her but still used the plots from all three books.) I really like the concept of her having to learn to live with a different culture, learning their customs and adapting to them.
The one thing I didn't care for was at the end of the book, where they sent her back to her parents. I rather liked the idea of her having to stay with the Sikhs and maybe even learning their language, becoming part of them in a sense. So that's one idea for a fic, writing an AU to that ending. Or you could go into details about her adapting to their life, or more in-depth about some of the events in the book. Whatever you can come up with. Basically, take Nicky, the situation she's in (living with the Sikhs), and run with it; I'm sure I'll love the result. :D
Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Basic premise: Does anyone still not know this one? ;) Basically, four children from London are evacuated during WWII to a home out in the country where they stumble through a wardrobe (not all at once, at first) and end up in another world called Narnia, where magic from an evil witch has kept it always winter and never Christmas. They conquer the witch and become kings and queens for years before stumbling back through the wardrobe by accident and being dumped back into their child selves.
Narnia is such a vast world and there's so much that can be done with it, so I'll try to give you some parameters to work within, if that helps. Of the five books that any of the characters I requested are present in, my favorites are (in this order): The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; The Horse and His Boy; The Last Battle; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I would rather not have fic set in the last two books of that list, and there are distinct differences in the levels of enthusiasm I have for the storylines in the other three.
As for the general story, the aspects that intrigue me the most is the fact that they grew up as adults - and then were sent back to live as children. Lewis was vague about how much they remembered, particularly about their emotional and mental states (did they come back thinking and feeling like adults, or did some of their previous child personalities get dropped back in?), and glossed over much of the difficulties they would have experienced. To that end, I find fic set in England post-Narnia to be even more interesting than any fic set in Narnia itself. Which leads me to some of my favorite types of Narnia fic…
I will always love stories where the Pevensies are adjusting to England after ruling Narnia for years, or fics from others' POV where they observe the differences in the children. If I'd had another slot, I'd have nominated Mrs. Pevensie as an option for that very premise; you'd think a mother would notice something drastically different about her children like that! I'm totally OK with making them be fully adults in children's bodies and all of the issues that entails, as long as they don't hate Aslan for it.
If you like writing AUs, then there's all kinds of interesting possibilities. For instance, what if they all came back from Narnia in their adult bodies? (What if they had children in Narnia - either staying there or that came back with them?) Or what if their parents are killed by a bomb before they return home from Professor Kirke's house? I'm totally OK with angst as long as there's some hope or comfort to be found.
Girl Who Owned a City - O. T. Nelson
Basic premise: When all people older than twelve years old die, ten-year-old Lisa and her younger brother Todd find themselves struggling to survive in a world where bullies rule. Their friend Jill Jansen joins with them in a big project to create a city - a city that Lisa owns.
This book I loved purely for the sheer concept. I used to create my own imaginary versions of the story (early "fanfic", I guess) where I tracked the kids' names and ages on pieces of scrap paper. I love these characters and would love to see more of them, which is why I requested them, but I also love worldbuilding so feel free to run wild with that too if you enjoy it.
Mostly for this I'd love to see future fic - how is Lisa's city doing years down the road? How do things change as the children grow into adults? How many skills are mastered that would allow the children to survive once the warehouses are exhausted of supplies? (Do they learn how to print new books, for instance, so they can reproduce the important information for later generations?) Do any of the three requested characters get married eventually or have their own children?
I've read a fanfic or two for this that went into some of the repercussions of everything down the road, and really enjoyed them. This fandom I'm happy either keeping it light-ish like the original (where bad things happened but the kids didn't really think about things as adults would) or with darker overtones as they grow up and realize just how primitive their world is, and how limited resources are, as they live off eventually dwindling supplies, and struggle to figure out farming, and all that. You could go into the farming bit that was discussed at the end, too, or education (I'm a teacher, so would love to see more about their education system, if you have any experience in that area or a good beta who does). So there's more ideas. Pretty much anything for this fandom will make me really happy. :D
Invitation to the Game - Monica Hughes
Basic premise: Eight young adults (later ten) find an escape from their jobless existence by playing a virtual reality game - which turns out to be preparation for dumping them on a new planet to survive there, in order to get rid of surplus people on an Earth where robots do nearly everything necessary.
