#phoenixfalls

[sanguinarysanguinity]

Criminal AU + Marriage of Convenience! Though it just occurred to me that the snippets of the Hornblower fic kind of fit this... so come up with a DIFFERENT scenario. Maybe a modern canon? ;p

Modern canon would 100% be Joan and Sherlock, one of them having committed a crime in the name of Justice. The two of them would then have to get married, so the other couldn't be compelled to testify against the first...

Oh, but wait! I already wrote exactly that: Nerve and Knowledge

[enemyofperfect]

a writing meme

For which I was kindly tagged by @phoenixfalls​!

What is your total posted word count on AO3? (Go to your Works, then click Statistics.)

5,618 6,859 words, because this meme motivated me to finally post a ficlet that’s been languishing in need of final edits for... a couple of years, as it turns out.  OMG.  Thank you, meme!

How often do you write?

Looking at my notes and doing the math... about once every two weeks, on average.  Or a little more frequently if I include original fic.  That’s honestly less dispiriting than I was imagining.

Do you have a routine for writing?

Nooo.  I guess the closest I come is that I wait to be seized either by inspiration or (if I have a deadline) desperation, and then I write until that emotion runs out.

When I’ve been trying to get myself to write lately, though, I can say that I usually start after dinner and keep going until I hit my goal for the day and/or absolutely must go to bed.  With music playing to drown out ambient noise, and frequent pauses to look up random subjects on the internet, of course.

What’s your favorite kinks/tropes/pairing?

This is such a broad question!  I love it!  Historically, I guess my favorite pairing to date is clearly Finch/Reese.  As for kinks and tropes, hmm.  Femdom is always amazing, although I’ve only written it in noncon flavor so far.  And I have to admit that I will seize any excuse that lets me write most of a fic just as dialogue.  Dialogue is the easiest part of writing anything.

Do you have a favorite fic of yours?

I’m really not sure I do -- or rather, nearly all of them are my favorite in some way.  I guess right’s now it’s a toss-up between the tiny crowd pleaser of First Edition, my one and only exchange fic My Mother Said, or Data Collection, just because I’ve finally tossed it onto the Archive and now it is free.  Those happen to be my three most recent fics, too, so I guess either I’m improving as a writer, or just sick of rereading the older ones.

Your fic with the most kudos?

ERROR: TOO MANY FEELS, by a mile.  I feel like it benefits partly from being a Valentine’s Day fic, so maybe people find it when that time of year rolls around, and partly from the fact that it’s epistolary, so I literally didn’t have to write anything other than goofy emails.

Anything you don’t like about your writing?

There’s so little of it!  Which I guess could be said to be a consequence of everything I dislike about the stuff I don’t complete or don’t post:  I find description very difficult to write, I have a tendency to painfully underwrite anything I want to be remotely subtle, and if I stop and think for too long I invariably forget how real life human beings use ye olde English language.

In stories I’ve actually published, I could always point to a million flaws or things I could have done differently, but my anxiety gets surprisingly low key once things have been up for a while.  Life is imperfection, you know?

Now something you do like?

This is a really good question, and it frightens me!  I guess... a few different people have told me that sometimes I’ll line up the words in a way that’s vivid and gives them feelings, and sometimes I think I can see what they mean.  It’s so hard for me to hold the shape of an entire story in my head, or sometimes even a single scene -- but on a sentence by sentence level, when I work at it, I think maybe I do pretty okay.

Off the top of my head, I’m going to tag @amovingtarget, @findundergrounddragoutofwater, @julstorres, @livenudebigfoot, @stunt-muppet, @theragnarokd, @vassraptor, and @villainny -- if and only if y’all want to play, as always! -- but anyone else reading this should 1000% feel free to do this meme and @ me to make sure I see it.  It’s fun talking about stories!

[livenudebigfoot]

phoenixfalls replied to your post “18 and 49, Reese/Fusco for the mashup asks?”

Ngl, I would read this so hard. :)

some guy in the audience shit-talks reese during a performance and fusco rolls his sleeves up like “hey fuck you buddy, that’s my wife” and it’s mostly for appearances but it’s also partly because reese might be a tall, bony, strange lady, but he’s his lady, darnit.

reese just standing there like “this is unnecessary, but. aw.”

[queensofmystery]

Okay now that I’ve written more than a paragraph I’m going to try this again.

Tagged by @sanguinarysanguinity and @phoenixfalls

Copy and paste the last sentence you wrote, then tag as many people as there are words in the line.

“I didn’t ask you to,” he said, the words muffled around the two pieces of candy.

