Dear Yuletide Writer!
Dec. 25th, 2010 12:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingDear Yuletide Writer,
[[ETA: FYI, I will be visiting my sister in Spain over Christmas, and I don't know if I will have internet access when the archive opens. I will be back in the USA on the 29th, and I will definitely comment as soon as I can read your story!]]
I'm pretty easy to please -- so long as you write a grammatically correct story that isn't simply a long sex scene, I'll be thrilled just to get a fic in one of the fandoms I asked for. *grin* But I realize that's not terribly helpful, so here's the (very!) long version.
---------------
General Information:
1. I will read anything when it comes to pairings -- het, slash, femslash, threesomes, poly, whatever, so long as you put in a bit of character development so the relationships don't seem to come out of nowhere -- but I prefer gen, and I tend to skim sex scenes because the non-sex parts of the story are almost always more interesting to me.
2. I read all kinds of genres and moods, from schmoopy fluff to angsty deathfic, but my favorite endings are bittersweet and a little complicated.
3. When I said 'any' characters, I meant it. I fall in love with worlds and themes as much as I fall in love with characters, if not more.
4. Stuff I really, really like: This can be boiled down to, 'Please treat characters as intelligent people who have understandable motives for their actions, please take the worlds seriously as settings, and please remember that there's more to life than sex. Also, ethics, metaphysics, and world-building are dead cool.'
The long version: I like character development; world-building; explanation of plot holes in canon; subtle humor; good spelling and grammar; a sense of wonder; writing that evokes an emotional reaction as well as telling a story; close relationships that don't necessarily involve sex (i.e., friendship, families, teachers and students, coworkers, traveling companions, soldiers in the same cause, etc.); the consequences of actions and choices; a sense of place and time; dialogue that conveys character as well as plot information; politics; ethics; people being intelligent even if they make bad choices; people trying to do the right thing even if they make bad choices; conflict because of opposing goals that both have points in their favor; a lack of simple solutions; female characters treated as people instead of plot devices; male characters treated as people instead of plot devices; ideas that make me stop and think; the nature of memory; the nature of truth; possession; soul-searching; non-gratuitous torture (...I have a kink, shut up); war and battles; hand-to-hand fighting; swordfights; peace and diplomacy; magic that's properly magical and strange or magic that's explained as a science (but not both at once); books and reading; people exploring a new country/world/city; linguistics and languages; early Industrial Revolution technology (or whatever technology is suitable to the milieu); people using logic to investigate a problem; and fires, floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.
5. Stuff I'm not so keen on: obvious authorial hatred for characters I like and/or find interesting (which is generally all of them); sex or romantic love with no in-story justification (unless the people in question are already a canon couple); gratuitous angst/torture/rape (i.e., bad stuff that comes out of nowhere and is not necessary to make the plot or character arc work); idiot plots (i.e., problems that could be solved in five minutes if the characters asked one or two obvious questions); and predestination, prophecies, and anything else that denies free will.
6. If there are ugly social issues inherent in these things I love, and you want to talk about them, that is fine by me. That falls under 'taking the characters and settings seriously,' and I am always pleased when a story makes me stop and think. (This is not to say that I don't love more straightforward squeeing as well -- because I totally do! -- but if you want to go deeper, I am with you all the way.)
Okay. On to specific fandoms.
---------------
The Lions of Al-Rassan:
(This is a standalone fantasy novel by Guy Gavriel Kay.)
Request: Anything would be great, but I'm most interested in the canon gaps. For example, what else happened during the year Ammar and Rodrigo served in Ragosa? What was the Belmontes' marriage like before they had children? When and why did Ishak learn medicine, and how did he come to Almalik's attention? I like all pairing types, but I prefer gen.
