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Fandom Snowflake - Day 02
Snowflake Challenge - Day 02
In your own space, share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul.
I'm enjoying my last day of vacation and still in the mood to overachieve, so I'll put down a few influences for things that greatly influenced me this year:
Fanwork: The Marriage Bargain by Kyele. It takes the best parts of the Season One version of the relationship between Eobard Thawne (in the guise of Harrison Wells) and Barry Allen and turns it into a no-powers modern Regency. The characters are lovely and stunning and there's plenty of drama and romance set in a truly unique world constrained by legally codified notions of class and power.
Book: I will confess that I read a hell of a lot of forgettable novels, and this year is no different. But one really stands out for me. Correction, it's actually a pair of books: His Royal Secret and His Royal Lover
By rights, these should have been eminently forgettable - an AU of modern England, where the reigning monarch is not Queen Elizabeth but a very elderly King with failing health, and the Prince of Wales is his grandson, James, a deeply closeted man in his very early 30s. What had initially attracted me to the story was that the object of James' affection was a Jewish man of Israeli descent, but that became the least of it as I read the first story and the sequel. The characters weren't archetypes or poster-board cut outs, but had real feelings, issues and decisions to make. The villains were real, too - not over-the-top crazies.
These stories are - like the fanwork I recommended - excellent examples of world-building, character development and thrilling story-telling.
Music: This one's a little harder to rec, because I generally don't get inspired by a particular song. And honestly, I almost have no interest in current music. So there's nothing new to me from 2016 to rec as inspiring, but I have no qualms about digging out and offering up Peter Gabriel's Don't Give Up:
The lyrics to this song were the inspiration for a very recent fic, Whatever May Come, Whatever May Go (don't give up)
Movie: Again, kind of a total fail this year - I think I only saw four movies in 2016 and none of them have really stayed with me. But, there's a very interesting scene in Casino Royale, when James and Vesper meet and are sparring on the train, when James suggests that Vesper's an orphan and she turns the tables on him. Which then reminded me of another James Bond movie, Goldeneye, when James and Alex talk about how ripe orphans are for recruitment to MI6.
This has directly inspired my current major work in progress, which will be a spy AU but is currently a university AU. And since it's a WiP, I'm not saying much more about it.
Other than the first fanwork rec, I can't say that any of these other recommended items have "changed my soul" but they all have deeply influenced my creative process.