5 ⧽. is there a certain kind of fic that feels the most satisfying to finish? any reason why?
I mean, long ones, obviously. But even moreso, I think fics where I’m aiming for a specific tone—emotion, writing style, theme, all tangled together into an aura pervading the whole fic—and I nail it. I’ve certainly only ever accomplished that, or even attempted it, on shorter fics.
Tanoraqui’s Top ‘Nailed the Vibe Check’ Self-Recs:
In Which Space Orcs are Men, a scifi take (‘humans are space orcs’ minigenre, specifically) on the prophecied apocalypse of The Silmarillion. 4.4k.
The Second Party, Silm/LotR, the last night of the Third Age of Middle Earth, in an au in which Maglor was adopted by hobbits. (Prequel is advised reading, but not strictly necessary.) 3.1k.
Brier vs the Lords of the Forest, Kencyrath faerie tale au featuring, if I may toot my horn even further, some lovely sensory description. 7.9k.
On the Subject of Falling, Girl Genius, Tarvek dreams before waking up from the timestop & poison. 3.4k.
Hello, I came across your Kencyrath rec post and I am tentatively intruiged. That said I wanted to ask about a trigger before I dive in. Suicide is pretty strong trigger for me. I can handle it if it's mentioned, but detailed descriptions of the act or a lot of time spent in a suicidal character's head/thoughts dealing with suicidal ideation would not be. Is this an issue in the Chronicles of Kencyrath, and if it is, do you have a different recommendation?
Okay SO.
The Kencyrath exist in a honor/shame society, in which going against the code of honor (lying, breaking your word, etc) is considered a sin that can only be forgiven through an honorable death. Sometimes this takes the form of going into battle without the intention to come back, generally without armor, but it also takes the form of ritualized suicide with a specific kind of knife. I would call it a very specific kind of suicidal ideation, in which it doesn’t come so much from a depressive headspace as it does from a kind of rigidly religious one. There isn’t a ton of time spent in the heads of characters actively pursuing ritual suicide, nor what I would call traditional depressive suicidality, but it IS a very present element of the society, including people freely making choices with the understanding that they will be expected to take their own life afterward, or people being forced to take their own life as an alternative to being dishonored. Think samurai rules or Imperial Chinese rules and you’ll be in the right ballpark. Ultimately I can’t know the inside of your brain, but if onscreen suicide discussion or aftermath is a concern, I might table this series until you feel more ready for it.
In terms of alternative recommendations, buckle up, I have a list based on what part of the Kencyrath pitch you were into. These recommendations are made with the assumption that all the OTHER content warnings for the Kencyrath are not a problem, but I’ll note any really major ones and include a broad rating according to AO3 rules. Anything with an asterisk by it heavily features the big Chivalric Devotion vibes of the main Kencyrath dynamics. I read a lot of that.
Sprawling politics:
The Unbroken* (drafted soldier impresses daughter of the empress, they try to stop a war, full of double-crossing schemes and gallant ladies, cw colonialism, M for violence, sex, and extremely real colonialism)
The Captive Prince* (dethroned prince is sold into slavery under his mortal enemy, definitional enemies-to-lovers content, cw sexual assault, E for a very sexually relaxed culture in a bad way)
A Taste of Gold and Iron* (unambitious prince gets tangled up in a currency fraud scheme and gets a shiny new bodyguard, E for a very sexually relaxed culture in a good way)
October Daye series (starts out classic urban fantasy, rapidly becomes Blood Magic and Politics The Series, for those committed to a long series, T for violence)
Pulp fantasy adventure vibes:
Hero and the Crown/The Blue Sword* (classic sword and sorcery fantasy, for DnD lovers and people who read Horse Girl Books as kids, General Audiences)
Silver Under Nightfall* (vampire couple teams up with vampire hunter to cure a magical plague, the polyamorous murder romance you need in your life, cw coercive assault and body horror, E for gore and numerous threesomes)
Heaven Official’s Blessing***** (translated Chinese novel, very old fallen god returns to Heaven and Does His Best, for those committed to a LONG book, currently on volume 8, T for violence)
Witch King (body hopping demon tries to solve his own murder with his found family in tow, perfect standalone book, T for violence)
Spicy magic systems:
The City We Became/The World We Made (sentient cities and extra dimensional invaders, for everyone who read a lot of Avengers In NYC fic back in 2012, cw racism and survival sex work, M for sex)
Gideon the Ninth/The Locked Tomb series***** (everyone knows about this series, it’s the one with the lesbian space necromancers, cw for just the craziest flavors of abuse, M for violence and cannibalism I guess, also fits the below category)
The Gilded Ones* (what if all the misogynists who said women were demons were absolutely correct, and it was fucking rad, cw for SO much sexism and also religious indoctrination, T for violence)
A Soul to Keep* et al (okay oKAY LOOK THIS IS MONSTERFUCKER CONTENT BUT I RECOMMEND IT, local cursed woman gets forced to marry a demon, they argue a lot and the sex scenes are REAL bizarre, cw kidnapping and the second book deals with a character coming out of a severe depression, HARD E for monsterfucking, obviously)
Interpersonal relationships that are just SO fucked up:
A Dowry of Blood (a letter from Dracula’s first wife to the man himself, cw domestic abuse, M for adult themes and sex)
Remnants of Filth/Yuwu* (translated Chinese novel, loyal general becomes the jailer for his traitorous ex-lover, cw slavery and discussion of sexual assault, E for sex)
The Salt Grows Heavy (homicidal Little Mermaid and plague doctor wander through an apocalypse together, actually read everything Cassandra Khaw has ever touched, the absolute pinnacle of horror, cw all her stuff for really creative violence and body horror, M for violence and gore)
Anyway if you have any other book recommendation questions and/or you read any of these and enjoy them, hit me up, recommending books to people is genuinely one of my great joys in life.
