The Tradëscan Codex

x. RAH -- World-as-Myth multiverse, Lapus Lazuli Long/Lorelai Lee Long**
x. RS+RAW -- The ILLUMINATUS! Trilogy, Miss Portinari
x. The Neverending Story Trilogy (movies), Bastian Bux/Nicole/Childlike Empress
x. The Neverending Story (book), Childlike Empress/Xayide
x. FHB -- A Little Princess, Sara Crewe/Becky
x. Ultimate X-Men, Kitty Pryde/Jean Grey/Charles Xavier
x. Ultimate Spiderman, Kitty Pryde/Peter Parker/Mary Jane Watson/Jessica Drew
x. Spider-Man <3's Mary Jane, Mary Jane Watson/Gwen Stacey/Liz Allen/Felicia Hardy
x. Spider-Man <3's Mary Jane, Mary Jane Watson/Gwen Stacey/Liz Allen/Lindsay Leighton
x. GBS -- Pygmalion, Eliza Doolittle/Clara Eynsford-Hill
x. GBS -- Man and Superman, Violet Whitfield/Anna Whitfield
x. RPF, Joss Whedon/Summer Glau
x. GO -- Nineteen Eighty-Four, Julia
x. Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?, Carmen Sandiego/the Player
x. OSC -- Ender's Game, Peter Wiggin/Valentine Wiggin
x. The Parent Trap (1999), Hallie Parker/Annie James*
x. My Summer of Love, Mona/Tamsin/Phil/Sadie
x. The Truman Show, Truman Burbank/Sylvia
x. The Secret Garden (musical), Mary Lennox/Neville Craven*
x. MT -- Tom Sawyer, Tom Sawyer/Mary/Becky Thatcher
x. WS -- As You Like It, Celia/Rosalind/Touchstone
x. WS -- The Taming of the Shrew, Kate/Bianca
x. Into the Woods, Cinderella/Baker
x. D.E.B.S., Janet
x. Gray Matters, Gray Baldwin/Sam Baldwin/Charlie Kelsey
x. Winter Passing, Reese Holden/Shelly
x. KDW -- Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Emma Jane Perkins/Rebecca Rowena Randall
x. KDW -- Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Jane Sawyer/Miranda Sawyer
x. Beautiful Girls, Marty/Willy Conway
x. GCW -- The Boxcar Children, Henry/Violet/Jessie
x. Legally Blonde, Elle Woods/Vivian Kensington
x. Brides of Christ, Sister Catherine/Sister Paul
x. Brides of Christ, Rosemary Fitzgerald/Frances Heffernan/Brigid Maloney
x. Brides of Christ, Rosemary Fitzgerald/Lucy Mulcady
x. Sunshine Cleaners, Rose Lorkowski/Nora Lorkowski

*Written for me in Yuletide.
**Written for me in Yuletide as a Yuletide treat.

I don't have a tag for femslash meta in particular, in much the way I would presume most boyslashers don't have a tag for boyslash meta; being a femslasher is the point from which I approach all my fannish meta.

I have compiled the following list of posts, however, at the request of carolyn_claire, with metafandom-style blurbs, as posts of mine which do address femslash as a genre in a fairly direct way, however. Altogether it's too large for a LiveJournal comment--although not, I'm fairly certain, for a Dreamwidth comment--so I'm posting it here. The list is ordered like a flist; the top post is the most recent and some posts link to some of the posts below them.

</a></b></a>alixtii: Femslash and the Lesbian Experience. Which Is Clearly Not My Experience.: my impression has always been that in more or less exactly the way that m/m slash isn't actually about real-world gay men (in a way that some interlocutors have found problematic, to say the least), femslash isn't about lesbians.
</a></b></a>alixtii: Meta: Girlslash OTPs: One "difference" that has never been quite so easy to demonstrate, however, has been my claim that femslash fandom is less OTP-oriented than m/m slash fandom. To me, girlslash is something one finds hiding in the interstices of a canon--and indeed, it's one of the things I really love about it. [The really interesting stuff happens in the comments, with a large discussion of the history of femslash. --Ed.]
</a></b></a>alixtii: Why Femslash Is Different, Part 1,001: There does seem, however, to be a sense that these "feminized" versions of the (male) characters are somehow OOC. But nobody ever complains about "masculinizing" female characters, do they? Ever wonder why not?
</a></b></a>alixtii: Meta: Gazes in/and/of Criticism: the femslasher's gaze is a gaze which sees woman as its object from a position within a community of women.
</a></b></a>alixtii: WNG Femslash: I've noticed that WNGWJLEO doesn't seem to be a trope in femslash--or at least the femslash I've read--the way it is (or has been) in m/m slash fandom. (I do wonder if WNG is more likely to be a trope in fandoms which are more OTP-centric than Buffy femslash fandom tends to be, fandoms like XWP or Law and Order or Wicked.)
</a></b></a>alixtii: Is "Q-Based Narrowing" Narrowing Based on John de Lancie or Desmond Llewelyn?: Literal-Minded provides [. . .] some good examples to parallel the femslash:slash relationship, in particular rooster:chicken, thumb:finger, square:rectangle, rectangle:quadrilateral, lesbian:gay (which of course is the obvious one when we're comparing to femslash:slash), and senator:congressman.
</a></b></a>alixtii: More Thoughts: "femlash" : "slash" :: "microwave oven" : "oven"
</a></b></a>alixtii: Thoughts: The problem with lumping both femslash and m/m slash under the same "slash" label isn't only that somehow femslash always seems to end up dropping out of the discussion altogether (no matter how much some might protest that they really do mean both brands of slash), but that the grouping just plain doesn't make much sense. [. . . O]ne can't help but ignore one or the other when using the term "slash"--the two types of fic are just too disparate to fit comfortably under one label.
</a></b></a>alixtii: yuletide and Slashcentricity: Not that I really have that much of a problem with fandom's slashcentricity, not really. [. . .] But I do weep (okay, not literally) to see perfectly wonderful female characters being passed over.
</a></b></a>alixtii: On Fraught Taxonomy: when do we actually use the gen/het/slash distinction? When we meta, certainly, but many if not all of us recognize that the definitions are fluid and know enough to define our terms before we begin. (And when we do make assumptions--such as that femslash is or isn't a subset of slash--we often end up in vexed situations.)
</user> This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/329373.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

