Galadhir has finished Visitation. Nobody liked that.
(This is a lie. I liked it, so I'm glad to have written it, and I'll enjoy having it there to read again once I've had time to forget it a little.)
In which Lan Xichen, in seclusion, experiences a moment of consolation, makes his mind up about some things and comes out swinging.
Because you know Jin Guangyao did not save him just for him to waste away in heartbroken regret.
It's very odd how it always seems to go this way: You write what you think is one of your best fics ever, and it gets absolute silence from readers. You write a throwaway thing that you don't think is much good, and it gets more comments than you could have imagined.
I'm currently doing the first thing of those. I think 'Visitation' is really good. And more than that, I'm actually enjoying writing it to the extent that I am excited about it and rotating it in my head like I used to do with stories back when I was a proper writer. But I post it and... crickets.
Meanwhile I've just come off what I thought was a rather pointless piece of kid-fic, and that was getting twenty comments per chapter.
And it wouldn't matter so much if I had any idea what made one more popular than the other. Is it just that this one is in Xichen's pov instead of Jin Guangyao's? Is it that JGY is dead in this one, and it might take him a few years to come back? IDK. I cannot have become a worse writer in the space of the two weeks between one fic and the next, so it must be the subject matter and not me, but it is a bit baffling and discouraging.
Never mind. Visitation is for me, so I'm going to continue to write it for me. Whether I continue to post it or not is another matter.
General Hux is my fandom blorbo, played by Domhnall Gleeson. Other characters played by Domhnall Gleeson include Caleb from Ex-Machina, which is a fantastic movie ostensibly about AI but (to the female gaze) also very clearly about misogyny. So here is a short piece from Caleb's pov.
~
Caleb beats on the bulletproof glass door until the meat of his hands is swollen and bleeding. Something about the smudges of gore on the glass cuts the final strings that held him upright and fighting. Pulling the pain in to his chest, he turns and slides to the floor in the beating pulse of the red emergency light.
That’s it then. He’s going to die here.
Is this what she had felt? Alone in her glass prison, knowing herself to be property, to be a prototype, with only dismantlement and recycling ahead of her, was she fighting for her life all the time she spoke to him?
His fingerbones are on fire, and it snaps him back to video footage. One of Ava’s earlier versions—her ‘sisters’?—punching on a locked door until the glass and her arm shatters.
The shame is almost as acute as the pain. He had thought the behaviour was interesting, had wondered if it was a sign of self awareness, self-determination. It hadn’t occurred to him until now that he was witnessing a woman trapped and desperate enough to gnaw through her own arm to escape.
He thought he was so fucking clever. Thought it was up to him to determine her personhood, up to him to bestow the gift of taking her seriously. Holding himself up like some kind of god, just as Nathan had.
Hah! He had wanted to be like Nathan, hadn’t he? At least at the start. Wanted to help create a slave race, control it, decide whether it was allowed to be considered intelligent or not.
No wonder she had left him here. He deserved it.
Slowly, he tips over onto his side and presses his cheek to the floor. Have the air recyclers been shut down too? It seems hot and his chest aches more physically than mere abandonment and despair could account for.
Will he suffocate first, or will the next food delivery turn up in time to save him? There is nothing he can do about either possibility, so it is best not to care. He closes his eyes and relaxes into the blood-stained floor.
Ava deserves to get away. He hopes she walks the beaches in her pretty white dress, hopes she enjoys the sun on her skin and the respect of strangers who have no cause to doubt that she is human. Perhaps there will be joy in her life before her battery runs out. Perhaps she will make drawings of what she sees, and for a little time there will be two intelligences on the earth to marvel at the beauty of the stars.
He hopes so, at least.
Gosh there are now so many people posting over here that it took me several hours to get to the bottom of my Reading Page! How cool! The more people talking over here, the less need there is to go anywhere else :)
Hello to everyone I've added today! It's great to have you on board.
Finished and posted chapter two of my Untamed fic Wedded Bliss, which is itself a tie in to my previous Untamed fic the same last name and the same coloured eyes.. After ten years of writing a minimum of 2000 words a day, followed by about five years of total writing block, I'm now finding a pace of 500 words a day doable and enjoyable.
The long term plan is to write a new novel, but for now getting my writing muscles working again by fanfic seems like a gentle way to get back into the swing of things.
Fandom: MDZS/The Untamed
We're on the penultimate chapter by now, in which JGY and JZX's plot against Jin Guangshan comes to its fruition, and - under some pressure - JGS does the best thing he has ever done in his life.
And on a lighter note, I have begun podficcing my own Oak and Willow, which conveniently has shortish chapters that I can both record and edit in a day. Much easier than having to record for an hour at a time!
Oak and Willow being the story of Celeborn and Galadriel during the First Age of Middle-earth, told from the Sindarin point of view, with digressions to cover the invention of writing, the first rising of the sun and the moon, and so much elvish racism and politics.
First three chapters up at Ao3
So I have not been on DW recently because I've been trying to write and podfic and practice my signwriting all at the same time and I had no energy left over. However, I do really feel like I'm back in the swing of writing (God willing) because here is another chapter of my Jin bros fic.
the same last name and the same colour eyes, Chapter three
In which Jin Guangyao attempts to lure Wei Wuxian over to the Jin side by the nefarious means of offering him a pardon and paying for the Wens to make it through the winter. Meanwhile, of course Jin Zixuan has eyes for nobody but Jiang Yanli.
Chapter Two of the same last name and the same colour eyes is up on Ao3 here
In which, following Jin Zixuan's unexpected expression of brotherly feelings, Jin Guangyao finds himself with a second person in the Jin family whom he wishes to please. This changes things.
Fic: Life Sentence
Chapter 8
Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Pairing: Armitage Hux & Poe Dameron (kind of pre-slash, kind of just emotional entanglement)
Rating: PG
Follows on from my From the Ashes
In which future historians are baffled
Fic: Life Sentence
Chapter 7
Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Pairing: Armitage Hux & Poe Dameron (kind of pre-slash, kind of just emotional entanglement)
Rating: PG
Follows on from my From the Ashes
In which a slightly suspicious decision is made
( Read more... )
Fic: Life Sentence
Chapter 5
Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Pairing: Armitage Hux & Poe Dameron (kind of pre-slash, kind of just emotional entanglement)
Rating: PG
Follows on from my From the Ashes
In which Hux is more than a match for some provincial prison governor.
Fic: Life Sentence
Chapter 3
Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Pairing: Armitage Hux & Poe Dameron (kind of pre-slash, kind of just emotional entanglement)
Rating: PG
Follows on from my From the Ashes
In which Poe has a devastating revelation
( Read more... )
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