Post-reveals Post
Happy New Year everyone!
This is the traditional post-reveals what-I-wrote-for-Yuletide post. It was a small Yuletide this year. I wrote 4 fics over 3 fandoms (3 full-length treats + assignment). I wrote the full range: gen, het, femslash and slash. The het was part of a threesome/polyamorous relationship - which was my first this year - but only kind of, given that the threesome is really more like three people paired off in open relationships in all different combinations.
BUT before I get to what I wrote I would like to point out (in lieu of a proper rec list because I’m a loser like that this end of last year) that I got a FANTASTIC GIFT. MousselineSerieuse wrote Ever onward, ever forward for me. This is a wonderful War and Peace fic centered on Dolokhov (with an ever-present Dolokhov/Anatole background). This story is painful and melancholic, but also hopeful in the end. The characterizations of Dolokhov, Vera and Hippolyte and their interactions are perfect. The glimpses that we get of the relationship Dolokhov and Anatole had before Anatole's death are also lovely and I love how obvious it is that Dolokhov adored him. (Warning for character death -- it's canon and off-screen, but the fic deals majorly with grief.)
Now. Stuff I wrote:
Title: On Your Honor
Fandom: Captive Prince
Characters/Pairings: Aimeric/Jord, Aimeric/Regent (past)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,459
Warning: Implied past sexual child abuse
Summary: Aimeric loves Jord. But he has good reason to do what he’s doing. He can think of at least 3.
Comments: This was my assignment. I was really happy to get a chance to write a fic with this ship/in this fandom. It’s actually a lot more an Aimeric-centric fic that a shipfic of any sort. I’d hoped to get a chance to talk about what I think lay at the foundation of Aimeric’s motivations during his spying mission (and, no, it’s not all about the Regent for god’s sake) and how Jord destabilizes everything for him. There were times when I was super unsure about this fic, but I do like how it turned out in the end.
Title: La Charmante
Fandom: War and Peace
Characters/Pairings: Helene/Natasha, Dolokhov/Anatole (on the side)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,294
Summary: AU. Anatole does not go to the opera that night and Helene decides to claim Natasha for herself.
Comments: War and Peace femslash! I’ve never written it before (not even the more comfortable and banal Sonya/Natasha) so I thought it was about time. I did want this to be longer and actually go through the entire seduction process and put in some extra Helene and Anatole interaction stuff because I love writing those two together. But I do think it worked alright and the rather open ending allows from some interpretation for the reader to imagine how this disaster of an affair goes.
Title: The Life You Choose
Fandom: War and Peace
Characters/Pairings: Boris, Sonya, Berg, Rostovs
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,232
Summary: After the war, Boris meets the Rostovs for the first time in several years.
Comments: I’ve never written Boris before so this was a very interesting challenge. (This year should be called firsts-in-W&P-fandom year.) The recip wanted potential explorations of Boris and Sonya’s relationship or she’s big on the Rostovs. Admittedly, I wasn’t able to do too much with the Boris/Sonya thing since they do strike me as very different people who wouldn’t really be able to understand each other, but it looks like the recip enjoyed what I did with them, so I’m happy. Also, this got me re-reading all the Boris parts specifically and thinking about him a lot which was a good exercise in general. (Also, a reminder of how much I love all the minor characters in this canon.)
Title: Stay Together
Fandom: Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812
Characters/Pairings: Dolokhov/Anatole/Helene, Anatole/Natasha
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,819
Warning: Incest
Summary: Dolokhov and the Kuragin siblings always end up coming back to each other.
Comments: For those who don’t know, Natasha Pierre… is a wacky modern musical (where like none of the lyrics rhyme lol) and it’s based directly on the Anatole/Natasha romance section of War and Peace (+ Dolokhov’s duel with Pierre for some reason…drama I guess lol). It’s absolute crack but it doesn’t take itself seriously and thus is totally wonderful in its own way. Anyway, since lots of the dialogue and other lyrics are basically lifted directly from the book, if you know War and Peace you can read in this fandom and fic in this fandom reads a lot like straight-up W&P fic. Anyway! What the big difference I found was that characterization gets to be looser in this fandom. I got to go a little crazier, a little less concerned that fanfic tropes or whatever would push things in OOC territory. I mean, the canon is already crack so… Also, the recip was into the idea of a Dolokhov/Anatole/Helene threesome. I don’t think I was able to quite deliver on that front, but she still seem please so it worked out. (I think what I ended up having was more like all three of them in open relationships with each other and then an implied “maybe-there-will-be-threesome-sex” at the end there.)
Thank you to all the Yuletiders for another wonderful year!