Yuletide gifts!

[edenfalling]

A couple days late, but let me point you toward my four (!!!) lovely and wonderful Yuletide gifts! You should go read them and shower love upon the writers!

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First, three beautifully clear, understated, and painful stories about Rulag and Palat (Shevek's parents) from The Dispossessed, which I am going to chew over for a long time and which will vastly enrich my experience of the book on my next reread:

Letters From Abbenay (1601 words)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Rulag/Palat
Characters: Rulag, Palat

Summary: "She only knows denial. How to deny the possibility of coming home." - The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin

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Serving Truth A Little At A Time (1480 words)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Rulag/Palat
Characters: Rulag, Palat

Summary: "She [Rulag] had the engineer's clarity and pragmatism of mind as well as the mechanist's hate of complexity and irregularity." - The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin

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The Joys of Solidarity (190 words)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Rulag, Palat

Summary: Denial and learning it.

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Second, somebody finally wrote me a Lions of Al-Rassan fic, and it is the bittersweet foursome canon-divergence AU of my heart:

Moon, Sun, Stars over Sorenica (5641 words)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Jehane bet Ishak/Ammar ibn Khairan, Miranda Belmonte/Rodrigo Belmonte, others
Characters: Jehane bet Ishak
Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat, Fix-It of Sorts, Canon Divergence, Turn-left canon-based AU, Polyamory, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical mentions of war, Canon-typical religiosity, Canon-typical race and religious issues, Canon-typical medical procedures, Unconventional marriages, Disability

Summary: They're celebrating Jehane bet Ishak's birth day when they hear the news about Al-Rassan the Beloved.

Comments

[transposable_element]

Wow, three Rulag/Palat stories. And they're pretty inter-compatible! Did you mention the characters in your "dear author" letter or prompt? Or was this synchronicity?

[edenfalling]

I did mention Rulag a couple times:

If you want plot hooks, I am fascinated by the way marriage (or the lack thereof) plays out in Anarresti society, and what that means for Shevek and Takver. Relatedly, family also seems to be a slippery concept and I'm sure that could lead to an interesting story centered around Sadik and her parents (or grandmother, perhaps?)

from my prompt itself, and then

I like how Shevek's relationship with Sadik is in some ways a direct repudiation of his non-relationship with his own mother, Rulag, while in other ways Shevek and Rulag are very similar -- both direct, abrupt, and work-driven.

from my letter. But I strongly suspect all three fics are by the same writer, which would mean the thematic unity is less coincidental than it first appears. *wry*

[transposable_element]

I strongly suspect all three fics are by the same writer, which would mean the thematic unity is less coincidental than it first appears.

Oh. Yeah, that makes sense. I think it didn't occur to me because if it were me I would probably make it into a single, multi-chapter work.

[edenfalling]

I often try to do that, but sometimes ideas don't mesh as smoothly as they ought to, or there are structural reasons to keep one incident separate from a chain of other incidents, or maybe the stories are making related but not quite the same thematic points that are stronger without the others to muddy the issue -- tiny jewels rather than a tapestry. *shrug* It's all good!