Normally I put this post up a little later (like, early January) but I don't have anything to do tonight. So here it is.
S T A T S :
fics: 13. Omg tragic. I've never dipped so low! Okay, in my defense: I wrote a novel this year (which I also did in 2013, except I did it solo then, so it's not really a good excuse) and I counted my multi-chapter as one. EVEN SO. I felt like I wrote a lot this year, but maybe it's just that I wrote LONG ASS FICS and also I've been more productive the last few months. And I guess the December fics usually bump it up a fair amount. Still, sad. Yeesharoni.
gossip girl: 8
other: 5
ships: 10
hetero: 9
slash: 2 FOR SHAME
femslash: 0 I AM A DISGRACE
gen: 2
female POV: 8
male POV: 5
most written character: Blair, with 4 fics from her PoV.
most written ship: Dan/Blair with 4 fics, followed by Dan/Serena with 3. A predictable creature, me.
O V E R A L L :
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
WAY LESS SO MUCH LESS. I am truly horrified @ myself. I didn't even crack TWENTY. I didn't even crack FIFTEEN. Like, okay, okay, yes: I mostly wrote fics that exceeded 10k, so there's that? But Idk. I felt like I spent so much of my time writing. At least for the last two months or so I feel like I've been writing nonstop (which I love, even if it's probably an unsustainable level of productivity).
Did you take any writing risks this year?
Hmph. I don't...know. Co-writing a novel was probably a "risk" even though it didn't feel like one during. I feel like I tend to stick to my zone mostly.
Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?
MORE GAY SHIT FOR ONE. Otherwise no, not really. I'd like to finish a couple things I have floating around. Write another The Man From U.N.C.L.E. fic.
Did you meet your goals from last year?
According to last year's post, my goals were: more Marvel fic & original fiction, improve upon my style, and get out of what was apparently a "rut" I was in. I definitely failed @ writing Marvel fic; Age of Ultron was so bad it really killed my boner there. I did write more original fiction! As for improving, that is anyone's guess. Writing is so second nature to me now, and I don't think I change up my style all that much – I mean, you spend so long trying to hone a style, you kind of want to enjoy it. And currently I am in a run of productivity, which I would really like to keep up, but these things all hit a wall at some point.
B E S T A N D W O R S T :
My best story of this year:
Hmph. Hard to say. "Best" and "personal favorite" are distinctly different things. But...I think if I had to choose the cross section of those two ideas, I would say crash and burn girl. I really loved writing it. It felt fresh to me even though it was a pairing I had written a hundred times before and it was nice to explore Dan and Blair's relationship in a less...internally fraught way?
My most popular story of this year:
good night bad morning, maybe?? tell me something true? crash and burn girl? The DB fics tend to be a safe bet in terms of popularity, haha.
Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
I am incredibly needy, so I am not an unbiased source: just sayin'. One of the fics I wrote for Yuletide isn't getting as much attention as the other two and it was secretly the one I liked the best, so even though Yuletide fics have literally only been up for FOUR DAYS, I am like WAAAAAH NO ONE LIKES ME. EVEN THOUGH THE OTHER FICS ARE GETTING VERY NICE COMMENTS! I'm a big baby. Also...age of dissonance, guys!!! I finished it!!! I posted it five days ago!!! Doesn't anybody like me???????????
I am exaggerating for comic effect, but only sort of.
Most fun story to write:
I don't know, they were all really fun! Even if I have not produced quantity this year, I like to think I have produced quality. Every time I go down the list to pick one out I keep choosing like four, lol.
Story with the single sexiest moment:
Hmmmmm. I write so much pornography that it is hard to say. (Sidenote, sometimes when I am writing smutty fic I think back with CRINGING CLARITY to the very first sex scene I ever seriously attempted to write, age 18, sitting on my dorm bed in the pitch darkness. Ah, how far I have come in a mere seven yea– OH MY GOD I AM SO OLD.) the best you ever had and good night bad morning were probably my best porn this year. For ~single sexiest moment~ I will say I really liked how the last sex scene in the best you ever had went. Carter is a fun character to write in porn because he has zero shame and therefore it forces me to have zero shame (I have a lot of shame, though. Every sex scene I write, I reach a moment of WHO ARE YOU WHERE ARE YOU EVEN GETTING THIS FROM. True story.).