By "usage" I mean all the times I used a fe/male character tag on a fic at A03. If I use a character in three different fics, that counts as three uses; there's no weighting for the length of the fic or the size of the role the character plays in it. There were a total of 240 uses of male character tags and 408 of female character tags. (Go here to see how many times my more popular character tags each got used. Also the breakdown by genre.) N.B. Faith still isn't being counted in these numbers, for reasons discussed in the previous archive stats post.

If we look only at the number of (canonical, in the Archive tag wrangler sense of "canonical") characters of each gender (of the two genders I've written) I've written (i.e., Dawn counts only once instead of 51 times), then we get this chart:

( pie chart #2 )

I've written 130 different female characters (that get their own A03 tag) and 88 male. Which means the average (mean) female character I've written appears in 3.14 (just under pi, actually) fics, and the average male character appears in 2.75. So I write 48% more female characters than male characters, and I write them 14% more often.

And here's a graph showing which POVs I used. Bar graph instead of a pie chart because some fics use more than one, or none, of these tags, so I can't rightfully show it as percentages:

( bar graph )

And tenses:

( another graph )

This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/329072.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

Mixing up "i.e." (id est, "that is," "which is to say") and "e.g." (example gratis, "for example"). Don't do it.

WRONG: I want to go somewhere, i.e. the mall.

RIGHT: I want to go somewhere, e.g. the mall. ("The mall" is an example of somewhere I could go.)

RIGHT: I want to go the place where they have many stores connected by an indoor promenade, i.e. the mall. ("The mall" restates "the place where they have many stores connected by an indoor promenade.")

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Give me one character and I will tell you:
1. OTP/favorite pairing for them.
2. Runner-up pairing.
3. Honourable mention(s).
4. Crack pairing(s).
5. Ship everyone else seems to like, but I don't.

This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/328541.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

The breakdown of my fic output by genre, as categorized at the AoOO:

( cut for images )

Apparently Google doesn't think the >1% of my output which is m/m (1.0852%, actually) is significant enough to display in the second graph.

It strikes me that looking at the percentage in terms of fics is kinda silly. Looking at the number of words I've written in each genre would be much more useful. But also more labor intensive.

( more images )

This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/328411.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

Comment with the name of a female character and I'll tell you why I love her. In return, you can do the same in your journal. As always, "character" includes both RPF and FPF characters.

(Two hours until "Epitaph Two"!)

This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/328133.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

So my reaction to the big m/m meta discussions going on has been basically, "Well, I'm glad I write alongside queer female writers about queer female characters for the benefit of a queer female audience." (Part of the reason for this is that I'm in the middle of a job search, so I don't have the time or the energy for a real opinion. If anyone knows of opportunities in the Philly/South Jersey region, do tell.) Not that the position I do occupy is unproblematic, but it's sort of problematic in fairly obvious ways we can all agree upon and don't require massive amounts of discussion.

But then my fellow femslashers have spoken up and the conversation has mutated in various ways and suddenly, I have thoughts. Because obviously m/m slash and femslash are different than and similar to each other in many complicated and different ways (many of which I've discussed repeatedly before), but my impression has always been that in more or less exactly the way that m/m slash isn't actually about real-world gay men (in a way that some interlocutors have found problematic, to say the least), femslash isn't about lesbians. (Obviously, the corollary to that is that femslash is about lesbians in all the ways m/m slash is about gay men. My purpose isn't to erase queerness.)

Obviously, I am not at all remotely qualified to speak to whether femslash accurately reflects The Lesbian Experience. So this is your invitation to tell me that I'm totally wrong. This post on femslash and the lesbian experience (eta: now locked, presumably in response to accusations of biphobia, although still much discussed throughout the LJ-meta-sphere) by freifraufischer, linked on metafandom, clearly indicates* that there's at least one queer female femslasher who would presumably disagree with the hypothesis put forth above. And it's interesting the ways in which she frames femslash writing in ways which seem foreign to this particular het male femslasher, such as her assertion that most "unrealistic" femslash fics are evidenced by bad writing: just stop by any femslash porn battle and you'll find plenty of incredibly well-written but not-at-all-realistic ficlets. (Putting aside for the moment the question of just what realism would even look like when one is slashing a Vampire Slayer with a vampire or werewolf.)

