kmo

The femslashex archive is live and there are many wonderful fics there for your reading pleasure this fall weekend.

So, I made a story:

The Kusheline Reel
Kushiel's Legacy, Melisande Shahrizai/Ysandre de la Courcel

A missing scene from Kushiel's Dart in which Melisande instructs Ysandre in the fine art of Kusheline country dancing.

Writing this was kind of a mixture of agony and ecstasy. In the end I'm pleased with the story and happy to have written the first evah Melisande/Ysandre story. *pats self on back* Many thanks to silverflight8 for a last minute beta- any faults that remain are all mine. Uh, about halfway through I realized that I was drawing from the ball at Netherfield as a subconscious influence. And now I kind of want a Kushiel's Legacy/Pride and Prejudice fusion. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Shahrizai in possession of great fortune must be in want of an anguisette...." Practically writes itself, people!

Somewhere during the writing of this fic, Fanchone Shahrizai may have become my spirit animal....

And I received:

Stone and Snow (6900 words) by justwolf
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Relationships: Arya Stark/Daenerys Targaryen
Characters: Arya Stark, Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow, Ghost (ASoIaF), Missandei (ASoIaF)
Summary: One of the Faceless Men comes to King's Landing to give the Queen a gift.

And it is super-fabulous and has grownup!Faceless Woman!Arya being brilliant and vulnerable and just perfect. It's one of the best gift fics I've ever received and certainly one of the best Arya fics I've ever read. I don't know how my author did it, but she managed to pull things out of this pairing and story that I didn't even know I wanted. And the best part is, it's a story of Arya coming home and becoming herself again, complete with the happy ending she is probably not likely to receive in canon. *sniffles*

ETA: I keep trying to post recs but DW keeps eating them. *frowny face* And I actually have to go read some candidate files and can't spend the whole afternoon fiddling with this. I'll try again later.

Ok, so this may be a bit presumptuous but they are polling right now for Femslash12 and I am pretty damn excited. I have watched from a distance the past couple years but this year, goddess willing, I am going to take the plunge and sign up. Even folks who plan to be "only readers" can vote. so please, practice democracy...and show my beloved Downton Abbey and A Song of Ice and Fire some love....because they are not doing as well as I had hoped. Sadness. I have lots of femslashy feelings, but for whatever reason, I never seem to have them for the large femslash fandoms. But then again, I have always been an obscure fandoms person. 

To all my fellow ASOIAF fans, a friend forwarded me a CFP (that's "call for papers" for the unitiated) for a volume on "A Game of Thrones and History." Damn was I ever tempted to submit something, despite that I am no one's idea of a medievalist, If it was straight up cultural crticism, I might be tempted, but I think this would require waaaay too much background research on something outside my field. I guess the world will never get to know my academic wankery on "Faceless (Wo)Man: The Female Masculinity of Arya Stark." But if other scholarly fannish types feel so inspired, you should go for it! 

I also took a spontaneous trip to DC this week and met up with my best friend and her baby (yay!) and another female friend with whom I have an extremely complicated and tempestuous relationship and her baby. (???) Le sigh. I'm still trying to process it all. I may post about it. A meeting with She Who Must Not Be Named always leaves me feeling a little shaken and stirred.