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
when you think you've tried every road. This was also one of the most fun stories to write, because it was a totally spur of the moment burst of inspiration, which I hadn't had in a really really long time. But I think in the writing of it I grew to like Tristan? It's from his PoV so I obviously had to reach a certain level of understanding. While watching I found him kind of fun but annoying (but hot; I like Finn Wittrock, so sue me) and in writing him I really started to love him (just as he DIED, of course). This may sound weird or mean, lol, but I really like writing dumb characters? What I really mean by that is I like writing characters who are...not academic or articulate or even that good at deducing how they feel. Like, I always really loved writing Nate for similar reasons. It causes my own brain to work in a different way.
And another sidenote, but it was nice to write characters (Liz and Tristan, that is) who were just...straight up in love? Especially writing so much Dan/Blair, a lot of which is very deny, deny, deny (and don't get me wrong, I love denial. Denial City is my hometown; it's where I live. I love people being idiots about their own feelings more than anything.), it was nice to do the opposite for once.
Hardest story to write:
the age of dissonance was hard to write, maybe? Not because the actual act of writing it was hard but because it involved a lot of planning and prep work and outlining. And I won't lie, I did have to push myself to keep at it and finish it. There were days where I would open the doc and just leave it opened, untouched, all day.
Biggest disappointment:
Don't think I had one!
Biggest surprise:
when you think you've tried every road was a major surprise to me. Never expected to write that! the march girls was another. Both were totally unplanned, in-the-moment kinds of things whereas usually I'm a crazed planner.
Most unintentionally telling story:
I don't know. This is the question I always stall at. Even though I do work in personal or experiential things occasionally, fic generally isn't based in a heavily personal place to me? It's probably more telling of stuff that gives me a ladyboner than anything else. But who can say? It all comes from me, so it's all revealing of who I am in some way.
W I P T E A S E R S :
Not much here tbh!
the second best. sequel to the best you ever had. gossip girl. dan/carter.
Carter scratches at the door like a stray cat. He has not been in New York in almost a year. He came here straight off the plane, used all the crushed up spare dollars and cents left in his wallet and still managed to stiff the cabbie a whole fiver. "Danny boy," he calls, nails scraping against the battered wood of the door. "Dan."
The door jerks open suddenly under him and Carter sways, cocky grin alighting on his face before he's altogether straightened up. But he gets barely a glimpse of Dan's harried face, his clenched jaw, before the door is slamming shut. Carter splutters. Then it opens again and a hand fists in Carter's shirt, drags him inside and into a hard kiss.
"Where," Dan says, muffled, "the fuck," broken up by kisses that seem to sting, "were you?"
untitled january ficlet. ahs: hotel. tristan/liz.
"Liz? Hey, Liz?"
Liz whirls around and there he is: her Tristan, beautiful and confused, his lovely brow knit. She couldn't even explain the feeling that rises in her, the happiness – and then a seam opens in his throat like a zipper, shock twisting his pretty features as blood gushes out of his wound. And out of it and out of it. A rough, ugly gasp rips its way out of Liz's throat but then it's all gone, just like that. The boy, the blood – everything.
R E C L I S T :
Have a lot of these! Would probably have more if I more thoroughly went through my scrapbook, but I just picked out the things I most distinctly remembered (which means something, I'm sure). I might stick these in a post on tumblr too, for funsies. Hmm...
• turn. saras_girl. harry potter. draco/harry.
“Shh, I’m saying something very important,” Draco instructs, eyes intense, and just for a moment, it’s obvious how much he has had to drink tonight. And then it’s gone, and he is regarding Harry with clear exasperation. “The point is, who could blame you for trying it when some wanker was trying to Crucio you?”
Harry blinks. “You’re calling yourself a wanker?”
“No... well, yes, but not me now... the little me. The stupid child.”
“You weren’t stupid,” Harry says, surprising himself.
Draco laughs ruefully. “I’d rather believe I was stupid than believe I was evil. I don’t think evil is something you can grow out of.”
“No, I suppose not,” Harry says, surprisingly affected by the plain truth of this statement, and simultaneously astonished that he is, quite voluntarily, telling Malfoy that he’s right.