[*ETA, now that the post in question is no longer accessible: "The higher percentage of femslash stories that reflect aspects of lesbian culture beyond the purely sexual make it an expression of the lesbian community. In so much that there are straight women, and men, who write femslash they appear more likely to make some effort towards expressing true aspects of LGBT culture, as opposed to writing pure fantasy that has little relation to gay culture." I'm deeply saddened that I can't find, floating around the internets anywhere, the quote about how any fic in which C.J. Cregg picked up Sam Carter in a bar would automatically have to be badly written.]

[ETA2: I've just come across this post, "Professional Lesbians . . . and Fanfic" which goes on at length about the sorts of unrealisticness she dislikes for not adequately living up to certain elements of the lesbian experience--the tacit assumption being, of course, that it should.]

It makes sense to me, in a more-or-less purely theoretical way (I don't think it actually is a purely theoretical way, because I have been a member of this community and one of you for many years, and at least to some degree have learned your ways, but het male privilege is all-pervasive) that may be totally wrong, that a predominately queer female body of writers writing for a predominately queer female audience about characters who are in some sense or another queer and female doesn't require them focusing on how they are representing themselves (because the people to whom they are representing themselves are themselves), or at least not how they are representing themselves in any way which requires realism. Rather that which is being represented is a set of hopes and dreams, fears and fantasies. It's not a mirror that's intended to exist without distortion; indeed, given the grim reality of so many queer female lives, it'd be the source of much pain and anguish if it were. Femslash, no less than m/m slash, is frequently a genre of escapist literature (although, of course, it doesn't have to be, and it can be in ways other than the immediately obvious).

Femslash, I thought, is primarily about female pleasure, both as medium and as message. Of course, female pleasure is no less political a goal than representation is--cue the Hélène Cixous Laugh of the Medusa song-and-dance:

We've been turned away from our bodies, shamefully taught to ignore them, to strike them with that stupid sexual modesty; we've been made victims of the old fool's game: each one will love the other sex. I'll give you your body and you'll give me mine. But who are the men who give women the body that women blindly yield to them? Why so few texts? Because so few women have as yet won back their body. Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes and rhetorics, regulations and codes, they must submerge, cut through, get beyond the ultimate reverse-discourse, including the one that laughs at the very idea of pronouncing the word 'silence', the one that, aiming for the impossible, stops short before the word 'impossible' and writes it as 'the end.'

(In one sense, it seems self-evident that femslash lives up to this ideal in a way that m/m slash does not; on the other hand, that acknowledgment seems to have something of the "we should all become lesbians" sentiment to it which characterized second-wave feminism** at its worst.)

[**ObDisclaimer: Wave-terminology erases feminist history; feminism never stops happening.]

I keep thinking back to my meta post of two years ago, Gazes in/and/of Criticism, in which I attempt to compare the desiring elements of both the het male and queer female gazes (assuming for the moment that we're breaking with Freud and Lacan enough to even posit that a female gaze is a possible subject position to begin with, as ithiliana notes in her post on fetishization). Of course, femslash is about much more than just a desiring gaze; it's also about agency (and the fantasy of agency) and about female characters (albeit characters who, although female, were probably written and created by het white men) being themselves (which in itself can be a radical act): women are desiring, women are desired, and women also get to do things which have little to nothing to do with desire before and after all the desiring. But I do think there is something "fetishistic," insofar as I understand that concept (linked gacked from ithiliana), with what queer women (and people who are not queer women, like me) are doing with fictional(ized) female characters in femslash. They're (and we're) playing with them like dolls. I just don't think that's especially problematic in and of itself.

(And may I say that all the google hits for "queer female gaze" which aren't me--and I'm glad to see that I'm not at the top--all look incredibly interesting?)

Now what the implications for the m/m debate are, in which the representations of--I hesitate to say "an other," because men are the default, unmarked gender and many (if not most) of the writers of m/m slash are queer, so they clearly aren't Other in the Lacanian psychoanalytic sense--but the representations of a group of people who are not the same people as the writers or the readers, and who likewise hold an oppressed position in relation to the patriarchy--are used to replace the fantastic (meaning not realistic, but also fantastic in a psychoanalytic sense) representations of the writers/readers that we get with femslash, I don't claim to know. But I did want to write down my thoughts on the femslash discussion, say a bit about how I frame femslash as a genre, and give a chance for queer women in the femslash community/ies to tell me I'm totally wrong.

(And while we're on the subject of female characters: less than eight hours until "Epitaph Two"!)

This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/327701.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

Return of the alphabet-fic meme! I have fics for every letter 'cept for K, X, and Z, which is two more letters filled than last time I did the meme. How I managed to write fic for six years and still never use a title beginning with K, I do not claim to know.

A is for The Art of the Possible (VMars, Veronica/Logan)
B is for Bullshit (RPF, Michelle/Summer)
C is for Camp Camelot (Merlin, OT4)
D is for Divine Interventions (BtVS, Ensemble)
E is for Experience (RPF/Firefly, Jane Espenson/Kaylee)
F is for Fairest of Them All (Firefly/AtS, Lilah/River)
G is for Glories Stream (Dar Williams)
H is for The Hurricane (The 4400, Maia & Kevin/Tess)
I is for In Soviet Russia, Femslash Writes You (RPF, Kristen/Hayden)
J is for Just Skin (BtVS, Amanda/Vi, Faith/Dawn)
K is for ---
L is for Last Day on Earth (Ender's Game, Val & Peter)
M is for My Girlfriend Is a Telepath (XMM, Kitty/Mindee)
N is for Not Quite Queen of the Damned (BtVS/VMars, Ensemble)
O is for On Her Knees (BtVS/AtS, Lilah/Wesley)
P is for Please Have Snow and Mistletoe (BtVS, Dawn/Vi)
Q is for Quartet for Two Voices (BtVS, Giles/Kennedy)
R is for Richard III, Act Two, Scene Three, Line Sixteen (Ender's Game, Val & Peter)
S is for Some Thing to Watch Over Me (T:tSCC, John/Riley/Cameron)
T is for Tomorrow Will Be Dying (Firefly, River/Simon)
U is for Up, Up, and Away (DC, Linda Danvers & Barbara Gordon, Kara Zor-El)
V is for "Vials of Ivory and Coloured Glass, Unstoppered" (XMM, Moira)
W is for WGA vs. Zombies (RPF, Joss & Summer)
X is for ---
Y is for You Just Can't Choose What She's Gonna Do (BtVS/Ats, Faith/Connor/Spike)
Z is for ---

