Purimgifts Letter

[melannen]

Hello, Purim gifter!

Sorry this is a little bit late; I made up my mind to sign up at the very last minute and didn't have a chance to write until now.

I would love anything about any female character, or Jewish character, or person being persecuted by evil viziers, in any of the fandoms I requested. I don't have any particular DNWs for any of these, and I love the kind of silly and/or fluffy fic that Purimgifts is good for, but I would also be okay with something that went dark (as long as it's appropriate for Purimgifts in general, of course - nothing along the lines of the bad fandom example in the faq.) I listed my top rating as mature because I didn't want you to feel pressured but anything at any rating is fine if that's what calls to you.

I'm okay with basically any ships in any of these fandoms, but please don't break up any ongoing canon ships to get there (turning canon ships poly is ok though.)

I requested a bunch of SF/Fantasy-ish fandoms that have very little canon Jewish content, but for any of them, I would love any AU or OC or worldbuilding-based stuff that looks at what it's like to be Jewish in that universe, and I also love everybody-is-Jewish AUS. (Or anything expanding on the Judaism canon there is, for the ones that have some.) I have some ideas (that I have been saving up every year I considered doing Purimgifts) below, but I am not Jewish, so some of them are probably Wrong, and feel free to ignore them and write me something else entirely.

I only requested fandoms where I could think of things I wanted for women OR evil viziers OR Jewish characters, so there's a lot under here, but feel free to ignore it all if that helps.

Discworld

My home in Discworld is Ankh-Morpork, and I would love anything for Sybil, or any of the women of the Watch, or Mrs. Palm, or Mrs. Cake, or Spike. I would also love anything about the golems and their work to free themselves from persecution (or about Spike and the golems) (or about my headcanon that, all the men Vetinari tried to tap for the job being too lily-livered and/or sensible to go for it, Spike becomes the next Patrician, supported by all the other powerful women in the city.)

I would also love Monstrous Regiment or Esme Weatherwax or Nanny Ogg or Tiffany Aching in the Ramtops and the Chalk, or the Low King and Lady Margolotta and Uberwald.

I am not sure how Judaism fits on the Discworld, but if you have figured it out, I would love to know.

Good Omens

So Aziraphale and Crowley were both theoretically Jewish for the first several thousand years of their lives, so anything from then would be great.

And I also like the idea that Aziraphale, at least, still considered himself culturally Jewish long after that; neither of them are the type to change their minds just because Heaven Said So - and given that Heaven, in this universe, isn't a great communicator, I bet they didn't even bother to confirm to them that the Nazarene carpenter actually mattered until several centuries after it happened. And I bet that Aziraphale always acted more visibly, stubbornly Jewish the less easy it was for the humans around him to be Jewish.

But I get that includes some tricky stuff about the way Judaism and Christianity interact, so if you'd rather write them before it was an issue, that would also be cool. Someone did Crowley and Aziraphale At The First Purim a few years back, and there can always be more, and Crowley and Aziraphale at some later Purim celebration would also be great, as would Crowley And Aziraphale at any point in Jewish history.

Any other GO character, AU or otherwise, Continuing To Be Jewish During The Christian Apocalypse would also be amazing if that appeals to you.

Also I love all the female characters, especially Madame Tracy and Anathema. I would also enjoy something fun about Agnes Nutter Being Persecuted, or Aziraphale or Crowley or even one of the Horsemen helping out some humans who are Being Persecuted at any point in history.

Highlander

Would you like to give me something with Rebecca? I would love anything about Rebecca, but especially something in which she is Jewish and she is not dead. Would you like to write me a story about any Jewish Immortal, actually? That would be great.

I would also love anything about Amanda, or Tessa, or Cassandra, or Amy, or Alexa, or even any of one-episode women. And given the entire scope of human history, there is plenty of chances to work with people being persecuted; I have always wanted a more-subtle-than-canon exploration of how Duncan's experiences as a Jacobite Scot after Culloden affected his ethics and politics later (and Joe's experiences in the complicated ethics of Vietnam too) but also the Duncan/Fitz/Amanda or Duncan/Amanda/Cory trickster trios overthrowing an evil vizier at any scale would be cool, and so would something about Carl Robinson fighting persecution in the past or present. And of course Methos doing anything anywhere that fits the Purimgifts outline is always fun (Rebecca/Methos taking down an evil vizier in the middle ages somewhere, maybe?)

Imperial Radch

There is one exchange in Ancillary Sword that implies the existence of Valskaayan Jews: "A priest," someone said, "A priest for us, and a priest for the Recalcitrants, there are some over on the next estate." "They're called Teachers," Grandfather said. "Not priests. How many times have I said so?" And Recalcitrant was an insult.

That little exchange has so much to say about how Valskaayan communities have adapted to being transported to Athoek and having to sing their songs in a strange land, and I want more.

For other ideas, I leave it up to you whether the Radchaai "she" automatically counts as female for the purposes of this fest (as long as you don't try to gender born Radchaai based on secondary sex characteristics; that's one of my only hard nos,) and if so, I love everyone who has ever been on board Mercy of Kalr. But fic about any of the canon Radchaai citizens who still carry their indigenous culture who are 'she' in their indigenous language (or aren't 'she' in their indigenous language but really like having the option of the Radchaai 'she') would also be great. I am intrigued by Daos Ceit in particular, if you would like an extremely minor character to play with. And there is, of course, infinite scope for people being persecuted by evil viziers in this canon.

Rivers of London

I can't think of any Jewish characters in RoL canon so far, but if you would like to give me one, please do.

I love all the Rivers, and I love Peter's mom, and Abigail, and Sahra, and Miriam, and Molly, and Varvara.

I would also love something about the relationship between England's magical community and the Folly before Peter came on the scene, because there's all those implications that it might qualify as "persecution by evil viziers", and that there was many decades of Nightingale very slowly but steadily figuring out that he's on the wrong side of that one and figuring out how to start fixing it. (Also Punch, or a relative of his left from Edward I's day, deciding to put on a Purim play with Nightingale in the part of the lead villain could be both hilarious and terrifying at once.) I'd also love something with the Night Witches, before or after the War, on persecution-by-evil theme (or the Night Witches are Awesome theme).

Star Trek:TOS

There is a tendency in the Federation to treat every planet as a monoculture, despite the intentional diversity of the human crews, so I would love something about being Jewish in Starfleet and interacting with people from other planets who don't know anything about Earth culture (or who are from non-dominant culture groups on their own worlds and bonding over that.) Maybe something with the Jewish resonances in Vulcan and Rihannsu/Romulan culture? Or anything about a Jewish community among a starship crew.

Also I love Chapel and I love Rand and I love Uhura (and I love TOS-not-AOS Uhura/Spock) and I love Number One and Amanda and T'Pau.

You could also have a ton of fun, I bet, doing the Book of Esther as an old-fashioned TOS episode where there has been amazingly coincidental parallel evolution and they have to figure out how to save everybody without breaking the Prime Directive.

Star Wars

I am familiar with all nine live-action movies, and Legends canon up to about 1999. I don't know any of the newer expanded universes, or any of the post-prequel trilogy animated canon, and I'm not super-interested in Old Republic/Clone Wars era except as it reflects forward onto post-Empire era. Feel free to use that for backstory/wordbuilding/minor characters, but I'd like it to be mostly about movies iv-iix and/or Rogue One.

If you can figure out a way to do Judaism for this one, I applaud you, and go for it.

I would love something with General Organa and Admiral Holdo being friends and supporting each other, or Rey and Rose meeting, or Rose and her sister, or Rose getting to live out her horse dreams (the way boys in the previous trilogies got to have motorcycles and racecars), or Leia at any point in her career, or Kaydel Ko Connix, or female X-wing pilots from anywhen. And I am intrigued by the Ach-To Caretakers because they really had a bad time in that movie and deserve better.

In terms of evil viziers, I would love something about First Order Stormtroopers resisting, or stories about When We Were Slaves on Tatooine, or Baze and Chirrut keeping the faith alive under Imperial occupation, or Ewoks or Jawas or Sandpeople under Imperial occupation. Or Leia's time in the Imperial Senate, or something about Cloud City. I am also always interested in the status of droids in Star Wars world, and the way the movies both do and don't engage with that in changing ways over time. K-2SO overthrowing his Imperial oppressors as part of a Rebellion that still treats most droids as legal chattel? Or maybe there's an upside-down holiday on Yavin where droids give the orders and buy and sell humans for a week, and Poe and BB-8 introduce it to the Resistance to great hilarity and discord? Or R2-D2's thoughts about ANYTHING whatsoever?

Thor movies

I am mostly about Ragnarok right now, except that I will always love Jane and Frigga. Again, if you can figure out a way to do Judaism for this one, I applaud you, and go for it. I have always kind of enjoyed a Jewish Bruce headcanon and that would probably be really interesting with his arc in Ragnarok. Jane and/or Darcy could be fun, too.

Also I love the Valkyrie and I love Jane and I love Frigga. I also love the semi-canon/myth canon/comics canon genderfluid Loki, and anything they feel about the female influences in their life (I would also enjoy Valkyrie/currently-female-Loki hateship f/f.)

In terms of evil viziers, I don't know if Korg counts as persecuted for the purposes of the fest, but I love him and I bet he would be willing to try to convince you he was, and I also bet that anything about his rebellion(s) on Sakaar would be great. (Also he is made of stone!)

Wonder Woman

I don't know any of the DC movie universe except this movie, but I know DC characters pretty well in the general sense, so please stick to the Wonder Woman movie for the main characters but feel free to bring in other stuff from any version of DC for background.

It occurs to me that there's no reason there couldn't be Themiscyran Jews. There could even be Ethiopian Themiscyran Jews. That would be super cool.

Also I love Diana and I love Hippolyta in general and Antiope in this movie in particular, and the complicated relationships the three of them have. Also I love Etta Candy unreservedly in all ways. For the third category, something about the early history of Themiscyra would be great, and so would anything about Diana and/or Etta confronting persecution and injustice and evil viziers and so on in the world of men. Also on the "people being persecuted" side, I would love anything about Chief/Napi.

Comments

[lannamichaels]

I am not sure how Judaism fits on the Discworld, but if you have figured it out, I would love to know.

(Not that I'm sneaking through your letter or anything, but there's a kosher butcher in Ankh-Morpork mentioned a couple times (in Feet of Clay and Unseen Academicals, maybe also elsewhere?). IDK if Terry Pratchett ever thought it through that it meant there were Jews in Anhk-Morpork, but he put them there.)

[melannen]

Oh! That's true, I recall that now, it's part of how he introduces Black Ribboners, IIRC? So there are definitely Jews in Ankh-Morpork, and I would love to get something about them! Maybe about the kosher butcher and their increasing number of vampire customers? (And I bet there is at least one Jewish golem in Ankh-Morpork then, and I bet said golem and Dorfl have very interesting theological discussions.)

[lannamichaels]

I didn't recall that about Black Ribboners, but that just made me check Fifth Elephant and it's in there, too :D "You don’t need to bring the garlic, though, because all the vampires work down at the kosher butchers’."

So that's Unseen Academicals and Fifth Elephant where apparently vampires are in high demand working in kosher butcher shops. And possibly a gorgon works there as well named Mr Bleakley (I may be misreading that line).

So, basically, the Watch isn't the first place a species shows up to work, instead, it's the local kosher butcher shop ;)

[melannen]

No, I think Mr. Bleakley is a vampire - the point of that line is that a vampire is the only sort of person that Vimes considers *worse* than a gorgon. (...someday I am going to finish writing the sedoretu fic where he ends up married to Margolotta.)

Has there been a discussion anywhere yet of whether it actually is okay to employ vampires at a kosher butcher's? Because I would definitely enjoy reading that discussion.

[lannamichaels]

I'm not sure I've seen one! I can't think of any issue with non-Jewish vampires doing it, and I think the last consensus (lol) about Jewish vampires that I saw was that they have to do it to survive, and anyway, the animals would be dead already.

