Hossgal
| Fan | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Hossgal |
| Alias(es): | leadensky |
| Type: | fan writer |
| Fandoms: | LOTR, Firefly, Supernatural, Battlestar Galactica, Master and Commander, Farscape |
| Communities: | |
| Other: | |
| URL: | FanFiction.net & FanFic on LJ. Also scattered across many fandom specific and/or multifandom archives such as The Glass Onion. |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Hossgal is a gen and het fan writer. She is perhaps best known for her powerful AU Lord of the Rings story "Mother of Horses", written in 2002 for The One Ring Challenge, which criticizes the prevalence of incest fic in fandom. The story depicts Éowyn being forced into a non-consensual relationship with her brother Éomer who now possesses the Ring. According to one reader the story "leaves you standing all alone on a bare, windswept plain, shivering and helpless. If you love Eowyn as much as I did in the books, it's an extremely difficult story to read. Which is all the more reason to read it anyway, if only to see how cruel good writing can actually be."[1]
From the author's notes: "I don't like stories with incest or rape for the same reason I don't like stories about people who give up -- I don't want to think about that sort of thing going on. Well, one could say, ignoring it isn't going to make it go away, now is it?...I think stories -- fiction, fanfic, what have you -- have the ability to affect the way we see things. I think that while most of us can draw a line between 'real' and 'story', I think that stories can expose us to ideas and concepts we weren't familiar with or didn't agree with before...Stories can have a normalizing affect -- they do for me. Repeat something over and over again, in book after book, and a part of me accepts it as everyday, usual. I stop flinching. I start thinking 'everyone says that, why don't I agree?....I like and appreciate and enjoy the stories that take difficult elements -- family rejection, violence both sexual and not, fucked-up family relationships, non-standard romances -- and build good, intriguing stories around them. I don't care for -- and I wish there were fewer -- stories that whitewashed over those issues, that pretend such things don't hurt, that don't share out blame in a realistic fashion, that depicted pain to satisfy kink and that try to pretend that a good fuck cures everything." [2]
Other readers felt the story is flawed in that it is based on the idea that only stories that focus on incest negatively are acceptable.[3]
She wrote Great LJ Strikethrough of 2007: Seven Things I Wish Fandom Would Not Do.
Other Notable Works
- Mummys, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys (Firefly). According to one reviewer: " This is adorable and hilarious and everyone's voice is just perfect. Guaranteed to put a huge dorky grin on your face, or your money back!"[4]
- All My Grievances I Keep. (Supernatural) - (Dean/Ellen)
- Bright Moon, Who Goes Farther Still. (Watership Down). One reviewer said: "Hossgal's ambitious story gives us the does' perspective not only on the events of Watership Down, but also on rabbit mythology. The novella's two strands weave together perfectly as the tale builds to its moving climax. A real treasure."[5]
- The Rider Verse - a Supernatural/Cherryh crossover with cofax7. "It's an awesome re-imagining of the Supernatural mythos transplanted to CJ Cherryh's Finisterre universe. You can find the first couple of stories in the AU here. It's an AU with distant worlds, alien creatures, a great frontier-style grit..."[6]
References
- ^ [1].
- ^ ~ Source: Author's notes, Archived version.
- ^ See The lady doth protest too much, methinks, dated Jun 12, 2007; WebCite.
- ^ [2].
- ^ Espresso Recommendations: Watership Down.
- ^ [3].