Dear Fic Corner and Jukebox Fest Writers
Aug. 12th, 2013 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretDear Fic Corner and Jukebox Fest Writers,
I'm afraid I don't have a full and formal letter for you. I feel like my prompts pretty much cover what I wanted to say. But people keep asking me why I haven't written a letter, so here's a letter.
I'm not particular and I'd much rather a great story be added to the fandom than a story be added to the fandom tailored to my arbitrary and capricious whims, so don't worry too much about me.
Here, my prompts are recorded for the curious.
Cyber.kdz - Bruce Balan
Tags
Tereza (Cyber.kdz)
Sanjeev (Cyber.kdz)
I love Sanj and Tz's friendship, how Tereza is sort of Sanjeev's better self, and how Tereza admires Sanjeev for his integrity and casual brilliance. But really, there's a lot I love about the Cyber.kdz series and not a lot that I dislike. Fundamentally the series is about tech as this great equalizer of culture and class and credo, as well as about the way the internet was carving out a new culture and the cyber.kdz determination that that new culture play by appropriate rules of openness and respect and fairness- netiquette, in a word.
We live in the world now of wikileaks and Aaron Swartz, of internet gambling and Stuxnet and Anonymous, and Cyber.kdz kind of quietly anticipated all of it, and vowed to work toward a different future anyway, united by the power of friendship.
The Great Brain Series - John D. Fitzgerald
Tags
Abie Hoffman
Abie's story broke my heart when I was a kid. As a middle class Jewish kid, the grandson of immigrants, the story kind of cut both ways for me. In some senses I was Abie, different from the Christians around me and just trying to get them to stop misunderstanding me. In other senses I was JD, clueless about the way poverty and pride and discrimination worked.
At the same time, a part of me was able to step outside of this dual empathy to critique the story. Fitzgerald's portrait of Abie, while insisting on the need to treat people as people, as individuals, instead of as members of groups, still doesn't really tell Abie's story. He's still just the tragic Wandering Jew. I empathized with Abie, but I never really identified with Abie.
So I would love to hear Abie's story, to hear where he came from and who he was and how he dreamed and how he prayed.
The Grounding of Group Six - Julian F. Thompson
Tags
Any Character
Ha... This story is great on so many levels. What I would really love, I think, is something super-fluffy and sentimental that we would then point people to and say "I love this story, and you don't need to know canon to get it." And they would read it and have the horribly distorted idea that Grounding is just a book about teenagers who went to private school together. That would make me laugh. Even better, if you come up with some fakeout idea about what 'grounding' is.
But that's mostly me being silly. I would also like non-trolly stories about the characters and their relationships and how they continue to be beautiful and broken together.
Henry Reed - Keith Robertson
Tags
Any Character
As a Jersey kid and an engineer, my love for the Henry Reed books is twofold: I love Henry and Midge's curiosity and sense of adventure and Henry's endless tinkering, and I love the sort of alter-Jersey geography of the books.
The Curse - Josh Ritter (Song)
Mummy romance! How did he get the curse? How did they negotiate the press? Were there legal obstacles? Or just lots and lots of feeeeeeeeeeeelings.
Girl in the War (Song)
Um... I'm not going to request anything here. Do what feels right, this is a great, mysterious song.
Jerusalem - Dan Bern (Song)
I think I want something that plays with the ambiguity of his confession... Does he start performing miracles, or things that at least he can claim are miracles? Does he get followers? Is he laughed at?
Or maybe something that considers him to have a specific audience, the person that he is confessing his love to. What is that audience like, and how does he or she respond to his story?
King of Spain – Moxy Früvous (Song)
Why is Lisa unspeakable? Please, please, mention Lisa!
The Piano Has Been Drinking - Tom Waits (Song)
I would love something that takes the song really, really literally. If you're not up to that sort of dark farce, the metaphor is good enough for me. So many of Waits's songs conjure for me the image of a place that would be irredeemably seedy if not for the beauty and magic of music, with its power of transformation. That's why this song works for me.
Five Years - David Bowie (Song)
I want all the Ziggy Stardust fic.
By this point, you may have gotten the message that I like fake messiah stories. I do. I love the sadness and the hope that intermingle in a good fake messiah story, how there's this track where it seems like everything can finally go right and then somehow unexpectedly you veer off the path. What makes Ziggy Stardust a particularly great fake messiah story is how it swirls everything in a thick layer of ROCK AND ROLL, like the power of sex and drugs and revolution can fix everything except maybe it can't.
