Yuletide reveal
Jan. 8th, 2016 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraHappy new year!! (for those for whom this is relevant)
For Yuletide I wrote Imaginary Planes, a Hav/RPF crossover forambyr. My identity was then totally guessable because I’d been all over ambyr’s nomination post with Hav enthusiasm, and then completely disappeared for any subsequent story discussion, but hopefully the fic itself came as a surprise.
Imaginary Planes (3000 words) by Cyphomandra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hav - Jan Morris, 20th Century Literary RPF (Alice Sheldon & Beryl Markham)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: beryl markham
Additional Tags: Misses Clause Challenge, RPF, Fake History, Spaceflight, real history
Summary:
I didn’t really have a story in mind when I signed up for Hav, but I did want to write at least some of the story from the point of view of one of the Hav inhabitants. The Jan Morris persona in the book is amazing, but achieving anything near that sort of densely allusive writing would have taken more time and concentration than I had available, and also it’s such an outsider’s viewpoint book that I wanted to turn that around a bit.
I did not have anything else in mind. I readambyr's prompts expectantly (well, re-read, as I'd seen them before matching!) and liked a lot of them. Roman Hav! Hav with dragons! Cyberpunk Hav! Young Wizards (with the bonus of being a fandom I’ve actually written fic for)! None of these, however, seemed to be tipping me over the edge from interest into story. I contemplated writing a Chess crossover in which Florence stalks grumpily through the streets of Hav during a tournament and encounters some other sort of game entirely, and regretfully decided against T.E. Lawrence because I haven’t seen the movie for ages and would also have to remember far more details of historical geopolitics than I usually do.
I also readambyr’s other prompts. I had read and loved the Tiptree bio, but did not think I could manage to write Sheldon/Tiptree (not a pairing!) at all well, not least because I’d finished the book furious with her over the murder/suicide pact with her husband. I didn’t know the other two canons. I’d never heard of Beryl Markham.
Markham did sound interesting. I looked her up on wiki. Then I downloaded a sample of her memoir, West with the Night. Then I bought the book, and downloaded a sample of Mary Lovell’s biography, Straight on til Morning. It had a bit in there about a discrepancy, between a trip Beryl said she’d taken, and the stamps in her passport. I thought fondly about Jean Batten (early NZ flier; first ever solo flight from NZ to England, in 1936), and how I’d wanted to write something about her for years. I went round the Air New Zealand 75 years exhibition, and looked at grainy film of early aeroplanes over Rangitoto. I picked up a book on chess culture from the library and totally failed to read it.
I bought Mary Lovell’s book. I did manage to stop before buying Circling the Sun, a recent fictional biography, but I do have it on hold at the library. I picked up the library copy of Hav (I’d lent out my own copy a while back) and made notes (and, if you are reading this but haven't read Hav - it is a delightful and disturbing travel book to a place that does not exist. Recommended. I sponsored a review of it byrushthatspeaks here, if you need more persuading).
I set Beryl’s piece in 1936 (the passport discrepancy in Lovell’s bio is a 1936/1938 confusion). In my head, it’s May/June when she’s in Hav. In September she would become the first pilot to fly the Atlantic east-to-west, and a few days after that Tom Campbell Black, her flight instructor and probably the only man she loved and respected, was killed when a plane collided with his while taxiing.
Writing the second part - the future Hav - took me a while, because I couldn’t decide how to do it. I was still very attracted to cyberpunk, but I wanted the ending to at least feel optimistic, and maybe I just read all the wrong books in the 80s/90s but optimism never seemed all that key. I had a lunar base for a bit, and then a Lagrange point colony, and then I decided that Gundam Wing was really too big for Yuletide even as a stealth crossover and I should move on. I actually wrote the foreword before the ending, which helped. The foreword is also written by a phonetic Jan Morris, because I had to put her in somewhere. I would have liked more time to work out a bit more of the context of the end character (not least who else is on this ship with them) but ended up focussing on looking back while going forward. The title at least was relatively easy, and I went for a quote as summary (roughly half my fics on AO3 have quotes for summaries, while the other half have very bland statements of fact. I should probably diversify).
I enjoyed writing this, and also really enjoyed discovering Beryl Markham, who I never would have encountered otherwise, and I'm very grateful toambyr for the opportunity. I am also extremely grateful to my betas, china_shop & isis, who were very helpful on very short notice.
I received two gifts for Yuletide, a Tripods story (with Will! and Fritz!) that is surprisingly optimistic for this canon and rather sweet, and a treat for the Shakespear's Sister music video for Stay that attempts to explain at least some of the weirdness. I have read quite a few other fics but this has taken me three evenings so far and so this year it will have to be comments on the fics themselves rather than a recs post.
Found In Translation (1102 words) by Bobcatmoran
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Tripods - John Christopher
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Will (The Tripods), Fritz Eger, Original Female Character(s) of Color
Summary:
Your Own World (566 words) by Merlin Missy
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Stay - Shakespears Sister (Music Video)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Characters
Additional Tags: Songfic, IN SPACE!
