fanfic author self-recs
thank you @chocochipbiscuit for tagging me - this was a delightful challenge! tagging @rose-gardens @mikbates @pretty-rage-machine @mariaaxescallop @leksaa90 @ostreatus @minoan-ophidian and anyone else who’d like to do this.
diving in, my five:
1) the sun coming out (Jiyeong/Kang Saebyeok) - Squid Game: wrote this for a lovely recip in an exchange, who liked/wanted post-canon fic. in practice I like exploring aftermaths & fix-its where people’s road(s) to happiness still have to be worked for and not every kink’s been smoothed out, and this fic is a prime example of that for me.
alternative tldr: “LOOK at the parallels between jiyeong and saebyeok. LOOK at them” fic complete with cooking and partial recovery. I’m deeply lucky my recip enabled my, uh, runaway domestic jiyeong/saebyeok aspirations and the latitude to write all that. <3
2) the slow mending (Pieck/Hange) - Shingeki no Kyojin: wrote this for a prescient friend -- my concept line was something like... political & historical differences patched through the good old reliable tactic of learning to read, understand, and trust your enemies. I’m still fond of this bit:
So Hange, conscious of historical precedence—what they have both usually done to each other in encounters like this, her titan’s gravestone teeth in Shiganshina and their aggression in Liberio—tries something new instead. They clasp her clean hand in theirs, and draw it close against their face. At the sensation of the contact-burn, her elevated shifter heat kissing their fingers, Hange very gently presses their lips to her hand.
3) to walk along the edge (Pieck/Annie) - Shingeki no Kyojin: this was a sophomore fic; some parts induce the facepalm emoji now, but I’m also surprised by how well certain parts hold up, and I think of this in some ways as a magnum opus.
despite the heavy subject matter and unhappy ending, I’ve been told this fic is comforting, and that humbles me. I sometimes find sad and bittersweet stories more comforting than staunchly happy ones myself; whether consciously or not, I think my writing here came from that same place.
4) blood to gold (Pieck/Hange) - Shingeki no Kyojin: looking back now this fic set up all my Classic Hits like, grief/mourning, hope amidst bleakness, thoughtful narrative voices, and so on. I wrote this shortly after reading the widely circulated essay Against the Logic of the Guillotine. I still like these lines:
Vengeance feels like a guillotine—an entity that wants justice to be served with a swift, purifying cut. Let history renew itself on a clean slate free of enemies.
5) the centre cannot hold (genfic; Hitch & Annie) - SNK: situational horror! missing scenes! stoic characters having said stoicism eroded! the slippage of time and memory; writing this was a blast.
