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.)

My best friend and I were talking about the ways that Legend of Korra does and doesn't work for us, and particularly about the way it feels very erratic on a craft level where ATLA is pretty consistently good to great, yet ultimately LOK engages us both more. Inevitably, we wound around to a point of firm agreement: excepting Unalaq and Vaatu in B2, we consider the main villains of LOK a lot more personally and thematically interesting than Ozai and this has a weird effect on LOK's politics.

I drafted a far longer post about this [ETA: lmao], but anyway: there are many obviously progressive elements to ATLA. Ozai as a villain is fundamentally aligned with things antithetical to progressive ideals. He is a hereditary autocrat carrying on a multi-generational campaign of imperialism that historically (in the show) has been justified by familiar bigoted, reactionary rationales about civilizing and bringing prosperity to other cultures. He's overwhelmingly authoritarian in every aspect of life—as a ruler, as a conqueror, as a father, as a husband. He's less a person than an embodiment of domination, imperialism, autocracy. And the ultimate solution that ATLA provides for the problem of Ozai is 1) a greater power defeating him in combat and 2) replacing him with a good autocrat.

That's not a charitable characterization of a beautifully executed and emotionally satisfying conclusion. And I think the underlying rationale for that resolution owes more to ATLA's mythic and fantastic structure than to any serious commitment to the "what we really need is a good dictator" form of political discourse that has unfortunately become increasingly common. But solving the problem of imperialism with a Chosen One and a kinder and softer absolute ruler over the imperialists is not ... exactly a radical solution, let's say. It's not that different from, say, Lord of the Rings.

It works for ATLA's story! I just don't feel that this resolution is particularly daring or transgressive in the way that it is sometimes represented as being. Other aspects of ATLA are much more daring and revolutionary than this, but the core politics just don't feel that way to me.

LOK, by contrast, has a lot of centrist-at-best baggage. It would take awhile to detail all of this (the fantasy copaganda is probably the most obvious), but it's especially apparent with the villains. LOK essentially has a revolving door of major villains who are each very different in personality, goals, motives, politics, and symbolic alignments, but thematically unified by one very familiar concept that is obvious even before it's explicitly spelled out in B4.

I've talked about this before in relation to LOK and had plenty of criticism of it (here and here), but the basic idea is this: What if the villain actually has the right idea, but just goes too far?

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I reblogged this gifset of Tarrlok on the boat, about to commit murder-suicide + Tarrlok and Noatak playing together as children + Noatak's silent tear as he passively acquiesces.

Tagged: #i feel like suffering #:(((( #tiny noatak's concerned face always gets me ;_;

sqbr responded to this post:

I don’t remember Zaheer’s plot very well, but wouldn’t the middling-evil version of Amon just be a Very Flawed Activist Leader?

Not the sort who suddenly turns into a supervillain just…while he does achieve SOME good things, he refuses to acknowledge any marginalisations other than his pet Issue exist, is kind of cult-leader-ish, accuses any non-bender who disagrees with him of being Part of the System, any groups with slightly different approaches of being Evil and Wrong etc.

You could have him act like the Rachel Dolezai’s of this world, who decide they can run a civil rights organisation best despite being a member of the relevantly privileged class, and thus are 100% justified in painting their face to mimic an made-up angsty marginalised backstory. (Not that being a non-bender is the same as being black, but she’s the best known example I can think of) Or you could have him be open about being a non-bender from the start, and the fact he talks over and silences actual non-benders who disagree with is him one of his obvious issues during the season.

And then at the end you’ve got all these other actual-non-bender activists who over the show have been shown to have idealogical and practical conflicts with Amon, and so are in a position to continue the work less terribly once he’s gone. Like a less simplisticly Good Marginalised Folk Support The Status Quo version of Magneto vs Professor X in Xmen. Have one of them be a major secondary character working with Korra, so it’s less benders vs civil rights group and more benders-and-non-benders vs this ONE civil rights group.