I read this at the very beginning of the year and I'm re-reading it now. It's just such a lovely, rich universe. You really fall in love with the characters and the world. I think it does a fairly good job of accessing the tone of the actual books, i.e. funny but heartfelt, easy and descriptive prose, and a very good worldbuilding. In the fic, Harry gets sort of transported to an alternate timeline in which one choice he made (in this case, getting Draco to defect from the Death Eaters) changed everything. It ends up highlighting all the things he isn't happy with in his own, epilogue-compliant life (most miraculously, it does this with genuine sensitivity and doesn't shit on Ginny or the kids or anything). Even more wonderful than the alternate timeline half is when Harry gets back to his own life and goes about fixing everything that's wrong with it.
• thunderbomb.robotboy. marvel. steve/thor.
Thor’s fingertips are rough on your knuckles, prising the tumbler out of your grip. He waits while you glance at the others. You’re still in the habit of checking nobody’s seen.
Last year I dropped a handful of Steve/Bruce porn recs; this year I was all about Steve/Thor for a hot minute. SADLY THERE IS NOT THAT MUCH OF IT. But I enjoyed this, and the one after it on the list too. It is a nice fun pairing and also Evans' throbber for Hemsworth is amusing.
• calisthenics. ipoiledi. marvel. steve/thor.
“I intend to be very forceful with you,” Thor says.
Porn.
• epiphany. plingo_kat. the man from UNCLE. napoleon/illya.
It's not that Illya isn’t interested, Napoleon thinks, drawing a finger through the condensation left by his glass on the tabletop. The man just has a terminal inability to act on his desires.
Also porn. Really quality porn.
• the devil finds work for. fahye. the man from UNCLE. napoleon/gaby/illya.
Here's the thing about Napoleon Solo: he only values something if he's stolen it.
A threesome fic that leaned Napoleon/Gaby aka the holy grail for me. I really liked this fic very much a lot. Also, can I take this moment to ask if I am the ONLY person who prefers Napoleon/Gaby? Illya is so uniformly the favorite of this entire fandom and I don't get it. Not that he's not great, but every fandom has its little pockets of alternative stuff, doesn't it???? I guess Gossip Girl fandom didn't really. I don't know. Am I the only one????????
• splendid. selden. mad max: fury road. splendid/furiosa.
Angharad? Splendid Angharad?
Yes, I knew her. Little slip of a thing from Gas Town. Grew up in the shine of the towers, under the smoke. Even back then you could see she was set for the sun. Hair like spun gold. Legs, arms, all of her high gloss, one hundred percent top grade. Always asking questions, too. Busy, busy. They say her mother taught her her letters. They say her mother remembered the time before, that she put ideas in the little one's head. Big ideas. Too big for the space under these towers.
They say her mother got the bone rot and little Angharad goes to the Citadel for a cure. We thought the Immortan could do it all in those days, see.
She messed her face up before she went, though. Precaution.
Oh, I saw it. She took a knife to it, bold as you like. Didn't help her though, when the Immortan's girl-searchers found her.
No, I don't know who could have told them.
She never saw her old ma again, that's for sure. Buried her myself in the black earth, down where the shine is thick. Least I could do.
This. Fic. Was. So. Good! It had a really unique style that worked so so so beautifully. I was really quite taken with it when I first read it and immediately went hunting for other Mad Max fic only to find that 90% of it was Nux/some war boy I didn't even remember and there was like no fic for Furiosa or the Wives. WHY. W H Y.
• i'll be your satellite.blairbending. gossip girl. blair/serena.
The girls at Constance go through crazes. Coloured chapsticks, cheap and waxy, smelling of candy and artificial fruit. Glitter putty, mashed into clothes and sticking tackily under fingers and nails. Then bracelets, hand-knotted, distributed to friends and ringing the arms of every girl in school. Blair's small, quick fingers make her the best bracelet-maker in the school. She is liberal at first, eager to show off, bestowing not one but three bracelets upon poor fatherless Serena, whose big blue eyes fill with tears. You're my best friend, she says. Blair's heart fills her chest and she feels on top of the world as she lovingly ties each one.
Before the week is up, Serena's wrists are crowded with fraying rainbow threads, more than any other girl in school. Blair quickly declares the bracelets stupid (wielding that week's spelling word, "unhygienic"). She snips all hers off and makes Iz and Kati do the same. But Serena is sentimental. She keeps her bracelets and carries on wearing them long after everyone else has moved on. Blair learns that generosity cannot be taken back. She begins to give more carefully.
