Fannish Friday
May. 12th, 2023 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phantomtomatoWe're a third of the way through the month and I've kept up with Write Every Day! I'm working on something with my favorite crossover ship, Tom Riddle/Edmund Pevensie. I've written them three times before, all five-figure-length fics, so it was a safe choice for getting back on the horse with writing fics outside of exchanges. What's new to me with this one is writing them as something other than children or young men—I've decided to take a look at how they might get along if thrown together in their forties, long after Edmund last leaves Narnia (and no, I don't keep to the canon of The Last Battle), when Tom is considering his path to becoming Voldemort. I've completely forgotten how to write a Tom Riddle who isn't deeply based on my years of development for his character; we'll see if I bother to make this story more accessible in editing.
I think I'll take a break from it either this weekend or when I'm on
vacation for a few days next week. I've got a couple of pairing tags that I
realized I could invent when I was thinking of ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
raremaleslashex
nominations. I don't want to get too distracted from my goal for this month
(make a significant dent on a mid-length fic), but I can't really believe
no one has done Bunny/Laurie from The Charioteer yet. I also edited
my H/C treat this week and want to finish up editing on another outstanding
gift soon.
My fic reading list this week was a grab bag:
- From Be The First, this sweet canon revision based on a ghost story. Finding a written canon was a bit of an ordeal involving library genesis, but there's a free and legal reading of it on YouTube! It's a very good performance. Like many old ghost stories, it has a delightfully slashy undertone between the POV character (Stanley) and a teenage boy who is a friend's nephew (Derek). The fic author, SweetSorcery, gives Derek a little more comfort than he gets in canon, and sets up a promising future for him and Stanley.
- Next, I revisited two of my favorite Raffles fic. The first, by hapaxlegomena, is lovely and
hot (warning for underage sexual content) and full of delightful period
details like Bunny's nightshirt and the first-person pastiche. I found this
last year by browsing the "fagging" freeform on AO3, can you believe that?
What a win for the use of uncanonized freeforms. Anyway, I find smutfic in
historical fandoms to be difficult, there's an understandable amount of it
which is focused on making something hot as the top priority, but I pretty
much always want the historical details to also be of primary interest. I
love how this one balances both.
And the second, by delfina, is another Bunny/Raffles fic from their public school days, this one with lots of unfulfilled pining. The very best T-rated romance (in my opinion) makes each kiss feel as devastating and sexy as a sex scene, and these ones are just fantastic. I am wrecked by Raffles' clear and present want to go further, held back by his awareness of their currently-meaningful age difference. How much it hurts, to know that if they were both just a little older, none of that would matter! - Then, rounding out the week was kelly_chambliss's fun use of two Harry Potter background characters, Wilhelmina and Aberforth. Kelly writes Wil like nothing else, and Aberforth is a fave of mine, so I was so excited to have this one resurfaced by a new podfic adaptation. HP, for me, is a space to play with those blank slates—I'm terribly fond of Voldemort, who is blanker than he should be, and my own completely-blank project character, Nott Sr. I treasure the other authors doing the same.
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Date: 2023-05-12 03:51 pm (UTC)And oooh, I'll have to check those Raffles fics out (I'm so glad that "fagging" exists as an Ao3 freeform, haha!). I definitely feel you on the historical smut: I'm still quite new to smut-writing in general, but my favourite thing to explore (both as a reader and a writer) has to be historical attitudes to sexuality, and all the attendant inhibition and repression. Then gratuitous detail about historical underwear has to come a close second! xD
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Date: 2023-05-12 04:25 pm (UTC)Aww, thank you! I agree, doing a middle-aged Tom/Ed has been on the bucket list for a while. It's just—what does it mean to have already been through the portal fantasy, for that experience to have become part of the background texture of one's life?
Let me know what you think if you read either of the Raffles fics! And yes so much agreement on the inhibition/repression. This has come up for me a lot: I just don't enjoy stories which remove those facets of historical experience, this is what I am seeking out by reading historical smut/romance more generally. It's understandable and reasonable if people are looking for different things out of the same settings, eras, or canons. But yeah no I'm always hunting for the work which doesn't shy away from depicting relatively accurate attitudes towards sexuality, hence the use of funny proxies like "fagging." I figure that someone confident enough to tag their work with that isn't going to deliver modern-feeling romance!
(Also yes forever to the period clothing. Just: yes. Love all of it.)
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Date: 2023-05-12 06:56 pm (UTC)I don't read a lot of smut, but I always love historical details in fic—the background of big historical events is interesting, but I think even more important are the little ways in which the setting shapes the material details of the characters' everyday lives and their attitudes to things like sexuality—those can say a lot when used well.
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Date: 2023-05-12 07:23 pm (UTC)Oh, rats! Yes, thanks for noticing that I copied the first link twice. It should be fixed now. (And thanks for the rec, I'm assuming!) The kisses are so good! It's one of those fics where I could predict the plot from the outset but that doesn't matter, because when reading I'm caught up in how the author writes everything unfolding. Bunny's first-person narration uses retrospection to such good end, giving us a mix of his then-understanding and a wink towards what he knows now.
Yes, I'm with you on the material details of everyday lives. I suppose I find them particularly potent in smut because smut is so material (or, at least how I like it), and more generally they're what grounds something in a setting which feels plausible (physically, emotionally). It's not even that I dislike white-box types of stories where all the focus is on what the characters are saying or doing to one another—the emotions in something like that can be potent! But the detail makes an interaction hit much harder for me. Of course, it's also one difficulty of picking up new eras of historical fandom. I notice I can persuade myself more easily to try something if it's during a time period and in a location with which I've already established some level of comfort. This would be less difficult if I weren't American, probably, given my preference of canons! Though I hold out hope for more litfic vibes in slash set in 20th c. America.
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Date: 2023-05-13 05:44 pm (UTC):D
Yes, I love that aspect of 'character writes their own story many years later' first-person narration—Raffles gives plenty of opportunities to use that in fic, and this story definitely does.
I know what you mean about the difficulties of new historical settings! There are some historical books that I love but am way too intimidated to write for largely because the historical setting is so unfamiliar to me, especially Rosemary Sutcliff's Roman and adjacent stuff.
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Date: 2023-06-21 11:46 pm (UTC)