Fic: Right From The Source

This was my original yuletide assignment, but it was sort of intimidating to me because sixthlight is one of the more prolific and beloved authors in the fandom, and her work has given me such joy over the years I wanted to return some, so I felt a bit more internal pressure for it to be good than normal.  (I mean, I always want it to be good, but you know what I mean.  When you sort the RoL fic on AO3 by hits, sixthlight wrote 9 out of 20 on the first page.)  Anyway, my original idea was to write the vaguely alluded-to adventure of Mamusu and Elsie back in Freetown, but I suck at writing adventure.  So this is what happened instead, and I really enjoy it.

I started by re-reading all of the books closely for any details about Peter's family that I could find, and updating the Follypedia.  I did have some qualms about doing so, because if someone read my story and then went to Follypedia someone might make the connection between "the person who just updated Mamusu and Abigail's pages" and "the person who just wrote a story about them" and wonder if they were the same.  (Also, I find it extremely annoying that Mamusu's page is titled "Rose Grant" and not "Mamusu 'Rose' Grant."  I corrected the page header, but the link is still "Rose Grant" even though we are explicitly told that's the name White people use (and by implication probably not her real name).

Title: Right from the Source
Fandom: Rivers of London
Characters: Abigail Kamara, Mamusu "Rose" Grant, Elsie Winstanley, Alfred Kamara
Written For: sixthlight in Yuletide 2017
Word Count: 3993
Betaed By: Burning_Nightingale
Summary: Abigail thinks she knows what the world is like. Then Aunt Mamusu shows up with the news of Cousin Peter's new job.

On AO3.

Author's Note: I have only read the comics that have been published as graphic novels, so this fic takes no notice of any details about Abigail revealed in "Cry Fox."

( Abigail was supposed to be doing her homework )

Canon note: While canon-reviewing and researching Sierra Leone, I found that the details of Mamusu's backstory as given by canon don't really ... add up.  When Peter first meets Mama Thames, she identifies his mother as a Fula, which is a Sierra Leonean ethnic group.  Except the Fula are 99% Muslim, according to multiple sources, and Mamusu is Christian.  Also, when she's speaking to Peter in a non-English language, she uses Krio.  According to various sources, most Sierra Leoneans do speak Krio as a lingua franca, but the only people for whom it is their native language are the Krio people.  (Who are, by the way, pretty much all Christian.)   Then there's the fact that Mamusu seems to have grown up or spent significant time in Freetown, and went away to school, whereas her half-brother Alfred is identified as having been a poor subsistence farmer in a backwater village before becoming a refugee.  So my headcanon is that Mamusu's dad was a Fula guy who travelled a lot on business and so his wives didn't all live in the same town.  Mamusu's mum was a Krio woman who lived in Freetown and had some money of her own (maybe owned a business), while Alfred's mum was a Fula woman who lived in a small village and did subsistence farming, and that's where all the discrepancies come from.  So while Mamusu speaks Fula, her native tongue is Krio, and while Alfred speaks Krio, his native tongue is Fula, and so Peter knows Krio while Abigail knows Fula.  And then, after figuring all that out, I realized that there wasn't much place for it in the story.

Fic: Five Things Antiope Taught Diana (And One Thing She Never Got the Chance To)

This was a yuletide pinch-hit I picked up, one of the late ones.  I don't remember what the deadline was, but it was about a week?  I was surprised to get it, because I figured that a pinch-hit that included Wonder Woman would be one of the ones to get snatched up quickly, and I am NEVER that quick.  But I got it!  And then realized that the characters included Antiope, Diana, Steve, and Etta, and that Yuletide is AND matching.  From the prompts, I figured that indiefic meant "or" so you didn't have to write a fic with all of the characters in (given that Antiope DIES before Etta appears, which kind of constrains you to either a VERY particular timespan or an AU of some sort), and if I'd had more time I'd have emailed the mods to ask and clarify the situation, but then I came up with the idea for a five things fic that would work, and got down to banging out some words.

The first draft, which I uploaded to be sure of making the deadline, was very rough.  It was LOTS OF TELLING, and very little showing.  Was it a complete story that fulfilled the request, sure.  Was it the best I could do?  Not by a long shot.  I just set my head down and banged out words to get something complete, and that was about all you could say about it but my brain was fried by that many words in that period and I couldn't deal with editing it.  So I sent it off to the lovely hellabaloo, who confirmed that there was entirely too much telling and too little showing, and also gave some good suggestions about how to fix it, plus a couple of other items I hadn't noticed.  By that point, my brain had had a couple of days to rest and I was able to approach it freshly, and that plus the beta comments allowed me to whip it into the final shape.

Title: Five Things Antiope Taught Diana (and One Thing She Didn't Mean to)
Fandom: Wonder Woman (2017)
Characters: Diana Prince, Steve Trevor, Etta Candy, Antiope
Written For: indiefic  in Yuletide 2017
Betaed by: hellabaloo
Word count: 6599
Summary: what it says on the tin.

On AO3.


( Read more... )

Fic: A Touch of Hands

This was the only treat I wrote this year; I just could not get inspired to write ANYTHING without a deadline over me.  (Lots of prompts where I went, "oh, yeah, I hope somebody writes this", not many where I went "not only could I theoretically write this, I actually can write this now.")  But this one grabbed me.  The pairing was one I'd never even considered, but when I went back and watched the movie I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed just how much zing there is between Katherine and John Glenn.  (I think because I appreciated the development of her relationship with Jim Johnson so much?)  Anyway, I had a lot of fun writing it, and uploaded it the evening of the 24th.

Title: A Touch of Hands
Fandom: Hidden Figures (2016)
Characters: Katherine Johnson/John Glenn, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan
Author:beatrice_otter 
Written for: mardia  in yuletide  2017
Summary: Sometimes, all it takes is a handshake to change everything.

Author's Note: Where there are conflicts between history and the movie, I have gone with the movie timeline. Notably, in real life, Katherine married Jim Johnson in 1959, three years before the movie is set.

On AO3.

( Katherine wasn't a chatterbox like Mary or even as talkative as Dorothy could be, but she was especially quiet for the rest of the day. )