I thought this fic was so incredible and it really reignited GG feelings that I didn't think I had anymore. One of my absolute favorites of the year. Top three. Maybe THE favorite of the year. There were so many Girl Things in it that resonated with me in a deep way – like the excerpted section.
• sleeper. eyebrowofdoom. the talented mr. ripley. tom/peter.
Sometime overnight – once Tom had heard Peter’s breath deepen into sleep, it had been easy to sleep himself – Tom had come to a resolution that had made everything so much easier. He had been so sad when he’d had to put away being Dickie, and go back to being diffident Tom, with his apologetic stoop, his way of ducking his head. But Peter liked him that way – that time he had sobbed on the piano stool was the moment that he’d had Peter, he thought now. What was needed here was to be Tom Ripley – he needed to impersonate himself. It would be safest, most perfect ruse he would ever perform.
A happy ending for the saddest gayest serial murderer of all time that somehow manages to remain in character.
• the splintered labyrinth.anonymous (for now!). the man from UNCLE. napoleon/gaby/illya.
She does not have that kind of predatory charisma, cannot make the world tilt on its axis, avid and supplicant on eager knees. She does not need to. She has someone to do it for her, after all.
Solo commands attention in the same way a forest fire might. He could be the ragged edge of the Nike of Samothrace’s bloodless, mutilated neck. It takes bare minutes for Gaby to find him in the crowd; the room seems to curve, fisheye, to accommodate his presence and all of its demands. The people, too, seem bent at all the wrong angles to catch his voice when he speaks. In their masks of black and gold, gilt and satin, they look like nothing but a nightmarish Greek choir. Solo’s mask does not detract from his conspicuousness, and Gaby would know him by the slope of his back and the too-still fold of his arms across his chest.
A Yuletide gift for me!!!! This fic is very lovely and has gorgeous ambiance, plus a heavy focus on Napoleon and Gaby's relationship. Really lovely prose with a distinct style.
So there's that! I kind of want to do a Best Of year end post this year, would anyone be interested in reading that? Maybe I'll do that fandom meme I've been seeing on my flist? Maybe both? I don't know?
S T A T S :
fics: 13. Omg tragic. I've never dipped so low! Okay, in my defense: I wrote a novel this year (which I also did in 2013, except I did it solo then, so it's not really a good excuse) and I counted my multi-chapter as one. EVEN SO. I felt like I wrote a lot this year, but maybe it's just that I wrote LONG ASS FICS and also I've been more productive the last few months. And I guess the December fics usually bump it up a fair amount. Still, sad. Yeesharoni.
gossip girl: 8
other: 5
ships: 10
hetero: 9
slash: 2 FOR SHAME
femslash: 0 I AM A DISGRACE
gen: 2
female POV: 8
male POV: 5
most written character: Blair, with 4 fics from her PoV.
most written ship: Dan/Blair with 4 fics, followed by Dan/Serena with 3. A predictable creature, me.
O V E R A L L :
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
WAY LESS SO MUCH LESS. I am truly horrified @ myself. I didn't even crack TWENTY. I didn't even crack FIFTEEN. Like, okay, okay, yes: I mostly wrote fics that exceeded 10k, so there's that? But Idk. I felt like I spent so much of my time writing. At least for the last two months or so I feel like I've been writing nonstop (which I love, even if it's probably an unsustainable level of productivity).
Did you take any writing risks this year?
Hmph. I don't...know. Co-writing a novel was probably a "risk" even though it didn't feel like one during. I feel like I tend to stick to my zone mostly.
Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?
MORE GAY SHIT FOR ONE. Otherwise no, not really. I'd like to finish a couple things I have floating around. Write another The Man From U.N.C.L.E. fic.
Did you meet your goals from last year?
According to last year's post, my goals were: more Marvel fic & original fiction, improve upon my style, and get out of what was apparently a "rut" I was in. I definitely failed @ writing Marvel fic; Age of Ultron was so bad it really killed my boner there. I did write more original fiction! As for improving, that is anyone's guess. Writing is so second nature to me now, and I don't think I change up my style all that much – I mean, you spend so long trying to hone a style, you kind of want to enjoy it. And currently I am in a run of productivity, which I would really like to keep up, but these things all hit a wall at some point.
