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You can still add prompts to the Sedoretu fic fest! Well, I can't, because I might have hit the prompting limit already, but you can!

If you're new here and have never heard of Sedoretu, it's a concept from stories by Ursula le Guin set on the planet O. Marriages there are four people: two men and two women; with four sexual relationships: two m/f, one m/m, and one f/f; and two non-sexual ships, the other m/f pairs. (There is more to it than that in canon, but that's what makes it really fun to play with as a fandom poly AU concept.)

There are currently 132 prompts in 75 fandoms for the fest, plus several for "any fandom"/"original work", so there is probably at least something you know, and if not you should add it. (Or 137 fandoms if you count all of the Old Norse sagas as their own fandoms, and can I say that I feel like the fact that Old Norse Sagas are the now third most popular fandom in the fest is a dagger aimed directly at me? It's not my fault that Njal's Saga is basically set on O already! I was only trying to taunt the mod a little bit!)

(In other news, we watched the documentary Hvellir last night, about people trying to stop dams on the Laxá,and it is very good, and quotes Njal's Saga, and also only in Iceland would a bunch of protesters trying to destroy a dam just go grab the dynamite that the dam developers had left in small unattended caches all over the protesters' land. And not consider this a particularly noteworthy part of the story.)

So I keep wanting to kudos prompts and accidentally almost claiming them, argh, I wish there was a way to feedback prompts without having to go on and write the darn things. :/ Unfortunately, writing any of the many ones I really want to read would require a ton of canon review that I don't want to commit to. (Although, tbf, anything other than "one of my recent fmk reads" would require a ton of canon review at this point...) Let's face it I will probably just end up writing for Gisli's Saga since at least it's relatively short (and also basically set on O already, fair.)

(I feel like there is probably a reason Le Guin decided to set her stories about four-person marriages and complicated kin relationships among sheep farmers and fishermen in decentralized farmsteads on marginal land.)

(although I want to make the post about the real life basis of moiety a separate post.)

So instead of reviewing canon I have just been reading all the sedoretu stories in fandoms I am at least somewhat interested in. And I have been rec-bookmarking a lot of them to the sedoretu collection linked to the fest. But I am running up against the fact that some of them... are not the quality that I would normally put my rec-heart on, even by my relatively lax standards. So here is a poll for the room: if somebody is going through and bookmarking all of the stories on ::theme:: to a collection,

Poll #18500

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 27

View Respondents

Is it better (by whatever definition of 'better') to:

View Answers

Bookmark the less-good ones to the collection but as Not A Rec
18 (66.7%)

Don't bookmark them at all
9 (33.3%)

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by which you mean "one f/f" of course :P

Is it that big now, prompting-wise? *investigates*

oops.

I mean, I think it might just be a couple of us hitting our prompt limits, but I am WELL under 15% of the total prompts, so it's not *all* me. :P

Edited 2017-06-16 19:24 (UTC)

Please make the real-life basis of moiety post, omg. Learning about how many different ways people have structured kinship and community is one of my favorite things.

I don't know much more than wikipedia but I am o_O at the the number of people in sedoretu discussions who seem to think moiety is a totally fictional thing that could never work in rl.

Hilariously there are two prompts (only one is mine) for The Raven Cycle which is basically already a sedoteru except with maybe less sex.

Let's face it I will probably just end up writing for Gisli's Saga since at least it's relatively short (and also basically set on O already, fair.)

You have no idea* how happy this would make me, OMG.

I was only trying to taunt the mod a little bit!

Taunting successful; I ditched my Doctor Who prompt to sign up for Njálssaga.

Now in research hell trying to track down a full copy or searchable scan of Landnámabók and see what I can do with Rannveig's parentage. In Njálssaga Mord Gigja and Sigfus are sons of Sighvat the Red, making Rannveig and Thráin Sigfusson siblings and Rannveig and Unn parallel cousins, meaning they and Gunnar all have to share one moiety. Hrut and Hoskuld are half-brothers with the same mother, meaning Hrut and Hoskuld's kids have to be of different moieties, meaning that either Unn and Hrut's marriage or both Gunnar and Hallgerd's and Thrain and Thorgerd's are same-moiety.

Landnámabók, as far as I can tell from snippet view on Google books and one full-text version in what I think is a Danish half-redaction of the ON with medieval Latin translation, neither of which is terribly readable, makes Mord Gigja Sighvat's grandson via a son Sigmund, and makes Sigfus and Rannveig Sighvat's children, so Rannveig, Unn, and Gunnar share a moiety but Thráin doesn't, and you still can't make all the marriages work.

(The Wikipedia article on Njála, meanwhile, claims that Landnáma calls Rannveig Sigmundardóttur, which would mean Rannveig, Gunnar, and Thrain all shared a moiety but Unn was the opposite, WHICH WOULD MAKE ALL THE MARRIAGES WORK OUT without my even having to speculate that anyone was the child of a hypothetical other half of the sedoretu. But I haven't found any support for this claim yet.)

(I will probably just end up introducing two more partners for Sighvat the Red--he's got enough kids that it's pretty plausible--and deal with the problem that way. Though I'm still stuck getting around how many people in this saga appear to have multiple opposite-sex partners or spouses compared to the number who appear to have full sedoretus. Things would be so much easier if I could just say that Hoskuld and Hrut and Jorunn and Melkorka were a sedoretu, but no, it's a dude and his same-gender moiety sib and his two opposite-sex opposite-moiety partners and WHAT KIND OF HOUSEHOLD EVEN IS THAT?)

