A Certain Slant of Light

candyheartsex has been revealed! I can now tell you that I wrote Look for Me By Moonlight an Aymar/Laurent fic for D. K. Broster's The Wounded Name. It's an an extension of the scene near the end of the book where Aymar tells Laurent that he has been piece of a transcendental good fortune and Laurent, swift thick-headed booby, doesn't understand until Aymar exclaims: "Is it nature or art, Laurent, that has made you so thick-headed? You don't know what I mean? Well, go and stand in front of your looking-glass, and perhaps it will dawn upon you!"

I tried to make their love confessions as gloriously OTT as everything else in the book, and may not have quite scaled those Olympian heights, but Laurent does get to kiss the burn scars that Aymar received when the soldiers tortured him to learn Laurent's whereabouts.

I also got FOUR gifts! Truly a bonanza!

There is one David Blaize story, Wandering, Not Lonely, an adorable moment with David Blaize and Frank Maddox hiking together.

Also THREE Queen's Thief gifts, all in one way or another about my boy Costis Ormentidiedes!

to love and to want is a Costis-eye-view of Kamet, a delicious complement to all of Kamet's musing about Costis over the course of the book.

The Fool's Guard features Costis and Irene bonding over their exasperation over Gen's latest mishap. A fool! A fool! And yet they can't help but love him.

And idiot. us is an adorable piece of fanart, featuring Costis & Kamet in the harbor at the end of Thick as Thieves. Their FOREHEADS TOUCHING, my god.

I've mostly stopped doing exchanges in the last few years, and I've never done a flash exchange before, but I couldn't resist Flash in the Pan, an exchange about food and cooking. And I actually had a great time! Maybe because the writing time was so short (and the required word count so low), I didn't get psyched out about my fic like I sometimes do in exchanges; in fact, I had a good time writing it.

Plus I got two gifts!

to soothe the ache (in your soul) is a Glimmer/Catra fic set on Horde Prime's ship; two former enemies forced to aid and comfort each other in the face of a greater foe. I love stories where the characters are battling to survive in an overwhelmingly hostile environment (so hoping that we'll get lots of this with Glimmer & Catra in season five), and this story does that beautifully.

Year-End Reports, an Agent Carter fic with Peggy & Daniel & Jack friendship; Peggy & Daniel bring Jack soup when he's wearing himself ragged working on, you guessed it, the year-end reports. I love the way that Peggy & Daniel are so brisk and businesslike with their care-taking; they're going to look after each other, but they're not going to be mushy about it.

Chocolate Box reveals have come! I wrote one fic, Take the T-Bird Away, which is a Henry’s-eye-view on Shawn & Gus’s friendship in the show Psych. As Henry drives pell-mell across town to save Shawn & Gus from imminent-yet-ridiculous peril, he composes letters in his head to Gus’s parents just in case he needs to explain how one of Shawn’s boneheaded schemes led to Gus’s death.

As you can imagine, Henry has composed many such potential letters in his life, probably starting when Shawn & Gus were about eight.

It’s been years since I’ve watched Psych, so I rewatched some of my favorite episodes in preparation for writing the fic, and remembered just how much I enjoyed the show - nothing has quite taken its zany mystery-solving place in the years since it went off the air. I even found the show’s persistent hammering of Shawn/Juliet weirdly nostalgic, possibly because I’ve had years to grow resigned to that ship’s inevitable sailing, although the Psych ship of my heart will always be Juliet/April MacArthur, the adorable marine biologist who only appeared in one episode, “Six Feet Under the Sea,” because Psych was never that great at female characters and probably saw no point in giving Juliet a buddy, as evidenced by the fact that actually April and Juliet only have one conversation, which is mostly about Shawn.

Although there is an earlier scene where Juliet introduces April to the chief of police with the impassioned declaration that “They [the marine biologists at the aquarium] like her, and so do I. We shouldn’t be arresting her, we should be helping her!” - while April gazes at her in admiration. So I didn’t just make the ship up of whole cloth.

(I listened to the DVD commentary on this episode and apparently the two actresses got on like a house on fire, which may be why they’re so shippable despite having so little interaction in the episode.)

