Dear Purimgifts 2020 Author
Jan. 5th, 2020 06:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thetransintransgenic... Hi! This is, uh, my first ever gift exchange, so I... hope I'm doing this right? And this is, like, reasonable requests/the general format/tone they should be in? (Aaaa..!) Sorry if I've messed up somewhere...
I'm mostly hoping for, like, explorations of Judaism and Jewishness and Yiddishkeit and the way characters interact with that (including, if it fits, rejecting it/parts of it! or being hesitant! "Apikores" is still very Jewish.).
I... think I wouldn't want AUs, because I feel like it would be hard to explore the Jewishness of the characters-in-the-work in an AU? But I haven't read all that many AU fics so I'm not sure how much you can still do within AUs so if you think you can get some good thoughts about characters' Jewishness in an AU, then, go for it? (My thoughts are the same on crossovers, I think.)
Specific stuff about specific fandoms:
Skin Horse
NICK! What a Nice Jewish Boy. He's had some great feelings/thoughts about/connections to/experiences with his Jewishness in canon over both the comic itself, and also his two different character blogs he's had, and those are definitely ripe for more following his thoughts (Is any of his anxiety over having lost his shvantz, anxiety over having lost his brit milah? Does his Yiddish cussing bring up any memories/feelings of connection? What were his thoughts about getting a Mezuzah installed? Does his new body have/does he want it to have a (-nother) bris? Has he asked a Rabbi about if he needs to get one, or if he specifically DOESN'T because HE (as an entity, who is incidentally right now primarily embodied in the Helicopter) has already had one, even if this specific body-appendage hasn't?).
There's also a lot of stuff that could happen outside of continuity -- are either of Chris and Marcie Jewish, and does he talk about it with them? How about Virginia? Has he had conversations about his Jewishness with her? Stuff of him celebrating some holidays and explaining them to her? More generally, other characters seeing Nick celebrating some holiday? (My one thing about this is, I wouldn't want it to be a general "Skin Horse celebrates ___" -- I'm more interested in what the holiday MEANS TO Nick.)
Or other ideas and stuff. You get it, I hope.
I also, separately, have a lot of emotions about Nick's feelings about what is his real body and that sort of things, so if you have any thoughts on that that would also be !!!.
Batwoman
The canon does an... extremely lax job of making the Kanes actually... do, or say, anything particlarly Jewish at all (She had gotten the thing for Chanukka! The generic graves with no stones on them in a generic cematary with no thought about the specific perspective of Judaism on moving the dead had Magen Davids! YAY!!), but there's a lot of room for the characters thinking through their life in relation to their Judaism, or for backstory stuff that explores their Judaism -- or for specifically relevant Jewish questions. Like, did Catherine and Mary convert before the marriage? How did they feel about either doing that or not doing that, and how did the celebration of the various Jewish holidays in the Kane family go. Or things like, the Kanes must go to SOME shul -- what discussions are people having with them over kiddush? And etc.
X-Men
There are a bunch of great Jewish characters in the X-Men and it is ALWAYS so fun to see them explore their Judaism more. My two requests are: I've seen a lot of X-Men Hanukkah fics so unless you've got a specific thing you want to say about someone's perspective on Chanukkah, then, eh; and also the "Magneto/Moses Leading Mutants/Jews From Non-mutant-governance/Egypt" Pesach fic has also had a few rounds. I'd also... prefer not the Holocaust?
Uprooted
This one I feel like there's a lot that can be done with a Jewish read of it -- I got EXTREME "this is my home but yes there's antisemitism" vibes from a lot of the stuff about the Wood. Especially the "We were of the valley. Born in the valley, of families planted too deep to leave even when they knew their daughter might be taken; raised in the valley, drinking of whatever power also fed the Wood." part, which feels SO MUCH like thoughts about Antisemitism and I'm not sure exactly WHAT thoughts but !!!
Emelan
Most fantasy stories have SOME group that pulls specifically hard from European tropes/expecations on Jews that ends up making that group feel particularly Jewish, and all the more so in a series about the Cosmopolitan interacting of various different cultures. One of the main group is definitely Jewish, and definitely has Feels about that.
Tolkien
Dwarves are Jewish. The whole supersessionist First-Created-But-Not-Fully-Correct, spread out but have their own sense of community/culture, the whole characterization of the Petty Dwarves, the Three-letter-root language, ...
Dwarves are extremely Jewish. And also significantly less world-built than Elves or Men in canon. What other Jewish things do Dwarves do/have equivalents of? Are there Dwarven zmirot?
Fairy Tales
A solid fraction of the canon of European fairy tales explicitly uses Jewish character for specific roles that Jews are put into by Christian perspective. Flipping the perspective there would be fun.
(Is this stuff... too specific? way too demanding? I don't know what is reasonable, you probably have a lot more experience than me -- if it's too much, feel free to play as loose as reasonable. I won't be insulted or feel like it isn't a fill (unless it's like, absolutely ignoring any sort of even vague directionality, I guess. maybe.), I'll just take it as feedback that I asked for too much.)
