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Jan. 1st, 2017 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eccentric_hatHappy new year, my friends.
This year for Yuletide I wrote this story:
On the relative importance of hats, horses, and trust among new partners in criminal enterprise (3208 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Gentlemen of the Road - Michael Chabon
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Amram (Gentlemen of the Road), Zelikman (Gentlemen of the Road)
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Bickering, Canon Character of Color, Canon Jewish Character
Summary:
This was fun, if difficult; I reread the book full of confidence that I would have time to do some research and worldbuilding, and ended up learning almost nothing about Khazaria and filling this story with the things I was already reasonably sure could plausibly exist in the world of the novel, most of which are cited in the title of the story. I also hadn't considered, when I offered this fandom, how much identity and representation politics are connected to the story, the Jewish kingdom of Khazaria being the locus for a bunch of gross anti-Semitism as well as the more positive kind of myth-making Chabon is doing in the book. I didn't really feel up to grappling with any of this, I'm afraid, except by treating the characters with respect. I felt like Amram didn't get the chance for much interiority in the novel, so I told the story from his perspective, and then I realized that meant we were looking *at* Zelikman the whole time, so he still kind of hogs the spotlight. Despite all that, I'm pleased with the funny bits in the story, and I think I did a decent job with the writing style. That's not nothing for a Yuletide project that I wrote while such terrible distractions were going on in the world.
This year for Yuletide I wrote this story:
On the relative importance of hats, horses, and trust among new partners in criminal enterprise (3208 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Gentlemen of the Road - Michael Chabon
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Amram (Gentlemen of the Road), Zelikman (Gentlemen of the Road)
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Bickering, Canon Character of Color, Canon Jewish Character
Summary:
Zelikman has a bad habit of becoming attached to things that can be killed, lost, or stolen.
This was fun, if difficult; I reread the book full of confidence that I would have time to do some research and worldbuilding, and ended up learning almost nothing about Khazaria and filling this story with the things I was already reasonably sure could plausibly exist in the world of the novel, most of which are cited in the title of the story. I also hadn't considered, when I offered this fandom, how much identity and representation politics are connected to the story, the Jewish kingdom of Khazaria being the locus for a bunch of gross anti-Semitism as well as the more positive kind of myth-making Chabon is doing in the book. I didn't really feel up to grappling with any of this, I'm afraid, except by treating the characters with respect. I felt like Amram didn't get the chance for much interiority in the novel, so I told the story from his perspective, and then I realized that meant we were looking *at* Zelikman the whole time, so he still kind of hogs the spotlight. Despite all that, I'm pleased with the funny bits in the story, and I think I did a decent job with the writing style. That's not nothing for a Yuletide project that I wrote while such terrible distractions were going on in the world.