B E S T A N D W O R S T :
My best story of this year:
Hmph. Hard to say. "Best" and "personal favorite" are distinctly different things. But...I think if I had to choose the cross section of those two ideas, I would say crash and burn girl. I really loved writing it. It felt fresh to me even though it was a pairing I had written a hundred times before and it was nice to explore Dan and Blair's relationship in a less...internally fraught way?
My most popular story of this year:
good night bad morning, maybe?? tell me something true? crash and burn girl? The DB fics tend to be a safe bet in terms of popularity, haha.
Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
I am incredibly needy, so I am not an unbiased source: just sayin'. One of the fics I wrote for Yuletide isn't getting as much attention as the other two and it was secretly the one I liked the best, so even though Yuletide fics have literally only been up for FOUR DAYS, I am like WAAAAAH NO ONE LIKES ME. EVEN THOUGH THE OTHER FICS ARE GETTING VERY NICE COMMENTS! I'm a big baby. Also...age of dissonance, guys!!! I finished it!!! I posted it five days ago!!! Doesn't anybody like me???????????
I am exaggerating for comic effect, but only sort of.
Most fun story to write:
I don't know, they were all really fun! Even if I have not produced quantity this year, I like to think I have produced quality. Every time I go down the list to pick one out I keep choosing like four, lol.
Story with the single sexiest moment:
Hmmmmm. I write so much pornography that it is hard to say. (Sidenote, sometimes when I am writing smutty fic I think back with CRINGING CLARITY to the very first sex scene I ever seriously attempted to write, age 18, sitting on my dorm bed in the pitch darkness. Ah, how far I have come in a mere seven yea– OH MY GOD I AM SO OLD.) the best you ever had and good night bad morning were probably my best porn this year. For ~single sexiest moment~ I will say I really liked how the last sex scene in the best you ever had went. Carter is a fun character to write in porn because he has zero shame and therefore it forces me to have zero shame (I have a lot of shame, though. Every sex scene I write, I reach a moment of WHO ARE YOU WHERE ARE YOU EVEN GETTING THIS FROM. True story.).
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
when you think you've tried every road. This was also one of the most fun stories to write, because it was a totally spur of the moment burst of inspiration, which I hadn't had in a really really long time. But I think in the writing of it I grew to like Tristan? It's from his PoV so I obviously had to reach a certain level of understanding. While watching I found him kind of fun but annoying (but hot; I like Finn Wittrock, so sue me) and in writing him I really started to love him (just as he DIED, of course). This may sound weird or mean, lol, but I really like writing dumb characters? What I really mean by that is I like writing characters who are...not academic or articulate or even that good at deducing how they feel. Like, I always really loved writing Nate for similar reasons. It causes my own brain to work in a different way.
And another sidenote, but it was nice to write characters (Liz and Tristan, that is) who were just...straight up in love? Especially writing so much Dan/Blair, a lot of which is very deny, deny, deny (and don't get me wrong, I love denial. Denial City is my hometown; it's where I live. I love people being idiots about their own feelings more than anything.), it was nice to do the opposite for once.
Hardest story to write:
the age of dissonance was hard to write, maybe? Not because the actual act of writing it was hard but because it involved a lot of planning and prep work and outlining. And I won't lie, I did have to push myself to keep at it and finish it. There were days where I would open the doc and just leave it opened, untouched, all day.
Biggest disappointment:
Don't think I had one!
Biggest surprise:
when you think you've tried every road was a major surprise to me. Never expected to write that! the march girls was another. Both were totally unplanned, in-the-moment kinds of things whereas usually I'm a crazed planner.
Most unintentionally telling story:
I don't know. This is the question I always stall at. Even though I do work in personal or experiential things occasionally, fic generally isn't based in a heavily personal place to me? It's probably more telling of stuff that gives me a ladyboner than anything else. But who can say? It all comes from me, so it's all revealing of who I am in some way.
W I P T E A S E R S :
Not much here tbh!
the second best. sequel to the best you ever had. gossip girl. dan/carter.
Carter scratches at the door like a stray cat. He has not been in New York in almost a year. He came here straight off the plane, used all the crushed up spare dollars and cents left in his wallet and still managed to stiff the cabbie a whole fiver. "Danny boy," he calls, nails scraping against the battered wood of the door. "Dan."