But I think basically I’ve just gotten better at finding shows that do have female characters who interact on a regular basis, which means that when I watch Psych I find it less frustrating that it doesn’t offer me that - because I can get it in other shows - and therefore can enjoy more of what Psych does have, which is ridiculous mysteries, best friend bickering, and general hilarity. And I think I managed to capture a bit of that in my fic.

Greetings, Chocolate Box writer! Thank you so much for writing for me! It’s been a while since I’ve done an exchange, but this one is so fun and low pressure that it seemed like a good way to wade back in.

Things I like
Hurt/comfort
Fraught character dynamics
Characters with an unequal investment in their relationship - unrequited love, or love that is requited but one character feels it much more strongly than the other
Pining
Loyalty/fealty
Ride or die friendships
Food descriptions
Holidays

Things I don’t like
Character death (unless it’s canonical, in which case that’s fine)

( Natsume’s Book of Friends, The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson, The Spy Who Dumped Me, Agent Carter )

Happy Halloween, everyone! It is a very cold Halloween here: I'm sitting inside watching snow fall past the sliding glass door. I suspect the prospective trick-or-treaters are undergoing agonies: I remember one Halloween, when I was a kindergartner, when thunderstorm succeeded thunderstorm all evening long and we only had time to trick-or-treat on one street. Awful!

Regardless of the weather, I had an excellent day at work today. My coworkers dressed up as Hansel, Gretel, and the witch, which was fun: we totally got a photo of Gretel pushing the witch in the oven as Hansel beamed in the background. It was pretty sweet.

And! And I got my trickortreatex stories! Four of them. Most exciting!

First, my gift story: Return to Innocence, Pirates of the Caribbean, Philip/Syrena,PG. This is about Syrena the mermaid and Philip the missionary, who were clearly the most interesting part of the entire movie: I know Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz did some stuff, but really, the mermaid/missionary love story is where it's at.

Second, an adorable Les Miserables ficlet: Thankfulness, Eponine/Cosette (Eponine => Cosette?), PG. Cosette gives Eponine an eclair, thereby winning her heart forever and also making me really, really want an eclair, because it sounds so delicious.

And two Rome fics! First, The Haunting of Lucius Vorenus, Antony/Vorenus (in a dream), briefly R. Antony is dead and far away in Egypt, but even now that he's returned to Rome, his spirit haunts Vorenus's dreams.

And finally, an adorable ficlet Preparing for War, Rome, PG. The author summarized it as Antony sizes up the newest recruit; but Vorenus is clearly sizing up Antony in return.

I tried to resist trickortreatex, but in between them carmarthen and entwashian have corrupted me. It looks so easy and simple and fun!

So I hope you, O writer/artist, have a good time with this!

Likes:
• Characters who understand each other, even if they sometimes drive each other up the wall
• Loyalty, especially characters doing stupidly amazing things out of loyalty for each other
• Relationships with trust issues, either because the characters can't trust each other but want to, or because they trust each other without reservation
• Relationships that are difficult but affectionate
• Angst leavened by humor, or humor leavened by angst
• A sense of place (scenery porn!)
• Hurt/comfort fics
• Pining
• Cuddling, for warmth or otherwise
• OT3s
• 5 things fics

Dislikes
• Non-canonical character death
• Modern AUs

Art
• Pairing art is fine, but I would prefer it to be work safe.
• Cuddling is always adorable. Always.
• I also like portraits! This is particularly so for the book prompts, most of which don’t have a lot of fanart.
• I'm fond of pictures of people reading.

( Fandom specifics: American Girl: Rebecca, Baby-Sitters Club, Les Miserables, Pirates of the Caribbean, Queen’s Thief, Rome )

Dear Scribbler:

Hello! Mere words cannot contain my excitement for this exchange. Fanfic about children’s books! If there were chocolate involved, it would contain all of my favorite things in the world.

So basically I am going to be pretty easy to please. I like most things: gen, het, femmeslash, slash, OT3s, ridiculous adventure. Deliciously bittersweet fic is delightful, and so are fluff and rainbows and fun. I don’t really want anything more explicit than PG-13, though, even if the characters are aged up.

