(no subject)
I've talked a bit about writing lately and thought I'd put together a list of some of my favorite fics/authors/writing styles. And hopefully track them down and get some links. We'll see how that goes.
The first one would have to be Void by wax_jism. One of the first fanfics I'd ever read. Had not seen The Faculty, don't particularly like Josh Hartnett and think Elijah Wood is slightly creepy. But this story......I was completely gobsmacked by the writing.
Still, he doesn't sleep very well, and he dreams strange dreams about fighting caribou; their horns clicking together like the branches of falling trees; and wide, bare plains.
Oh, man. The whole story's like this; kind of cold, and fragile, and spare, and everything is slightly off.
I also so admire the writing of eyebrowofdoom. I can think of two favorites. The first is Here On Earth, a Lotrips Sean/Orlando apres surfing fic that is so descriptive, I can almost taste the salt and smell the neoprene.
Sean rubs the towel around to Orli’s buttocks, and he crouches and rubs down each of Orli’s legs. He works the towel up again to the buttocks, and he rubs around and around. The moment where Orli is standing naked in the open air and letting Sean rub him and rub him stretches on: Orli’s neck softens and he buries his face in his arms on the roof of the car; he gives a little, muffled chuckle. Orli’s back gets an arch in it. Sean rubs up Orli’s back in one long stroke, then down again. He circles the buttocks again, two-handed.
Then the arch in Orli’s back eases, and he says, gently, earnestly, “I’m really cold. I’ve gotta get in the car, eh?”
The second one is Beasts a Ned Kelly, Joe Byrne/Ned Kelly fic that has great period dialogue and seems very true to the source material.
Then he let one of my arms go, and put his hand on the front of my trousers, and I said, “What’re you doing?”
He started to squeeze with his hand. He did it again, and again, and I felt my prick starting to get hard, and I kept waiting for him to answer me but he didn’t.
Then he did: he said, grinning all the harder, “I’m no good, you see, Ned. And I’m just… I’m just being no good is all.”
Then he said, “You want to be no good with me, eh, just for a minute? For a minute.”
Neither story uses a lot of description but gets a lot across with a minimum of well chosen words, a trait I lack completely. Dammit. Another thing I like about her fics is that often the characters and the situations are just a little ambiguous and everything is slightly understated.
And then there are stories that suprise me, that I almost pass on after I read the summary, but that once I start, I can't leave along. There are a few I have been completely captivated by despite the subject matter.
A good example is Thursday's Child by chaosmanor, a Lotrips, AU, Orli/Viggo. She's pulled up camp from LJ but her fics are up on insanejournal and dreamwidth, and pretty much all of them are good. I was new to slash and when I saw this one was an MPreg I thought "oh jesus, forget it", because really, WTF? But I started it, in what must have been a bored moment, and was completely won over by the sheer humanity of the characters, and how she actually managed to make the situation sort of feasible. IKR.
There was no guilt there. Not that Kate had any idea, and he had no intention of telling her. What he had with Viggo was physical, it was about passion and spontaneity, not love and commitment. They certainly never planned to meet again, never went further than one of them rolling tiredly out of bed the next morning, body aching pleasantly, and kissing the other one on the lips before staggering to the shower.
One day they’d stop, maybe they already had.
Another one that caught me was The Way We Are by tessa111. This is an Orlando/OMC, which is another type of fic I generally steer clear of. It's also really long and has a bunch of other original characters that take a while to keep straight. But it's REALLY GOOD, and by the end I think I was a bit in love with the two of them. Orlando is cute, and confused, and conflicted and Michael in just gahhhh. It's also pretty funny in places, such as Orlando's first bumbling attempt at topping.
Michael’s body was obviously objecting to the intrusion and Orlando figured that maybe he needed to be more careful. Or, maybe it was better to continue while Michael’s body was still partly open. Deciding on the latter, Orlando tried to enter again then hesitated, stopped, changed his mind and pushed forward only to pause again to caress Michael’s hips.
Michael’s back trembled slightly but not from anxiety Orlando soon realized as Michael started laughing, “Will you just get on with it.”
“Seriously, you’re ruining the moment,” Orlando claimed, offended.
“What moment? You’ve been trying forever and we’re getting nowhere.” Michael flopped onto his back on the bed, abandoning the awkward position he had so patiently stayed in, to instead watch Orlando who sat back on his heels, stark naked, his half erection standing not very proudly now.
“I’m just trying to be gentle and take it slow.”
“Yes, I get that but you’re making me nervous.”