The door jerks open suddenly under him and Carter sways, cocky grin alighting on his face before he's altogether straightened up. But he gets barely a glimpse of Dan's harried face, his clenched jaw, before the door is slamming shut. Carter splutters. Then it opens again and a hand fists in Carter's shirt, drags him inside and into a hard kiss.
"Where," Dan says, muffled, "the fuck," broken up by kisses that seem to sting, "were you?"
untitled january ficlet. ahs: hotel. tristan/liz.
"Liz? Hey, Liz?"
Liz whirls around and there he is: her Tristan, beautiful and confused, his lovely brow knit. She couldn't even explain the feeling that rises in her, the happiness – and then a seam opens in his throat like a zipper, shock twisting his pretty features as blood gushes out of his wound. And out of it and out of it. A rough, ugly gasp rips its way out of Liz's throat but then it's all gone, just like that. The boy, the blood – everything.
R E C L I S T :
Have a lot of these! Would probably have more if I more thoroughly went through my scrapbook, but I just picked out the things I most distinctly remembered (which means something, I'm sure). I might stick these in a post on tumblr too, for funsies. Hmm...
• turn. saras_girl. harry potter. draco/harry.
“Shh, I’m saying something very important,” Draco instructs, eyes intense, and just for a moment, it’s obvious how much he has had to drink tonight. And then it’s gone, and he is regarding Harry with clear exasperation. “The point is, who could blame you for trying it when some wanker was trying to Crucio you?”
Harry blinks. “You’re calling yourself a wanker?”
“No... well, yes, but not me now... the little me. The stupid child.”
“You weren’t stupid,” Harry says, surprising himself.
Draco laughs ruefully. “I’d rather believe I was stupid than believe I was evil. I don’t think evil is something you can grow out of.”
“No, I suppose not,” Harry says, surprisingly affected by the plain truth of this statement, and simultaneously astonished that he is, quite voluntarily, telling Malfoy that he’s right.
I read this at the very beginning of the year and I'm re-reading it now. It's just such a lovely, rich universe. You really fall in love with the characters and the world. I think it does a fairly good job of accessing the tone of the actual books, i.e. funny but heartfelt, easy and descriptive prose, and a very good worldbuilding. In the fic, Harry gets sort of transported to an alternate timeline in which one choice he made (in this case, getting Draco to defect from the Death Eaters) changed everything. It ends up highlighting all the things he isn't happy with in his own, epilogue-compliant life (most miraculously, it does this with genuine sensitivity and doesn't shit on Ginny or the kids or anything). Even more wonderful than the alternate timeline half is when Harry gets back to his own life and goes about fixing everything that's wrong with it.
• thunderbomb.robotboy. marvel. steve/thor.
Thor’s fingertips are rough on your knuckles, prising the tumbler out of your grip. He waits while you glance at the others. You’re still in the habit of checking nobody’s seen.
Last year I dropped a handful of Steve/Bruce porn recs; this year I was all about Steve/Thor for a hot minute. SADLY THERE IS NOT THAT MUCH OF IT. But I enjoyed this, and the one after it on the list too. It is a nice fun pairing and also Evans' throbber for Hemsworth is amusing.
• calisthenics. ipoiledi. marvel. steve/thor.
“I intend to be very forceful with you,” Thor says.
Porn.
• epiphany. plingo_kat. the man from UNCLE. napoleon/illya.
It's not that Illya isn’t interested, Napoleon thinks, drawing a finger through the condensation left by his glass on the tabletop. The man just has a terminal inability to act on his desires.
Also porn. Really quality porn.
• the devil finds work for. fahye. the man from UNCLE. napoleon/gaby/illya.
Here's the thing about Napoleon Solo: he only values something if he's stolen it.
A threesome fic that leaned Napoleon/Gaby aka the holy grail for me. I really liked this fic very much a lot. Also, can I take this moment to ask if I am the ONLY person who prefers Napoleon/Gaby? Illya is so uniformly the favorite of this entire fandom and I don't get it. Not that he's not great, but every fandom has its little pockets of alternative stuff, doesn't it???? I guess Gossip Girl fandom didn't really. I don't know. Am I the only one????????
• splendid. selden. mad max: fury road. splendid/furiosa.
Angharad? Splendid Angharad?