I'm afraid I don't have a full and formal letter for you. I feel like my prompts pretty much cover what I wanted to say. But people keep asking me why I haven't written a letter, so here's a letter.
I'm not particular and I'd much rather a great story be added to the fandom than a story be added to the fandom tailored to my arbitrary and capricious whims, so don't worry too much about me.
Here, my prompts are recorded for the curious.
Cyber.kdz - Bruce Balan
Tags
Tereza (Cyber.kdz)
Sanjeev (Cyber.kdz)
I love Sanj and Tz's friendship, how Tereza is sort of Sanjeev's better self, and how Tereza admires Sanjeev for his integrity and casual brilliance. But really, there's a lot I love about the Cyber.kdz series and not a lot that I dislike. Fundamentally the series is about tech as this great equalizer of culture and class and credo, as well as about the way the internet was carving out a new culture and the cyber.kdz determination that that new culture play by appropriate rules of openness and respect and fairness- netiquette, in a word.
We live in the world now of wikileaks and Aaron Swartz, of internet gambling and Stuxnet and Anonymous, and Cyber.kdz kind of quietly anticipated all of it, and vowed to work toward a different future anyway, united by the power of friendship.
The Great Brain Series - John D. Fitzgerald
Tags
Abie Hoffman
Abie's story broke my heart when I was a kid. As a middle class Jewish kid, the grandson of immigrants, the story kind of cut both ways for me. In some senses I was Abie, different from the Christians around me and just trying to get them to stop misunderstanding me. In other senses I was JD, clueless about the way poverty and pride and discrimination worked.
At the same time, a part of me was able to step outside of this dual empathy to critique the story. Fitzgerald's portrait of Abie, while insisting on the need to treat people as people, as individuals, instead of as members of groups, still doesn't really tell Abie's story. He's still just the tragic Wandering Jew. I empathized with Abie, but I never really identified with Abie.
So I would love to hear Abie's story, to hear where he came from and who he was and how he dreamed and how he prayed.
The Grounding of Group Six - Julian F. Thompson
Tags
Any Character
Ha... This story is great on so many levels. What I would really love, I think, is something super-fluffy and sentimental that we would then point people to and say "I love this story, and you don't need to know canon to get it." And they would read it and have the horribly distorted idea that Grounding is just a book about teenagers who went to private school together. That would make me laugh. Even better, if you come up with some fakeout idea about what 'grounding' is.
But that's mostly me being silly. I would also like non-trolly stories about the characters and their relationships and how they continue to be beautiful and broken together.
Henry Reed - Keith Robertson
Tags
Any Character
As a Jersey kid and an engineer, my love for the Henry Reed books is twofold: I love Henry and Midge's curiosity and sense of adventure and Henry's endless tinkering, and I love the sort of alter-Jersey geography of the books.
The Curse - Josh Ritter (Song)
Mummy romance! How did he get the curse? How did they negotiate the press? Were there legal obstacles? Or just lots and lots of feeeeeeeeeeeelings.
Girl in the War (Song)
Um... I'm not going to request anything here. Do what feels right, this is a great, mysterious song.
Jerusalem - Dan Bern (Song)
I think I want something that plays with the ambiguity of his confession... Does he start performing miracles, or things that at least he can claim are miracles? Does he get followers? Is he laughed at?
Or maybe something that considers him to have a specific audience, the person that he is confessing his love to. What is that audience like, and how does he or she respond to his story?
King of Spain – Moxy Früvous (Song)
Why is Lisa unspeakable? Please, please, mention Lisa!
The Piano Has Been Drinking - Tom Waits (Song)
I would love something that takes the song really, really literally. If you're not up to that sort of dark farce, the metaphor is good enough for me. So many of Waits's songs conjure for me the image of a place that would be irredeemably seedy if not for the beauty and magic of music, with its power of transformation. That's why this song works for me.
Five Years - David Bowie (Song)
I want all the Ziggy Stardust fic.
By this point, you may have gotten the message that I like fake messiah stories. I do. I love the sadness and the hope that intermingle in a good fake messiah story, how there's this track where it seems like everything can finally go right and then somehow unexpectedly you veer off the path. What makes Ziggy Stardust a particularly great fake messiah story is how it swirls everything in a thick layer of ROCK AND ROLL, like the power of sex and drugs and revolution can fix everything except maybe it can't.