Likes
- Characters who understand each other, even if they sometimes drive each other up the wall
- Loyalty, especially characters doing stupidly amazing things out of loyalty for each other
- Characters who are passionate about something (aside from just each other) – who love their work, their art, their stamp-collecting, anything
- Hurt/comfort fics
- Friendship
- Witty banter
- “Five things…” stories

Dislikes
- Character death

( Specifics for the fandoms: The Montmaray Journals, Protector of the Small, Queen's Thief )

The Yuletide reveals are upon us! I wrote six treats this year, partly in penance because I defaulted on my story. I just need to not offer to write things for movies or TV fandoms, because it generally doesn’t work out very well.

Nymphs and Bacchantes, Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, Lucy/Ginevra, R.

After a costume ball where she feels her charms have been underappreciated, Ginevra comes to Lucy’s room in search of commiseration and/or appreciation.

“An officer,” she said. “Handsome as an angel, with hair as blonde as my own and hands almost as fine, and his legs - ! Ah, do not frown, Diogenes; he was dressed as Apollo, I could not help but see. I missed a dance because of him: I put myself in his way, but he did not take his chance, and so I had to sit at the side like a wallflower. And he took no notice of anything I said to him. Me! And I barely eighteen: am I losing my charms already?”

Her heart was not injured: only her vanity. “He sounds a sensible man,” I told her. “Be sensible too, and go back to your bed so I can go back to mine.”

I love all my Yuletide fics, but this one is my secret favorite. I should probably print out the recipient’s comment and frame it in gold.

Chrysalis, Isobelle Carmody’s Obernewtyn Chronicles (set near the end of Farseekers, Elspeth/Rushton, G.

“Rushton would not let us clear out your room,” Ceirwan had told me, looking at me with such a speculative light in my eyes that I had clamped fiercely on my thoughts. But although I could keep my thoughts from drifting loose for a farseeker to pick up, I could not keep myself from remembering Rushton’s voice when I first saw him after my return: Ah, Elspeth, love.

Ah, Elspeth and Rushton, the pairing of my fannish little heart during my teenage years! I still love them in all their uncommunicative glory. This is a missing scene inserted near the end of Farseekers, right before the Moonfair, to explore Elspeth’s feelings a bit more.

Just Deserts, Madeleine L’Engle’s And Both Were Young, Erna & Jackie, G.

And Both Were Young is one of L’Engle’s early works, set at an international boarding school in Switzerland not long after World War II. The book touches very gently on the experience of German girls at the school; the recip mentioned she wanted a bit more exploration of that, so that is mostly what this is. With bonus friendship and cookies!

Three Christmases with the Halladays, Frances Ha, kind of sort of Frances/Sophie, PG for language.

”I just, I, uh, I kind of thought we were dating,” Frances said.
Sophie stared at her. Frances picked at a pimple on her chin. “Because of that time at the party?” Frances said. “When you wouldn’t kiss me.”
“You thought we were dating because I wouldn’t kiss you.”

I watched Frances Ha only a couple of days before Christmas, but I liked it so much that I pounded out this story right away. I tried to capture the balance, like the movie, between Frances and Sophie’s easy talking - their conversations replicate the weirdness of chats between old friends very well - and their inability to quite communicate the deeply important things, although I’m not sure I succeeded: the visuals, the body language, are very important for that.

No More Sad Songs, Sherwood Smith’s Crown Duel, Elenet, G

I have always, always wanted more about Elenet after the end of Crown Duel. She seems like such a great person, and she gets such a raw deal from life: her father murdered by Galdran, her mother fleeing back to her home country and leaving Elenet behind, the man she loves in love with someone else.

This is my attempt to give her a road forward, without taking the easy route of pairing her up with someone. It’s much more introspective than most of my stories, very quiet, very reserved: a reflection, in a sense, of Elenet.

Doppleganger, Brave, G. The prompt for this came as a super-emergency last minute pinch hit, so if it’s a little rough, that’s why.

The prompter suggested a story where Merida meets her Disney princess counterpart. (For those of you who don’t keep up with Disney Princess news, Merida got a slight but telling redesign when they added her to the Disney princess line; you can compare the two here.)

