tagging meme (from wyncatastrophe)

[anghraine]

wheeeee!

(1) What is the crackiest fic premise you've ever written straight?

Jane and Elizabeth were kidnapped by the Bennets - well, more by a completely deranged Mrs Bennet, and enabled by a self-deluding Mr Bennet. In fact they're nieces to Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Only! They are not biological sisters but cousins! Elizabeth is the daughter of Lady Catherine's younger brother. Jane is Darcy's sister! And she and Darcy vaguely half-recognize her! And Mr Bennet is dying so no iffy conflict there. But then the girls are separated after he dies! And Elizabeth was supposed to be raised by Lady Catherine, and Lady Catherine insists on taking charge of her once she turns 21!

And until then, she's stuck in Yorkshire with a bunch of relatives she's never met: her uncle the earl (distantly well-meaning), his elder son Lord Milton (witty but selfish), his younger son Colonel Fitzwilliam (kind, distracted), his daughter Lady Eleanor (haughty, abrasive), his mother (thoughtful, understanding, struggling with dementia), and his friendly, affectionate, ditzy niece Cecily (daughter of his other brother, her father's twin). Jane, meanwhile, goes to Pemberley and settles in much more easily with Darcy and Georgiana, and finds herself remembering more of her early childhood and trying very hard not to resent the Bennets for KIDNAPPING HER. (Jane <3)

Anyway, I treated the whole thing completely seriously. It's like, P&P: the gothic romance.

(2) What was the first SW fic you read?

I might have a read a few short ones, but the first thing to come to mind is fialleril 's Anabasis. I know I read it before I saw AOTC and ROTS, because even though I knew Dooku was a villain and a Sith Lord and all, I was still disappointed by how weaksauce he was compared to hers. I was rather disappointed by canon Padmé too. And Anakin. And Obi-Wan. And, umm, okay, everyone but Palpatine, and that's probably just because he didn't show up in the fic. Hell, even Sabé was ten times more awesome in the fic.

/Anabasis stan

(3) If you got your chance with the Sorting Hat, what house would you ask for?

Ravenclaw, of course!

(4) Do you have a favourite literary critic?

John Wiltshire. If it weren't for the psychoanalytic nonsense he'd be pretty much flawless.

(5) Who's one academic you would fangirl if you ever met him/her in person?

bell hooks.

(6) What is your favourite Skywalker family moment?

Anakin killing Palpatine and Luke running to him and taking his hand when he's collapsed on the floor. :D :( ;_; :) :) :( ...ahh, emoticons cannot express my feelings

(7) If you were going to write a work of historical fiction, which real people from history would appear in it, and why?

I have written historical fiction, but I have quite a lot of lingering discomfort around RPF and haven't put any real people in (and have no particular desire to, for those). If I could simply call historical fiction into being with real people, it would be Elizabeth I and El Cid. They would have an epic romance and their children would be Time Lords.

Comments

[rebeccation]

(7) RPF, historical or not: I hear you on this one. On the other hand, El Cid has been so fictionalized in the remaining accounts of his life that he feels more like fiction to me than reality. Even records of his actual life are either very vague (mentions of his name when he shares a name with two other members of the Spanish courts at the time, not to mention with countless other men who could have appeared in court documents), or most probably fictional (ahem, "his" carta de arras?). I kind of want to compare him to Davy Crockett and Paul Bunyan sometimes--each obviously for different reasons.

Er, I think I'm showing my hand. El Cid is my OTP, paired or alone. I think he would have been fascinated with Elizabeth I, and anything they did together would by definition be epic, though I'm not sure how they'd manage the 500-year gap between their lives and cultures without being Time Lords. That said, Elizabeth I usually hits my RPF squick too firmly for me to want to read something like this.

How do you deal with real people who appear peripherally? I tend to find that mentions of and brief encounters with real people are unavoidable if the scope of your story is wide enough, if you're playing with a period that is well-documented or well-known, or if you touch at all on themes of fame, notoriety, and power. At what point does historical accuracy get in the way for you as a writer? (If you know the name of the commanding officer of the column stationed for five months at ---town, do you use it in passing?)

[anghraine]

Yeah, I think a major difference there is when figures are so remote that they don't "feel" quite real, whereas someone like Elizabeth left footprints all over the historical record (hobnailed bootprints, possibly). I've always been pretty skeeved out by Elizabeth RPF, but then I watched some of her episodes of "The Tudors" and people wrote all sorts of fic for it, and it's like some weird no-man's-land between fic and RPF.

(Seriously, every time a fic mentions that her hair is red, unlike BOTH of her parents, I'm just like "wait, what?")

Re: peripheral real people -- hmm. A lot of authors include jokey references in their Austenfic, à la Georgette Heyer, but I'm not really comfortable with it. It's one thing to allude to the exist of the King, but thus far I've never, as far as I know, had cause for including real people within the story proper. The closest I've come was naming Colonel Fitzwilliam's older brother Lord Milton (the RL title of the heir to the Earls Fitzwilliam). But you're right that anything that went beyond that manor-house scope (and I think, for instance, that Darcy and Elizabeth's lives post-P&P would inevitably do so) would require real people. Even that might, since Pemberley is likely quite close to Chatsworth.

I would lean towards historical accuracy in this case. The real person would probably be kept to the distance -- either someone the characters refer to but don't meet, and if they do show up seen from a distance, and if they have to be seen at close proximity show them from other characters' perspectives. Getting inside a real person's head is still iffy for me.

[rebeccation]

Hmm, yes. Once we know enough of a person to know that they were more than just a name, that they had something of their own going on in their head, I have a hard time writing/reading them. I always feel like that's a question of co-opting their agency and free will. I think I feel differently about El Cid because what is canonically known about El Cid is already fiction--not just distant, but actually fiction... Historical accuracy in his case often means divergence from what is "known".

It's interesting--to me, at least--that contemporary fiction outside of RPF (whether contemporary to today or contemporary to the 1790s or the 1080s...) tends to manage to avoid writing real people in, but historical fiction often has difficulty with this.

(Re: Tudor red hair. Wait, what? I have no idea what the generally-accepted historical opinion of Anne's hair colour is, but Henry VIII's red hair is at least as famous as Elizabeth's... isn't it?)

[katharhino]

They would have an epic romance and their children would be Time Lords.

I would like to read this, please. :-D

[anghraine]

If I could wish fic into being, this would definitely show up on the list! I don't write RPF, though. :\

[katharhino]

I can't write it either although I do like historical fix with real characters