Fic meme!

[anghraine]

Care of beatrice_otter, cross-posted from tumblr.

1. Your three fanfics with the most comments

Haha, could #1 possibly be wgdots?

…LOL.

#2 is First Impressions, my f!Darcy/m!Elizabeth retelling of P&P (easily my most popular fic until we get dark, only to shine stomped everything else I’d ever written into the dust). #3 is Season of Courtship, my oldddd P&P sequel—technically interquel, about Darcy and Elizabeth’s engagement, and incidentally crossing over with Lady Susan and a bit of MP.

(The meme doesn’t ask for #4 and #5, which are also both Austen fics, but I’m honestly touched that Anomaly made it.)

2. Your three fanfics with the most kudos

Inevitably, wgdots takes the lead at 825, but this one’s a little less absurdly disproportionate. There’s 522 for but thou didst not leave his soul in hell(also on tumblr), a 800-word fic about Luke and Vader’s conversation in ROTJ going differently, and 375 for Season of Courtship.

3. Your oldest fanfic

…is, shockingly, a never-finished WiP about Arwen in Gondor, Springless Autumn. I intended it to be about Arwen and Faramir becoming friends and political allies (…apparently my preoccupations have not substantially changed from age nineteen :P), but never got there.

Also, this is a lie: Springless Autumn is the first fic I posted at AO3, but my for-real first fic was Better Choice, where Faramir goes to Rivendell instead of Boromir.

4. Your proudest fanfic

I always waver on this one; there’s a handful of fics that I am still genuinely proud of, but for very different reasons. There’s wgdots for sheer heart (and consistency!), but it’s also such meandering badwrong id candy + pedantry that it’s never going to be something I can direct people to as my Great Accomplishment.

There’s First Impressions, which is definitely my greatest, hm, exertion in terms of planning and executing the plan—by and large it’s exactly what I wanted it to be, which almost never happens. But “what I wanted it to be” is fairly narrow (not a what-if, a retelling), and I very obviously ran out of time at the end.

Probably the ones I’m happiest with in terms of even quality are The Letters of Elizabeth Darcy (1796-1798), which is exactly what it sounds like—epistolary sequel with a side of pseudo-academia—and still the stars find their way, where Leia, Han, and Luke confront the ramifications of their family drama immediately after ROTJ.

5. Your longest fanfic

wgdots at 160,000 words. Oh, you.

6. Your three fanfics with the most bookmarks

Could it possibly be… yep, the trifecta of wgdots (126), Season of Courtship(118), and but thou didst not leave his soul in hell (95). Nicely close together, though.

7. Your favourite character to write in fanfic

Huh. I honestly don’t know. I enjoyed writing Han in the Lucy Skywalkerstories a lot. Vader in Revenge of the Jedi was a blast. Darcy is always a pleasure to write about, through his POV or (I think more often) Elizabeth’s. Lady Catherine is super fun. I’ve loved writing Cesare and Lucrezia in wgdots, though perhaps the most interesting for me to write was the single chapter from Micheletto’s POV.

I like outside POV a ton, whether filtered through pseudo-academia, or letters, or side characters’ perspectives on the protagonists, or whatnot, so it’s really difficult to say. wgdots readers have certainly had to deal with the full dose of my fondness for it through Bernardo, a character who 1) probably didn’t exist irl and 2) definitely didn’t appear in the show. So it’s hard to talk about a single favourite. There aren’t many people I don’t like writing.

8. Three fanfics you love that aren’t already listed

Going with SW for convenience’s sake (and the reality that it’s my original Tumblr fandom and the one most people are following me for :P)—

For more pseudo-academia, I’m immensely fond of the Vader debate fic pair: Jedi Knight (anonymous review) and Reflections on the Vader Question.

The Quality of Mercy, my now-Jossed anti-EU Luke-stanning fic, revolving around the discovery that Han and Leia’s eldest child is veering into zealotry, flirting with some very questionable morality, and deeply over-identifying with the Skywalker ancestry. Er. In QOM, however, the child is a daughter and not a son, a Jedi Knight whose passionate convictions are taking her a bit too far. But there isn’t a serious danger of the Dark Side, the political situation is perfectly peaceful with a stable Jedi Order (and Leia as grandmaster!), ghost!Anakin is very seriously present, and everything is filtered through a second child of Han and Leia’s with none of her sister’s issues. It was mostly about Luke as A+ uncle, A+ Jedi Master, and the nature of compassion.

Aaaaand there’s the Lucy Skywalker series, borne out of sheer frustration at the discovery that f!Luke was under consideration and progressed so far as Ralph McQuarrie’s beautiful concept art of her. It’s probably dearest to my heart of all my SW stuff.

It varies in quality and much of it comes very near to just … novelization of the movies with f!Luke, where the changes are all interior and barely affecting the actual plot. It does have to stay nailed to the railroad tracks for reasons that should be evident by the end of The Imperial Menace, but it’s definitely a weakness for people expecting more of an AU.