I replied:

Hmm, that makes sense! I was thinking of middling Amon as a little darker—still carrying off the Amon persona to some extent, and trying to figure out how he could manage that without going full villain. But yeah, I think “he refuses to acknowledge any marginalisations other than his pet Issue exist, is kind of cult-leader-ish, accuses any non-bender who disagrees with him of being Part of the System, any groups with slightly different approaches of being Evil and Wrong etc” have got to be pretty essential to how he operates.

An anon asked:

Do you think the fourth season of lok might have flowed better if kuvira were introduced way earlier, like in season 1 or 2?

I replied:

Yes. I mean, Nickelodeon’s shenanigans and the development of the arcs and such makes it pretty impossible for that to happen, but if it were possible, I think it would work better, because Kuvira serves two different functions that are fairly difficult to reconcile.

Her primary function is as a villainous version of Korra through whom Korra’s issues can be processed—hence Korra hallucinating Kuvira as herself, for instance. This IMO is the main reason why taking compassion on Kuvira is so important as the culmination of Korra’s character arc; Kuvira represents Korra at both her worst and her most vulnerable, so Korra taking compassion on her is intrinsically tied to taking compassion on herself. This is why Kuvira is Final Boss, much more than because of the threat that Kuvira poses.

At the same time … well, someone on FFA said Kuvira got beaten by the villain stick to make the story work, and I do kind of agree. Sometimes what we get in Kuvira is “how would a dark Korra become more extreme?” and sometimes it’s “how would a military dictator become more extreme?” So you get really weird things like the camps and the giant mecha laser thing that don’t fit with the dark!Korra theme, or seem to follow from the basic characterization, but rather from the function Kuvira is fulfilling as an ideological representative who goes Too Far.

Like—if you’re going to try and weld “dark Korra” and “military dictator” together, IMO it would help to build up to it! There’s a lot we just don’t know about Kuvira or only get the merest scraps of (contrast Amon, who gets a highlight reel of his entire childhood that explains a lot). If there was more time and space given to her descent into villainy that actually tied in her parallels with Korra, I think the different elements would feel less abrupt and disconnected.

Of course, it would require a lot more continuity between the seasons than really exists. But I do think it’s a good idea, yes.

I really like LOK and there’s a lot that’s great about B3, but every time I remember people telling Korra that she’s never!! faced enemies like the Red Lotus!!!, it’s just like…

Korra: *remembers fighting a mega-powerful bloodbender projecting his trauma onto the world in general and her specifically*

Korra: *remembers fighting the cosmic spirit of darkness and chaos*

Korra: really

tags: #if noatak hadn't acquiesced in murder-suicide (for kids!) he could and would have crushed zaheer like a bug #and vaatu ... i mean. lol

Voice acting is so surreal. I’m playing GW2 and at the phase where I deeply resent one of the main characters … but his VA voiced one of my favourite characters from Avatar and I’m just aghhhhh.

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An anon asked:

Do you think part of the reason why Tarrlok antagonized Tenzin was envy because Tenzin still had his brother Bumi, while Noatak was (thought to be) dead?

I replied:

Hmm. On the one hand, I don’t imagine that Tarrlok typically went around antagonizing people for having living brothers (for other reasons! just probably not that), and I do think the personality/morality clash is probably sufficient to explain their general animosity.

BUT it’s also really hard for me to imagine that Tenzin’s family background wasn’t a factor for Tarrlok, given how tightly Yakone ties his abuse of Noatak and Tarrlok to Aang. I mean, he says outright that punishing Aang is the purpose to their existence, and he prepares them for doing it by making them torture animals for years until they snap, which results in the apparent death of Tarrlok’s teenage older brother. That is a LOT.

And, like … Aang’s children all live to adulthood (and are still alive!). Aang’s children had normal childhoods and are reasonably close. And Aang’s son is right there on the council lecturing people. I definitely imagine that Tarrlok’s needling of Tenzin is a tiny, tiny outlet for the nuclear rage he actually feels.

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I had another burst of inspiration (aka I was taking breaks between grading exams), so here’s the next chapter: