100 days of enemy recs: 34. The Left Hand of Darkness

[melannen]

That part where Therem rescues Genly, and Therem has lost everything, all honor, all allies, and Genly still thinks of them as a betrayer and doesn't know where to trust? But he has no choice but to go trekking across the ice with them on a hopeless hope, relying on them for everyhing? And they huddle for warmth in a tiny tent every night? While Therem goes into heat, and then goes into heat again? And they learn how to mindspeak with each other, miraculously, impossibly, but Genly mindspeaks to Therem inexplicably in the voice of their long-dead lover/brother? That's the good stuff right there.

(The tale-within-a-tale about Arek of Estre and Therem of Stok? Absolutely pure good stuff, give it to me direct. There's no fanfic for that yet though.)

• Once More, as Aliens (5707 words) by Emma Kowal
  Fandom: The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
  Rating: General Audiences
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Genly Ai/Therem Harth
  Characters: Genly Ai, Therem Harth rem ir Estraven
  
  Genly and Therem on the ice.



• like hands joined together (1980 words) by fallingintodivinity
  Chapters: 1/1
  Fandom: The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
  Rating: General Audiences
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Genly Ai/Therem Harth
  Characters: Genly Ai, Therem Harth rem ir Estraven
  Additional Tags: Romance, Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies
  
  Genly and Therem, after (in an AU where Therem doesn't die, because, yes.)



• Something New in the Same Face (4503 words) by arpent
  Chapters: 1/1
  Fandom: The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
  Rating: Mature
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Genly Ai/Therem Harth
  Characters: Genly Ai, Therem Harth rem ir Estraven, Lang Heo Hew
  Additional Tags: Estravan lives, ambisexual character, Storytelling, Depression, Past non-consensual drug use, referenced Voluntary Farm trauma, kemmer is complicated, past Therem/Arek, lots of feelings, figuring out interspecies sex
  Therem and Genly, after (in another AU where Therem doesn't die. There's a pattern ok.)



• Other Kinds of Men (2937 words) by karanguni
  Fandom: Ursula K Le Guin - the Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness
  Rating: Not Rated
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Therem/Arek
  Characters: Therem Harth rem ir Estraven, Arek Harth rem ir Estraven, Genly Ai, Sorve Harth rem ir Estraven
  Additional Tags: Yuletide, recipient:mauvecloud, challenge:Yuletide 2008
  
  Therem before, and Genly after.

Comments

[pauraque]

Ahh, this is one of my favorite perennial Yuletide fandoms! It's so awesomely tropey (telepathy!! heats!! huddling for warmth!!) but also intensely personal and specific. I'm always delighted at how good the fic for it is, too.

[melannen]

It's so great that one of the best and most famous SF novels ever written is *also* so very full of current slash tropes, and yet here it is! Just waiting for more people to write it!

[minoanmiss]

The tale-within-a-tale about Arek of Estre and Therem of Stok? Absolutely pure good stuff, give it to me direct. There's no fanfic for that yet though.

It's too perfect. It'sso perfect.

[melannen]

It's sooo good! And all the implications with Arek and Therem in the main story being named for them that are never explicitly brought forward! Uugh.

[luzula]

Ha ha, wow, I just never categorized Therem and Genly as enemies to lovers in my head, even if it is completely obvious that they are!

I find the book remarkably difficult to write fic for, though. I've done it twice for Yuletide, once with original characters, and the other time, when I really had to write Therem and Genly, I re-read the book and despaired of writing something set within canon or a canon divergence! It was just so perfect already! Finally I wrote a sort of combined epilogue/prologue, which was okay, I guess, but not great.

[melannen]

It's one of those unbalanced ones! Therem was on Genly's side pretty much from the beginning but they got so caught up in shifgrethor and politics and their own tragic backstory that they forgot they should probably tell him that, and Genly got so caught up in his Envoy job that he forgot that politicians are sometimes also people. Luckily they had to do a bunch of huddling for warmth, and the Therem lived a long happy life afterward, so they managed to work it out.

It is really hard to write for! I've been struggling with trying to write an Imperial Radch crossover, and even without trying to do the canon characters, the worldbuilding is just so dense and so good.