It's that time again!

[esmenet]

Prompts time! :D Ignore the fact that I'm already working on twenty different stories, including the dark_agenda challenge, and that I still haven't gotten around to writing out any of the prompts I got last time. (Although that's because I was given prompts for single scenes and want to write novels. ^ ^;;)

Don't even bother narrowing it down to things you want me to write -- I just want to hear about other people's ideas, what they want to see. I've spent the past week binging on meta about race and queerness and privilege, and now I want to see the other kind, the kind that's not so much about the fandom-people as it is the fandom-fic. (Also I want to talk about things that would be totally awesome. Rurouni Kenshin in branchandroot 's Global Steam world! Narcissa Malfoy as Potions Professor! Hikaru no Go with giant robots!)

Comments

[ojuzu.livejournal.com]

I think the only reason I could ever read the Narnia books again, now that I know about privilege and would be able to identify exactly what is wrong with them, is to write something like that. It would feel so good, too -- to be able to turn old-school British escapist Christian fantasy full of stereotypes and reeking of privilege into something accepting and clever and self-aware.

Or maybe an AU of Prince Caspian, where instead of White Hidden Real-King Dude calling other White Real Kings and Queens to save the day, the Calormen just, like, go around Archenland just to explore and end up in Miras' territory. And then they meed Miras and go "well, this guy's a dick but this is a pretty nice country he's got here. hmmm." And they open up trade negotiations and end up influencing Caspian so when he runs away from his uncle he doesn't ride off blindly into the woods but just heads to the Calormen outpost where he has a bunch of old friends and says "hey guys, my uncle's trying to kill me, can you hide me for a while?" His Calormen friends do him one better and take him home to meet their families when they get some leave. Then at some point I guess he goes back to Narnia with his new cultural awareness and maybe becomes some kind of advisor to his uncle's son when Miras dies, or maybe he goes off and joins the army, or maybe he just goes to the Calormen capital and becomes a scholar. And if the Pevensies ever get called at all it's probably when Caspian's tutor gives up and is like "fuck it, get these pseudo-Romans OUT OF HERE I don't care if you're thirteen" or maybe Caspian takes the horn with him when he goes off to his Calormen friends and someone blows it one day out of curiosity and the Pevensies show up in, like, the public forum of the capital and everyone goes WHO THE HELL ARE YOU and Susan just kind of sighs and asks for a guide to the nearest temple so she can yell at Aslan for this, because it's obviously all his fault. And everyone nods and says yes, that Aslan dude is kind of a jerk.

. . . And I just outlined one more transformative fic to work on instead of my actual dark_agenda challenge. Go me.

[demoerin.livejournal.com]

*wistful sigh* The entire outline of "Caspian hangs out with the Calormen" sounds marvellous. (Observation: damn, "Calormen" is an annoying thing to type, thanks Lewis for giving your characters of colour such a subtle and well thought out name.)

I don't think the Pevensies would see Aslan as a jerk; they know his thing is tough love, where he goes "You deserve/need this, but you can deserve better things if you try". In the construct of canon he's the quintessential good. On the other hand, Neil Gaiman didn't let "Jesus never had sex with Lilith" stop him when he wrote The Problem of Susan (the White Witch is Lilith, right?). It would be disturbing to keep Aslan as unquestioned good in this kind of fic because it would imply approval of the problematic parts of the Western/Christian mindset he embodies.

...hmm. What I'd like to see is if Aslan stepped out of the temple in the form of the Calormene god, Tash or Tesh I think. He could stand around being as glowy and awe-inspiring a vulture-headed dude as he was a lion/lamb, I'm sure. It would even go with that line in The Last Battle where he says something like "Everything good that you do in the name of Tash, is a good deed for me and my father, and anything bad you do in the name of Aslan goes to Tash". (A point for trying, Lewis? On the one hand, oh wow "your god and mode of beliefs is wrong wrong wrong except when it is right by accident!" On the other, "we should all strive for the essential good and recognise it in each other". Let's go with "it's kind of progressive for its time" and have done with it.)

. . . And I just outlined one more transformative fic to work on instead of my actual dark_agenda challenge. Go me.
*laughs* And that's why they call the damn things plot bunnies.

[ojuzu.livejournal.com]

Ahaha, I want to write this fic SO BADLY but it would have to be incredibly AU, to the point of ignoring lots and lots of canon. And I have no idea where to start researching all the cultures that were amalgamated into the Calormene, and how they would have evolved between the one time we get a good look at them (HaHB) and the Caspian-era. But I want to. :D

I think Susan's the only one who'd be at all pissed off about being suddenly dropped into Calormen for no apparent reason -- Lucy and Edmund and Peter would be walking around going "Whoa, look at how much that changed! This place is so cool! :D"

Tash and Aslan . . . IDK. The thing is, Tash doesn't read to me as Aslan's opposite, or his other half, or anything like that at all. They don't belong in the same kind of theme, any more than the beliefs of Ancient Egypt match up with the tenants of Judeo-Christianity. Which is another thing; I don't think I quite buy the Calormene having only one god, probably because Tash is obviously based off of the Egyptian god-model, and feels like one of the Assyrian gods. Maybe Tash has many different forms, like the Hindu pantheon?

Interesting note: the Calormene are bad Middle-Eastern stereotypes the whole way through, but they start out as 'Arabic' and end up as a whole lot more 'Constantinople/Eastern Roman Empire'.