Most people I know have already been tagged, so I’ll tag the same people I did before again ^_^

@disheveledcurls @margoleon @lesbxdyke @inasentimental-mood @elementary-said-ni

[sibilantly]

S and T for the fanfic ask meme?

S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist?

Friends to lovers. Enemies to lovers. Longtime fuck buddies to lovers: I’m all about witnessing evolution and transformation in stories - tackling the essential question of ‘what motivates people to change?’ - so I’m big on fics where people who’ve been one thing for so long (friends, enemies, fuck buddies, and the like) have to adapt and adjust to this new thing they’ve become.

Quasi-established relationship: I wasn’t sure what to call this trope, I don’t think it has a name, weirdly, but it’s a particular relationship stage that fascinates me. I don’t care as much for meet-cutes, the will-they-won’t-they brand of slow burn, or the first blush of a new relationship. I like seeing the weeeeeeeiiiiird stage, a few months to a year in, when the new car smell has faded, and people have gotten to know one another decently well, but don’t know one another super well like in an established relationship. There’s still the potential for honest misunderstandings and endearing, fumbling attempts to connect, but the stakes are higher (in a good way!) because they care about one another and are emotionally invested in the relationship already.

Bodyswap/Freaky Friday, and its close cousin bodysharing: it appeals to the speculative fiction fan in me. I love stories that delve into the sensory or kinaesthetic aspects of how strange it must be to inhabit someone else’s body (like, oh shit, my centre of gravity is completely off; goddamn it, I stood on tiptoe to reach the topmost shelf and ended up knocking my head against the ceiling, what is this place, a hobbit hole?). Said stories usually come with emotional conflicts and complications I enjoy - characters being forced to see things (literally and figuratively!) from one another’s perspective, walk many miles in one another’s shoes, all those good cliches. (Interestingly, the Fansplaining survey ranked bodysharing as one of the most controversial tropes - as in, people either really love it or really hate it, not much in between. Not sure why that is, but it was an interesting result.)

Canon divergent AUs and mirror ‘verse AUs: I find the question of nature versus nurture endlessly fascinating, so this trope/genre is like crack in a bottle for me. Take your characters, tweak just ooooonnnne choice/aspect or give them entirely opposite life circumstances - what stays the same in their personality? What changes? Why? How much does environment influence a person/character, and how much of a personality is innate? From a writing POV, I also find writing such AUs to be a fun logistical puzzle. How much can you change a character and/or their circumstances, and yet have them remain recognisable to readers?

(However, I admit, because I love how much potential there is in canon divergent AUs and mirror verse fics, there are few things that can turn me off as fast as a cookiecutter character AU. If I read an AU and can’t detect any common thread - even a faint one - connecting characters to their canon counterparts, I back click like a motherfucker.)

T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand?

I am happy to give any trope a go if it’s written by an author I trust. That being said, some tropes do have a much higher bar that needs to be surmounted, such as:

A/B/O and mpreg: the majority of these fics do not have themes or raise questions that are of interest to me personally. I am also not a fan of biological determinism in general, so the whole thing tends to leave me a bit cold. Your kink is not my kink and all that.

Plotless fluff: I feel like I’m in a weird minority saying this, but plotless fluff - especially of the vignette style - makes me impatient and curmudgeonly. “Where is the story arc?” I will mutter. “I don’t care how short it is, I don’t care if you’re a pantser, stories have arcs and structure.” (Once again, nothing objectively wrong with plotless fluff, it’s just subjectively very much Not My Thing.)

Thank you for the questions, and sorry if I answered in waaaaay too much detail!

(The ask game is here!)

[amindamazed]

1 fic to start, 10 participants remixing in turn, 12 new stories to read

Your job: read, enjoy, try to guess the order of the remixes and who wrote what. Comment on the fic at the link above; post your guesses here.

[sanguinarysanguinity]

"🌹"

The image Hotspur pressed on Bush betrayed only a dim understanding of the inflexibility of human anatomy, but she had clearly been eavesdropping on Hornblower's memories of Kingston. 

[sanguinarysanguinity]

A prompt! Etta Candy/Diana Prince, bed-sharing.

(Also on AO3.)

“Oh!” Etta says, coming to a sudden stop on the threshold of the room they rented for the night. There’s only one bed. That's… That’s not good.

She turns to go back downstairs, but thinks better of it almost immediately: Etta is better than this. She all but ran Britain’s War Ministry during the Great War; she faced down foreign agents with a sword; she was the personal secretary, however unwittingly, to a god. And Miss Diana Prince, Princess of Themyscira, chose her, Etta Candy, as her traveling companion! Etta will not be intimidated by a mere bed.

