Fic: Right From The Source
Jan. 12th, 2018 12:51 pmThis was my original ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
yuletide assignment, but it was sort of intimidating to me because ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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.
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.
