Anghraine

I'm taking a brief break from my dissertation to ... uh, amuse myself by figuring out my readers' ranking of my genderbending fics on AO3.

Rules I'm applying: 1) I'm only including fic verses that are collectively at least 2000 words long because, well, I do have to go back to the diss, 2) verses comprised of multiple fics are ranked according to either the popularity of the series as a whole or the most popular individual fic (depending on which is higher; not combining them because there's a lot of overlap), 3) I'm considering both bookmarks and kudos in my judgment—we'll see if it makes a difference, and 4) I'm ignoring everything with less than 30 kudos and 5 bookmarks.

1. First Impressions | 215 bookmarks | 876 kudos | genderbent characters: Elizabeth Bennet (-> Henry Bennet) and Fitzwilliam Darcy (-> Catherine Darcy)

This is a genderswapped retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in its original period (not really a true "what if"). All stats are specifically for the original (completed) 36k fic. It individually beats out every possible stat for every other fic in the series as well as the series as a whole. (Note: The overall series is 44k words long.)

2. Lucy Skywalker series | 163 bookmarks | 406 kudos (The Jedi and the Sith Lord) | genderbent characters: Luke Skywalker (-> Lucy Skywalker)

This is a genderbent AU that mostly, but not completely, sticks to the rails of canon until the end of the ESB timeline, at which point it swerves into the "real" AU. The Jedi and the Sith Lord is the sequel to The Imperial Menace/the ESB plot, and the third fic in the main series, focusing on the consequences of Vader capturing Lucy. It's technically completed at 70k, but only in the sense that it explores what happens to/with Lucy and Vader until the nature of her captivity fundamentally changes, and everything after that will be a separate fic but hasn't been written yet. Although none of the individual fics have as many bookmarks as the series as a whole, my #2, #3, and #4 most bookmarked genderbent fics are all for the Lucyverse. (Note: the overall series is 129k words long.)

3. Love, Pride & Delicacy | 25 bookmarks | 163 kudos | genderbent characters: Fitzwilliam Darcy (-> Catherine Darcy, for convenience)

This is an actual Elizabeth/f!Darcy "what if" femslash AU rather than a retelling, though a slow one—it's still early in the overall story at 25k. It's also placed in the original P&P setting. There is no wider series.

4. The Lady of Gondor | 25 bookmarks | 119 kudos (we also are daughters of the great) | genderbent characters: Faramir (-> Fíriel)

This is a deeply self-indulgent Aragorn/f!Faramir/Éowyn AU, though it's not only a WIP but split into different vaguely related fics (some of which are also WIPs!) about some aspect of the verse in relation to Fíriel. I think the norms of Gondor and Middle-earth make the gender change particularly significant (in some ways more than any other verse), so actual plot and relationship changes tend to be the focus. The kudos are for the specific linked fic, which is a WIP at nearly 5k and the most Éowyn-centric of them. (Note: the overall series is about 9.5k words long.)

5. The Edge of Darkness | 17 bookmarks | 106 kudos | genderbent characters: Tarrlok (-> Taraka)

This is a genderbent f!Tarrlok AU, though told entirely from Noatak/Amon's perspective, and to some extent more about the impact on him than on Taraka herself (though she's extremely important to the fic). Even more than that, the linked fic is focused on the effect of the change on their family dynamics as children, until teenage Noatak leaves her behind per canon. The fic can look like a retelling à la First Impressions, since the basic plot points don't change, but the larger series is on course to swerve into full "what if" territory as well. However, like First Impressions, these stats are all for the completed opening fic (18k) and not the longer WIP series (32k), which is temporarily paused at the point where 37-year-old Taraka openly identifies Amon as Noatak. CW: child abuse.

6. Blood and Fire | 16 bookmarks | 67 kudos | genderbent characters: Tarrlok (-> Taraka) and Noatak (-> Nataka)

This is a dark(er) AU of The Edge of Darkness in which Noatak/Amon is also genderbent, and the bloodbending siblings never separated. Taraka fled home with Nataka back in the day, they only grew closer (...too close), and although Taraka still ended up on the Republic City council, her true loyalty is to Amon. She promptly turns Korra over when Amon shows up, which is where the fic begins; it's told entirely through Korra's attempts to navigate her circumstances as a prisoner of the Equalists. CW: incest, complicated F/F/F dubcon??? emotional bonding kink with occasional violence yet little overt romance and no sex. I am what I am. The stats are for the completed (though deliberately ambiguous) main fic, which is 10k, and not the side fics or the series as a whole (13k).