I love this book because, while you can't call it anything but fantasy, it is not particularly fantastical. It's excellently written historical fiction that happens to be set in a made-up world. (I grant that Kay's secondary world is suspiciously similar to Spain during the Reconquista, but the fantasy aspect frees him to create his own characters and plot rather than being a slave to historical accuracy.) Kay also learned a trick from Tolkien that adds extra poignancy: the constant refrain of beauty shattered and fading in a harsh, mortal world. There's an aching sense of lost possibilities, the hope that if just one or two things had gone differently... but then you look again at the larger situation of the world, and you realize historical forces are aligned against your dreams, and nothing lasts forever. As Rodrigo says, "Even the sun goes down."
This book makes me cry every time I read it. I never cry over stories. But Kay gets inside my heart, hooks it open, and leaves me raw and aching. I love that so much, that a fictional world and fictional people can be that real and true for me. I want them all to win, but there is no way for that to happen, and that's better than any old struggle between straightforward good and evil. Because it's real.
I particularly like the friendship between Rodrigo and Ammar, the way Jehane is an independent, competent adult, and the Belmontes' marriage.
---------------
Lucifer:
(This is a completed eleven-volume comics series written by Mike Carey and illustrated by Peter Gross, Dean Ormston, Ryan Kelley, et al. It is based on character interpretations developed by Neil Gaiman in The Sandman, but you don't have to read that series to understand this one.)
Request: Lucifer is my favorite, but I love pretty much all the characters. What I am especially interested in reading this year is a story about families - Lucifer and his brothers; Lucifer, Michael, and Elaine; Elaine's human family, or how Cestis copes with 'her' new wife and son after the series end; Rachel and her resurrected brother (is he healed? how does she cope if he is or isn't?); Gaudium, Spera, and Lumen; Mazikeen and Lilith; Jill and Noema; Izanami and her sons; or any of the other family units in the series. Failing that, why not tell me what Gabriel was up to during the series? He seems to have vanished off the face of the universe after the incident with Lilith, and I would love an explanation of what happened to him. I like all pairing types, but I prefer gen.
I have a thing for the devil, okay? Not in the religious/ethical sense of worshipping evil, but as a character. I empathize with feeling trapped and coerced, and with lashing out against that. I like Satan in Paradise Lost. I like Lucifer in Neil Gaiman's Murder Mysteries. I like Lucifer in Angel Sanctuary.
And I like this version of Lucifer, as envisioned by Gaiman in The Sandman and fleshed out by Mike Carey in Lucifer. He is cold and proud, solitary, self-centered, and cruel... but he doesn't compromise, he keeps his bargains, he returns faith for faith given (if cutting a bit toward the letter of the law rather than the spirit), he cares about Michael and Mazikeen as much as he's able, and he never, ever lies. He is the one who tells God, "No." And he makes it stick.
Of course, Lucifer himself is not the only reason I love the series. I love Elaine in her confusion, and the way she grows and becomes so much more (personally, not just professionally) than she ever imagined. I love Mazikeen, how Carey found a warrior queen inside the lovestruck demon Gaiman first showed us. I love Michael's tortured attempts to understand and justify the flaws in the universe, and to do right by his duty and his daughter. I love how human all the angels and demons and centaurs and old gods and playing cards and humans are. I love the wheels within wheels of the plot, and how the seeds of the end are inevitable from the beginning if you look. I love the world-building that makes hell a living, breathing society. I love the storytelling, the patterns and word choices, the little asides Carey stops and makes in the middle of his epic. I love the scale, and the horrible edge to the choices Lucifer makes and forces other people to make. I love the stupid humor Gaudium, Spera, and some other characters bring to the table. I love that an epic saga of metaphysical war is packaged as a kitchen table story about dysfunctional families, about fathers and sons and mothers and daughters and sisters and brothers. (I really like that part.)
But mostly I come back to Lucifer, and the idea of saying no. No lies. No compromises. No false choice between serving in heaven or reigning in hell. He insists there are other options, and he goes out and makes them. I respect the hell out of that.
(One note? If you write fic for this series, please, for the love of my sanity, use a light hand with italics. Yes, the comics are heavy on italics. But what works in one medium often falls flat in another, and excess italics make my head hurt.)
---------------
The Psion Trilogy:
(This is a science fiction series by Joan D. Vinge; the component books are Psion, Catspaw, and Dreamfall.)
