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Fannish Friday: your ultimate microfandom
I want some conversation! So let's talk about the stuff we love that nobody else loves. I feel certain I've asked about this before, but it can never hurt to ask about it again!
What is the one (or two or three) canon that you love so very much that you're ravenous for fic/meta/fanart/squee about it but you simply can't find it?
The three that come to mind for me are:
+ The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, which has such rich worldbuilding and side characters that I wish could read a thousand fics about virtually anything!
+ M.M. Kaye's The Shadow of the Moon, which has one of my ultimate OTPs, who I would like to read a thousand canon divergence fics in which Alex and Winter fall in love in a thousand different ways.
+ Shut Up! Flower Boy Band, a kdrama about a rock band that has a brush with fame, which has such rich characters and relationships that I would could (again) read a thousand fics about these characters bumping into each other! Jamie wrote me one OT4 fic back in the long-ago days after the show came out, but other than that, there's almost nothing.
What is the one (or two or three) canon that you love so very much that you're ravenous for fic/meta/fanart/squee about it but you simply can't find it?
The three that come to mind for me are:
+ The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, which has such rich worldbuilding and side characters that I wish could read a thousand fics about virtually anything!
+ M.M. Kaye's The Shadow of the Moon, which has one of my ultimate OTPs, who I would like to read a thousand canon divergence fics in which Alex and Winter fall in love in a thousand different ways.
+ Shut Up! Flower Boy Band, a kdrama about a rock band that has a brush with fame, which has such rich characters and relationships that I would could (again) read a thousand fics about these characters bumping into each other! Jamie wrote me one OT4 fic back in the long-ago days after the show came out, but other than that, there's almost nothing.
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It has one work on AO3. This work is in Spanish.
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Just butting in here to say that 2008 Survivors is a remake of the original 1970s BBC TV series, and technically for copyright reasons (the Terry Nation estate is deeply weird about copyright of his stuff), the 2008 was based on his tie-in novelisation instead, which was slightly different, but... it's still just the tie-in! (Which is to say that sadly I would very much doubt a 70s tie-in book by Terry Nation is that good, so I'd go in with low expecations & hope to be surprised, sorry).
The original TV series exists and is complete, though! You might be able to find it somewhere - it can be very 70s in the bad way sometimes (warnings for, like, pretty much everything I can think of, seriously) but I caught up with it years after watching s1 of 2008 on TV and found it completely gripping, so it's worth looking out for if you enjoyed the premise & would be up for an earlier take on it.
However, the 2008 storyline and characters were either very changed or completely new from the 70s ones, aside from Abby and sort of Greg (ish), so I think only the 2008's creators can really give you closure on that one, sadly. Or fic! <3
(If you do ever catch the 1975 and like it, I can scream happily about that one, lol, but I'm way too fuzzy on the 2008 at this date).
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When I was making through Jeremy Northam's CV, I found several things I loved and ran to AO3 as they were a bit more mainstream than my usual stuff - but there was no fic/1 weird fic etc/nothing for my ship. At least there was a bit for The Winslow Boy and even more now since Yuletide!
I keep falling in love with radio plays and series, these days and that's always deeply miniscule as fandoms go - but I did get a Craddock & Co fic for Yuletide, so now it has 1! (It's a 3 x 30 mins sweet and fun Victorian detective series about an Uncle and niece, tiny but perfectly formed, yet also obv crying out for more because there is so little of such a good thing).
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I could write this fic myself, but I think I'm the only one who wants it, so it's hard to be motivated. But maybe someone else out there is thinking the same thing! My microfandom soulmate!
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That sounds like a bop! And I would not be surprised at all if there was someone else out there looking for it! (Also now if I ever have the chance to see it, I will, so that I can commiserate!)
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Perhaps the most frustrating reading experience of all! If you have any desire to rant about the things that frustrated you most, I would definitely listen!
I have several times written fic that I thought had only me for an audience, and I always found at least one reader, if that's worth knowing!
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If you have any desire to rant about the things that frustrated you most, I would definitely listen!
:DDD Thank youuuuu you might regret that because I just wrote OVER 2000 WORDS. So I totally understand if you don't actually read it, but thank you just for the offer, because it helped me to just to articulate my frustrations!:
Plot: THIS BOOK. Okay, full spoilers. This is a gender-swapped B&tB retelling that takes place in France in I believe the 1700s/1800s (present story in 1800s but Arabella was cursed a century ago). She’s the only child and heir to a duke, and her parents are forcing her to marry an arrogant, cruel prince. Arabella dreams of being an architect and wants nothing to do with balls, princes, etc. Her mother is awful to her and says, among other things, that “a girl who cannot control her emotions is no better than a beast.” More and more, Arabella tamps down her emotions, trying to be the pretty, docile daughter her parents want her to be. Then she loses control (understandably!!) when the prince starts hitting a stableboy and her horse. She tries to stop him, and the horse ends up rearing, and the prince falls off and dies. Arabella blames herself and Succumbs To Despair, and boom, a demon (that looks like a gothic lady-in-waiting) appears. Lady Espidra (an anagram of "despair") curses her to become a feral beast and starts turning everyone else, starting with her parents, into frozen clockwork figures. Then boom, Death appears (who’s been masquerading as a clockmaker making a giant clock for her father). He says that Despair has overstepped and he alters the curse so that Arabella is only a beast from midnight to dawn, and he saves the rest of the not-yet-frozen servants from being turned into clockwork figures. He says Arabella has a century to learn to love, cross a bridge, and love what she has shunned, and if she does, the curse will be broken. If not, everyone dies.
