Maygra de Rhema
| Fan | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Maygra de Rhema |
| Alias(es): | Maygra, Leila Sharpe, V. Watts, Valerian |
| Type: | fan writer |
| Fandoms: | Highlander, Supernatural, The Fast and the Furious, Magnificent 7 (ATF, Escorts, AU's), Zetsuai 1989 & BRONZE, Smallville, TPM and others |
| Communities: | ROG-L |
| Other: | Maygra's Musings |
| URL: | http://maygra.livejournal.com/ http://del.icio.us/maygra http://assignations.org/maygra/ http://chaikhana.net/spn/ https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maygra |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Maygra has been a BNF nearly from the day she found fandom.
She has written over 200 stories (often in collaboration with others), both gen and slash in many fandoms. Both together and separately, Maygra and MacGeorge were highly influential writers in Highlander fandom.
She was a prolific contributor to The Directorium.
In November 2006 she started the MiniNaNoWriMo community on Livejournal for those fan writers who wanted to participate in something like National Novel Writing Month but on a less grand scale.
Interviews
- Citizens Against Bad Slash Interview with Maygra (2000)
- Ask the Author: Maygra (2007)
- Media Fandom Oral History Project Interview with Maygra (2013)
Essays
- My Take On Betas (1998)
- Being My Own Hero: an essay on the Why and Wherefore of slash (1999)
- The Rules of Combat: Violence in Fanfic writing as V. Watts (1999)
- Why isn't slash yaoi and why is yaoi slash? (2000)
- Same Shit, Different Day (2003)
Fan Reactions
In 2008, a fan commented on her fiction (with an emphasis on Fast and the Furious):
She writes in several fandoms, including Supernatural and Highlander, but what I've read are her The Fast and the Furious fics. I love them all.TFTF is an easy fandom to write badly in - and lord knows, a lot of people do - because the movie offers us some superficially stereotypical characters: the tough ex-con street racer, the pretty-boy undercover cop, the tight-knit street gang, the nasty fed. A lazy writer can just plug those stereotypes right into her favourite fantasy without too much thought.
What Maygra does is think. She works with and through the stereotypes to develop characters who might seem at first to have little to develop. She's also not afraid to take the time it takes to wind together the threads of a convincing plot, to explore people's psyches, to write enough so that we understand what's happening and why, and to make it a logical development, rather than a writer's device to get things moving along. One of the things I've learned from her is that there is no unimportant scene. If it needs to be said, you have to say it, and you as a writer have to find a way to make it exactly as good as the more exciting or sexy bits of the story.
Another thing I really appreciate about Maygra is that she writes her guys as men. There's no wussification. They swear, they get all macho and stubborn when they're hurt, they don't talk very well, any reason is a good one for a beer, they get horny at all sorts of inappropriate moments. As a friend of mine puts it: "They pee standing up."
Oh, and when she gets to the point, she writes smokin' sex.
Probably her best is the novel-length Unfinished Business, which is a direct sequel to TFTF the movie. But if you want something literally out-of-this world, which absolutely should not work worth shit, and nevertheless does, try The Fast and the Furyan. It's a cross-over in which Brian O'Connor is a bounty hunter after Richard Riddick, in the Pitch Black universe. It's absolutely crazy, and I couldn't put it down. [1]
Fanfiction (sample)
Supernatural
- A Different Demon
- Laid Low by Achilles
- The Company You Keep
- Light of Day, Dark of Moon
- Second Sight Series
- False Comforts Series
- Family Ways
- Out of This Darkness
- Reap the Wild Wind
- Reminders of Echoes
- Midnight at the Majestic
- Not for Samson in the Temple
- Salvation series with Eighth Horizon
- Room and Board[1] (Sam/Dean)
- Don't Pay the Ferryman
Fast and the Furious
- Unfinished Business
- The Fast and the Furyan (an improbable crossover set in the RiddickVerse)
Magnificent 7 (ATF AU)
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
Highlander The Series
- A Gathering of Angels
- Archangel Redeemed with MacGeorge
- Blanket of Stars with Melina Clark
- Descent of the Muse with Meghan Black
- Killing the Cat (From Futures Without End I)
- The Ragged Edge with MacGeorge
- Stone Soup (From Futures Without End IV)
- Swords at Sunset with Ashlyn Donnchaid (NC17-slash)
- The Shield Brothers Arc
- The Abomination (Maygra's first fanfic published online, in 1996)
- Immortal Nations with MacGeorge
- The Bed Series