Request: I would love to know what's up with Cat having Draco's logo as a tattoo; it always felt to me like the first thread in a novel's worth of unraveling twisty plots. Also, while happy endings are kind of out of the question, a bittersweet communication with Miya sometime in the future would be lovely -- maybe they meet in person, or maybe she's just ghosting the net, but either way, I want some closure to the way Vinge left them hanging. Also also, maybe you could write something about Human-Hydran relations after the mess Cat made on Refuge, or the continuing fallout of his contact with the TaMings and Nathan Isplanasky. Basically, it's a rich universe with all kinds of interesting corners -- explore one! I like all pairing types, but I prefer gen.
Vinge has said that Cat is the personification of her social conscience, and that seems about right to me. Whatever his intentions, no matter how much he wants to be selfish and just thread his way safely through the minefields of his life and the universe, Cat always falls into situations where the only way he can live with himself is to shake things up and sort them out. He plays tough, but he's a bleeding heart idealist underneath his edges, no matter how much he'd try to deny it. The amazing thing is that he manages -- through a combination of ridiculous luck (whether good or bad is up to interpretation) and pure bloody determination -- to wake other people up and get them to change themselves and the little pieces of the world they can affect. It's never very much, but any difference is better than none, and by the third book the effects are slowly starting to accumulate.
I like that tension between idealism and cynicism -- the idea that the future may not be pretty, but that people can keep making a difference if we work together and refuse to ignore our consciences.
Also, I just love Cat. He's had a horrible, horrible life, and it has left him battered both physically and emotionally, but he keeps pushing on through just like he pushes on through everything else. The people he meets are also fascinating, and even the villains usually have understandable motivations for their actions and beliefs. (Not justifiable motives, of course, nor palatable, but understandable.) The 'good' characters are similarly gray, often because of moral compromises they've made, knowingly or unknowingly, to get by. Vinge's world may glide on smoothly for the vast majority of people, but if you fall through the cracks, the gears will grind you down and spit you out, and there are precious few support structures for people who stop fitting into neat and acceptable categories.
This is a good series to read if you want to work up righteous outrage and then go out to change our own world. It makes me think about who might be falling through the cracks of my own society, in my own town, and whether I can do anything about it. (...I tend to then not do much, but that is a failing on my part, not the story's.) Which is basically a long way of saying that I love this series because it grabs hold of my heartstrings and yanks, and because it grabs hold of my conscience and kicks.
---------------
The Dispossessed:
(This is a standalone science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, though it is part of a rather haphazard universe called, variously, the Ekumen or the Hainish Cycle.)
Request: I love the entire Ekumen, but what I want for Yuletide this year is fic specifically and only for "The Dispossessed," which is one of my very most favorite books ever. I am not at all fussy about what you write -- I like the characters, the utopianism and related politics and philosophy, the crazy alien physics, the world-building for both Urras and Anarres, etc. I am also totally up for fic about "The Day Before the Revolution" and the rest of Laia Odo's life. If you want specific 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. I am also intrigued by the hints of Odo's own relationship with Taviri. Or you could take the throwaway mentions of Urrasti legends and write me proper mythology, or flesh out the chaos in Benbili that was going on while Shevek was on Urras. There are infinite options! I like all pairing types, but I prefer gen.
What I love about this book is everything. No, seriously -- everything. Shevek fascinates me, and I love how real all his relationships feel, especially the family he and Takver create and maintain. I like how he slowly learns to connect with other people, that he and Takver have problems and work through them, that they're good and loving parents but their own concerns affect their children. 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. I like the glimpses we get of Shevek's friends over the years.
I love the alien conception of physics, where science is assumed to automatically include moral and philosophical dimensions, and to describe only the physical world is only doing a fraction of the job. I love the descriptions of life on Anarres, how the people work together to carve life out of a barren, inhospitable world -- the parts where Takver studies sea life, or Shevek marvels at the abundance of species on Urras, are very striking.
