#otp: the cup was overturned; the wine spilled

[souridealist]

Slightly belated Yuletide roundup!

WHAT I WROTE:

I had five works in the collection this year, which is a personal best by far: Imperial Radch, the video game Black Closet, "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)", and two for Ursula Vernon's Digger.

Imperial Radch: A Good Friend to Have: Uran and Athoek Station, G, 800 words, no archive warnings apply. A post-canon flashfic about evolving terms of address.

“Why do you still call us Radchaii?” Uran asked, leaning back against the wall. He ran his gloves against the welded seam of the wall next to him, like he was stroking a companion animal or a very close friend. Station couldn’t feel the gesture, either through the wall or through Uran’s hands, but it could see. “It’s been months.”

Brandy: All the Great Wide Sea: Brandy-centric, featuring Brandy/her unnamed lover. G, 600 words, no archive warnings. A short fic about Brandy considering new options.

It wasn’t only men who piled into the bar with a purse full of silver and a head full of tales, either. You got the occasional woman coming along, as tattoo-mottled and shaggy-haired as the men, in ragged trousers and oft-patched shirts. One quiet night Brandy wound up pouring sweet red wine for a woman with three brass rings punched through one ear and the five-thousand-mile swallow tattooed on the back of her hand.

Black Closet: Raise Bid to 31 Pieces of Silver: Rowan/Elsa, T, 1.5K, no archive warnings. A traitorous Rowan turns in an intentionally failed assignment and begins to suspect that Elsa knows her secret.

“You know,” Elsa said. “Mallory’s a good girl, and she can blend in with a crowd all right, but I’ve never had trouble noticing when she comes into a room. She draws the eye.” Mallory was pretty enough, Rowan thought. Bright hair. “But you…” Elsa said, pushing back her chair. “You’re so quiet, when you want to be. It’s a gift.”

Digger: Comparative Theology: Murai, Jhalm, Digger, and Shadowchild. G, 3k, no archive warnings. Four scenes exploring each character's relationship with the divine.

. Later in life, Jhalm revisited the temple and learned of the great wars of attrition that Teshia’s priests fought over the herb beds: the Invasive Plant Debates, the Three Or Possibly Four Basil Varietals, and the Mint Idiot, who planted mint in the ground to run riot over the temple. But as a child he’d always found the gardens peaceful, and he’d loved taking home the sacred packages each worshiper was given, leaves from Teshia’s garden dried over the sacred Hearthflame. He used to press the twists of burlap to his nose and inhale something both delicious and sacred. Once one of the priests caught him at it: Cassandra of the straight gray braids and straight-pressed robes. Jhalm jumped, squeaking, and shoved the herbs into his bag.

Digger: Anything That Talks: Murai and Jhalm, G, 2k, no archive warnings.Jhalm's patrol of the Veiled meets another, more ordinary demon, and Murai and Jhalm have a conversation about authority, the past, and how to be good.

“I eat what I will,” it said, slithering forward. Murai could just see the roots of the trees in its coils. She doubted the little stand of elms would last for very long after this. “I eat the shadows of great and small, of weak and of mighty. Yours, impertinent creature – ah, yours is fascinating, strange and dark and deep. So hard-edged, in such a bright light. You will be…” It moved forward, again – between the flanking arms of the Veiled. “Delicious.”

“I see,” Murai said, stepping easily back. “Captain Jhalm, I believe we should kill this creature, if you will give the order.”

WHAT I RECEIVED:

The Touching of Lips by Prinzenhasserin. Queen's Thief, "Five times Costis wanted to kiss Kamet and one time he did." This is a delightful story about five people making Costis think about how much he wants to kiss Kamet; each scene is a beautifully drawn, distinct sketch, and the payoff is delightful. I wanted Costis/Kamet so badly after Thick as Thieves, and this was lovely to receive.

Antelope Dreams by ambyr. Summer in Orcus, "When she was eleven, Summer thought she was very nearly an adult. At seventeen, she's starting to understand how much she has to learn." This is a glorious postcanon fic about growing up, and living with the legacy of Orcus, and being a well-behaved Good Kid (tm) with a crush on a Bad Kid (tm), and Summer remembering the antelope woman and realizing she's a queer furry. It's perfectly in-tone and beautiful.

AUTHORIAL CHATTERING ON WHAT I WROTE:

Yes, I shall continue to do this. Yes, with all five of them. But under a cut!

A Good Friend to Have: This one was a really interesting experience, because I originally wrote it using she/her pronouns for Uran, since canon does. It wasn't unti coming back to it later that I remembered that Uran is briefly identified as male in Delsig, and that if I was leaving the 'Citizen' honorific as Radchaai, I was 'translating' out of Delsig. And thus shoud use he/him pronouns. I really love the series's use of 'she' as a neutral pronoun, and everything that choice creates, and I was pretty hesitant to step away from it -- but it's also a very central conceit of the story that Uran isn't hearing Radchaai the way a native speaker would hear it. Which means Uran needs to use he/him. Going through and changing that was the most annoyingly fiddly editing task I have ever fucking undertaken, but also... really damn interesting to do! The pronouns were all I changed, and it still shifted my mental image of Uran's body language and physical presence a lot.