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Title: Fatherhood
Fandom: The Parent Trap (1998)
Characters: Nick Parker, Hallie Parker, Annie James
Rating: Worksafe
Word Count: 564
Summary: Sometimes Nick Parker feels like the caricature of a bad father; he can't even tell his children apart.

( Fatherhood )

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Title: Pre-Frosh of Miskatonic U
Fandom: Sarah Jane Adventures
Cast: Clyde/Rani/Luke, Maria
Summary: While visiting an American university in New England, the trio makes a discovery.
A/N: Thank you to ionlylurkhere for the beta.

( Pre-Frosh of Miskatonic U )

This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/326949.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

CAMERON: You sent [Derek] back to wait for us. (in "Queen's Gambit")

This reaffirms the notion that Derek and Cameron come from the same timeline. (Or does it?) But when and why did John send Derek back?

If Derek was sent back to 2006+, then he would have been wiped away when Cameron changed history in 1999, and wouldn't appear in the new timeline The Sarah Connor Chronicles takes place in--unless both John's send back Derek: the first so that Cameron can remember it, and the second so that Derek can actually reach the destination. The thing is, they'd have to send John for different reasons: the latter John would send Derek back knowing that Cameron would cause Sarah and John to jump forward in the future, and the former John would send Derek back because--the thing is, I can't figure out a coherent reason why John would send Derek back.

He'd have to have known that Cameron was going to change history, because presumably he wouldn't have remembered meeting Cameron as a teenager. (I toyed with the possibility of ignoring T3 and assuming that John did remember meeting Cameron, and having it all be one big causality loop--but no, Sarah's death by cancer screws up that theory.) So it'd be silly to send Derek back to any point in time after he sent Cameron. So he either didn't think things through--and I'd hate for the fanwank to only work by assuming the characters are stupid--or else he sent back Derek to before 1999. But that doesn't seem to work--surely Jessie would have noticed if he was suddenly a lot older? (We can assume that Derek jumped back and then jumped forward, but now we're getting to truly massive amounts of fanwank.)

Maybe there's some way John could send Derek and Cameron back at the same time (but to different temporal destinations) so that Derek would be protected from the effects of Cameron changing history? Call it the Stargate: Continuum school of time travel theory.

Ruling out that possibility, we're now back to Derek and Cameron being from separate timelines. But why would Cameron claim to know the reason John sent Derek back if they aren't from the same timeline? Assuming that John did, for whatever reason, try to send Derek back in Cameron's timeline, she could have assumed the same logic would carry over. This seems like a big assumption--if Derek's John knew Cameron as a teenager, that John might well reason very differently, but again, for the show to make any sense at all we do need to assume some degree of temporal inertia, that certain patterns (like Cameron's conversation with Jessie) keep happening over and over again in multiple timelines. Cameron would presumably be familiar with this phenomenon. But that explanation still doesn't seem totally sufficient to explain Cameron's utter certainty that Derek's mission was not to kill Andy Goode, but rather to wait for "us." There's no way she could be 100% positive that history didn't change in a salient way, is there?

The simplest explanation might be to simply assume Cameron is lying. But what could her motivation be? (Ooh, there's a fic there somewhere.)

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The AO3 tells me I have 97,575 words posted in the Watcher!verse (divided among 50 fics). It's really hard not to read that as a challenge.
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Title: Quartet for Two Voices
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: Rupert Giles/Kennedy, Dawn/Faith/Giles/Kennedy
Summary: It's strange and not strange at once. Not strange because Kennedy and Giles must have shared a bed dozens of times; strange because it's the first time Dawn or Faith or both isn't in it with them, and at the end of the day, he's a guy and she's, you know, really damn gay. (She's not straight they just love each other.)

( Quartet for Two Voices )

This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/326294.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

1.My character tag at the Archive of Our Own. (I don't believe you need my permission to write RPF about me, but you certainly have my blessing. Just don't out me if you know my legal persona.)

2. SCC 1x02 strongly implies that Derek and Cameron come from the same future (the date that Cameron provides for Judgment Day is the combination for the safe). Thus, in the future that Derek comes from, John doesn't skip any years. (Presumably, in the future Jessie comes from, he does.) In short, Timelines B and C are the same.