I love the way the utopian anarchism of Anarres is not perfect; it must be maintained, carefully, and the gains come with corresponding losses. I love that the Anarresti themselves disagree over the ideal shape of their society, and are fighting against the human tendency to settle into power structures and fixed patterns of behavior. I love the way Urras is so rich and so poor at the same time, so gentle and so cruel; there is such abundance, yet they hoard power and build fences to keep people (women, the poor, people from other countries) from sharing in that abundance. I love how the people of both worlds are shaped by their cultures so they keep talking past each other. Neither world is perfect, and there is a clear symbiosis between them; in some ways they need one another to act as the symbolic Other. I love the hints of geopolitics that play out on Urras during Shevek's visit. He only stays in A-Io, but there is a sense of a greater world beyond his limited horizon; I am curious about the parts of Urras he doesn't get to see, and how the presence of Anarres plays out in other cultures.
I am fascinated by the implication that both Urras and Anarres are in a long, slow-motion social change caused by the intrusion of other human species into their worlds -- the idea that they are descended from the Hainish must shake them, and I really like that Shevek is inspired by reading some of Einstein's Terran physics, though he thinks Einstein is all wrong about any number of things.
As for "The Day Before the Revolution," well, Odo is a vivid, compelling character even in the brief glimpses we get during The Dispossessed, and she comes satisfyingly to life here. It's interesting to me that Le Guin chose not to write about all the grand events -- both political and romantic/personal -- of Odo's life, but to focus on a quiet day in her old age, as she is learning (awkwardly, reluctantly, bitterly) to deal with both physical and emotional loss, and realizing that the movement she inspired has grown beyond her. It's not the kind of story I'm used to reading in science fiction, and I think that makes it more powerful than it would be in a different genre. Anyway, Odo is, as I said, fascinating, so if you want to write about her instead of the later world, that would be cool too.
I think the only cooler thing would be to somehow work different times and places together into one story, because that's another thing I really love about The Dispossessed -- the way its narrative structure is built to support and enhance both the ideas of Shevek's temporal physics (Sequency and Simultaneity), and the theme of journey and return.
---------------
And that is that.
[[ETA: FYI, I will be visiting my sister in Spain over Christmas, and I don't know if I will have internet access when the archive opens. I will be back in the USA on the 29th, and I will definitely comment as soon as I can read your story!]]
I'm pretty easy to please -- so long as you write a grammatically correct story that isn't simply a long sex scene, I'll be thrilled just to get a fic in one of the fandoms I asked for. *grin* But I realize that's not terribly helpful, so here's the (very!) long version.
---------------
General Information:
1. I will read anything when it comes to pairings -- het, slash, femslash, threesomes, poly, whatever, so long as you put in a bit of character development so the relationships don't seem to come out of nowhere -- but I prefer gen, and I tend to skim sex scenes because the non-sex parts of the story are almost always more interesting to me.
2. I read all kinds of genres and moods, from schmoopy fluff to angsty deathfic, but my favorite endings are bittersweet and a little complicated.
3. When I said 'any' characters, I meant it. I fall in love with worlds and themes as much as I fall in love with characters, if not more.
4. Stuff I really, really like: This can be boiled down to, 'Please treat characters as intelligent people who have understandable motives for their actions, please take the worlds seriously as settings, and please remember that there's more to life than sex. Also, ethics, metaphysics, and world-building are dead cool.'
The long version: I like character development; world-building; explanation of plot holes in canon; subtle humor; good spelling and grammar; a sense of wonder; writing that evokes an emotional reaction as well as telling a story; close relationships that don't necessarily involve sex (i.e., friendship, families, teachers and students, coworkers, traveling companions, soldiers in the same cause, etc.); the consequences of actions and choices; a sense of place and time; dialogue that conveys character as well as plot information; politics; ethics; people being intelligent even if they make bad choices; people trying to do the right thing even if they make bad choices; conflict because of opposing goals that both have points in their favor; a lack of simple solutions; female characters treated as people instead of plot devices; male characters treated as people instead of plot devices; ideas that make me stop and think; the nature of memory; the nature of truth; possession; soul-searching; non-gratuitous torture (...I have a kink, shut up); war and battles; hand-to-hand fighting; swordfights; peace and diplomacy; magic that's properly magical and strange or magic that's explained as a science (but not both at once); books and reading; people exploring a new country/world/city; linguistics and languages; early Industrial Revolution technology (or whatever technology is suitable to the milieu); people using logic to investigate a problem; and fires, floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.