[melannen]

I was thinking there might be issues with the possibly that they count as human corpses, but I poked around the internet and I guess not, at least in modern Judaism?

[lannamichaels]

There's definitely an outstanding question on if vampires are alive or not.

[jadelennox]

I always assumed the Ankh-Morpork golems were canonically Jewish, except were otherwise specifed, to the extent that Judaism is meaningful in a world with a known pantheon. They have Yiddish names, their words is in a Hebrewesque font, and they're written thematically very much like the Jewish folktales.

[melannen]

There is definitely something very Jewish-ish about them, in language and heritage and also in themes, but also there are a lot of fantasy worlds that have Jewish-ish golems without having anything else even vaguely Jewish in them. I was actually thinking about requesting the golems in general as canonical-ish Jewish characters, because I would like that to happen, but I wasn't sure if I knew enough to say if it actually fit beyond the way fantasy likes to appropriate folklore. Does Father Tubelcek read as Jewish-ish to to people who actually know what they are looking at? In some ways it felt like Pratchett was going for a sort of Jewish feel, but a deliberately pluralist underlying theology where the golems are all powered by different religions (but, then, given the revealed theology of the Disc...)

(Feet of Clay was actually the second Discworld book I ever read, and also it has all the good V/V h/c, so I have read it many times.)

Anyway I think I should probably just keep repeating what I said in the letter before I get in trouble, which is that if someone else has figured it all out, I would love to know, so yes please keep discussing this in my comments. :D

[jadelennox]

Star Wars Jewishness: There's a Colonel Kaplan in TFA, and also Greg Grunberg has stated that he considers every character he's played to be canonically Jewish.

IMO Spock is Jewish, and probably all of the Vulcans, given the origins of the Vulcan salute and much of Vulcan culture. Also, Lieutenant Worf's adoptive parents, the Rozhenkos, are totes written as cultural Jews (though that might just be a side effect of casting Theodore Bikel), which means I've always considered Worf and Alexander to be culturally interfaith.

Also in the Diane Duane novelizations Harb Tanzer is totes Jewish.

[melannen]

... A Jewish First Order officer may actually get into stories I am not interested in (although to be fair, I am deeply not interested in First Order officers at all, unless they are in the process of defecting.) And I don't know enough modern lore (I know I should at least read Aftermath and Bloodline and the Baze & Chirrut YA novel but if I start I will FALL DOWN A HOLE) to prompt anything useful about Temmin Wexley except that he appears to be a Rebel fighter pilot and fighter pilots are one of my bulletproof character kinks, so probably anything about him would be amazing. Yes, please figure out how that works!

I *technically* only signed up for TOS because that's the only one where I've seen all the canon, so I didn't want to prompt anything not TOS either, but the few things I have seen in fandom about Worf's Jewishness have been great.

Harb Tanzer is def Jewish. Also I really want Judaism-adjacent fic about the Empty Chair. And have many feelings about Vulcan culture. Like, the number one Judaism fic I would request if I was admitting to the deepest wishes of my heart is Spock and Ael at the Enterpise seder. But I didn't nominate*, so the Diane Duane book canon is technically not in the tag set this time around, and I was probably already over the line by saying the word "Rihannsu" up there, because supposedly there are people who don't think Rihannsu and Spock's World are show canon? IDEK.

Anyway, Spock can still be Jewish even if Vulcans in general aren't, and I am in favor of that too.

*(I signed up after the mod post about PLEASE MORE NOT-TINY FANDOMS after I saw how many things I love were already on the list, and only requested things with multiple offers already, or this list would definitely include Rihannsu and Pinkwater and Rocket Ship Galileo.)

[catpella]

The idea of the Enterprise seder sounds amazing to me. I was invited to one seder with campus friends, I loved it, and now I'm definitely wondering what a seder there would be like.

[melannen]

Some of the people I follow used to post seder fics a lot and I somehow got it into my head that it's one of the basic genres of fanfiction...