That would mean any appearance of Cameron in Derek's flashbacks would be an appearance of our Cameron, and the differences between the future of, say, "Dungeons and Dragons" and T3 would be the same as between Cameron's future and T3--the main difference we know of being the date of Judgment Day. (I'm not quite sure I understand the mechanics of T3, though--at first glance it looks like a causality loop, but on further looks it become clear that history is being changed, although I'm not sure what it's being changed from--so it might be better to just ignore it altogether.) Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything problematic about this (other than one would expect his and Jessie's timelines to be more wildly divergent, but we already have weird parallelism existing between timelines: Judgment Day itself, of course, but also the fact that Cameron and Jessie both remember the conversation about Jessie's unborn child despite both coming from different timelines) or any detail to contradict the theory. Can anyone else?

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The I Saw Three Ships archive is live! I received The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, which is Merlin/Morgana/Nimueh and has reincarnated!teen!Nimueh as Morgana's handmaiden-with-benefits. There is nothing which is not guh about that scenario.

If you can guess which fic I wrote, I'll write you a ficlet. Screening's on; I'll unscreen non-guesses unless told otherwise.

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STATS (completed fics only, not counting The Fires of Love and Wrath, and using the not-so reliable counter at AoOO)
Total Stories: 25
Total Words: 47,984
Mean Average Words Per Story: 1,919
Median: 1,015
Shortest Story: 200
Longest: 13,304

Fandoms written in: Arcadia, Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, BtVS comicsverse, Dollhouse, Ender's Game, Firefly, Marvel Movieverse (Iron Man/XMM), Merlin, The Parent Trap, RPF, Sarah Connor Chronicles, Veronica Mars
Fandoms I had never written in before: Dollhouse, Iron Man, Merlin, Sarah Connor Chronicles

( Read more... )

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3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
 2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Makes enough for two small appetites or one big one.

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So I've posted links to all my Yuletide stories, but here's a place for me to compile all those links into one place and chatter about them.

My main Yuletide assignment was Glories Stream, for reflectedeve. We were matched on Dar Williams' song "Alleluia," from the album The Honesty Room. It was weird being matched on a canon that was shorter than the fic I was supposed to write; at first, the temptation to simply write a novelization of the song, throwing details in until I expanded it out to a thousand words or more.

As I wrote, however, I found ways to make my work transformative, to make it fanfic rather than a mere novelization (which should not be construed as a prescriptive definition of what fanfic is and is not). There are pieces of the song which don't appear in my fic, and parts of my fic which critique the song. There are bits--little bits, but there--that require already knowing the song in order to understand. As far as I'm concerned, these are features rather than bugs; they're what serve to make the fic mine. I don't explain the surfing, for example, anymore than I would explain what vampires are when writing a Buffy fic.

What I did realize once I had read what I had written, however, was that my fic was a lot more explicitly Christian than Dar's song. This too was a feature; reflectedeve had specifically suggested I might examine the theology behind the song a little more deeper. So a number of Christian saints are mentioned in my fic (I couldn't resist pairing St. Francis and St. Clare), as well as references to Christian doctrines. It was fun to write, especially as it freed me to be irreverent and bring something a critical lens to traditional notions of heaven. The fact that I re-read Heinlein's novel Job: A Comedy of Justice in the course of writing the fic probably influenced me as well. And I know conversations with Ari and Elizabeth were in my head as I wrote the line "just two bodies created in the fucking divine image doing what they fucking were designed to do [i.e. lesbian sex]."

My other fic I wrote in a new fandom was If on a Yuletide morn a slasher, one of the several If on a winter's night a traveler fics that made their way into the Archive this year; indeed, norah's fic's title differs from mine by only one word (she used "reader" where I used "slasher").

It, too, was fun to write--I got to use my draft of an unfinished Platonic Dialogues genderswapped space opera AU which I had abandoned because I just couldn't find any point to it as the story-within-the-story, as well as communicate just a fraction of my love for fandom and for Yuletide. Because Calvino's characters would write fanfiction, would get mixed up (and lost!) in the levels of creation and transformative recreation. My story's not as polished as it could have been if I had had more than a couple of hours to write it in, but judging from the comments, that love and affection came through--which is the important thing.

For my other treats, I returned to known and loved fandoms in which I was comfortable. So I finished two Sarah Connor Chronicles fics I had been working on in my Psalm 23 'verse that filled two of the prompts, The Children's Crusade, which is Sarah training Savannah in the (pre-Judgment Day) future leading up to the final scene of "Born to Run," and Though I Walk Through the Shadow, which is the crucial meeting of John and Savannah in the post-Judgment Day "Born to Run" future. selenak</user>wins a ficlet for the observation that I wrote a story with a pairing for whom I am the lone OTPer and which is consistent with my other fics in that 'verse.

I also wrote two Arcadia fics, both of them simple fixits of a sort--one of them, Skasis, a cracky crossover with Doctor Who where Thomasina becomes a companion, and the other, Dancing Lessons, a more serious fic which begins with Thomasina and Septimus' last dance in the play and goes on to get porny. Neither manage to negate the tragedy of the play, though, because in order to fit into canon both fics still end with Thomasina and Septimus separated and Septimus going mad. Oh, play, how you break my heart. ("Skasis" actually started out in my mind as an AU where Thomasina lives and she and Septimus get to be together, but I began to try and picture the magnitude of the changes that would exist in a world where chaos theory was discovered in the time of Lord Byron and then the Doctor showed up to set everything right again. Oh well, maybe next year I'll write the steampunk epic in which the Doctor doesn't appear.)

Last Day on Earth is an Ender's Game fic, another canon I know well, but the first fic I've written in which Val and Peter actually do part as in canon. In the fic I write them saying goodbye. Beleza and the B.E.A.S.T. is a fairy tales fic, a futuristic AU of "Beauty and the Beast" taking place on a space station.

