December Meme: awoiaf and fic things

lareinenoire asked Following the massive influx of new canon from The World of Ice and Fire, which story do you want to write the most?

Huh. There were things about awoiaf that delighted me (that there are about three generations of Tullys named after muppets; there's a Ser Kermit who is succeeded by his son Ser Elmo. This, I assume, was a prime example of the thing where you get stuck, write something obviously silly - I favour a string of swear words - to remind yourself to come back later and fix it, only they forgot.) Things that interested me (I have adopted the headcanon that the Dornish bought peace and continuing independence by promising to put Rhaenys Targaryen, who they'd been holding in some dungeon somewhere for years, out of her misery), but nothing that really made me sit up and go I must have fic about this at once.

I don't know, very little of my fic features the historical characters, I tend to focus on the characters who're kids now and their lives post civil wars/apocalypse a la dragons and ice zombies. And if I do write more historical fic it'll probably be something about the league of dead mothers (something where Elia survives on a wave of righteous, impotent fury; something where Joanna lives and it changes nothing in the bigger picture because Tywin isn't a jerk because his wife's dead, and he doesn't hate Tyrion because his birth killed Joanna, he's a jerk because he's a jerk, and he hates Tyrion because his pride can't cope with having fathered a dwarf)

By the way, if you are at all interested in historical asoiaf fic check out lareinenoire's AO3 page at once. Start with the Within the Hollow Crown series.

I am interested in historical Targaryen women. I want a fic about Visenya and Rhaenys Targaryen and what their relationship was like independent of Aegon. I want to know more about Rhaenys Targaryen, the queen who never was. The tales of the Dragonknight and his love for his sister are great romantic stories in canon, and I sort of want to deconstruct that to give Queen Naerys, trapped between a brother who was actively trying to kill her with childbirth, and another who was too devoted to his own vows to actively help her, a voice.

As an aside, I wrote my all female Night's Watch AU before The Princess and the Queen came out, and the set up was that years ago Rhaenyra Targaryen had been lady commander after the Dance of the Dragons; I'd had Rhaenyra in mind as a sort of Visenya Targaryen type character. It still works with what we know of her in canon if you assume that having fought a war and sat in on her father's councils since girlhood she could be a pretty decent general without being herself a warrior, and more so if you handwave that she was allowed to take her dragon with her when she was exiled to the Wall. Still, you have to squint, and to this day it irks me.

One of the things that really pleased me about awoiaf was the amount of homosexuality there was in the world. I like how the assertions that Rhaenyra's sons were bastards were as much that her husband's preferences were well known as it was character assassination. And I liked the canon confirmation that in Dorne nobody cares. And I loved the description of Sabitha Vypren as "enjoying killing men and kissing women." Fic about this lady pls.

The asoiaf I really want to write, and this has nothing to do with awoiaf, is the one where Sansa Stark is a lesbian, and her attraction to knights is aesthetic, but not romantic (at least, not after she meets a few of them up close) or physical, and how you would possibly navigate that in a world that has no language for it.

December Meme: Music

glinda asked about Music you love (or hate, whichever you can get most impassioned about). I haven't the faintest clue what your music taste is like and I'd like to hear about it.

Which, actually, I don't think I've ever talked about music here, and I'm not really sure why, so let's start. My favourite band is Biffy Clyro ('mon the biff!) who I have followed for years since the days when they played King Tut's Wah Wah Hut. For any of you unfamiliar with the joys of hairy, shirtless Scottish men, guitars, and largely inexplicable lyrics, I shall include an embed.

( Who's Got a Match )

When Scotland play home rugby matches in Edinburgh, whenever we score, they blast a little bit of The Fratellis to celebrate, which probably explains my lasting fondness for this song...

( Chelsea Dagger )

When I was a student I had a social psychology tutor who taught that music was a really important way of bonding, especially among young people. That at our age (like, 18/19) shared taste in music could seem more important than anything else we might or might not have in common. I mention it because at the time I was shying pretty hard away from the gay society at uni and all the gay pubs/clubs in Glasgow because I felt like they catered pretty exclusively to a specific sort of camp gay male sexuality. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but when that's all there is-- it felt more alienating and unwelcoming to me than being the only lesbian in my crowd of straight friends. I ended up part of a crowd who all liked the same sort of rock/metal music as I did at the time. Because making friends based on a shared sexuality would have been silly, making them based on a shared belief that Slipknot wasn't just noise was of course the height of sense.

Not that I didn't have great times with my uni mates; we all used to hang around this pub called the Solid Rock Cafe where they did £1 bottles of Carlsberg and played mused loud enough to perforate your eardrums. I remember wearing a lot of black, midriff tops, and one of those metal studded dog collars. The default chat up line I used to get at the time, almost invariably from much older women, was that they could just put a leash on me and take me home.

There was an episode of Criminal Minds, back when I still watched that show, where the killer staged a romantic meal, then killed his victims to the strains of their favourite romantic song, which he discovered by seeing which was the most played track on their ipod was. Back then I would have been murdered to the soothing strains of Rage Against the Machine.

( Killing in the Name )

Now iTunes tells me that I would be murdered to The Kinks.

( Sunny Afternoon )

Ho hum. Could be worse. I have in recent years regressed back to my childhood and the stuff my parents played in the house. The Kinks. The Doors. The Beatles. One of the things I do like about being in my thirties now is that I have aged out of all music snobbery, and I'll listen to everything, and probably sing along too. As a teenager I wouldn't have been caught dead listening to pop music, but last year I went to the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony and was up singing and dancing to Kylie Minogue right beside everyone else.

( Can't Get You Out of My Head )