7. The Queer Rogue One AU | 12 bookmarks | 57 kudos (the words we've both fallen under) | genderbent characters: Cassian Andor (-> Cassia Andor)

This is, on one level, a relatively straightforward genderbent!Cassian AU that is more or less complete at 13k. The underlying concepts are: a) what if my male fave was a hot lesbian and my ship was f/f and b) what if we headcanon every single member of the main team as queer in some capacity :D and c) the SW universe is so blatantly patriarchal in the films that it's a particularly interesting setting for exploring the effects of the gender change on someone like Cassia, a female revolutionary and spy :D :D. It's a little challenging to properly evaluate where it sits wrt stats because I revised the scattered, vaguely connected scraps of the universe into a single fic through both sentence-level revisions and significant additions, but that revision is only on Tumblr (where the link currently goes to, sorry) and my GoogleDrive, not AO3. It's not even a series in my heart! But it is on AO3. Evaluate as you will, but when I finally get around to converting the AO3 version to the correct format this may or may not change. For now this is where it goes by AO3 stats.

8. Daughters of Númenor series | 5 bookmarks | 33 kudos (the voices of the sea) | genderbent characters: all Númenórean throwbacks in LOTR, but specifically Aragorn (-> Aranor), Faramir (-> Míriel), Denethor (-> Andreth), and Imrahil (-> Imraphel)

As might be guessed, this is an AU where every Númenórean throwback mentioned in LOTR is genderbent (in the backstory, this also includes Ivriniel and Finduilas of Dol Amroth, who become Túrin, Prince of Dol Amroth, and Gwindor of Dol Amroth). It's Aranor/Míriel and definitely focused on them despite the broader change (where Arwen is a non-factor for the OT3 in The Lady of Gondor because she went to Valinor with Celebrían, she actually is present in Middle-earth in this series, though unfortunately very straight). While Fíriel in The Lady of Gondor was never expected to be a warrior and gets on reasonably well with Denethor, this AU is more about the broader effects—so even though we rarely see f!Denethor/Andreth, it's significant that she was a trailblazer as a female warrior, loremaster, and ultimately the first female ruler of Gondor, inadvertently laying a foundation that Aranor could build on later (which would have horrified Andreth herself!). The specific fic with the most kudos in the series, linked above, is a nearly 2k fic about the effect of Faramir's canonical visions on Míriel. (Note: the overall series is currently 3k words long.)

I unwisely spent a bit of time writing important content for the Merry+f!Faramir+Éowyn fic:

“It grows wild in great abundance, however, and has a pleasant smell.” 

“It does indeed,” Merry said emphatically, his pride soothed. “I can see why it would grow better here”—it took some doing to make it prosper in the Shire and around Bree—“but I wonder how it came to be here in the first place.”

“We brought it from our homeland, I believe,” said Fíriel. “Númenor, or Westernesse: the island where my people lived before it sank into the sea. Some of our forebears carried away as many of its trees and herbs and flowers as they could in its last days, and Isildur himself planted a great many of them here in Gondor. Some call galenas ‘westmansweed’ because it was one of them.”

Merry’s eyes rounded. He did not imagine that he knew as much about Westernesse as most, but he had certainly listened closely enough to understand that it had been a remarkable sort of place, and spawned the entire peoples that Aragorn and Boromir came from, and that this was all a very long time ago.

“Really?” he blurted out. “I had no idea it went back that far. Fancy, pipe-weed on Westernesse!”

I posted the second chapter of we also are daughters of the great and tagged it:

#lmao it took five years to write these 3000 words #i was going to make footnotes for all the canon references but i'm too lazy rn #i'll probably go back and edit that in later though

Later that day, I added (twenty-six) footnotes and said:

#let no one say that i don't take my fic deadly seriously

Several people responded to this:

lotesse said:

Merry is the best tho *encourages*

velvet-jellyfish said:

Ooh exciting!

heckofabecca said:

I LOVE MERRY

I replied:

Here’s a bit of him!