For prettylightsfic, I wrote Deck of Cards, which focuses on Miracle Laurie. My main research for the fic was reading Miracle's twitter feed, and the thing that struck me the most was the way in which being a Jossverse actor was still new and shiny to her. So I thought about the ways in which that might be overwhelming, and how I could use her outsider perspective. I considered making it critical, but I never got the sense that Miracle's reaction to any of it was anything but genuine love and excitement, so I went light and fluffy instead, focusing on a geeky conversation about how best to adapt Alice in Wonderland. I wanted Felicia in it because, Felicia, so I set it in "Epitaph Two," which gave a nice thematic connection to Alice in that I could have Miracle's reflections on Dollhouse ending and how it paralleled Alice leaving Wonderland.

I have to say that "Deck of Cards" is the least anonymous anonfic I've written since I remixed "Incurable" for Ari (even with my SCC fics this year giving it a run for its money). Obviously the fic in which Joss, Summer, and Felicia all appear, and in which Joss wants to get into Summer's pants, was written by alixtii. I'm surprised no one guessed it.

For secret_slasha I wrote Life is Just This, which is Buffy/Willow. It was a fic where I sat in front of my laptop for quite a while not writing anything, then I walked away from the keyboard and put pen to paper and suddenly I had notebook pages full of fic. This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/324915.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

Title: The Trials of a Hacker
Fandom: Dark Angel/Veronica Mars
Pairing: Original Cindy/Cindy Mackenzie
Summary: It's come time for Mac to give up her cushy desk job, and she's not sure she can do it.
A/N: Tia Nuestra is from "glum olitory obfuscate gazebo" by soundingsea.

( The Trials of a Hacker )

A03 Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/43923
This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/324507.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

The first line of the first public nonfiction post of each month:

1. January: I closed my eyes, just for a few seconds, at 11:20 p.m. last night . . . and opened them at 12:30 a.m. this morning, Jan. 1, year of our Lord two thousand and nine. (...2009 Enters)
2. February: From a WiP: When Cameron returns, it's in the truck, with John and there's a large mass in the back covered by a canvas which Riley assumes is the remains of the T-101, to be destroyed later. (Playing with POV)
3. March: I have the first disc of season 2 from Netflix. (BSG S2 Reaction)
4. April: I'M GOING TO WRITERCON! (Writercon!!!)
5. May: My BFF, ladyphoenixmage, has created an illustration to go with my XMM fic "I'm Awfully Fond of You" (which is the fic that "My Girlfriend is a Telepath," one of my all-time favorite fics, is a sequel to). (I can has illustration!)
6. June: I still need a beta for my SCC John/Savannah/Allison threesome fic, under 3,000 words, NWS, and spoilerly for "Born to Run." (SCC Beta Request Redux)
7. July: Apparently, I won a couple of awards at the Kinda Gay Awards? (Awarded)
8. August: I arrived in Minneapolis around 8 o'clock local time, and managed to get to Nicollet Mall around 9:30 or so, I suppose. ("There is no 'H' in 'Alixtii'": WriterCon 2009 Con Report, Part I)
9. September: Suzie at Echidne of the Snakes, on how Dollhouse is and isn't (and should and shouldn't be) feminist, here. (People Who Have Expressed What I Think Most Articulately So That I Don't Have To)
10. October: One of the things about fanfic is that things which are ambiguous in the original text need to be resolved, even if you like them ambiguous. (Is John Connor a virgin?)
11. November: If you check out my userinfo, you'll find a 'thon policy which implores that you be true first and foremost to the prompt and your muse, and to consider whether I'd like a story as, at most, a secondary concern. (Dear 3_ships Sailor)
12. Does anyone have any McKeller recs? (Call for recs)

The first line of the first fiction post of each month:

1. January: Mary Lennox was twelve years old when she arrived at Misselthwaite, and Neville could not see past the familiar brown eyes looking out from a black dress. (The Life of a Flower)
2. February: Buffy and Satsu don't speak to each other. (Silence)
3. March: Summer's got the number from Jewel. (Summer Loving)
4. April: No fic posted. :(
5. May: John woke up to find Savannah sitting on the end of his bed, watching him sleep--the way his mother had used to do so many times, the way Cameron did that one time right after they had rescued Savannah, right before John's trip into the future. (Unfulfilled)
6. June: John thought he knew how to be a soldier. (Master and Commander)
7. July: "No, the other coaxial node!" (Echoes of the Past (The Holographic Businesswoman Remix))
8. August: The first time Tony met Magneto, Master of Magnetism, he was just a boy, fifteen years old. (Four Times Tony Stark Met Erik Lenscherr (And One Time He Didn't))
9. September: No fic. :(
10. October: No completed fic.
11. November: The doorbell rings. (Fever)
12. December: It's a strange sort of thrill to stand in a middle of a crowd, knowing that nobody can see or hear you, and hear people who have never met you utter your name in hushed tones of awe. (Glories Stream)

The closing line of the last (completed) fiction post of each month: ( cut for spoilers )

 

This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/324342.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

January

Not Quite Queen of the Damned. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars crossover. Faith and Vi hire Keith Mars to investigate the Phoenix Land Trust. Is its business being conducted from beyond the grave? [Started long ago but finally completed last January.]