This was also published with what was originally its working title, which I don't think I've ever done before; occasionally the right title has come to me by the time I have to save the word document (almost always when the fic is written in one sitting), but this wasn't meant to be final and then I realized I liked it better than anything I could come up with. It's a direct quote from canon: Breq's comment when Uran mentions talking to Station in the second book.

All the Great Wide Sea: The prose is so purple here. I had so much fun writing it. It's a short, open-ended fic written all in a hurry because I thought the collection closed a day sooner than it did, and I basically just threw women sailors, running off to sea to join your man, and Age of Sail tavern imagery together with gleeful abandon. The 'being metamours with the ocean' theme isn't explored as thoroughly as I'd like, but... I couldn't resist adding the tag because I amuse myself too much. I'd never written fic for a song fandom before, even though the existence of it is one of my favorite things about Yuletide before; I'm glad I finally did.

Raise Bid to 31 Pieces of Silver: This title is... a thing. I refused to let mysef name it 'Silver and Hemp,' because this is not a religious fic and for fuck's sake come up with a better reference for a fic about treachery, but, well. I could not, in fact, come up with a better reference. But I did manage to at least include the idea of being tempted out of treachery, and I like the implicit cynicism of the bid thing. Because, you know: Machiavellian secret-police teenagers.

This was a great prompt, and I made a beeline straight for a traitor!Rowan/Elsa worldstate, because that is my favorite route hands down. This is also the first time in I don't know how long that I've used jealousy as a shippy plot device! I don't usually like it, and I don't find it cute in any way; but this isn't meant to be a cute fic, and part of what I love about this fandom is that it's an all-female cast where everyone gets to have a lot of rough edges.

Oh, and I also got to play around with incorporating game mechanics into the story! I fucking love trying to de-abstract game mechanics in a way that doesn't contradict what you actually see. As if you couldn't tell from me regularly sneaking that shit into Dragon Age fic.

Comparative Theology: This was actually my second attempt at my main assignment! I wanted to do a post-canon adventure that involved everyone meeting up while Digger tried to get home, and then everyone having to share anecdotes from their past (since my recipient mentioned liking fic about 'how people get to where they are'), but I just. Could not make it work. I'd had the idea of writing a set of thematically-linked vignettes in the back of my head as a backup, and the idea of linking them specifically by theology clicked just as the deadline started to really intensely loom. And thus! It's a pretty baggage-heavy theme to use, and I did worry about that -- especially in a gift fic -- but, well. The tagline is "A wombat. A dead god. A very peculiar epic." I figured I was probably safe. And one of my favorite things about the comic is what it does with the relationship between the human (or... worshiper of various species) and the divine.

I drew on a bunch of Ursula Vernon's print work as well as the actual comic (though I still got a lot of my own particular High Drama all over the prose, trying to capture the tone of things like the Saltlace sequence in words. The line about the Mint Idiot is in there entirely because I was like 'this voice is drifting way too far back towards just me. QUICK, ADD SOME PLANTS.' The Baba Yaga line is a direct reference to Summer in Orcus too.

I may eventually try and salvage what I had of my original attempt. I hewed closer to canon tones, I think, and I had some good fucking Jabberworck dialogue.

Anything That Talks: This one is secretly my baby. I was surprised to find myself really interested in Jhalm on later read-throughs, because I wasn't the first time; but it turned out I wanted to poke at him. And I really wanted to poke at Murai's decision to be his leash, and at what that might look like, and how she would choose to do it. Twisty power dymanics! The power actually lying with the person with less outward authority! Using one's own weakness as a source of strength! Very rigid people needing to bend or die, and what that costs! MY SHIT. (And I didn't actually realize that last was, in fact, something I keep revisiting until this moment, but hm. This sure is the third fic on that theme I've posted since November.)

Something I absolutely did not do intentionally during this fic and then noticed in the editing: I don't reference color anywhere in this fic other than 'cold white-glowing eyes.' Perils of writing for a black-and-white comic! (I didn't do that in either 'Comparative Theology' or my false start; fic isn't canon, text isn't a comic, and you've got to use the medium you're working with. But I left it alone for this one; I liked it.)

[souridealist]

So I finally got hold of a copy of Thick as Thieves

And may have reflexively clutched it to my chest in the bookstore like it was a long-lost friend, don’t look at me. Scattered reactions underneath the cut! (Scroll like hell if you’re on mobile; there’s major spoilers but there’s also a rambly-ass wall of text to conceal them.)

I think it’s interesting, structurally, that it’s been three frickin’ books since we actually got anything at all from Eugenides’s POV even though it is very much his series. It does at least reinforce my impression of The Queen of Attolia as the central book in the series and no, I’m not just saying that because it’s my favorite, shut up.  But I do wonder if, since apparently the next book is going to be the last, if we’re going to end up with two triptychs: The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and the unnamed last one as the main story, and The King of Attolia, A Conspiracy of Kings, and Thick as Thieves as the “spinoffs.” KoA is the least convincing as a spinoff, and the most Eugenides’ story out of the three, since it’s the story of how he took command of Attolia as much or more as it is the story of Costis gaining respect for him.