Summary:
For Yuletide I wrote Imaginary Planes, a Hav/RPF crossover for
ambyr. My identity was then totally guessable because I’d been all over ambyr’s nomination post with Hav enthusiasm, and then completely disappeared for any subsequent story discussion, but hopefully the fic itself came as a surprise.Imaginary Planes (3000 words) by Cyphomandra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hav - Jan Morris, 20th Century Literary RPF (Alice Sheldon & Beryl Markham)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: beryl markham
Additional Tags: Misses Clause Challenge, RPF, Fake History, Spaceflight, real history
Summary:
Two conjugate imaginary points always lie on a real line and two conjugate imaginary lines in a plane intersect in a real point.
I didn’t really have a story in mind when I signed up for Hav, but I did want to write at least some of the story from the point of view of one of the Hav inhabitants. The Jan Morris persona in the book is amazing, but achieving anything near that sort of densely allusive writing would have taken more time and concentration than I had available, and also it’s such an outsider’s viewpoint book that I wanted to turn that around a bit.
I did not have anything else in mind. I read
ambyr's prompts expectantly (well, re-read, as I'd seen them before matching!) and liked a lot of them. Roman Hav! Hav with dragons! Cyberpunk Hav! Young Wizards (with the bonus of being a fandom I’ve actually written fic for)! None of these, however, seemed to be tipping me over the edge from interest into story. I contemplated writing a Chess crossover in which Florence stalks grumpily through the streets of Hav during a tournament and encounters some other sort of game entirely, and regretfully decided against T.E. Lawrence because I haven’t seen the movie for ages and would also have to remember far more details of historical geopolitics than I usually do. I also read
ambyr’s other prompts. I had read and loved the Tiptree bio, but did not think I could manage to write Sheldon/Tiptree (not a pairing!) at all well, not least because I’d finished the book furious with her over the murder/suicide pact with her husband. I didn’t know the other two canons. I’d never heard of Beryl Markham.Markham did sound interesting. I looked her up on wiki. Then I downloaded a sample of her memoir, West with the Night. Then I bought the book, and downloaded a sample of Mary Lovell’s biography, Straight on til Morning. It had a bit in there about a discrepancy, between a trip Beryl said she’d taken, and the stamps in her passport. I thought fondly about Jean Batten (early NZ flier; first ever solo flight from NZ to England, in 1936), and how I’d wanted to write something about her for years. I went round the Air New Zealand 75 years exhibition, and looked at grainy film of early aeroplanes over Rangitoto. I picked up a book on chess culture from the library and totally failed to read it.
I bought Mary Lovell’s book. I did manage to stop before buying Circling the Sun, a recent fictional biography, but I do have it on hold at the library. I picked up the library copy of Hav (I’d lent out my own copy a while back) and made notes (and, if you are reading this but haven't read Hav - it is a delightful and disturbing travel book to a place that does not exist. Recommended. I sponsored a review of it by
rushthatspeaks here, if you need more persuading). I set Beryl’s piece in 1936 (the passport discrepancy in Lovell’s bio is a 1936/1938 confusion). In my head, it’s May/June when she’s in Hav. In September she would become the first pilot to fly the Atlantic east-to-west, and a few days after that Tom Campbell Black, her flight instructor and probably the only man she loved and respected, was killed when a plane collided with his while taxiing.
Writing the second part - the future Hav - took me a while, because I couldn’t decide how to do it. I was still very attracted to cyberpunk, but I wanted the ending to at least feel optimistic, and maybe I just read all the wrong books in the 80s/90s but optimism never seemed all that key. I had a lunar base for a bit, and then a Lagrange point colony, and then I decided that Gundam Wing was really too big for Yuletide even as a stealth crossover and I should move on. I actually wrote the foreword before the ending, which helped. The foreword is also written by a phonetic Jan Morris, because I had to put her in somewhere. I would have liked more time to work out a bit more of the context of the end character (not least who else is on this ship with them) but ended up focussing on looking back while going forward. The title at least was relatively easy, and I went for a quote as summary (roughly half my fics on AO3 have quotes for summaries, while the other half have very bland statements of fact. I should probably diversify).
I enjoyed writing this, and also really enjoyed discovering Beryl Markham, who I never would have encountered otherwise, and I'm very grateful to
ambyr for the opportunity. I am also extremely grateful to my betas, china_shop & isis, who were very helpful on very short notice.I received two gifts for Yuletide, a Tripods story (with Will! and Fritz!) that is surprisingly optimistic for this canon and rather sweet, and a treat for the Shakespear's Sister music video for Stay that attempts to explain at least some of the weirdness. I have read quite a few other fics but this has taken me three evenings so far and so this year it will have to be comments on the fics themselves rather than a recs post.
Found In Translation (1102 words) by Bobcatmoran
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Tripods - John Christopher
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Will (The Tripods), Fritz Eger, Original Female Character(s) of Color
Summary:
Thousands of miles from home, Will and Fritz find a small pocket of potential resistance against the Tripods.
Your Own World (566 words) by Merlin Missy
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Stay - Shakespears Sister (Music Video)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Characters
Additional Tags: Songfic, IN SPACE!
Summary:
Angela defeated the Angel of Death. Probably.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-08 02:43 pm (UTC)It probably is, but it still would have made me giggle a lot!
I have not read Circling the Sun, but it is definitely on my radar as something to pick up at some point.
Thank you again for writing for me!
no subject
Date: 2016-01-11 08:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-08 04:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 08:44 am (UTC)