5. Stuff I'm not so keen on: obvious authorial hatred for characters I like and/or find interesting (which is generally all of them); sex or romantic love with no in-story justification (unless the people in question are already a canon couple); gratuitous angst/torture/rape (i.e., bad stuff that comes out of nowhere and is not necessary to make the plot or character arc work); idiot plots (i.e., problems that could be solved in five minutes if the characters asked one or two obvious questions); and predestination, prophecies, and anything else that denies free will.
6. If there are ugly social issues inherent in these things I love, and you want to talk about them, that is fine by me. That falls under 'taking the characters and settings seriously,' and I am always pleased when a story makes me stop and think. (This is not to say that I don't love more straightforward squeeing as well -- because I totally do! -- but if you want to go deeper, I am with you all the way.)
Okay. On to specific fandoms.
---------------
The Lions of Al-Rassan:
(This is a standalone fantasy novel by Guy Gavriel Kay.)
Request: Anything would be great, but I'm most interested in the canon gaps. For example, what else happened during the year Ammar and Rodrigo served in Ragosa? What was the Belmontes' marriage like before they had children? When and why did Ishak learn medicine, and how did he come to Almalik's attention? I like all pairing types, but I prefer gen.
I love this book because, while you can't call it anything but fantasy, it is not particularly fantastical. It's excellently written historical fiction that happens to be set in a made-up world. (I grant that Kay's secondary world is suspiciously similar to Spain during the Reconquista, but the fantasy aspect frees him to create his own characters and plot rather than being a slave to historical accuracy.) Kay also learned a trick from Tolkien that adds extra poignancy: the constant refrain of beauty shattered and fading in a harsh, mortal world. There's an aching sense of lost possibilities, the hope that if just one or two things had gone differently... but then you look again at the larger situation of the world, and you realize historical forces are aligned against your dreams, and nothing lasts forever. As Rodrigo says, "Even the sun goes down."
This book makes me cry every time I read it. I never cry over stories. But Kay gets inside my heart, hooks it open, and leaves me raw and aching. I love that so much, that a fictional world and fictional people can be that real and true for me. I want them all to win, but there is no way for that to happen, and that's better than any old struggle between straightforward good and evil. Because it's real.
I particularly like the friendship between Rodrigo and Ammar, the way Jehane is an independent, competent adult, and the Belmontes' marriage.
---------------
Lucifer:
(This is a completed eleven-volume comics series written by Mike Carey and illustrated by Peter Gross, Dean Ormston, Ryan Kelley, et al. It is based on character interpretations developed by Neil Gaiman in The Sandman, but you don't have to read that series to understand this one.)
Request: Lucifer is my favorite, but I love pretty much all the characters. What I am especially interested in reading this year is a story about families - Lucifer and his brothers; Lucifer, Michael, and Elaine; Elaine's human family, or how Cestis copes with 'her' new wife and son after the series end; Rachel and her resurrected brother (is he healed? how does she cope if he is or isn't?); Gaudium, Spera, and Lumen; Mazikeen and Lilith; Jill and Noema; Izanami and her sons; or any of the other family units in the series. Failing that, why not tell me what Gabriel was up to during the series? He seems to have vanished off the face of the universe after the incident with Lilith, and I would love an explanation of what happened to him. I like all pairing types, but I prefer gen.
I have a thing for the devil, okay? Not in the religious/ethical sense of worshipping evil, but as a character. I empathize with feeling trapped and coerced, and with lashing out against that. I like Satan in Paradise Lost. I like Lucifer in Neil Gaiman's Murder Mysteries. I like Lucifer in Angel Sanctuary.