She squares her shoulders, turns back–

And stops again, because really, no, sharing a bed with Diana is just too much. Discretion and valour and all that. She pivots on her heel to retreat, but–

“Oh!” she exclaims again, because Diana has come up close behind her, and now Etta is face-to-face with her breasts. Well, not really face-to-face, more face-to-fur, but that is even worse, because now Etta is thinking about fur muffs and the last time she was face-first–

She pivots sharply on her heel again, and there is the bed.

This is the way Etta is going to die: trapped between a bed and Diana Prince’s breasts.

“What is it?” Diana asks, sidestepping past her like a woman who has never once in her life been stymied by a revolving door.

The fur of her cape brushes past Etta’s face – fur and soft and tall and oh, the smell of that woman, that is what it must be to be a literal goddess, to never stink of travel and perspiration – and Etta revises her opinion: this is how she’s going to die. Here, in this doorway, Diana’s voice low and kind and throaty in her ears.

“Etta?” Diana asks, and Etta blinks her eyes open. Diana is standing in the small space between the door and the bed, her face beautifully creased in a slight frown of concern.

Etta stifles the urge to dootle-de-doo away her discomfort. “There’s only the one…” Her vague gesture doesn’t seem to enlighten Diana in the least. “There’s only one… bed.”

Diana turns to frown at the offending furnishing. “It is large enough for two.”

And isn’t that just the problem? Etta plasters on a bright, determined smile. “I’ll just take the floor then, shall I?”

Diana’s head tilts. “Do you enjoy the floor?”

Etta makes a cheery but noncommittal noise. Even if one could lie to Diana Prince – and Etta isn’t entirely sure she could – the woman conducts her life with such unflinching honesty that it seems unkind, unsporting even, to meet her with anything but the same.

And yet there are still secrets Etta would rather keep for herself. For example, how overwhelming Etta would find it to share a bed with Diana, how much Etta craves it, and how little she dares to hope for it.

“Because I don’t enjoy the floor,” Diana continues. “The floor is cold and hard and lonely. The bed will be none of those things.” And then, because Diana is apparently determined to kill Etta, she adds, “Especially with you to share it with me.”

Diana’s voice is as low and gravelly as if she had just woken after a long night of muff-eating. If Etta didn’t know the woman sounded like that all the damned time, Etta might even believe there was a proposition in there.

“Etta?” Diana asks again, her smile intimate and warm. Oh, yes, this is definitely how Etta will die.

“Erm,” Etta says, intelligently.

Diana’s face falls. “Oh. I see.” She turns away, removes her cape, her weapons. “Steve also was reluctant to sleep with me.”

Etta’s stomach twists in a surprised knot of laughter and grief, because she just bets he was, and also, Steve.

“There is a… taboo?” Diana asks, still doggedly trying to work out Etta’s reluctance to share the bed.

“Ah, no,” Etta hastens to clarify. “Well, not between two women sharing a bed. Not usually.” And dootle-de-doooooo, Etta flies right past that. “But with a man and a woman, yes, definitely, it isn’t done. Or shouldn’t be. Steve was trying to protect your honour. Probably.”

“My honour,” Diana says, amused. She sits on the bed and unbuckles her greaves. There are bald patches on her legs where her armour has worn away the hair. “And are you trying to protect my honour, Etta?”

Etta grimaces. It’d be fairer to say that it’s her own honour she’s protecting. Or, at the very least, her self-respect.

“My honour lies in my sword, and in my open hand,” Diana says, undoing the rest of her armour, buckles and clips and straps, stripping down to the light cotton shift she wears beneath. “It lies in when I choose to speak, and for whom. My honour does not lie with whom I share a bed.” She pauses, considering Etta. “Unless, perhaps, I attempt to share a bed with someone who does not wish to share with me.”

Oh, crikey, but does Diana have it wrong. “No, that’s not… Of course I…”

But Diana is already standing and spreading her cape next to the bed. “I’ll take the floor.”

The last thing Etta wants is to see Diana sleeping on the floor because of Etta’s cowardice. “No! I’ll take the floor! You can’t sleep on a floor, you…” She’s a princess and also a goddess, but Diana would accept neither of those reasons. Etta gestures helplessly at Diana, golden and strong and perfect. “Your bones are all. Um.”

Diana looks at her quizzically, waiting for the end of that thought.