*You probably have a very good idea.

Edited 2017-06-16 20:34 (UTC)

I mean, if I do Gisli's saga I will not be doing *that* much canon review*. :P

I kind of feel like at any point in these things you can just declare that two people that canon calls "siblings" are actually germanes instead, if you need it for the moieties to work out.

Or that the saga writer messed up on a genealogy, which is not exactly unlikely...

* although my copy of Gisli's saga actually has the relevant bits of landnamabok** in the notes in the back, and I have already read them, so maybe

** also I have this dream of someday writing the YA fantasy novel version of Njal where he is a trans dude, at which point I will probably end up reading, like, gragas and jonsbok just to start. But NOT THIS SUMMER.

the YA fantasy novel version of Njal where he is a trans dude

!!!!!!!

WOULD. READ.

What sort of fantasy? Just the sort of ghosts and sorcery that are already in the saga?

It would depend on how capable I felt of actually doing it in full-historical-canon setting or not, honestly. Secondary world fantasy means not having to say "I'm sorry!" for fudging the historical research.

(Or I could just request it for every yt for forever, which would be a lot less effort on my part.)

(I was honestly shocked that here is not *already* a YA novel where Njal is a trans dude tbh.)

ALSO DITCHING THE RANI/DOCTOR/MASTER/ROMANA ONE IS NOT A GOOD OUTCOME! DO BOTH! :P

I will totally pick it back up if I finish the Njalssaga one (and don't get tempted by someone else), but I have not managed to write anything outside Yuletide in four years; finishing one story is a stretch.

Yeah I know that feel; other than a very half-hearted attempt over yt I haven't written any fiction since November.

I was so tempted by the dw one but "review all the old who canon" is really not a smart life choice for me right now.

Ooh, that looks fun! And I can think of a few prompts to leave, too.

Please write the post about the real-life basis of moiety! That sounds very interesting.

(Hi! I've been an off-again on-again lurker on Dreamwidth for a while, and am trying to un-lurk now that I have a journal.)

Hi good to meet you! I am working on the post. :D

Here's the thing: if people are looking for any and all sedoretu fic regardless of quality, they can do what you did, and check the tag. There's already a simple way for them to find stuff like that! What differentiates a collection from a tag is that a collection is CURATED in some way. Other people may or may not agree with your selection criteria, but a tag is EVERYTHING INCLUDING THE KITCHEN SINK and a collection is not. If you just bookmark everything, there is literally no difference between what's in the collection and what's in the tag, so why bother having a collection at all?

Huh. That is a very good point!

Thanks for making it.

Well, there are some not under the tag (and once I run out of AO3 ones - I'm down to my last one - I may look for external works), and there are some in the tag that aren't appropriate for the collection (tf&tf fandom apparently has a popular polyship that they just tag "sedoretu" sometimes even if it's only in the background, and the fics aren't AU at all, for example, and I'm not bookmarking those even if they're good.) And it's an open collection, so somebody else could come in and bookmark ones I hate at any time anyway.

SO there's something to be said for going for "comprehensive list," I just know it would make *my* heart sink if I saw one of my fics on a list like that but pointedly missing the rec heart.

I've still got slots if you want me to prompt something for you :)

Nah, I think probably "just under 15%_ is a high enough proportion to be from me. (I actually searched all of DW for sedoretu discussions and put in all the ones where I knew the fandom well enough to write a prompt and agreed with the pairings that hadn't been written yet.)

I so want to reading the real-life version of the moiety, in case you're tracking that as well. :,)

I will try! It's mostly going to be "this is why you should google for stuff written by people who actually live it," though.

It sounds so neat! I haven't read any of the Le Guin canon or any fanworks or anything (I should read the canon; I should read more Le Guin in general!), but every time I hear about it I'm struck by how interesting the idea is.

So I'm not participating, but I love that this fest is happening. ^_^

The _"canon" is just three short stories (Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, Mountain Ways, and Unchosen Love)! Unfortunately not anywhere I can link you online, but they're all in multiple anthologies that are still reasonably easy to get.

Also most people writing the AUs have not read the stories anyway. :P

Okay, I've just done some poking around and I think what I've figured out is that "Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" is available in the novella installment of the new "Selected Short Fiction" set of books, and the other two stories are not available in either volume, but they're both included in The Birthday of the World, which my library has. So that's good.

(I've been planning to pick up the two-volume "Selected Short Fiction" anyway--although I'm sad about it being only a selection of short stories to go with all of her novellas--so I can avoid unnecessary duplication if I wind up just buying The Birthday of the World as well.)

And! "Mountain Ways" is available online--I found it in my list of links to short fiction to read. ^_^

Which leads to, do the three stories have a reading order?

As far as I know, they don't have any reading order - they're about completely different characters, places and times. I hadn't actually read Another Story until just now, when I looked it up on ISFDB and discovered it was in one of the Tipree anthologies.

Oh, good to know at least Mountain Ways is online! That's my favorite (and the queerest) of the set anyway and it'll make it easier to spread the love.

As far as I know, they don't have any reading order - they're about completely different characters, places and times.

Okay! That's good to know. ^_^

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