“What is she like?” Merry asked.

Pippin tilted his head, thinking about it. In fact, he thought about it for so long that Merry might have poked him, if not for the chain mail.

“A bit Elvish,” he said at last. “She belongs to those heights, right enough—but isn’t so far-off, if you understand me. It’s hard to explain. You can talk to her, and at the same time, she … you can’t help feeling that you would do anything for her.”

He flushed a little as he spoke. Merry hid a smile. 

“Did you ask for a strand of her hair?” he said.

I reblogged this graphic for Fíriel (f!Faramir), which I originally posted on 25 October 2015:


2020 addition:

I made this five years ago and I still have a) a ton of feelings about this verse and b) yet to write most of it.

Tagged: #it's definitely become a ot3 in my head though #i was re-reading some of my scraps and drafts and just. consumed with emotions #one scrap is just entirely about fíriel and denethor's relationship #i wanna write more about fíriel and éowyn's #there's 'a hard matter' with fíriel and aragorn figuring out What Now #there's théoden surviving as an outcome of denethor stuff and returning in honor and glory to rohan with éomer and éowyn at his side #there's pippin's love for faramir becoming a sort of scaled-down version of gimli and galadriel with fíriel #gandalf telling young fíriel his true maia name #AND WHAT ABOUT ELROND #esp if i go with my headcanon that the stewards' 'royal origin' is tindómiel...? #there's just #so much #...fíriel's nose is a bit different in my head but otherwise the second picture is especially super close to how i picture her #anyway

I'm unsurprised but still pretty touched that Catherine Darcy crushed all opposition in my which-genderbent-character-of-mine-should-I-write Tumblr poll and that every single one got at least some votes. I suspected that nobody would vote for Taraka, say, but someone must have. And Lucy (f!Luke Skywalker) took second while Fíriel (f!Faramir) actually got into third, which also makes me happy.

Friday is my free day, so!

I'll probably post some May posts separately, since I swerved pretty hard back into LOTR fandom last month, but the first chunk of run-of-the-mill ones:

( Read more... )

I've been enjoying seeing the stuff out of Celebration on my dash (except the quasi-canonization of Thrawn, BOO HISS—but as long as they keep him out of the films, I'm good). Jyn Erso's grim-determined-insouciant smile is like ... my entire sexuality in a second, haha.

I'm also glad about the Ahsoka stuff for TCW/Rebels people! And Mark Hamill has been endlessly charming.

It's bittersweet for me, personally, because my sister is a massive Star Wars fan. It's the first remotely complex story I was able to introduce to her—she has some pretty severe developmental and mental disabilities, and we were told she'd never be able to read or follow the plot of a movie or anything. And she glommed onto it like nothing else, and asked about the Han and Jabba scene in ANH (all I have is the Special Edition)—she thought something about it didn't fit. She loves the prequels; Anakin/Vader is her favourite, though she also loves Padmé, Luke, and Leia. And she adored TFA, and came out of the theatre struggling between loving Kylo and loving Rey. 

(She's in good company, obviously, though I kept her the hell away from the fandom for obvious reasons.)

Anyway, SW has been a bonding thing between the two of us, and I'm the one who tells her the info that gets dropped and shows her the trailers and whatnot. So seeing it all without her around is like ... still very cool, but bittersweet, particularly as she's told us she's unhappy and doesn't like eating junk food all the time (she's pre-diabetic), so we're all worried anyway.

I'm trying to keep the gloominess off Tumblr, though it's probably pretty clear that I'm on edge. So I'm trying to cheer myself up with P&P—I posted some P&P fic at AO3 that I'd never got around to crossposting, including a WIP (shhhh), and I'll probably see if I can scramble the Fíriel scraps into something. It's probably the most happy lalalala of my genderswaps; the Lucy stuff is very linear, Philadelphia demands a certain ... rigour, but the Fíriel stuff is just a scrap with Éowyn here, a ramble there, an aesthetic fancast, occasional present, whatever (someone even asked for Fíriel/Arwen once and it's still rattling around my gdrive!). So that's sort of my happy place and I might do that. We'll see!