Etta gives up and strikes a pose. She gestures lavishly down her frame, as if she’s modeling the latest fashions. “Whereas I have all this natural cushioning! See? All soft and comfy on the floor.”

Diana blinks, then bursts into incredulous laughter. “Did you just call me bony? No, no, you can’t take that back! Now I have to sleep on the floor,” she teases, stepping into the circle of her cape. She sits, tugs the fur up around her shoulders. “If I share the bed with you, I might injure you with my sharp bones.” She grins up at Etta.

“Oh, lordy, I didn’t mean… But you don’t like the floor. You just said! The floor is hard and cold and lonely!”

Diana pokes at her knee, the jut of her hipbone, all the places where her bones run close to the surface, obviously amused by the idea of being fragile. “Well, yes. But it’s not going to hurt me.” She glances up and sees Etta’s expression. “Oh, Etta, don’t fret, it’s fine. It takes far more than a floor to hurt me. And I don’t get cold, not really. As for lonely…” The smile is still there, but it’s gone brave and wistful. She shrugs. “I’ve been lonely since Themyscira.”

Oh, fudge. She will most definitely die here, but she is Etta Candy, and she chooses to die a soldier’s death.

She marches to the bed, plucks up the pillows, and drops them on the floor next to Diana, who looks up in surprise. Etta kicks off her shoes, then kneels down heavily on the fur cape. She gestures for Diana to move over. “Well go on, make space for me.”

“What are you…?”

“Sleeping with you,” Etta huffs, and manhandles a bewildered Diana until they’re curled up together on the floor, Etta spooned around Diana’s back. There isn’t enough cape to wrap around them both, but with Diana against her front and a curl of the fur pulled around her back, Etta is warm enough. And Diana says she never gets cold, so that’s fine.

“You’re not going to change?” Diana asks. On other nights, she has teased Etta about her voluminous nightgown.

“I’m fine, go to sleep.”

“But I took off my armour,” Diana complains, and Etta would swear she is pouting. Nevertheless, Diana snuggles back into Etta’s body, a series of small, worming movements until the fit between their bodies is perfect. Diana tangles her fingers with Etta’s, lifts her hand and kisses her knuckles. Her heart stuttering, Etta returns the kiss against Diana’s shoulder blade. That’s as high as Etta can reach; even laying down, Diana is very tall.

“Etta?” Diana asks, a little while later.

“Can’t talk, sleeping,” Etta says into Diana’s back. It is a lie; she is most definitely not sleeping. She can’t even imagine sleeping.

Diana giggles, and if Etta hadn’t already been gone for this woman, she would be now. “That was a lie. You’re lying,” Diana scolds, but Etta determinedly doesn’t respond. Her mission tonight is to hold Diana until she’s not lonely anymore. Etta will certainly be dead by morning, but she will have earned her place in Valhalla.

“Etta,” Diana tries again. “Is there a reason we’re on the floor?”

“Yes,” Etta responds immediately, hoping to put enough conviction into the answer to spare her having to discuss it.

A minute passes, long enough for Etta to believe her hopes have been realised.

“Is it a good reason?” Diana asks.

Etta doesn’t answer.

“I only ask because…” Diana turns herself over in Etta’s arms, a series of flops in place, like a beached sea-mammal, and Etta is gratified to know that not even Diana can make that maneuver look graceful. Etta’s gratitude is short-lived, however, because Diana takes Etta’s face in her hands and kisses her gently on the lips.

Etta’s brain whites out.

“…because while I am not cold,” Diana is saying, “and neither am I lonely, the floor is still hard, and I am still bony.” Diana puts a hand on Etta’s waist. Her fingers trace the steel struts of Etta’s corset. “Also, I think you will be more comfortable without your armour. But if you prefer to sleep here, like this, then I am content, too.” Diana’s smile is pure grace.

Wondering at herself, Etta reaches up and kisses that smile. Diana kisses back with the same heartfelt sincerity that she pours into everything.

Perhaps Etta will die here tonight, but it will only be a little death. Perhaps even many of them. And Etta will not die alone: Diana has always been firm that a general should die with her soldiers.

Etta heaves Diana up to lie on top of her. She can’t breathe from the combined pressure of her corset and Diana’s weight, but Etta is no longer afraid of death. “See? Soft and comfy,” Etta says, then winces as Diana’s hipbone juts into her thigh. “Okay, yes, I think maybe the bed–”

“Will be warm and soft and not at all lonely,” Diana agrees, and pushing herself upright, she reaches down to hand Etta up from the floor.