A Certain Slant of Light

Snowflake challenge #8: Create a wishlist.

-always and forever, fanart or fanfic for any of my books.

-more generally, links to cool fanart! I have no idea where to find it these days.

Canons I enjoy include Captain America (particularly interested in Natasha art right now, but always fond of Steve, Bucky, and/or Stucky), She-Ra, anything Rosemary Sutcliff, American Girl (SIDE NOTE, has American Girl considered partnering with Netflix to create American Girl miniseries about the historical girls, a la the Babysitters Club TV show? Just throwing the idea out there. It would be amazing)... Really I am not picky about fanart, if you think I will enjoy it you are probably right.

I also enjoy colored photos from the past, particularly if they were originally taken in color, like this 1909 Paris photoset.

I couldn’t resist today’s snowflake_challenge: In your own space, tell us who, from one of your fandoms, would you most want to have dinner with (or tea, or a random afternoon visit), And why? This could be a creator, an actor, a costumer, a set designer, a director, a character, a composer, anybody! What would you talk about? What are you dying to know?

This isn’t exactly one of my fandoms, but the person who pops to mind right now is Diana Wynne Jones. I’d like to have a tea party with her, preferably with a number of other interested guests, so at the psychological moment we could all pin her with our beady little eyes and demand, “So what’s UP with the ending of Fire and Hemlock, DWJ?” Surely under the pressure of our many eyes, she would have to spill.

Although possibly we might just learn that she didn't know either. Still, that at least would be something.

In your own space, talk about what you think the future holds for fandom.

This is a particularly apt question this year, isn’t it, with fandom’s future platform still up in the air? I must say that Tumblr has collapsed less than I would have expected after Tumblrgeddon, but then, LJ didn’t collapse all at once after strikethrough either - so in the same way, this is probably only the beginning of Tumblr’s long slow end and there will be holdouts who stay there for years after most of fandom has left.

I’ve been enjoying the Dreamwidth renaissance, but I don’t expect that fandom will settle here as a whole: the image hosting is just not strong enough to support fanartists and gif makers. So we’ll see where that lands! I personally intend to stay here till the site explodes or the internet goes out, whichever comes first.

In your own space, create your own challenge.

Oh! Oh! This is so exciting, because I actually have a challenge idea!

Read a fic written in a fandom that is a movie directed by a woman. Extra challenge mode: leave a comment on the fic.

I’ve compiled a non-exhaustive list of fandoms on AO3. (I personally have written fics for Bend It Like Beckham, Cairo Time, and Om Shanti Om, in case any of those strike your fancy.)

1. Alias Grace (I realize this is technically a miniseries but I couldn't resist.)
2. Austenland
3. Belle
4. The Beguiled
5. Bright Star
6. D.E.B.S. (I haven’t seen this movie, but I mean to, especially now that I know it’s got seventy fics.)
7. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
8. Jupiter Ascending
9. Lady Bird
10. A League of Their Own
11. Little Women
12. Mamma Mia!
13. The Night Manager
14. The Secret Garden (1993)
15. Set It Up
16. The Spy Who Dumped Me
17. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (!!!! This one has a lot!)
18. Waitress
19. Winter’s Bone
20. Wonder Woman

Create a fanwork.

Taking my inspiration from eglantiere here: leave me a prompt and I'll write you a ficlet!

In your own space, create a list of at least three fannish things you'd love to receive, something you've wanted but were afraid to ask for - a fannish wish-list of sorts.

1. My dream has always been for someone to draw fanart or write fanfic for one of my original works (I think Briarley would be most amenable at this point, but I’m not picky), so… that. You’ve arrived as an author once your works get their own AO3 category!

2. I’d really like a copy of Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman. Although possibly I should gift this one to myself through the magic of interlibrary loan.

3. Prompts! I love writing to prompts - whether fanfic or origfic. asakiyume once gave me a prompt about a time-traveling popcorn ball and she got a whole children’s book out of it (although obviously I’m usually not quite that prolific).

In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc.) and explain why you love it so much.

Ugh this is such a hard choice! There are so many possibilities!