“I’m sorry… but I can see you tensing up so I stop,” Orlando excused his behaviour, feeling dejected that his approach had been wrong. He hadn’t done it right.
“But it’s as if you’re planning a surprise assault.”
“I’m sorry,” Orlando repeated miserably.
And then there's the crossover where I'd not seen either of the movies, A Thousand Words and it's sequel Scars by jasmineskie. They are Orli/Viggo, but with characters taken from Haven and A Perfect Murder, so Shy/David Shaw really. The characters are so much more than in the movies and so well developed that the stories basically read like good original fiction.
The gull cried again overhead. Shy's hand came up to stroke David's head. There was a subtle change in the quality of Shy's touch that was unmistakable.
"What are you doing?" David asked.
He tried to pull away, but Shy held him close. Shy had touched him once before in what David thought of as Shy's way of saying goodbye. David didn't want goodbye now, and he sure as fuck didn't want Shy feeling sorry for him.
"I don't need your fucking pity," David said, and this time he did push Shy away.
Shy looked at him with dark eyes. "It's not pity," Shy said.
David glanced down at Shy's lap. He was hard.
The last one for today is The King of New Orleans by Cee. I can't find it on the internets anymore but it's a really good Orli/Viggo AU set in New Orleans. I've saved it so if anyone wants to read an atmospheric story that's a hot mess that reads like a fever dream about voodoo, and street kids, and rum, and blues, and sweaty sex, and secrets, let me know and I'll email it to you. Be prepared to be completely gutted by the ending.
The boy is perched on one of the stone pillars at the foot of the steps, impossibly yet perfectly balanced. The rising sun gilds his form, the long line of his neck, the curve of his shaved head. He has wings, Viggo thinks stupidly; blinks and squints and he does, tattooed with amazing detail on his back and shoulders. The illusion is dizzying.
Viggo shifts his camera around, raises it and brings the boy into focus; as he does, the boy turns his head and he can't have known Viggo was there, it's impossible. The boy smiles. Viggo presses the shutter.
Nothing happens.
:::
Viggo sleeps all day and dreams of night. He dreams of the boy, the boy from the steps is standing framed in the open balcony doors of Viggo's hotel room. When he moves there is the faint sound of beating wings, when he moves the stars wheel and spin above, when he kisses Viggo's cheek it feels so cold that it burns.
When he wakes the sun is setting over the river. The French doors are closed.
:::
The first one would have to be Void by wax_jism. One of the first fanfics I'd ever read. Had not seen The Faculty, don't particularly like Josh Hartnett and think Elijah Wood is slightly creepy. But this story......I was completely gobsmacked by the writing.
Still, he doesn't sleep very well, and he dreams strange dreams about fighting caribou; their horns clicking together like the branches of falling trees; and wide, bare plains.
Oh, man. The whole story's like this; kind of cold, and fragile, and spare, and everything is slightly off.
I also so admire the writing of eyebrowofdoom. I can think of two favorites. The first is Here On Earth, a Lotrips Sean/Orlando apres surfing fic that is so descriptive, I can almost taste the salt and smell the neoprene.
Sean rubs the towel around to Orli’s buttocks, and he crouches and rubs down each of Orli’s legs. He works the towel up again to the buttocks, and he rubs around and around. The moment where Orli is standing naked in the open air and letting Sean rub him and rub him stretches on: Orli’s neck softens and he buries his face in his arms on the roof of the car; he gives a little, muffled chuckle. Orli’s back gets an arch in it. Sean rubs up Orli’s back in one long stroke, then down again. He circles the buttocks again, two-handed.
Then the arch in Orli’s back eases, and he says, gently, earnestly, “I’m really cold. I’ve gotta get in the car, eh?”
The second one is Beasts a Ned Kelly, Joe Byrne/Ned Kelly fic that has great period dialogue and seems very true to the source material.
Then he let one of my arms go, and put his hand on the front of my trousers, and I said, “What’re you doing?”
He started to squeeze with his hand. He did it again, and again, and I felt my prick starting to get hard, and I kept waiting for him to answer me but he didn’t.
Then he did: he said, grinning all the harder, “I’m no good, you see, Ned. And I’m just… I’m just being no good is all.”
Then he said, “You want to be no good with me, eh, just for a minute? For a minute.”
Neither story uses a lot of description but gets a lot across with a minimum of well chosen words, a trait I lack completely. Dammit. Another thing I like about her fics is that often the characters and the situations are just a little ambiguous and everything is slightly understated.
And then there are stories that suprise me, that I almost pass on after I read the summary, but that once I start, I can't leave along. There are a few I have been completely captivated by despite the subject matter.