100 years later, with only days left in the curse, Beau (boy Belle) gets inadvertently trapped at the castle when the ancient drawbridge collapses. There’s some initial bickering, and she tries to kill him a few times as the beast (when he doesn’t know it’s she). But then they have some ~moments, and she revisits her love of architecture and starts helping him build a rickety bridge so he can escape. Eventually he discovers she’s the beast, and after some initial fear, he’s like, “omg you’re amazing” and quotes Shakespeare at her and then bam, insta-love. They think the curse is breaking because they're in love now and all they need to do is re-build the bridge, because Death had mentioned crossing bridges.
Of note, Lady Espidra has been there the whole 100 years trying to keep Arabella in despair, and the rest of her “bad” emotions have been there too as other ladies-in-waiting, all preying on her and making her feel terrible about herself (Shame, Guilt, Sorrow, Rage, Fear, etc.). There are two angelic children running around, Hope and Faith, whom Arabella has turned her back on, and they’re trying to find their third sister, Love.
Arabella and Beau build the bridge, but oh no, she can’t cross it because of a magical barrier, meaning the curse hasn’t been broken after all! After some contrivances to get us to the last-petal-falls type of scene, Arabella is dying. Beau realizes that the person she has to love is herself; she wasn’t meant to fall in love with just any old man; she was supposed to learn to love herself and embrace all her dark emotions, rather than try to suppress them. But Arabella’s basically unconscious when he’s shouting this at her. Cut to, she’s dying and sees a vision of Death, who basically tells her the same thing. Then she wakes up and with minutes left, she embraces all her emotions/ladies-in-waiting, which leads to them disappearing. Except she doesn't embrace Despair, because Death says that's the one emotion you need to guard again, and Espidra/Despair crumbles to dust and dies (??) as she finally breaks the curse. The clockwork figures wake up, and her mother’s like, “can you ever forgive me?” and Arabella’s like, “I already have,” and then a year later, she and Beau are married and she’s happily being an architect and improving the duchy.
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1) The premise as executed feels SO victim-blamey. At the end, Death literally tells Arabella that she cursed herself because she succumbed to despair. Which is not a great message IMO. The despair she feels isn’t exactly the same as clinical depression, but they’re close enough that it feels uncomfortable.
2) And if not succumb to despair, what exactly was she supposed to do as a GIRL IN THE 1700s?? It’s not like 18-year-old girls had a lot of power back then!! She herself says that she should have pawned her jewels and run away with her books to be an architect, but that doesn’t seem like a super viable solution! And even if it were, that still takes us back to victim-blaming.
3) The world-building makes no sense. I knew that might be the case going into it because I’ve read one of the author’s other fairy tale retellings before and that just seems to be her thing, but it was very egregious here. There’s no explanation for where Espidra/Despair comes from. She’s called a demon, but that’s all we know about her. We don’t know where Hope, Faith, and Love come from. They don’t disappear at the end when all her negative emotions do. We don’t know why Death is just hanging around the duchy when Espidra/Despair arrives. There’s no explanation for any of it!!
4) Death says that Arabella cursed herself, but Espidra actually curses her. It’s contradictory. You could argue that Arabella metaphorically cursed herself by succumbing to despair and thus unintentionally summoning the demon, but some actual explicit world-building would be nice! And while I could buy Arabella inadvertently cursing herself to become a beast because she hates herself so much, she never would’ve turned everyone else into clockwork figures. It makes no sense! And is victim-blamey!
5) For the first 2/3 of the book, beast Arabella acts like a psychotic monster trying to kill Hope, Faith, and Beau. Then Shakespeare quotes happen, and it turns out that surprise, she can talk while she’s a beast and actually does have her faculties some of the time! And it’s a lovely, great scene between the two of them! But how about some consistency?! Some (any) explanation as to what makes her sentient some of the time and a senseless monster the rest? Also, there’s at least one scene that heavily implies she’ll miss becoming the beast because of the freedom it gives her to run, be powerful, be unconfined, etc. But then toward the end, she’s like, “[I’m afraid] of the beast. It feels like she's coming. Like I'll never escape her. Like she'll tear me apart.” THE INCONSISTENCY.
6) The insta-love. They fall in love in like a week? Maybe a few weeks but only like two scenes? It’s ridiculous, especially for a B&tB retelling.
