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2011-09-16 10:14 am

Week of Awesome Ladies -- Day 5

Still playing catch-up...



Kate is a tough one. She's an uncomfortable character -- she's raw, she's angry, she gets humiliated (most frequently by her father), she's addicted to her own pain. This is all stuff that happens routinely with male characters and it tends not to bother us. We (the collective 'we') even celebrate it. It's angst! It's man-pain! Kate is, at the core, Angel's mirror -- at least through the end of Season 2. But for whatever reason it's a more difficult story prospect when the character is a woman, particularly someone a little bit grating like Kate. I love her for her gruffness, her awkwardness, but can see why it doesn't work for everyone.

In fairness, though, I do think some of the reason audiences didn't quite respond to her is because of the writing. When her original character arc was axed, I think the writers had to scramble to figure out exactly what they wanted to do with her -- and never quite got her story back to where it needed to be.

That said, there's an AU in my head where Corrupt happened as originally written and Kate gets her arc -- and it's pretty awesome.

There's also a AU in my head where she comes back to L.A. in Season 3, post-Sleep Tight, just in time to meet up with Wesley before he hits rock bottom. I've always wanted to finish it and writing about her this week made me open it up and give it a hard look for the first time in a long while. So here's a bit from the beginning of the fic. This scene is mostly set-up for the action to come, but I think it fits the female-focused theme of [profile] womenlovefest nicely.

From Dark Waters (Alternate Season 3) -- a scene in which Kate Lockley meets her LAPD 'replacement.'

'Well, it’s nice to know they had a spare.' )
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2011-09-14 10:12 am

Week of Awesome Ladies -- Day 4 (still playing catch-up)

Going through the content I wanted to play with for [profile] womenlovefest, I’m realizing that the lady characters I love enough to want to write about often experience fandom hate or apathy – but it’s often because their characterization never feels quite finished. It’s like they never quite get the character arc I think they should have, and that makes me sad for them. It’s how I feel about Vala, it’s how I feel about Kate Lockley (hopefully more on her soon) – and it’s definitely how I feel about Mara Jade.

Not to get too pop psychology about it all, but it just feels like none of the characters in the Star Wars EU – Mara, in particular – ever get to do the emotional work needed to be fully-functioning human beings after all the truly awful shit that happens to them. Or, if they do, we just don't ever see it, which... why not?

How does Mara get from the angry, self-destructive (arguably a little suicidal – there are extenuating circumstances, but she straight-out asks Luke to kill her at one point) girl she is when we meet her to a complete person, confident in her own abilities and place in the universe? To a woman who feels ready to be a wife and mother? To being comfortable with wielding power and teaching others? We just don't ever really see that transformation, which is just a shame because she's a great character and there should be lots of interesting territory to explore there.

Given that, I usually tend to play with AUs when I write her, but this time around I'm going to try and fill in some of those missing moments – not an easy feat when you realize that even the canon of this particular fandom is wildly inconsistent and often flatly contradicts itself. But, what the hell? I like a challenge.

So I'm going to do a short fic for each of the tracks on the Mara fanmix I posted here, each one a 'missing' character moment or just something I would have liked to see happen. These are a little out of order, but maybe once I have them all done I’ll figure out whether they work best in chronological order, order of the track numbers – or something else altogether.


#1. Dog Days Are Over )


#3. Raw Sugar )
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2011-09-14 10:11 am

Week of Awesome Ladies -- Day 3 (sort of)

I am so far behind on [profile] womenlovefest, I can't even tell you. I kind of knew this would happen, but I did have imaginings that I'd be able to sneak in a few posts here and there. Posting from a rock somewhere between the U.S. and Canada, though, has proved a little more challenging than I thought. Fingers crossed, though, that this works. If it does, this will be my post for Day 3 -- followed closely by Day 4.

Day 3 = more Vala. This is from a longer piece that I've never quite managed to finish, but have always wanted to. It's Vala and Adria (both the original and the namesake), and what makes them all tick:

The child was a lost cause. )
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2011-09-10 04:42 pm

Week of Awesome Ladies (Cont)

Trying to squeeze in Day Two of [profile] womenlovefest before heading off to an actually love fest (a wedding) this evening.

Day One was Vala (more on her later). For Day Two, I want to share some thoughts on (and fun content for) Mara Jade...

Oh, Mara. Mara is one of those characters who doesn't suffer from fandom hate so much as she suffers from maybe a little too much fandom love. The problem? It's often not good, healthy, well-rounded love. It's creepy boyfriend who puts you on a pedestal, swears that you're perfect, and is violently disappointed when it turns out you're really only human love. It's weird freshman year roommate who steals your clothes, cuts her hair just like yours, and secretly wants to sleep with your boyfriend love.

That said, I love Mara. (Hopefully more in the good way than the bad way, at least most of the time...)



'Here's Your Damn Love Song -- A Mara Fanmix' under the cut... )

Click here to download. (And let me know if you have any troubles -- it's been ages since I've done anything like this.)
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2011-09-08 10:51 pm

Week of Awesome Ladies

I hope it's kosher to re-use at least some older content for [profile] womenlovefest, because I really want to start my Week of Awesome Ladies by posting the link to this fic. It's one of my all-time lasting favorites, because it is full of awesome ladies being awesome (even the ones who only got, like, two scenes of screen time in the actual show). It has mothers and daughters, goddesses and saints, maidens and crones, and an ordinary teenage girl with a really wicked sword.

Most importantly, it has Vala Mal Doran doing her thing -- which usually involves being a total badass.



Title: Mysteries
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Pairings: Mostly gen, but heavy subtext for various pairings
Rating: PG
Story Note: This was originally written between Seasons 9 and 10, before we're actually introduced to Adria as a character, so it's a little dated. At this point, consider it AU/another way it could have gone.
Summary: Demeter and Persephone fistfight in heaven.

Read it on LJ or AO3.
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2011-09-08 10:26 am

She's not the kind of girl who likes to tell the world

30 Days of Fanfiction -- Days 19-22, Inspiration, Sequels & Fests/Challenges ) This is a great segue, though, into...



[profile] womenlovefest (On LiveJournal at: http://womenlovefest.livejournal.com/) How much do I love this idea? A lot, like a whole lot. I am seriously pressed for time right now -- we are going to be at a wedding this weekend, have our own wedding anniversary and then will be traveling part of next week -- but I'm still going to try my hardest to talk at least a bit about some of my favorite female characters who don't get enough love. So awesome.