Your Cruise Director

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Fan
Name: Your Cruise Director
Alias(es): cruisedirector, Em Wycedee, MYCD
Type: fan writer
Fandoms: Star Trek, Space: 1999, La Femme Nikita, Lord of the Rings, Smallville, Harry Potter, Aubrey-Maturin, The King's Speech, Les Misérables, MCU
Communities: kings_speeches, perfect duet, slither in
Other: Your Cruise Director's Love Boat, Putrid Poetry old website
URL: AO3; LJ; IJ; DW; Tumblr; Skyehawke; FF.net; Walking the Plank; HASA; Previous site Your Cruise Director's Love Boat
Your Cruise Director's Love Boat.jpg

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Your Cruise Director, also known as Cruisedirector and Em Wycedee, is a fan writer who has been active for several decades. Her "given name" Em Wycedee, which sometimes appears on her stories, is derived from MYCD or M. Your Cruise Director. She has written in both het and slash fandoms, primarily Star Trek: Voyager, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter. She has been nominated for several Mithril Awards. Her works have been commented on during the ASC Awards, and received votes for the Golden Orgasms. She is a co-founder and moderator of several LiveJournal communities and was an early member of JetC.

Your Cruise Director's Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fic appeared in print zines such as The Temple Jewel and can be found in archives from Usenet and Geocities. She also wrote humor and essays for Now Voyager. She has written with collaborators including Becca O, DRush, Cybermum, Karelian, Ldybastet, Celandine and Schemingreader among others, though her most recent and frequent writing partner is Dementor Delta, with whom she has written The King's Speech and Les Misérables as well as Harry Potter.

In Her Own Words

Your Cruise Director was featured in The Best of Trek Fanfic Spotlight of the Month in March 2000.

See The Best of Trek Fanfic Interview with Your Cruise Director.

Some excerpts:

[On how she got started in fan fiction] Accidentally - I thought I had invented K/S along with my best friend in junior high school. Imagine our shock when we discovered other people had beaten us to it a decade earlier. I wrote some terrible fan fiction in high school, then wrote none for years until dared to write a Kira/Odo story by a good friend. Then when Voyager came on the air, someone posted a dare to get Janeway in bed with someone before the end of "Caretaker." Who could resist such a challenge? [On advice for other fanfic authors] Write what you enjoy writing, when the muse strikes. Don't worry about fitting the constraints of any Pocket Books contest of anonymous fan review page or the demands of your readers. Don't get too hung up on people telling you that fan fiction can or should be a learning ground for other forms of fiction; if you want it to, fine, but there's nothing wrong with writing PWPs or ten-line episode additions or rambling alternate universe epics if that's the direction in which you feel compelled to go...I've always thought fanfiction should be for fun and to create a sense of shared community.
[1]

Reviews

Cruisedirector, in her Fourth Age story 'Seasons of Wonder'...puts Aragorn, Arwen, Faramir, and Eowyn in a polyamorous relationship. In this story, which inspired several spin-offs, the four characters find healing through multiple expressions of love for each other, a provocative and joyful interpretation of the Fourth Age as sexual utopia.[2]

Because I won't be able to rec everything she's written individually, let me just mention you can't go wrong with any of the stories on Your Cruise Director's LOTR page. Lovely stuff all over. (Melina)[3]

I have spent all of my free time over the past several days working through/re-working through (Your) Cruise Director’s Voyager archive on AO3...I’ve read a shit ton of fan fic over the years, from back when all websites looked the same and flashing fonts were the epitome of internet creativity and you willingly signed up for mailing lists, and I’ve never come across a better collection of smut. Well-written, believable, honest smut. With heart. (Well…sometimes. Hehehe.) (stillboldlygoing)[4]

If you like your J et C avec romance, read YCD's stuff. Romantic, but rarely sappy and the sex is hot. She's done a little slashing as well. She was here with us when Voyager started and heads Kate's fan club.[5]

Example Fanfiction

  • Uniform – Star Trek: VOY, possibly the first 'net J/C
  • Drowning – Star Trek: Voyager. Often cited as Your Cruise Director's most-loved Janeway/Chakotay story.[6]
  • Disclosure – The West Wing (Josh/Matt). theficklepickle writes: This is a perfect little gem of a story that all West Wing slash fans - even dyed in the wool Josh/Sam aficionadoes - should go out of their way to experience for themselves.[7]
  • Absolution – Snape/Harry alternate ending AU. secretsolitaire writes: The characterizations of Snape and Harry are perfect, true to canon...very moving, and well worth reading even if Snarry isn't your favorite pairing.[8]
  • The Beauty of Their Dreams – The King's Speech. bluerosefairy writes: All the characters are so perfectly true to the movie...and ohhh, the voices. I can hear Bertie perfectly, the stutter and the perfect diction and the unholy glee he has of using vulgar language.[9]
  • Emblematic – LotR filmverse. Espresso Addict writes Piercing observations in this account of a day in the life of the Fellowship[10]
  • Semantics – MCU.

Printzines

References

  1. ^ The Best of Trek Fanfic
  2. ^ Una McCormack, 'Finding Ourselves in the (Un)Mapped Lands: Women's Reparative Readings of The Lord of the Rings' in: Perilous And Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J. R. R. Tolkien (Janet Brennan Croft & Leslie Donovan, eds) (2015)
  3. ^ crack_van: Seasons of Wonder by Your Cruise Director and Ashinae (NC-17) (accessed 31 July 2014)
  4. ^ stillboldlygoing.tumblr.com: Best smut you'll ever hope to find. (accessed 31 July 2014)
  5. ^ comment by Ruth Gifford at alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated/, November 3, 1997
  6. ^ Messages to Mel: Favorite J/C fanfic (accessed 31 July 2014)
  7. ^ epic-recs: Disclosure by Your Cruise Director (PG-13) (accessed 31 July 2014)
  8. ^ secretsolitaire: Quick Rec: Snarry (accessed 31 July 2014)
  9. ^ fangirl-tour: Belated Sunday Recs (accessed 31 July 2014)
  10. ^ Espresso Recommendations: JRR Tolkien (accessed 12 August 2014)