Goldengrove Unleaving

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

These things do make me happy to not be following yuletide_admin but honestly, you'd think 2013 is too late for anyone to realise that quantity on AO3 and FF.net count for Yuletide-qualification.

Found this absolute gem of a trailer just now, on the Home Guard in WWII.

"Thirty in three months," Lanyon said, and nodded. "I know, I have rather a brutish face."
It was not that, precisely. In fact he had fine, decisive features of the sort one might expect incised on an old coin, half obscured by passing time and many hands, faintly unreal in full daylight and animated conversation. It was his manner that, once one knew his secret, smacked of a certain sententious reserve even beyond her years let alone his. Helen, all unknowing, might have approved, but it gave Harriet a case of social claustrophobia.
"You look as though you wish you were fifty already," she informed him, and stubbed her cigarette out in the proffered ashtray, "and it only seems polite to bring you as near it as possible."
He laughed a little, a soundless gasp she saw as much as heard, escaping in the frigid air. "I've been recalling as near as I could a very martinet of a captain I had very young; it's the only way I can get by without flattening Straike."
"We really ought to get hold of his credentials," she said, and waved off his offer of a third cigarette. "Pity he wasn't at Oxford."
"Cambridge man," Lanyon agreed, and drew meditatively on his own cigarette, cheeks hollowing. "I know a man who might have been up with him, and was a Fellow after, so a few years one way or another shouldn't affect matters. I can go down to the post office and call him tomorrow, since getting near the phone here is an ordeal and a half. He's still up there, can get hold of the records easily."
Something about the gesture had made Harriet's mind swing to fleshly matters like a magnetized needle north. What a filthy little mind I have under the sophistication, she thought, and having administered a quick reprimand, said, "Were you a Cambridge man?"
This time Lanyon's smile was all teeth and no humour, a bright slash. "I was a fishing trawler man, my lady. My father refused to pay for university after I got thrown out of school for touching children wrongly." He finished his cigarette in a long pull and flicked the ash and smouldering stub into the empty carton. "I'd ask you to keep it quiet in the house but you will regardless. Lord Peter knows already, of course."

 I think I feel guilty about writing Boromir as always-a-cis-woman, even though barely anyone will read the fic and even though she doesn't have a romantic story-line going, because when I came into fandom  the tendency of gender-bending in order to write your ship safely heterosexual was just coming under critical fire and I absorbed it like a sponge.
So I can say all I want that to explore the ways in which the narrative would change, or how people would react, and whether the Fellowship is different and how and why (not), and what it means to survive and to survive when you're a woman, and what it is to be a woman who cannot slide into the sweetness of marital domesticity, and how to deal with barrenness and grief and mourning family everyone else is glad to see the back of, and...
And I can say all of that, and a lot more, and mean every scrap of it, and I still feel like I'm doing this to write het. porn and letting the side down and I should be ashamed of myself. I am, ohboy, to the extent of trying to self-justify with "at least it's not a Mary Sue self-insert" when I don't really think that's something to be ashamed of, either.
I'm ashamed and it's irritating me no end.

 Has anyone else ever thought of Harriet Vane as a WoC? The description of honey skin and dark eyes and deep voice have on my last read through been very persuasive on that count.

Someone looking like a younger Thandie Newton, mebbe.

Allegiance (4040 words) by toujours_nigel
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Lord of the Rings (Movies)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Relationships: Aragorn | Estel/Boromir (Son of Denethor II)
Characters: Aragorn | Estel, Boromir (Son of Denethor II)
Additional Tags: Magic Fingers, Rape Recovery, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Past Rape/Non-con, Vaginal Fingering, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex
Summary: porny outtake of Red Sun at Morning with which I am now bored, and also stalled, because heterosex does not interest me beyond a point. Uploading for sake of completion, and also to stop thinking about it.

This is what I was writing to keep sane during my conference/interview week of insanity in Delhi. It has no future, so might as well get posted rather than haunting my hard-drive in hopes of completion.

• been on the train 26 hours
• lived with a distant-ish friend and filia_noctis in a hotel room for three days
• interviewed for a fellowship (didn't clear it)
• lived with friends from undergrad and their husband. boyfriend, and cousin (all roommates) over the weekend
• lived with a friend from masters and his parents for three days
• wrote Aragorn/fem!Boromir rape-recovery porn
• worked in an archive where the archivist was consistently too busy to pull the material I wanted to access
• variously rode the metro and took flights and flights of stairs with a densely packed rucksack longer than my torso
• attended and presented a paper at a two-day conference
• played nice with utter strangers over the stretch of 60 hours or so
• travelled for 25 hours in the company of an irritable infant.

I AM DONE I AM SO DONE I AM NEVER GOING ANYWHERE AGAIN EVER

While I recognise that I have a tendency to assume that all Mumford and Sons songs relate to The Chariot, and especially Ralph Lanyon in one way or another, I submit for general inspection Sigh No More as an Alec/Ralph song

Ask away!

1. Describe yourself how you would describe a character you’re introducing.
2. Is there any specific ritual you go through while/before/after your writing?
3. What is your absolute favorite kind of fic to write?
4. Are there any other fic writers you admire? If so, who and why?
5. How many words can you write if you sit down and concentrate intensely for an hour?
6. First fic/pairing you wrote for? (If no pairing, describe the plot)
7. Inspiration, time, or motivation. Choose two.
8. Why do you choose to write?
9. Do you ever have plans to write anything other than fic?
10. What inspires you the most?
11. Weirdest thing you’ve ever written/thought about writing/etc.?
12. A fic you wish you had written better, and why?
13. Favorite fic from another author?
14. Your favorite side pairings to put in?
15. Your guilty writing pleasure?
16. Do you have structured ideas of how your story is supposed to go, or do you make it up as you write?
17. Would you describe yourself as a fast writer?
18. How old were you when you started writing?
19. Why did you start writing?
20. Four sentences from your work that you’re proud of.