So, it looks like it'll be a Tuesday thing.
You voted for:
Post (together) a collection of fics on a theme: historical AUs, Mpregs, Viggo-as-bottom etc.
Feel free to leave comments with suggestions of themes although I make no guarantee I'll use them - it depends what I think of to rec.
This week's theme is
fics with something of magic or otherness in them. Not magic in the sense of wizards and wands, but just a little something that isn't quite normal.
1:
Mardi Gras by
abundantlyqueer.
(link is to
zoniduck's index, for ease of navigation)Multiparing, including Orlando, Elijah, Viggo, Dom, Ian, Cate and Liv. So yes
het content, although the focus is distinctly slashy.
NC17Summary: It's the week of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Orlando is an actor made famous by the LOTR films and he's in New Orleans for another round of interviews. But in this AU world it was Tobey Maguire and Stuart Townsend and Gwyneth Paltrow not Elijah and Viggo and Cate who starred alongside him. He has yet to meet Elijah and Viggo and Cate, yet to experience the power that pulses in New Orleans at this time of year.
Why read this?: Because it's delicious and you can't see where it's going. It's dark and powerful.
abundantlyqueer is the master of the Lotrips AU, her characters uncurl in enticing patterns, drawing you into the fic. And the descriptions are vivid, immediate. And the sex is hot. In fact all the writing is perfect - this is how I wish I could write. This Viggo is dangerous, mesmerising. This Elijah is smart but vulnerable. This fic is fabulous. And there are still bits that leave me wondering...
Extract:
“I want – I want you to make me Queen of Mardi Gras,” Liv says in a rush, narrowing her eyes as if daring Viggo to laugh at her, but he doesn’t so much as flicker an eyelid.
“Oh woman you’re delusional,” Elijah crows. “The Queen of Mardi Gras’s picked from the oldest families in New Orleans. You’re a fucking club-singer from California.”2:
Viridian, Vermillion, Alizarin by
novanumbernine.
Viggo/Orlando.
RSummary: An artist finds a boy and when he helps him he discovers that the boy has wings.
Why read this fic?: For a start, because it's one of only two wingfics that I like. This is a fic that happens to have a character with wings, rather than a wing!fic. It's told in the first person, directly, all in terms of
you and I, and it works. It's beautifully bittersweet, not a conventional romantic fic and the writing itself is gorgeous.
Extract:
I still prepared my canvases the old-fashioned way, with rabbitskin glue and gesso I mixed myself, spooning pure white powder-chalk into a plastic bucket. I took a cup and filled a small breakfast bowl with chalk from one of the stiff brown paper bags I kept propped up against the studio wall. Kneeling down beside you, I began to drizzle and worry the chalkdust into your feathers. 3:
Na Goshi by
abundantlyqueer (again!)
Just finished today, in fact.
One:
The Lotus. Two:
The Narrow Path. Three:
Nogitsune. Four:
The Ten Thousand Things. Five:
Mara. Six:
The Floating World. Seven:
The Demon's Daughters. Eight:
The Shade of the Bodhi Tree. Nine:
A Koan of the Bodhisattva Lotus Eyes. Ten:
The Thread Breaks. Eleven:
Buddha Heart, Warrior Soul.
Multiparing: Viggo. Elijah. Orlando. Dom. Billy.
NC17This fic comes with
non-con and
character death warnings.
Summary: Elijah has been kidnapped. But the man who is holding him is not what he seems. And who is Billy and why is he there? Dom is a Buddhist monk, Orlando is something... What part do they have to play in Elijah's story?
Why read this fic?: Despite the warnings, or perhaps because of them, this fic is worth an explore. I've never read anything like it. Each chapter peels off a layer and makes the whole thing more complicated. It somehow seems very still, it's one of those fics that makes me want to sit quietly and think about it.
Extract:
Dom and Orlando get out of the car and slam the doors closed. Orlando's wearing his habitual denims and sweater and long coat, but Dom's no longer dressed in his crimson robes. He's wearing black leather jeans and a skinny black tee shirt under a long gray suede jacket. His wooden prayer beads are wound around his right wrist, looping down a little onto the back of his hand.
"So, what?" Dom asks as he and Orlando walk side by side up the broad stone steps leading to the garden at the front of the house. "We just walk in an' take him back?"Right, there you go, that's what I have to share for this week!