Yes, I knew her. Little slip of a thing from Gas Town. Grew up in the shine of the towers, under the smoke. Even back then you could see she was set for the sun. Hair like spun gold. Legs, arms, all of her high gloss, one hundred percent top grade. Always asking questions, too. Busy, busy. They say her mother taught her her letters. They say her mother remembered the time before, that she put ideas in the little one's head. Big ideas. Too big for the space under these towers.
They say her mother got the bone rot and little Angharad goes to the Citadel for a cure. We thought the Immortan could do it all in those days, see.
She messed her face up before she went, though. Precaution.
Oh, I saw it. She took a knife to it, bold as you like. Didn't help her though, when the Immortan's girl-searchers found her.
No, I don't know who could have told them.
She never saw her old ma again, that's for sure. Buried her myself in the black earth, down where the shine is thick. Least I could do.
This. Fic. Was. So. Good! It had a really unique style that worked so so so beautifully. I was really quite taken with it when I first read it and immediately went hunting for other Mad Max fic only to find that 90% of it was Nux/some war boy I didn't even remember and there was like no fic for Furiosa or the Wives. WHY. W H Y.
• i'll be your satellite.blairbending. gossip girl. blair/serena.
The girls at Constance go through crazes. Coloured chapsticks, cheap and waxy, smelling of candy and artificial fruit. Glitter putty, mashed into clothes and sticking tackily under fingers and nails. Then bracelets, hand-knotted, distributed to friends and ringing the arms of every girl in school. Blair's small, quick fingers make her the best bracelet-maker in the school. She is liberal at first, eager to show off, bestowing not one but three bracelets upon poor fatherless Serena, whose big blue eyes fill with tears. You're my best friend, she says. Blair's heart fills her chest and she feels on top of the world as she lovingly ties each one.
Before the week is up, Serena's wrists are crowded with fraying rainbow threads, more than any other girl in school. Blair quickly declares the bracelets stupid (wielding that week's spelling word, "unhygienic"). She snips all hers off and makes Iz and Kati do the same. But Serena is sentimental. She keeps her bracelets and carries on wearing them long after everyone else has moved on. Blair learns that generosity cannot be taken back. She begins to give more carefully.
I thought this fic was so incredible and it really reignited GG feelings that I didn't think I had anymore. One of my absolute favorites of the year. Top three. Maybe THE favorite of the year. There were so many Girl Things in it that resonated with me in a deep way – like the excerpted section.
• sleeper. eyebrowofdoom. the talented mr. ripley. tom/peter.
Sometime overnight – once Tom had heard Peter’s breath deepen into sleep, it had been easy to sleep himself – Tom had come to a resolution that had made everything so much easier. He had been so sad when he’d had to put away being Dickie, and go back to being diffident Tom, with his apologetic stoop, his way of ducking his head. But Peter liked him that way – that time he had sobbed on the piano stool was the moment that he’d had Peter, he thought now. What was needed here was to be Tom Ripley – he needed to impersonate himself. It would be safest, most perfect ruse he would ever perform.
A happy ending for the saddest gayest serial murderer of all time that somehow manages to remain in character.
• the splintered labyrinth.anonymous (for now!). the man from UNCLE. napoleon/gaby/illya.
She does not have that kind of predatory charisma, cannot make the world tilt on its axis, avid and supplicant on eager knees. She does not need to. She has someone to do it for her, after all.
Solo commands attention in the same way a forest fire might. He could be the ragged edge of the Nike of Samothrace’s bloodless, mutilated neck. It takes bare minutes for Gaby to find him in the crowd; the room seems to curve, fisheye, to accommodate his presence and all of its demands. The people, too, seem bent at all the wrong angles to catch his voice when he speaks. In their masks of black and gold, gilt and satin, they look like nothing but a nightmarish Greek choir. Solo’s mask does not detract from his conspicuousness, and Gaby would know him by the slope of his back and the too-still fold of his arms across his chest.
A Yuletide gift for me!!!! This fic is very lovely and has gorgeous ambiance, plus a heavy focus on Napoleon and Gaby's relationship. Really lovely prose with a distinct style.
So there's that! I kind of want to do a Best Of year end post this year, would anyone be interested in reading that? Maybe I'll do that fandom meme I've been seeing on my flist? Maybe both? I don't know?