I'm mostly hoping for, like, explorations of Judaism and Jewishness and Yiddishkeit and the way characters interact with that (including, if it fits, rejecting it/parts of it! or being hesitant! "Apikores" is still very Jewish.).
That could be focused on a single character, in backstory-building-ways or in following-thoughts-during-canon-events ways or in any other way of focusing on a single character,
or through characters' relationships and the way those are affected by/affect/interact with the characters' Judaism,
or through worldbuilding institution stuff, or, etc. This isn't an exhaustive list, just, thoughts of ways.
I... think I wouldn't want AUs, because I feel like it would be hard to explore the Jewishness of the characters-in-the-work in an AU? But I haven't read all that many AU fics so I'm not sure how much you can still do within AUs so if you think you can get some good thoughts about characters' Jewishness in an AU, then, go for it? (My thoughts are the same on crossovers, I think.)
Specific stuff about specific fandoms:
Skin Horse
NICK! What a Nice Jewish Boy. He's had some great feelings/thoughts about/connections to/experiences with his Jewishness in canon over both the comic itself, and also his two different character blogs he's had, and those are definitely ripe for more following his thoughts (Is any of his anxiety over having lost his shvantz, anxiety over having lost his brit milah? Does his Yiddish cussing bring up any memories/feelings of connection? What were his thoughts about getting a Mezuzah installed? Does his new body have/does he want it to have a (-nother) bris? Has he asked a Rabbi about if he needs to get one, or if he specifically DOESN'T because HE (as an entity, who is incidentally right now primarily embodied in the Helicopter) has already had one, even if this specific body-appendage hasn't?).
There's also a lot of stuff that could happen outside of continuity -- are either of Chris and Marcie Jewish, and does he talk about it with them? How about Virginia? Has he had conversations about his Jewishness with her? Stuff of him celebrating some holidays and explaining them to her? More generally, other characters seeing Nick celebrating some holiday? (My one thing about this is, I wouldn't want it to be a general "Skin Horse celebrates ___" -- I'm more interested in what the holiday MEANS TO Nick.)
Or other ideas and stuff. You get it, I hope.
I also, separately, have a lot of emotions about Nick's feelings about what is his real body and that sort of things, so if you have any thoughts on that that would also be !!!.
Batwoman
The canon does an... extremely lax job of making the Kanes actually... do, or say, anything particlarly Jewish at all (She had gotten the thing for Chanukka! The generic graves with no stones on them in a generic cematary with no thought about the specific perspective of Judaism on moving the dead had Magen Davids! YAY!!), but there's a lot of room for the characters thinking through their life in relation to their Judaism, or for backstory stuff that explores their Judaism -- or for specifically relevant Jewish questions. Like, did Catherine and Mary convert before the marriage? How did they feel about either doing that or not doing that, and how did the celebration of the various Jewish holidays in the Kane family go. Or things like, the Kanes must go to SOME shul -- what discussions are people having with them over kiddush? And etc.
X-Men
There are a bunch of great Jewish characters in the X-Men and it is ALWAYS so fun to see them explore their Judaism more. My two requests are: I've seen a lot of X-Men Hanukkah fics so unless you've got a specific thing you want to say about someone's perspective on Chanukkah, then, eh; and also the "Magneto/Moses Leading Mutants/Jews From Non-mutant-governance/Egypt" Pesach fic has also had a few rounds. I'd also... prefer not the Holocaust?
Uprooted
This one I feel like there's a lot that can be done with a Jewish read of it -- I got EXTREME "this is my home but yes there's antisemitism" vibes from a lot of the stuff about the Wood. Especially the "We were of the valley. Born in the valley, of families planted too deep to leave even when they knew their daughter might be taken; raised in the valley, drinking of whatever power also fed the Wood." part, which feels SO MUCH like thoughts about Antisemitism and I'm not sure exactly WHAT thoughts but !!!
Emelan
Most fantasy stories have SOME group that pulls specifically hard from European tropes/expecations on Jews that ends up making that group feel particularly Jewish, and all the more so in a series about the Cosmopolitan interacting of various different cultures. One of the main group is definitely Jewish, and definitely has Feels about that.
Tolkien
Dwarves are Jewish. The whole supersessionist First-Created-But-Not-Fully-Correct, spread out but have their own sense of community/culture, the whole characterization of the Petty Dwarves, the Three-letter-root language, ...
Dwarves are extremely Jewish. And also significantly less world-built than Elves or Men in canon. What other Jewish things do Dwarves do/have equivalents of? Are there Dwarven zmirot?
Fairy Tales
A solid fraction of the canon of European fairy tales explicitly uses Jewish character for specific roles that Jews are put into by Christian perspective. Flipping the perspective there would be fun.
(Is this stuff... too specific? way too demanding? I don't know what is reasonable, you probably have a lot more experience than me -- if it's too much, feel free to play as loose as reasonable. I won't be insulted or feel like it isn't a fill (unless it's like, absolutely ignoring any sort of even vague directionality, I guess. maybe.), I'll just take it as feedback that I asked for too much.)