A good example is Thursday's Child by chaosmanor, a Lotrips, AU, Orli/Viggo. She's pulled up camp from LJ but her fics are up on insanejournal and dreamwidth, and pretty much all of them are good. I was new to slash and when I saw this one was an MPreg I thought "oh jesus, forget it", because really, WTF? But I started it, in what must have been a bored moment, and was completely won over by the sheer humanity of the characters, and how she actually managed to make the situation sort of feasible. IKR.
There was no guilt there. Not that Kate had any idea, and he had no intention of telling her. What he had with Viggo was physical, it was about passion and spontaneity, not love and commitment. They certainly never planned to meet again, never went further than one of them rolling tiredly out of bed the next morning, body aching pleasantly, and kissing the other one on the lips before staggering to the shower.
One day they’d stop, maybe they already had.
Another one that caught me was The Way We Are by tessa111. This is an Orlando/OMC, which is another type of fic I generally steer clear of. It's also really long and has a bunch of other original characters that take a while to keep straight. But it's REALLY GOOD, and by the end I think I was a bit in love with the two of them. Orlando is cute, and confused, and conflicted and Michael in just gahhhh. It's also pretty funny in places, such as Orlando's first bumbling attempt at topping.
Michael’s body was obviously objecting to the intrusion and Orlando figured that maybe he needed to be more careful. Or, maybe it was better to continue while Michael’s body was still partly open. Deciding on the latter, Orlando tried to enter again then hesitated, stopped, changed his mind and pushed forward only to pause again to caress Michael’s hips.
Michael’s back trembled slightly but not from anxiety Orlando soon realized as Michael started laughing, “Will you just get on with it.”
“Seriously, you’re ruining the moment,” Orlando claimed, offended.
“What moment? You’ve been trying forever and we’re getting nowhere.” Michael flopped onto his back on the bed, abandoning the awkward position he had so patiently stayed in, to instead watch Orlando who sat back on his heels, stark naked, his half erection standing not very proudly now.
“I’m just trying to be gentle and take it slow.”
“Yes, I get that but you’re making me nervous.”
“I’m sorry… but I can see you tensing up so I stop,” Orlando excused his behaviour, feeling dejected that his approach had been wrong. He hadn’t done it right.
“But it’s as if you’re planning a surprise assault.”
“I’m sorry,” Orlando repeated miserably.
And then there's the crossover where I'd not seen either of the movies, A Thousand Words and it's sequel Scars by jasmineskie. They are Orli/Viggo, but with characters taken from Haven and A Perfect Murder, so Shy/David Shaw really. The characters are so much more than in the movies and so well developed that the stories basically read like good original fiction.
The gull cried again overhead. Shy's hand came up to stroke David's head. There was a subtle change in the quality of Shy's touch that was unmistakable.
"What are you doing?" David asked.
He tried to pull away, but Shy held him close. Shy had touched him once before in what David thought of as Shy's way of saying goodbye. David didn't want goodbye now, and he sure as fuck didn't want Shy feeling sorry for him.
"I don't need your fucking pity," David said, and this time he did push Shy away.
Shy looked at him with dark eyes. "It's not pity," Shy said.
David glanced down at Shy's lap. He was hard.
The last one for today is The King of New Orleans by Cee. I can't find it on the internets anymore but it's a really good Orli/Viggo AU set in New Orleans. I've saved it so if anyone wants to read an atmospheric story that's a hot mess that reads like a fever dream about voodoo, and street kids, and rum, and blues, and sweaty sex, and secrets, let me know and I'll email it to you. Be prepared to be completely gutted by the ending.
The boy is perched on one of the stone pillars at the foot of the steps, impossibly yet perfectly balanced. The rising sun gilds his form, the long line of his neck, the curve of his shaved head. He has wings, Viggo thinks stupidly; blinks and squints and he does, tattooed with amazing detail on his back and shoulders. The illusion is dizzying.
Viggo shifts his camera around, raises it and brings the boy into focus; as he does, the boy turns his head and he can't have known Viggo was there, it's impossible. The boy smiles. Viggo presses the shutter.
Nothing happens.
:::
Viggo sleeps all day and dreams of night. He dreams of the boy, the boy from the steps is standing framed in the open balcony doors of Viggo's hotel room. When he moves there is the faint sound of beating wings, when he moves the stars wheel and spin above, when he kisses Viggo's cheek it feels so cold that it burns.
When he wakes the sun is setting over the river. The French doors are closed.
:::