The Middle Distance

Let me take this opportunity to rec the hell out of the story that was written for me: Sherbert Holmes and the Elephant of Surprise, by miscellanny

Yes, it's a Good Omens/Sherlock crossover, and the prompt filled was: "Mrs. Hudson leaves Baker Street. England falls." But of course I wanted the Good Omens cast doing their usual great work at Apocalypse-foiling, and what I got was so, so much better than I could ever have imagined. It's metafictional, it's multilayered, it's rich and hilarious, and it does a much much better job than either canon does with female characters: Madame Tracy, Anathema, and Mrs. Hudson are hilarious, clever, and beautifully drawn. And if you're wondering where Adam Young comes in . . . read it, just read it. You won't be sorry.


I wrote The Widening Gyre, for tomato_greens. T-G wanted a story involving the poems "Easter, 1916" or "Leda and the Swan" and said that a historical setting and W.B. Yeats himself as a character would be extra-great, so that's exactly what I did. Historical fiction set shortly before and after the 1916 Easter Rising, a bit of compare-and-contrast between the developing, ever-changing relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley, and the never-consummated but lifelong weird relationship between W.B. Yeats and Maud Gonne. (All the best lines are Yeats's, not mine of course - though the meanest ones definitely come from A. Crowley. No, not that A. Crowley. The other one.)

The Widening Gyre on AO3

Okay, I'm back from Mysticon and back from a little drowning in make-up work when I got back, so here's something I've been working on for a little while: some Hobbit recs!

All of these are adult-rated and explicit, mostly Bilbo/Thorin. Some have a side of Kili/Fili, and one is Bilbo/Almost Everybody. One day soon I will rec some fics I like that aren't smutty at all. Today is not that day.


Every Good Dwarf Does Fine by htebazytook
Bilbo/Thorin, NC-17
6,289 words

I'm not even going to pretend to be objective about Bazy's fic, since she's my partner in crime on that whole Erotic Adventures of Hillbilly Sherlock Holmes business – but then, I wouldn't have wanted to write with her in the first place if I didn't already love her work to bits, so you can trust my judgment anyway. She uses music in fic like no one else, and this hilarious story has Thorin the awful lyricist being the brunt of jokes amid the endlessly musical Dwarves. So leave it to Bilbo, the rather talented wordsmith, to be his, er, beta-listener. Which eventually leads to making beautiful music together if you know what I mean, and I think you do. The story takes its own sweet time getting there, though, and there's a lot of delicious wordplay and mutual love of language and legend. Bonus points for a rare appearance of top!Bilbo.


In the Halls of the Elven King by htebazytook
Bilbo/Thorin
NC-17
word count: 4236

This one is set in Thranduil's hall, during the time of the captivity of the Dwarves and Bilbo's invisible thieving; it's also a movieverse/book canon hybrid, and features further hilarious and very Tolkienesque use of poetry and song, and a ridiculously hot through-the-prison-bars sex scene. Especially wonderful is the characterization of Tauriel, about whom we know virtually nothing. If PJ & crew write their own OC half as well as Bazy did, I won't resent her insertion into the story one little bit. (Especially if her relationship with callow prince Legolas is exactly like this.)

Nightmares by Avelera
Bilbo/Thorin, R
WIP. Word count so far: 25,776
Warning: Dark

I'm not impartial on this either – I did some brainstorming with her on Tumblr at the very beginning of her idea, and I'm credited as beta, although I'm doing that after the fact and am woefully behind. It's a horror story at heart, and it's a “fix-it” AU that's going to be darker and sadder than the original. (I know where it's going and it might make you wrap up your whole jewelry box in lead chains and throw it into the sea.) Which makes the first few chapters, with its comedy of manners and sweet eroticism and fairly lighthearted sense of longing, all the more wrenching. See if you don't get hooked in right away with her awesome characterization of Smaug in the prologue – I dare you.


A Substitute for Pudding by airandangels
Bilbo/Half of the Dwarves, in Various Combinations, with special emphasis on Bilbo/Thorin and Bilbo/Bofur
SO VERY NC-17
WIP. Word count so far: 55,169

This is the filthiest Hobbit story I've come across yet, no fucking contest. (Partly because there is a fucking contest.) Hobbits are known for their prodigious appetites—oh, my sweet summer child, did you think that only referred to food? Once this becomes known to the company, certain members (heh!) are desperate to make sure they get their fair share with their relentlessly horny little burglar. No slut-shaming here: Bilbo quickly becomes their greatest treasure – and he seems a bit boggled that his insatiable hunger for cock seems to be considered so unusual, and would everyone stop being so damn careful with him? For all that it's a shameless smutfest, the characterizations, the sweet moments and the bittersweet ones, the comedy of manners aspects and the stern weirdness of Dwarven politics, are so very well developed. And, dear to my heart, it's set within a very Tolkienesque frame of far-future historians and literary scholars trying to determine just how much of this salacious tale was written by Baggins himself, was it all a forgery, and even if authentic, how much of it can possibly be believed...? (Warning: you'll never be able to hear the "Blunt the Knives" song innocently again)


***

More to come, these are just a few I thought especially noteworthy. Recs of your own very welcome - and where do you go to find good icons these days? I could use a few.