How I ----ed Your Father. Jossverse RPF, Jewel/Nathan/Summer. An unlikely beginning, in a world where The Sarah Connor Chronicles ran for five seasons and Dollhouse for seven. [Written for Pretty Lights 2008, before the announcement of SCC's cancellation, but revealed after I wrote up last year's list.]

You Just Can't Choose What She's Gonna Do. Angel, Faith/Connor/Spike. They're both fucking her, and each of them knows the other is fucking her and doesn't like it, but they both like their balls attached too much to try to tell Faith who she can and cannot sleep with. Post-apocalyptic pregnancy and babyfic.

Spectres of Hope. Angel, Wesley/Cordelia/Gunn, Fred/Wesley. Courtesy of Illyria, Wesley relives a moment with Gunn and Cordelia.

February

Silence. Buffy the Vampire Slayer comicsverse, Buffy/Satsu. Sometimes words aren't need; sometimes, they just simply aren't wanted.

March

Some Thing to Watch Over Me. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, John/Riley/Cameron. Termination's not an option, so Cameron is going to have to draw on other methods in order to neutralize the threat that Riley poses. 13,000 words.

Camp Camelot. Merlin (BBC), Merlin/Gwen/Morgana/Arthur. American summer camp AU: There's not much to do for the counselors at Camp Camelot to amuse themselves once the campers get put to bed, but one night's strip poker game may end up having summer-long ramifications.

May

Unfulfilled. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, John/Savannah. In 2016, a teenaged Savannah about what he saw in the future.

Substitution Rule. The Parent Trap. Annie isn't as fond of boys as her sister, but there are few pleasures she enjoys as much as sex with a boy that Hallie's fucked. Double drabble. Warning: rape via impersonation.

Confirmation Hearings. Veronica Mars. Mac shows up to Veronica's Senate confirmation hearings with her hair dyed pink.

June

Master and Commander. John Connor thought he knew how to be a soldier, but he was brought up to be a leader, not a follower.

July

Echoes of the Past (The Holographic Businesswoman Remix. Crossover between Dollhouse and Firefly. Someone in the future comes across Adelle DeWitt's imprint, and negotiations ensue.

Beside the Still Waters. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, John/Savannah, John/Savannah/Allison. In 2024 and 2016 (in that order), John goes swimming with Savannah.

August

Four Times Tony Stark Met Erik Lenscherr (And One Time He Didn't). Iron Man and X-Men movieverses. They're each a member of a different type of ruling class, but as their understandings of power evolve over the decades, they find they're not as different as they think.

November

Fever. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy/Faith. Faith turns to Buffy for help as she struggles with a demonic fever.

Caretakers. Doctor Who, Reinette/Ten, Reinette/Lucy, Reinette/Martha. Reinette finds herself in 21st-century London taking care of the broken wife and unborn child of the two Time Lords who changed her life forever, and she can't do it without help.

The Whipping Girl. Ender's Game, Peter/Val. He loves her for her martyrdom. [A revised and expanded version of a fic written for a porn battle and lost to the ravages of the internets.]

December [*deep breath*]

Glories Stream. "Alleluia" by Dar Williams, The Honesty Room. Heather's not a big fan of Heaven, but Liz makes it worth it.

If on a Yuletide morn a slasher. If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino. The cursor hovers over the link and you sloppily strike the touchpad with your finger, summoning the fic to you from its sleeping place somewhere deep in the inner workings of the AO3. [Be sure to read the full summary at the AO3; it's an integral part of the fic itself.] With bonus genderswapped space opera AU Platonic Dialogues!

Beleza and the B.E.A.S.T.. "Beauty and the Beast," Beleza/B.E.A.S.T. Belaza was angry with her father for selling her to the B.E.A.S.T. in order to settle some old shipping debts, but mostly she was frightened--frightened of what her life would be like on the space station, of the empty corridors and the lonely days, and, more than anything else, frightened of the B.E.A.S.T. itself, the Biomechanical Electronic Ahuman Sentience Transfer which was responsible for all of the station's functioning.

Skasis. Crossover between Doctor Who and Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. Thomasina solves the Skasis Paradigm.

Last Day on Earth. Ender's Game. It's strange for Valentine, knowing it's her last day on Earth.

Dancing Lessons. Arcadia. Septimus teaches Thomasina to dance--and then he teaches her to dance. A semi-porny insertion into the play's final scene.

The Fires of Love and Wrath. Arthurian myth/legend. [Mostly written while I was in high school, God help me.]

• Book II: The Orphans. Arthur/Morgan. The education of Morgan le Fay in the art of sorcery, and her romance with Arthur Pendragon. 12,000 words.
• Book IV: Ere That Last Weird Battle. Arthur/Guinevere, Mordred/Guinevere, Merlin/Nimue. Mordred has captured Caerleon and Guinevere, and Arthur wants back his crown and his wife, while Morgan tries to make peace between her brother and her son.

The Children's Crusade. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Sarah, Savannah. Sometimes children have to fight the battles of adults.

Though I Walk Through the Shadow. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, John/Savannah. Only two people know what it is like to live in the shadow of John Connor.

Life is Just This. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy/Willow. Buffy's not sure that Willow has figured out, even after all that's happened, why she knew she wasn't able to live without Buffy, why she had to resort to ripping Buffy's soul from heaven itself.

Deck of Cards. Jossverse RPF, Miracle & Felicia & Summer & Joss, Miracle/Summer, Joss-->Summer. After "Epitaph Two," Miracle Laurie wonders if she's going to have to wake up from the dream now. This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/324003.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

This has to be the least anonymous anonymous fic I've written since "Incurable (The 'All You Zombies' Remix)," I mean, really.