I nominated this with no characters because I'm not particularly tied to any of the characters in the book - I just love the whole idea. You could show a glimpse of a different group of people's experience (complete with their own landscape, flora and fauna), or go several more years into the future of the ones in the book. Note, for instance, that if there are only ten families, at some point they would need to encounter new groups to mix their genetics up a bit more… I wish I had more ideas for you, but I'm sure I'll love whatever you come up with! :D
Running Out of Time - Margaret Peterson Haddix
Basic premise: Jessie Keyser is thirteen and believes it's 1840 - but it's really 1996, and she's living in a historical preserve that turns out to be a dangerous prison, as children begin falling sick with diphtheria and Jessie has to be sent for help.
The book already shows us what Jessie's current life is like in Clifton, and we can easily extrapolate her earlier years, so I would love to see more of Jessie adjusting to life on the outside. Anything from her first day at school to her finding a future career to her interacting with her father, who wants to stay in the 1840s…
Worldweavers - Alma Alexander
Basic premise: Galathea Winthrop (aka Thea) is a Double Seventh, a seventh child of seventh children. This should mean she's good at something really special, right? Except she can't do magic at all. And Ars Magica is part of the curriculum of every school in the entire nation—except for one: the Wandless Academy (which is sometimes called the Last Ditch School for the Incurably Incompetent). But between a summer school (with a class of one) like no other, and various unusual events, Thea begins to discover the gifts she has never known she had. Oh, and save the world in the process.
I didn't nominate/request any characters because I'd like to leave things open for worldbuilding. The sheer idea of a world where Ars Magica is part of the entire school curriculum—really, where magic is so woven into the way things happen that coffeeshops use spells to keep people's orders straight, you can buy a spell to keep gardens tidy, and a magic allergy is extremely life-threatening. Oh, and throw in the feral libraries, with elevators that act like four-year-olds! I fell in love with the world with that part. Just pure awesomeness! I also enjoy that part of it is set in my region of the US (the Pacific Northwest). I also love Thea's story, so if you're feeling more of a character-driven story, I'd love fic about her! For this fandom I'd love OCs, especially since I'm more interested in the way things work than in the specific characters' stories (other than Thea).
I like how Thea's friends grow over time, and you can totally throw them in, but I'd prefer that the fic not focus on them. I'm less interested in the Anasazi, Grandmother Spider/Tawaha/the Trickster, Tesla and all of that; feel free to leave them out. The Alphiri and Faele are not my thing, and we know little of the Dwarrowrim, so I'd prefer if the fic not focus on those polities, as they're called in the books.
I'd love something about the education system, from a child starting their first Ars Magica classes to the creation of the Wandless Academy. I'm a math teacher, and the mention of mathemagic, spell-solving of equations, and fractionators had me wishing I could see more of those. Or write something about magic run amok, like feral libraries, or magic as used in crimes and criminal justice, etc. Or explore some of the other types of magic (the ones mentioned in the list of all the things they tried in order to find Thea's magic). Or maybe something with society setup, like the Federal Bureau of Magic, or how it's integrated into the everyday lives of people (note the bit in the first book about people not using cars much due to portals, slipways, transfigurations . . .), even as regards to having magic allergies (the medical profession would be interesting!) Use whatever you know well. I'm not into sports (the only possible exception is Olympic gymnastics or ice skating which I watched back in the '90s, mainly) or fashion, but I'll find just about any other industry fascinating; I like complex systems and how they work (hence my fascination with air traffic control and airports in general). The world of Worldweavers feels familiar but there are so many interesting changes!
If you find yourself inspired by Thea, I'd love something set after Dawn of Magic, where she settles into her full power, finishes at Amford, etc. Does she create anything really special in her life? Like the Elemental houses, for instance. Something that no one else could do.
If you're into crossovers, feel free to cross this with just about anything! It makes for an excellent fusion fandom. If I've requested it or listed it as a possible crossover fandom in one of my other exchange letters, you can totally use it (noting, of course, that children's book fandoms should be the main focus of the fic to keep to the spirit of this exchange).
Happy writing! :D