First, there's the awesome tumblr blog Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor. Exactly what it says on the tin.


That blog lead me to this challenge at ArtOrder, which hosted a massive art challenge (everyone do the same scene from the same book! Interpret as you like) that resulted in 160 different artists' renditions of the Eowyn Vs. Witch-King scene from LOTR. Most of them are beautiful in one way or another, and when you get to look at that many interpretations of the same scene all at once, it really brings out the richness of fiction and the visual/symbolic imagination. Looking at a few is really fun, but looking at them all, which I did over the course of about two days, is actually mind-expanding.

(She's wearing reasonable armor in almost all of them, except for one that is, shall we say, an artistic choice I find rather odd.)

In the one by Gordon Napier, Éowyn looks exactly like the singer/guitarist from G's new metal band if she had blonde hair. I duly facebooked it at her.

So I am sitting on a couch in a very big living room, with TWO cats galumphing down the hallway. So life is good, so it's time for some PIMPING!


go_kink_art.

What it says on the tin. It's a Good Omens kink meme. For ART.

Go forth, prompt, draw, and help prove why we CAN have nice things.

Ska-wee!

Book Six in Naomi Novik's Temeraire series is in US bookstores today!

And as if that's not cool enough, Novik is hosting a fanart contest. She'll write stories to go with the winning entries, and the art and stories together will be published in a chapbook, and proceeds from the sales go to benefit the Organization for Transformative Works. See the link above on Novik's page for the rules - deadline is August 31, 2010.

I know some of you could ace this!

One more pimp of the remix of my story. No, I'm not going to shut up about how much I love it.

Ship Song (Der Himmel Uber Berlin Remix). It's a Good Omens/Wings of Desire crossover, ffs. You know you want it.

Anybody care to guess which remix is the one I wrote? I'll only say it is in one of my qualifying fandoms (I only have three of those), and the person whose story I remixed IS on my friendslist.

Correct guesses get a custom ficlet. :D Obviously, I can't tell you if you're correct or not until the reveal.

I'm ecstatic about the response "Lomendánar" has gotten. I can't thank everyone who's helped and reviewed and recced enough - I was so afraid I'd lost my way in Middle-earth.

Speaking of recs, I'm doing Good Omens this month at crack_van. Only 12 recs allowed? Ouch. I will try to achieve a representative sampling while still keeping my picks stubbornly idiosyncratic.

So I did manage to get a little writing done for the IJ porn battle....

Seems that gender-bending warrior-bonding femslash was my theme this time.

Discworld (Monstrous Regiment), Polly/Mal, "taboo."
(Squick warning on this for a very special kind of, ahem, bloodplay)

Crossover, Chronicles of Narnia/Lord of the Rings, Aravis/Eowyn, horsewomen.


The glorious hyel and I kept crossing each other - I think both the prompts I wrote were hers and I know she wrote two of mine and did an AMAZING job, so the least I can do is rec the hell out of her:

A Moon-Lit Challenge (Crossover, Good Omens/His Dark Materials, Adam/Lyra, revolution)

Dream Interpretation (Crossver, Sandman/Hellblazer, John Constantine/Morpheus, dream interpretation)

and one that wasn't one of my prompts but I wish it had been:

Heaven (Moby-Dick, Ishmael/Queequeg)

Might head out in a bit to a low-key Super Bowl party for people who (largely) don't give a shit about the Super Bowl. With home-cooked tamales.

I spent a lot of the day watching the first season of the current Battlestar Galactica on DVD because M has been going on for weeks about how addicted she is. She wasn't lying about its awesome, that's for sure!

There's a Feedback meme for fic writers. I gave in, I could use it.

Speaking of fic and feedback, if you like Minerva/Severus at all, or even think you might be open to being persuaded to like it by an excellent story, please read and love on this: Things We Lost (and Found) in the War, by xylodemon. (NC-17, definitely not PWP). Just gorgeous.

My dear maelipstick was inspired by my post yesterday of that godawful Photoshop Your Pet with Jeebus site, and wrote me sweet 'n'evil Aziraphale/Crowley comment fic. With ILLUSTRATION.