And I like this version of Lucifer, as envisioned by Gaiman in The Sandman and fleshed out by Mike Carey in Lucifer. He is cold and proud, solitary, self-centered, and cruel... but he doesn't compromise, he keeps his bargains, he returns faith for faith given (if cutting a bit toward the letter of the law rather than the spirit), he cares about Michael and Mazikeen as much as he's able, and he never, ever lies. He is the one who tells God, "No." And he makes it stick.
Of course, Lucifer himself is not the only reason I love the series. I love Elaine in her confusion, and the way she grows and becomes so much more (personally, not just professionally) than she ever imagined. I love Mazikeen, how Carey found a warrior queen inside the lovestruck demon Gaiman first showed us. I love Michael's tortured attempts to understand and justify the flaws in the universe, and to do right by his duty and his daughter. I love how human all the angels and demons and centaurs and old gods and playing cards and humans are. I love the wheels within wheels of the plot, and how the seeds of the end are inevitable from the beginning if you look. I love the world-building that makes hell a living, breathing society. I love the storytelling, the patterns and word choices, the little asides Carey stops and makes in the middle of his epic. I love the scale, and the horrible edge to the choices Lucifer makes and forces other people to make. I love the stupid humor Gaudium, Spera, and some other characters bring to the table. I love that an epic saga of metaphysical war is packaged as a kitchen table story about dysfunctional families, about fathers and sons and mothers and daughters and sisters and brothers. (I really like that part.)
But mostly I come back to Lucifer, and the idea of saying no. No lies. No compromises. No false choice between serving in heaven or reigning in hell. He insists there are other options, and he goes out and makes them. I respect the hell out of that.
(One note? If you write fic for this series, please, for the love of my sanity, use a light hand with italics. Yes, the comics are heavy on italics. But what works in one medium often falls flat in another, and excess italics make my head hurt.)
---------------
The Psion Trilogy:
(This is a science fiction series by Joan D. Vinge; the component books are Psion, Catspaw, and Dreamfall.)
Request: I would love to know what's up with Cat having Draco's logo as a tattoo; it always felt to me like the first thread in a novel's worth of unraveling twisty plots. Also, while happy endings are kind of out of the question, a bittersweet communication with Miya sometime in the future would be lovely -- maybe they meet in person, or maybe she's just ghosting the net, but either way, I want some closure to the way Vinge left them hanging. Also also, maybe you could write something about Human-Hydran relations after the mess Cat made on Refuge, or the continuing fallout of his contact with the TaMings and Nathan Isplanasky. Basically, it's a rich universe with all kinds of interesting corners -- explore one! I like all pairing types, but I prefer gen.
Vinge has said that Cat is the personification of her social conscience, and that seems about right to me. Whatever his intentions, no matter how much he wants to be selfish and just thread his way safely through the minefields of his life and the universe, Cat always falls into situations where the only way he can live with himself is to shake things up and sort them out. He plays tough, but he's a bleeding heart idealist underneath his edges, no matter how much he'd try to deny it. The amazing thing is that he manages -- through a combination of ridiculous luck (whether good or bad is up to interpretation) and pure bloody determination -- to wake other people up and get them to change themselves and the little pieces of the world they can affect. It's never very much, but any difference is better than none, and by the third book the effects are slowly starting to accumulate.
I like that tension between idealism and cynicism -- the idea that the future may not be pretty, but that people can keep making a difference if we work together and refuse to ignore our consciences.
Also, I just love Cat. He's had a horrible, horrible life, and it has left him battered both physically and emotionally, but he keeps pushing on through just like he pushes on through everything else. The people he meets are also fascinating, and even the villains usually have understandable motivations for their actions and beliefs. (Not justifiable motives, of course, nor palatable, but understandable.) The 'good' characters are similarly gray, often because of moral compromises they've made, knowingly or unknowingly, to get by. Vinge's world may glide on smoothly for the vast majority of people, but if you fall through the cracks, the gears will grind you down and spit you out, and there are precious few support structures for people who stop fitting into neat and acceptable categories.