It also accepts the gender issues of the OT as genuinely part of the in-story universe, which I don’t think most people do, but which is really where I was interested in looking at consequences. It’s mostly confined to low-level changes on the interpersonal level, like Han’s initial assumption that Lucy is essentially Obi-Wan’s Lolita (and later difficulty defining his relationship with her), Lucy and Leia’s bond as the resident Exceptional Women, Lucy being made lieutenant instead of commander (and grateful for that), Vader’s recruitment of a daughter being a harder sell to Palpatine, and considerable muddling of the love triangle between Leia and Lucy’s iron solidarity and the maybe-platonic maybe-romantic tension of Han and Lucy’s friendship.

Much of that only works if you buy the premise that misogyny is widespread and pervasive in the GFFA, and if you’re willing to read a barely-changed story for the sake of some shifting interiority/relationships and a couple of sudden crises.

Anyway.

Bonus round: your three favourite fanfics not posted yet

Ooh, interesting!

Okay, #1 has got to be the one that so far is just philadelphia.odt:

“No,” Elizabeth admitted, “I have not had the pleasure of your niece’s acquaintance, Lady Catherine.”

After ten minutes in Philadelphia Darcy’s company, she could not regret the fact.

To be sure, Miss Darcy neither did nor said anything wrong. Her manners, however uninviting, were correct; her appearance was more than correct. Elizabeth had never seen a handsomer woman, except Jane, whom Miss Darcy did not resemble in the slightest. To look at her, in fact, she might have been Lady Catherine’s daughter, rather than insipid Miss de Bourgh. Miss Darcy had the same black curls, the same cold dark eyes in a colourless face, the same decided way of carrying herself.

Elizabeth did not suppose that Lady Catherine had ever been quite as pretty, or as sensible. Miss Darcy spoke well when she deigned to speak at all—but her air of superiority was exactly Lady Catherine’s. The haughty silences would have been, too, if Lady Catherine ever confined herself to silence.

f!Darcy again, but this time as 1) not a retelling but an actual what-if, trying to realistically consider the consequences, and 2) femslash!

I did post a f!Darcy/f!Fitzwilliam take, a sort of AU of the AU, but it is not the Real Story, which languishes tragically on my drive but will someday happen.

#2, along similar lines, is the f!Faramir/Aragorn political marriage fic, which I’ve posted some bits and snatches of under the #fíriel of minas tirith tag (as well as a picspam/aesthetic post :P)—but most of it is completely unposted because I’ve never ironed out the various fics.

 

“Tell me of your travels,” she said at last.

Aragorn paused, then with a faint smile, complied. For the next hour, he talked of wide lands throughout Eriador, Rhûn, Harad, painting pictures with a few well-chosen words. He knew the world better than any man of Gondor, as a king should. But she, who knew well how to hide truth behind more truth, listened too for what he did not say. He talked of his exploits as Thorongil and his acquaintance with her mother, but little of Denethor, whom he must have known much better. He talked of the sights and ways of the strange far lands he’d seen, but little of what he had done there. He talked of the beauty of Rivendell, the precious lore, the evenings full of Elven-song, the wisdom of Master Elrond, but little of how it survived the onslaughts of orcs.

Fíriel listened and said little.

There’s also a Fíriel/Arwen AU of that prompted by @quentyl​, which … grew, and I haven’t posted any of it at all. She also prompted a Fíriel and Éowyn scene here.

#3, the modern Borgias AU set in the Bay Area, where the Borgias are no more outlandish for our time than they were in theirs—i.e., guilty of nasty business practices (they’re basically the unholy love child of Tor and Amazon), not organized crime. It lives under alfie.docx, since (so far as I’ve written) it’s told from the POV of Lucrecia Borja’s douchey WASP boyfriend, Alfred. He goes by Al, but Lucrecia adopts “Alfie” as an affectionate pet name—as does her brother César, not at all affectionately. There are a few scraps under the tag #borgias modern au: bay area edition.

Aaaand some more:

She’d invited him to her dad’s house for family dinner—a regular, possibly scheduled event for the Borjas. Rodrigo could be old-fashioned in odd ways for a man on his fifth wife, and just about all of them showed up for food and soccer.

There was Rodrigo, of course, terrifyingly dignified until he clapped Al on the shoulder and assured him that there’d be vegan sides of everything. Julie the supermodel, Rodrigo’s former lover/current wife, who should have been trashy but honestly reminded him of a Sunday school teacher. Juan the suffering artist—Al couldn’t remember if he was a painter or a writer, or if it made any difference. Lucrecia didn’t talk about him half as much as César, and when she did, he sounded like a joke. Somehow he didn’t seem like one in person, even though he looked and acted like he’d walked out of a Mexican soap opera.

Then there was Adrienne, the mother of Julie’s ex, who in a fun twist turned out to be Rodrigo’s best friend and HR director. And Jack the lawyer, Selene the girlfriend (Al didn’t know whose), and a bunch more people whose names he didn’t bother to learn. But not César.

“He has an exam,” Lucrecia told everyone, which was news to Al. He might have been annoyed if he hadn’t been so distracted keeping all the names straight and deciphering the heavy accents.