Title: Deck of Cards
Fandom: Jossverse RPF
Pairings: Miracle&Summer&Felicia&Joss, Miracle/Summer, Joss-->Summer
Summary: After "Epitaph Two," Miracle Laurie wonders if she's going to have to wake up from the dream now.

( Deck of Cards )



This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/323586.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

I was in high school when I wrote most of this. It shows in the gender dynamics if nothing else. Indeed, the main reason I haven't more heavily revised this is that I can't; I'm not the sort of Nietzschean I was when I wrote it, and this just isn't the sort of story I can tell anymore.

Title: Ere That Last Weird Battle
Fandom: Arthurian myth and legend
Pairings: Arthur/Morgan, Arthur/Guinevere, Mordred/Guinevere, Merlin/Nimue
Word Count: ~12,000
Summary: Mordred has captured Caerleon and Guinevere, and Arthur wants back his crown and his wife, while Morgan tries to make peace between her brother and son.

( Ere That Last Weird Battle )
This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/323389.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

Title: Though I Walk Through the Shadow
Fandom: Sarah Connor Chronicles
Pairing: John/Savannah
Timeline/Spoilers: "Born to Run"
Summary: Only two people in all the world know what it is like to live in the shadow of John Connor.

( Though I Walk Through the Shadow )
This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/323297.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

Title: The Children's Crusade
Fandom: Sarah Connor Chronicles
Characters: Sarah, Savannah, Cameron
Summary: Sometimes children have to fight the battles of adults.

( The Children's Crusade )

This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/322938.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

Title: Life Is Just This
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: Buffy/Willow
Summary: Buffy's not sure that Willow has figured out, even after all that's happened, why she knew she wasn't able to live without Buffy, why she had to resort to ripping Buffy's soul from heaven itself.

( Life Is Just This )

This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/322667.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

Title: The Orphans
Fandom: Arthurian myth & legend
Pairing: Arthur Pendragon/Morgan le Fay
Word Count: ~12,000
Summary: The education of Morgan le Fay in the art of sorcery, and her romance with Arthur Pendragon.

( The Orphans )

This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/322329.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

Title: Dancing Lessons
Fandom: Tom Stoppard's Arcadia
Pairing: Thomasina/Septimus
Summary: Septimus teaches Thomasina to dance--and then he teaches her to dance. An episode tag, of sorts, with porn.

( Dancing Lessons )

This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/322213.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

An Ender's Game story from Alixtii that's actually not an AU! Will wonders ever cease?

Title: Last Day on Earth
Fandom: Ender's Game
Characters: Valentine & Peter Wiggin
Summary: It's strange for Valentine knowing that it's her last day on Earth.

( Last Day on Earth )

This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/321879.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

Title: Skasis
Fandom: Doctor Who/Arcadia
Summary: Thomasina solves the Skasis Paradigm.

( Skasis )

This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/321709.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

Title: Beleza and the B.E.A.S.T.
Fandom: Fairy Tales (Beauty and the Beast)
Pairing: Beleza/B.E.A.S.T. (Beauty/Beast)
Summary: Belaza was angry with her father for selling her to the B.E.A.S.T. in order to settle some old shipping debts, but mostly she was frightened--frightened of what her life would be like on the space station, of the empty corridors and the lonely days, and, more than anything else, frightened of the B.E.A.S.T. itself, the Biomechanical Electronic Ahuman Sentience Transfer which was responsible for all of the station's functioning.

( Beleza and the B.E.A.S.T. )


This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/321451.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

Title: If on a Yuletide morn a slasher
Fandoms: If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino, Fandom RPF, Plato's Dialogues, and (very briefly) Jonny Quest. Also a reference to Socialist RPF.
Pairings: Reader/Ludmilla, female!Socrates/female!Charmides, Benton Quest/Jonny Quest. Also a mention of Marx/Engels.


You are about to read "If on a Yuletide morn a slasher," an If on a winter's night a traveler fic written by an anonymous author. You'll want to make sure you're reading this a suitable distance from your computer screen, in a well-lit room, with the contrast and brightness of your screen properly adjusted. Or else you might want to print it out and read the hard copy.

Ludmilla is logged onto her laptop, across the room from you, re-reading for the thirtieth time the Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels BDSM fic some poor soul ended up having to write for her. She still can't stop chuckling, no matter how much she tries to surpress it.

"Hush," you tell her, because you're really interested in the Calvino fic. The fact that there exists If on a winter's night a traveler fic in the archive is pretty darn awesome by itself, you think, and you really want to find out what, exactly, the anonymous author decided to do with it.

Ludmilla sticks her tongue out at you, which is more or less the reaction you expected.

( The cursor hovers over the link and you sloppily strike the touchpad with your finger, summoning the fic to you from its sleeping place somewhere deep in the inner workings of the AO3. )
 

This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/321225.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.

Title: Glories Stream
Fandom: "Alleuia" by Dar Williams, in the album The Honesty Room [Sendspace Link] [Mediafire link from Lilith]
Pairing: Narrator (I was always taught to call the narrators of songs/poems "personae," but "Narrator" makes a better A03 tag)/Magenta-Haired Girl
Summary: Heather's not a big fan of Heaven, but Liz makes it worth it.

( Glories Stream )

This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/320824.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here.