Gorbel is one of my favorite Kencyrath characters, he’s torn in so many directions and raised in one of the worst houses for respecting the Kendar but he still is one of the most respectful and decent highborn we see. Hes also just so much more calm about Jame’s general destruction than pretty much anyone other than Sheth.
Tori didn’t really worry about getting beat up by bullies. For one thing, being a dread creature of the night meant he could take most people in a fight, no matter how scrawny he looked. For another thing, he didn’t live in an 80s movie. This was college. People didn’t swagger up in packs to steal your lunch money.
So he didn’t even look up when someone stopped in front of his couch at the library. He was neck-deep in an essay about the impacts of transcendentalism on the Mexican-American War, and had little attention to spare for some rando who’d stopped to check their phone or whatever. He noticed, because he always noticed when someone was standing near him, but he didn’t care, because he only had a few hours to finish this five-page paper.
He didn’t care when the second person came up beside the first, either. It wasn’t till the third that he glanced up, still in mere thoughtless surprise rather than out of any real curiosity, and froze.
There were three incredibly jacked freshmen standing in front of him, arms crossed to show off their biceps. He knew they were freshmen because they were wearing matching t-shirts from the summer orientation camp. They were also wearing matching death glares.
Tori’s eyes flicked between them before settling on the one in the middle. “Can I help you?”
The girl’s mouth curled into something too angry to be called a smile. “You’ve got them all fooled, haven’t you?”
Tori blinked. Dread dropped into his stomach like a stone. He forced himself to keep breathing, in and out, like a regular human who definitely still needed to oxygenate his blood.
The girl’s lip curled up further in a snarl. “Well, we don’t fool so easy. And we’re not letting you prey on innocent students any longer.”
Tori had the incredibly stupid urge to stammer out, “There’s been a terrible misunderstanding,” like a character on the BBC. He quashed it. The problem, after all, was that there was no misunderstanding. The problem was that somehow, these freshmen knew exactly what he was.
Despite their prevalence in popular media, vampires were not actually all that common. Most people never learned to clock one on sight. There was only one person Tori’d met out here who’d known what he was without having to be told.
Which meant that, unfortunately, he knew exactly what these freshmen were, too.
The werewolf leaned in a little, just enough to loom. “Your time’s run out, bloodsucker.”
I found a couple of old fics tonight and posted them on AO3 basically unedited:
Esk, Issa (Beginning, Movement): Imperial Radch, 800 words
My existence began in a single room.
Or rather, this is where my memory record begins. My existence itself began in a laboratory some very many gates away, but this is only hardware. I, myself, did not begin until I was already in orbit, already set into place above the planet where I was destined to live and die.
The Merrikitt Hotel: Chronicles of the Kencyrath, mall AU, 1.2k
Jame stood in the empty hotel parking lot and tapped her chin. Up close, the Merrikitt Hotel was much nicer than she’d thought, dwarfed as it was by the Four Seasons’ veritable high rise next door. She contemplated the likely price for a room, weighed it against her unfortunately barren wallet, and then weighed it a second time against Rowan’s reaction if Jame came back from her lunch break still dripping mud all over The Knorth Face’s nice clean floors. Never mind that Jame thought it would lend a pleasing verisimilitude to an outdoor goods store; Rowan’s expressionless face could speak volumes when necessary. Right, showering at the Merrikitt it was.
and kencyr beauty and the beast? i remember you talking about this but it's been awhile...
this is one of the many aus @tanoraqui and I have come up with in the kencyrath chat, and honestly it's a banger
The monster was a dark shadow, backlit by some faint glow whose source Kindrie couldn’t guess. Its eyes shone silver from edge to edge, split by slit pupils that were narrowed almost to nothing despite the gloom. Its fangs were too big for its mouth. They distorted its lips into a permanent sneer.
“Why?” it growled.
Why what? Why should it forgive him? He couldn’t say, because I’m sorry—he wasn’t, despite everything. Better that he should die here than the Highlord.
No good answer to that question; find a better one. Why had he thrown himself into the monster’s path?
Because he is my natural lord. He couldn’t say that either. He’d never found the nerve to utter the words aloud, and he had no nerve to spare just now.
“Because he’s the Highlord,” Kindrie said. His voice rasped worse than gravel. “I had to protect him.”
The monster hissed at that, like a vicious cat. Kindrie flinched. “Forgive me,” slipped out without thought.
The last of the far echoes died away, leaving them in silence. Kindrie’s labored breaths drew more attention to themselves in that stillness than he would have liked. The monster regarded him balefully, but there was something else emerging from behind that rage. Kindrie tentatively judged it to be curiosity.
He should fan that curiosity, say something intriguing, anything to keep the monster talking. To make himself more interesting alive than dead. But Kindrie’s mind was filled mostly with gibbering panic, and he had no experience at all in being interesting.
The creature spoke again before he could think of anything. “You will stay.”
The words came out garbled, as if they didn’t quite fit the shape of the monster’s mouth. It took a moment for Kindrie to parse them, and a moment more to understand them. Even then, he could make no sense of them.
“Honor break me,” the monster snarled, the words gnashing together like boulders.
Something in Kindrie found the space to quail at that. It was one thing to be trapped in the lair of a darkling beast; another thing entirely to never even try to flee. Freedom had tasted so sweet, for the brief time he’d known it. Its pull had borne him through so many horrors.
The monster slammed him against the wall again. His vision swam and flickered.
What point in freedom if he was too dead to enjoy it? “Honor break me,” Kindrie choked out, “darkness take me, I so swear.”