The cracktastic brilliance of this idea tickled my fancy. What would happen if they met? How would this meeting come about in the first place? Will Merida let her sparkly counterpart take her place in DunMoch, while she herself runs off to sack Byzantium? (Hey, motetus! There’s another Byzantium picture possibility for you! :D)

At last I have finished my first pass through the Yuletide archive! Which will need to be followed by an almost as extensive second pass through the Yuletide archive, because there are a ton of stories this year. Someone wrote a nearly 40,000 word rewrite of the ending of Mansfield Park. I am kind of excited about this.

In the meantime, I come bearing recommendations!

First, and if you read no other Yuletide stories this year: Re-designation, a WALL-E fic, which is about the meaning of identity and names and, most basically, what happens when EVA and WALL-E meet another WALL-E unit.

A depressed perfectionist WALL-E unit, which is slowly sliding into despair as it realizes it may never clean up its city on its own. [Progress toward task completion: NOT ENOUGH. Estimated time to completion: NEVER.] WALL-E-97-567982 summarized.

Fortunately, WALL-E and EVA are there to help. The author has also somehow managed to make their voices perfectly in character, despite the fact that the robots never actually talk in the movie. It's brilliant.


The Not Entirely Accurate Chronicle of John Polidori, Genius Physician and Brilliant Writer, and His Rather Less Distinguished Companions, a fic about the trip that Byron, the Shelleys, and Polidori took to Lake Geneva. It's in a Very Secret Diary format and everything about it is hilarious.

Note to self: Do not ask Byron any questions regarding his conquests.

2:00 pm

Note to self: Must stop assuming the rumors and gossip surrounding Byron are false. Far easier to assume everything is true.

10:00 pm

Far easier to assume that everything is, in fact, more scandalous than rumored.


And, finally, an adorable Sports Night fic: Once More, With Feeling, a hilarious five times story (with perfectly Sorkin-esque dialogue!) about Jeremy's attempts to ask Natalie to marry him. One of them involves trying to teach all his coworkers a dance routine.

Jeremy addressed the room, all still panting from the latest run-through of the routine before Jeremy pulled the plug on the ordeal. "The fact that I don't want to subject my hopefully future-wife to your chicken-like collective spasms does not a chicken of me make."

fic_corner stories! I have found time to read, and now I must share my glee in my stories!

First, my main gift, The Very Long Letter Bran Left on His Desk. An epistolary fic! Well, a single epistle, which Bran forgets to send his poor sister, oh Bran. (Maybe I should add “epistolary fic” to my list of things I like for Yuletide.)

The fic covers Bran’s months at Athanarel just after Galdran’s deposition, and I love how it captures the atmosphere of court - the leftover anxiety from Galdran’s reign (we get a few details about Galdran’s court that are quietly hair-raising), slowly fading away as uncertainty about the new court gives way to the sense that things will be better.

The fic also offers an interesting interpretation of Tamara: that her flighty fickleness as at least in part a front that she put on for Galdran, and that court mask has perhaps grown attached to her face and she doesn't know how to (or perhaps doesn't want to) take it off. It’s a thought-provoking take.

And a treat! i give thee the ocean, stormy or tranquil, which is about Tamara and Savona’s relationship - a stormy ocean if there ever was one. Crown Duel being in Mel’s perspective, we don’t get to see Tamara and Savona’s wranglings, and I was left very curious at the end just what they saw in each other: Tamara, after all, is not a very nice person.

This story also offers an interesting exploration of Tamara. She’s still not a very nice person, in fact works at seeming even less kind than she actually is:

It rankles to think that he might dole out his love as a reward for her good deeds, or worse, that he or anyone else might suppose that it’s only his faithful adoration that carved a half-decent human being from the virago of Chamadis.

She’s turned back against herself. But Savona sees the vulnerability that she hides - because he hides his vulnerability in much the same way.

And a couple of recs:

First, Worldbuilding, Chronicles of Narnia, about Polly and Digory discussing what it would be like the build Narnia. Pitch-perfect voices, slyly funny, and interesting speculation.

And second, Mountain Ash, The Dark is Rising Sequence, a little bit Jane/Bran but not much. The focus of the story is on Will, and on the effects of the forgetting on them all - the gaps it has created in their lives.

They never could stick together, having forgotten the core of what had first united them. But apart, they were never wholly contented.

It's taken Will decades to realize what damage the series' end has done to them. There's a sense of quiet melancholy to it, and hope as well.