Sidebar: the way that I read these books was Exactly Wrong, because it was as follows: I read half of The Thief while entirely too young for it, forgot about it completely, received KoA several years later when it was the most recent in the series, and read through it with no more idea of what was going on than Costis. I wouldn’t recommend this - it was like never getting to read Queen of Attolia for the first time, just skipping ahead to the first reread - but it made for a really interesting experience of KoA, and I think probably an unusual one? And is probably why it took me until now to think “hey, Costis kind of stands in for all of Attolia in going from contemptuous of Gen to devoted!”

Anyway. Thick as Thieves is definitely a side-story, as is Conspiracy of Kings - I’d need to reread CoK to analyze it at all, but everything that’s relevant to the story of the Little Peninsula in ToT is in the last, oh, fifty pages? But both of them are, I think, the stories of how Eugenides affects other people. (And this is why I lumped KoA in with them earlier). In ToT it’s about Eugenides rearranging his life; in CoK it was about Eugenides inspiring Sophos to go from uselessly scholarly heir to king. They’re both about Gen’s impact, just as KoA is also about how Gen affects Costis. I really love the personal-vs-political pressures in this series, can you tell?

Speaking of personal-vs-political, I’ve seen a few intersections between this series’ fandom and that of the Vorkosigan books, which I have to stop myself from calling the Barrayar books on a regular basis. I think that pressure, personal and political playing off each other, probably draws people to both series. The end of the book, with Kamet getting fond of Attolia (and I do wish that that had more focus), made me want a particular kind of story – a story about how Attolia changes everyone who comes into her borders – and I think that also reminds me of the Barrayar books, because they also had that thread in them.

Anyway, back to the actual book I’m reacting to, here. I guessed that Costis was Costis very early on, but that wasn’t really meant to be a secret, and I liked that the moment when Kamet finally used his name still had impact even though we all knew by that point. I knew Kamet wasn’t going to be delivered and then thrown out, obviously – we know Gen’s not like that.  And we know that the series twists on you and there’s always more going on than you think, so I at least was looking for the twist the whole time. I guessed what it was wrong, though; I thought for a very large chunk of the book that Costis knew Nahuseresh was dead and hadn’t realized Kamet didn’t know he knew. Eventually I started realizing that I was wrong; I didn’t really have a replacement theory. I did guess that Kamet was being abducted for reasons other than annoying Nahuseresh, and that it was for the things he knew, but I’m not sure how much that counts as guessing the twist, given that we know Gen. I guessed that Gen was the disobedient Attolian servant Kamet was friends with, though I’m still a little vague on the timeline there – before Gen got his hand cut off, I think? Or was it an offscreen bit in QoA? Either’s possible. I did not guess that Nahuseresh was still alive, so, MWT’s still got it.

I was definitely expecting Ennikar or Immakuk to show up, and I do think Ennikar did, that feverish Costis had the right of it. I doubt we’re supposed to know, though.

Whatever was going on with Gen’s youngest attendant at the end went right past me – young Erondites? What? I thought there were only two Erondites children, Dite and Sejanus; was there a sister who’s now Gen’s sweet-Polly-Oliver attendant? What? I need a reread, I guess.

Her Highness Gitta Kingsdaughter is making me tear my hair with frustration. Who introduces something like that on a frontispiece map? Who? Who does that? Googling brought up interviews, and apparently she’s trying very hard to have her own story and MWT is trying not to write it, and. Tearing of hair, gnashing of teeth, why aren’t the other books in front of me!

And finally – until tomorrow, anyway – Costis/Kamet. Oh my God. I was actually… not expecting, but faintly hoping, that it was on purpose? It didn’t seem to be, and, well, I didn’t expect it, but I wish it had been there. Not just because I ship it like burning, although that’s true, but because… this series and I go a long way back, and it would have meant a lot to me to have a queer love story in a series that has been so important to me for so long. (See also: Nico di Angelo, intense feelings about.) And I got my hopes up, just a little, never really thinking I had a chance, so it stung a little. On the other hand, I was genuinely afraid for a while that they were going to part ways forever, so the relief of realizing that Gen was sending them off into the sunset together was a balm to that particular self-inflicted hurt.

Fangirl hat taking over from queer girl hat (not that they’re not often comorbid hats) – for fuck’s sake. “My Attolian.” Tongue-in-cheek talking about who could ever possibly be so foolish as to get romantically entangled, followed by staring at the sky and waiting for the other one to speak. The constant push-and-pull of power between the two of them, of Costis trying not to hold power and Kamet pushing them back into master-and-slave roles because that’s how he knew how to interact with the world – that is a damned fascinating dynamic whether it’s romantic or not, but I’m a person with a sexual interest in complicated power dynamics and it had my attention. Kamet’s complete shutdown when he thought Costis was dead, and complete inability to abandon Costis to his illness. That fucking scene where Costis and his bulging muscles pull Kamet close by the replacement chain and tear the inks apart. I know what I want for Yuletide. (They also get a tag.)