7) The breaking of the curse at the end omg:
a) This girl has been trapped for a CENTURY in this castle, and then at the last minute, Beau and Death are like, “love yourself,” and voila, she accepts her “bad” emotions” and breaks the curse. This book seems to be marketed as a feminist retelling (e.g., with the tag line, “you can’t silence a girl who needs to roar”), but it doesn’t feel very feminist for the boy to be the one to tell her to love herself.
b) Death just TELLS her to love herself?? He couldn’t have done that A HUNDRED YEARS AGO??
It would’ve been such a more satisfying story/message if Arabella had learned to love herself while rediscovering her love of architecture. She could have inadvertently embraced one of her “bad” emotions (ladies-in-waiting) earlier in the story and then eventually realized she needed to make peace with all of them to break the curse. But nooo, we have this deus ex machina ending where Death just TELLS her what to do.
8) Her mother is SO terrible, but at the end, she’s like, “I thought I was doing what was best for you, can you ever forgive me,” and Arabella says she already has. And I like a happy ending, but it just feels so OOC and unearned!
9) The book is YA, and I think it works fine for YA, but I also think it could’ve been a much darker (probably better) adult retelling. The curse itself is genuinely horrifying (losing your mind every night and becoming a beast; people trapped as clockwork figures, possibly while still sentient; one of the servants is a mother whose TODDLER is a clockwork figure for ONE HUNDRED YEARS), and it feels like the book kept starting to lean into the horror aspect and then pulling back, maybe because it was YA. Also, it feels like Beau super liked beast Arabella, and that certainly could’ve been explored more in adult lol.
8)a: Another thing about it being YA is that she is, in fact, technically a child (even if 18 was really an adult for the time), and that’s emphasized by the fact that all the adult figures keep calling her “my child” (her mother, Espidra, and Death), and it’s just really gross that a CHILD was CURSED BECAUSE HER PARENTS BULLIED HER INTO SUPPRESSING HER EMOTIONS.
As I write this, I’m realizing that some of these storytelling problems maybe could’ve been solved if the book were published as adult fantasy and she could’ve been an adult with actual agency in the beginning…
10) Going back to the world-building, Espidra is there the full hundred years, and in the present-day, Arabella relies on her and looks to her for reassurance and guidance, even though she’s miserable about it. We the readers really deserved an explanation for that because ESPIDRA’S THE ONE WHO CURSED HER AND EVERYONE ELSE. You'd think that at least one of the servants would’ve tried to kill her, in the hopes that would break the curse, and I’d assume there’d be a reason it couldn’t work, like demons are unkillable or something, but do we ever get such an explanation? Nope. It’s frustrating to see Arabella turn to her abuser for comfort, and while I know that absolutely happens in real life, it feels very jarring in this book where we don’t get any insight into how that relationship evolved. You could extrapolate that Arabella is used to craving approval from people who abuse her because her parents were so awful, but I, the reader, should not have to fill in those holes (or at least not so many holes!!).
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[Beau quotes romantic Shakespeare to beast Arabella]
“The ferociousness on Arabella’s face softened to surprise. Her eyes widened, and Beau saw an aching vulnerability in them. She quickly looked away, unused to seeing wonder on a human being’s face, he guessed. Unused to seeing anything but fear.”
And then a few pages later when she’s human again:
“She thought of the lines from the sonnet he’s spoken to her, and how they made her feel, for the first time in a hundred years, that she was something more than a monster.”
GAH. If you want self-loathing characters with h/c, this book is certainly going to scratch that itch. There are so many compelling things about it! But the execution leave so much to be desired!
The fic I’ve started brainstorming would take place 10 years in the future and would focus on a) exploring her beast side (with, I must confess, some light, off-screen bestiality because what's the point of B&tB fanfic otherwise lol) and b) her relationship with her mother. Because at this point that’s the real love story I want more of that the book certainly didn’t satisfy: Arabella and the mother who supposedly always loved her and just really, really, really sucked at showing it. It says something about Beau and the insta-love nature of the romance that my fic bunnies are not about him and Arabella lol. In my won’t-be-written fic, she’s been an architect for 10 years and now is trying to have a child/heir but keeps miscarrying and of course blames herself and the curse for not being able to carry a pregnancy to term. A trickster appears, Desperation, who offers to ensure a healthy pregnancy if she spends a month as the beast. And Arabella agrees and gets to explore that side of herself again, but without all the repressed rage that made her psychotic, and her mother does everything she can to take care of her along the way.
Whew I can’t believe I just wrote 2200 words. Even if you never read this, thank you for the offer, because this was CATHARTIC.
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It's both the sanding-off and the adding-in of edges that don't really look like that. Black Swan is not a documentary!
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It's both the sanding-off and the adding-in of edges that don't really look like that. Black Swan is not a documentary!
I would almost prefer the adding-in of edges to turning a (let's face it) ridiculously abusive industry into a cotton candy world, but I am sure if I was actually confronted with added-in edges, I would change my mind!
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