One of my favorite TV episodes ever is “Dear Mrs. Kennedy” in season two of The Crown, because I love that show (the sumptuous costumes! The beautiful sets! The wonderful acting! The history) and this episode is one of the best constructed and also the most well-designed to appeal to my id.

Which is certainly saying something in a show where there’s an entire episode revolving around whether Prince Philip will kneel to his wife during her coronation (he does) and another where he’s ordered to wear a tie with little hearts on it in order to show that he, unlike his buddy the womanizing jerk, is a good family man who loves his wife. And takes orders from her.

However, “Dear Mrs. Kennedy” is about Elizabeth’s relationship with Mrs. Kennedy, and I really like the way that it evolves over the course of the episode. At first she’s jealous because Mrs. Kennedy seems to embody all the things that she’s not: she’s brilliant and well-educated and witty, while Elizabeth is dull and stodgy and often ignorant.

But then they meet, and Elizabeth is bowled over by Mrs. Kennedy’s famous charm… only to learn later that not only was Mrs. Kennedy not charmed in return, but in fact she made fun of her at a dinner party later that week.

(Then Elizabeth goes to Ghana and causes a sensation by dancing with President Nkrumah, which is delightful in quite a separate way.)

And then! And then! Jack Kennedy tells his wife that Elizabeth has heard about her unkind comments (he thinks it’s hilarious and makes jokes about cat fights while Jackie sits petrified with horror), and next time the Kennedys are in London Jackie arranges a meeting at Buckingham Palace specifically so she can abase herself apologize (this does not involve kneeling in the show but I like to imagine that someday someone will write the fic where it does), which involves explaining that a doctor has been dosing both Jackie and Jack with shots of “vitamins” that are almost certainly amphetamines.

There’s something about this admission that just gets me - the fact that the Kennedys, one of the most powerful couples in the world, are at the mercy of this quack doctor, and the bravery of admitting something so potentially humiliating to someone who has good reason to be angry at her.

And they don’t exactly become friends after that, but there’s respect and understanding between them. At the end of the episode Queen Elizabeth is watching the news on the day Kennedy was shot, and Jackie is on TV still wearing her bloody clothes, and the Queen Mother thinks its because Jackie is distraught but Elizabeth understands - no - she’s wearing those bloody clothes on purpose: this is a political action, a cry for justice.

And it’s just so rare for relationships between women on TV to be so fraught, neither simple friendship nor straight-up enmity, but complicated and changing over time.

...also, I’m just saying, Jackie Kennedy kneels to the queen would be a great fic. The First Lady of the United States kneeling to the Queen of England - I’m sure Jackie would be alive to the painful political overtones even if this is a purely private act. The flush rising to her cheeks! The downcast eyes, the lowered eyelashes grazing her cheeks! And the queen sits in her chair, coolly sipping her tea.

Every year I mean to do the snowflake_challenge and every year I do maybe one or two and then wander off into the wild blue yonder... but this year! Maybe this year will be my year.



Day 1: In your own space, talk about your Happy Place—the things that give you joy, calm you or keep you sane.

Is this what we're using Happy Place to mean now? I always thought it referred to, like, an actual place - maybe a place that you imagine rather than a place where you physically go, but this makes it sound like it doesn't need to be a place at all and you can just be like "My happy place is a cup of hot chocolate."

Not a cafe where you get hot chocolate in a china mug with two fat marshmallows on top and a piece of shortbread on the saucer and you drink it sitting at a table made out of a reclaimed door. Not drinking hot chocolate while wearing a soft sweater in front of a roaring fire as fat snowflakes drift through the window and you know you don't have to go outside all day if you don't want to. Just the hot chocolate.

The snowflake_challenge graphic has given me hot chocolate on the brain, but to be fair hot chocolate is joyful and calming. I also like tea in this capacity, and I would like to welcome hot spiced cider into the fold but I can't seem to make it quite as delicious as I would like. Oh well. Maybe next year.

My happiest place is a comfy couch with a book and a blanket and a nice hot drink. The hot drink is an addition I have made in adulthood, but the rest of it has been basically my favorite place since I learned how to read.