This is a good series to read if you want to work up righteous outrage and then go out to change our own world. It makes me think about who might be falling through the cracks of my own society, in my own town, and whether I can do anything about it. (...I tend to then not do much, but that is a failing on my part, not the story's.) Which is basically a long way of saying that I love this series because it grabs hold of my heartstrings and yanks, and because it grabs hold of my conscience and kicks.
---------------
The Dispossessed:
(This is a standalone science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, though it is part of a rather haphazard universe called, variously, the Ekumen or the Hainish Cycle.)
Request: I love the entire Ekumen, but what I want for Yuletide this year is fic specifically and only for "The Dispossessed," which is one of my very most favorite books ever. I am not at all fussy about what you write -- I like the characters, the utopianism and related politics and philosophy, the crazy alien physics, the world-building for both Urras and Anarres, etc. I am also totally up for fic about "The Day Before the Revolution" and the rest of Laia Odo's life. If you want specific 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. I am also intrigued by the hints of Odo's own relationship with Taviri. Or you could take the throwaway mentions of Urrasti legends and write me proper mythology, or flesh out the chaos in Benbili that was going on while Shevek was on Urras. There are infinite options! I like all pairing types, but I prefer gen.
What I love about this book is everything. No, seriously -- everything. Shevek fascinates me, and I love how real all his relationships feel, especially the family he and Takver create and maintain. I like how he slowly learns to connect with other people, that he and Takver have problems and work through them, that they're good and loving parents but their own concerns affect their children. 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. I like the glimpses we get of Shevek's friends over the years.
I love the alien conception of physics, where science is assumed to automatically include moral and philosophical dimensions, and to describe only the physical world is only doing a fraction of the job. I love the descriptions of life on Anarres, how the people work together to carve life out of a barren, inhospitable world -- the parts where Takver studies sea life, or Shevek marvels at the abundance of species on Urras, are very striking.
I love the way the utopian anarchism of Anarres is not perfect; it must be maintained, carefully, and the gains come with corresponding losses. I love that the Anarresti themselves disagree over the ideal shape of their society, and are fighting against the human tendency to settle into power structures and fixed patterns of behavior. I love the way Urras is so rich and so poor at the same time, so gentle and so cruel; there is such abundance, yet they hoard power and build fences to keep people (women, the poor, people from other countries) from sharing in that abundance. I love how the people of both worlds are shaped by their cultures so they keep talking past each other. Neither world is perfect, and there is a clear symbiosis between them; in some ways they need one another to act as the symbolic Other. I love the hints of geopolitics that play out on Urras during Shevek's visit. He only stays in A-Io, but there is a sense of a greater world beyond his limited horizon; I am curious about the parts of Urras he doesn't get to see, and how the presence of Anarres plays out in other cultures.
I am fascinated by the implication that both Urras and Anarres are in a long, slow-motion social change caused by the intrusion of other human species into their worlds -- the idea that they are descended from the Hainish must shake them, and I really like that Shevek is inspired by reading some of Einstein's Terran physics, though he thinks Einstein is all wrong about any number of things.
As for "The Day Before the Revolution," well, Odo is a vivid, compelling character even in the brief glimpses we get during The Dispossessed, and she comes satisfyingly to life here. It's interesting to me that Le Guin chose not to write about all the grand events -- both political and romantic/personal -- of Odo's life, but to focus on a quiet day in her old age, as she is learning (awkwardly, reluctantly, bitterly) to deal with both physical and emotional loss, and realizing that the movement she inspired has grown beyond her. It's not the kind of story I'm used to reading in science fiction, and I think that makes it more powerful than it would be in a different genre. Anyway, Odo is, as I said, fascinating, so if you want to write about her instead of the later world, that would be cool too.
I think the only cooler thing would be to somehow work different times and places together into one story, because that's another thing I really love about The Dispossessed -- the way its narrative structure is built to support and enhance both the ideas of Shevek's temporal physics (Sequency and Simultaneity), and the theme of journey and return.
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And that is that.
