rheaitis

 and now my yuletide assignment is here! *cuddles assignment, hares off to review source)

we say a lot about leaving comments, but the you've got kudos mail is such a blessing to my day, especially at times i'm not writing with any regularity (so, like 80% of the time).
In the last couple weeks, someone called Sistermine (whose profile is woefully shorn of details) has kudosed twenty-seven of my fic, primarily for Renault-fic, and I'm just so full of love for them. ♥ ♥ ♥

tozka posted about the Dewey Readathon, which I usually only find out about once it's underway, so I'm delighted to be able to sign up for once. I'll be reading two (or three if time allows) Daphne du Mauriers, none of which I've read in the last seven years, so I'll be coming to them a new person. All updates to be made to this post.

• Hour 1: Starting with My Cousin Rachel.

 I have spent the week just about drowning in a dozen of KJ Charles' novels, and astonishingly love all of them, which rarely happens. It helps that most of her series/verses are three books long, and even there shift focus from one character to another. But it's still a lovely shock.

I have packed all my stuff and come home, and posted the story that kept me company as I was going nutso.

habib albi (8000 words) by toujours_nigel
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Padmaavat (2018)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Mehrunissa/Padmavati, Mehrunissa/Alauddin Khilji, Alauddin Khilji/Malik Kafur, Alauddin Khilji/Rani Kamala, Malik Kafur & Rani Kamala, Rawal Ratan Singh/Padmavati
Characters: Mehrunissa (Padmaavat), Alauddin Khilji (Padmaavat), Malik Kafur (Padmaavat), Rani Kamala, Rawal Ratan Singh (Padmaavat), Padmavati (Padmaavat)
Additional Tags: Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Male Character, Canon Queer Character, Canon Queer Relationship, Canon Compliant
Summary: "Tell me about your wife," Mehrunissa instructs Rawal Ratan Singh.

Addendum to the previous post

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you were new, merely that I'm not sure how many folks who wrote stories before are still keeping up. I'm "new" to the fandom, so to speak, so catching up on stories posted years ago. And I understand your point, it's just that at times, I wasn't entirely sure what you were saying/implying, and got confused. Hence my suggestion to be a bit clearer. I really *enjoy* layered meanings in texts, but if it's too vague, it seems to undermine the intention.

(Then again, I'm a journalist by training, and my own writing style is very frank and blunt and graphic.)

Not sure if you're still writing, but I will certainly read further stories. Cheers.

So, to reiterate, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But also, is the fic that confusing?

flicked off gwyn but also seen elsewhere, List your top fanfic on AO3 for every year, sorted by kudos. I'm starting with 2009, because I don't think fanfic I wrote before that is on the Archive.

2009: Dāshrathi; Ramayana: gen. I don't think kudos were a thing yet, and also I suspect these particular kudos drifted in relatively recently. Everything else I wrote that year was for a Bollywood film, had a readership of two, and had originally been posted here or on LJ.
2010: The Mating of Sharks; Harry Potter: Draco Malfoy/Blaize Zabini. (Close runners-up: Moses Among the Bulrushes; also Harry Potter and racebent. to race Thanatos; Alexander trilogy; deathfic)
2011: Vistas of Sun and Smoke; Alexander trilogy: gen and the beginning of my obsession with Hephaistion's family. (Close runners-up: The Son of Monoetius; The Iliad; a death-wail for Patroclus. Nathbati; The Mahabharata and the beginning of my love for writing AU in the epic; the name itself is flicked from the Bengali drama about Draupadi: Nathbati Anathbat [husbanded husbandless].)
2012: Noone here to save; Captain America: Steve/Bucky with Bucky alive post-train. Thoroughly unsurprising, is what I'm saying.
2013: Food of Love; Harry Potter: Marauder-era fic of Sirius/Remus getting together. Possibly my favourite and definitely the lightest and funniest thing I've ever written with these two.
2014: Not a House or Even a Tent; The Charioteer; wedding-night fic for Ralph/Laurie. Shmoopy sentimental sex. Has a lot of kudos for such a small fandom, I must say. (Definitely not the best TC fic I wrote that year, which is almost certainly The Thousandth Man; ofc I wrote a lot of TC fic that year so YMMV clearly.)
2015: Sex while Parents; Pride (2014): has very little sex in it considering the title, but a whole spiel about suddenly landing as unofficial foster-parents while queer and in your late-thirties or older. I love it to bits, so this ranking makes me very happy.
2016: and in the mirror; Harry Potter: gen. Remus and his third-year Slytherin class v. Boggarts. I... think this might have been recced recently because it's got a fair trickle of kudos in the last month or so.
2017: a soft epilogue; Harry Potter: Remus/Sirius post-canon. The only thing I wrote in 2017.
2018: grow; Greek mythology: porny. Look there's a reason this got written December 2018 and is somehow the most kudosed fic for the year, and the reason is Persephone pegging Hades. The internet is for porn, etc.
2019: I'm still writing and plan to do a lot of it in the last quarter of the year, but as of right now the MCU fic is winning because well, MCU.

moetushie gave me three random things to talk about, and you too can have random this by commenting on her post or this one.

1. Seed: I tried growing basil and mint from seed last year, and absolutely failed with the mint. The basil was coming along nicely (both sweet and holy) but then a dog ate some and I got furious and uh, I smashed the rest. 

2. Chariot: I am still mad at translations which use car instead (car-warrior, etc). I am *also* fascinated by the attachments on the wheels, but that might be down to watching/reading Ben-Hur at a formative age.

3. Phone: I keep refusing to upgrade, much to my family's collective horror, but I don't really *need* something 4g or super-fast, so eh. Long as it supports Instagram and a food-delivery service or two, I'm okay.

flicked off musesfool. Rules: list the first lines of your last 10 published stories. See if there are any patterns yourself, or have other people say what they notice.

agyana: “I thought you would be furious,” Yudhishtira said after everything was over, and only the bruises remained to remind Arjuna of his great feats.

pravilabhate: They meet again in Hastinapuri’s palace, its bright halls now a haven for ghosts, and Dushala screams at him for clinging to life when their brothers are dead.

life, the one you get: The first thing Peggy Carter does when she meets Steve Rogers for the second time is point a gun at him, her hand steady, the Walther PPK unwavering.

sukhin: Sita is ten when first she meets Shanta, once Princess of Ayodhya and Anga.

yashashvini: “Queen Kaushalya’s son will be Crown Prince,” Manthara says when she dances in, exultant. “Not yours at all.”

saputra: He holds Srutakarma in his arms the first time and realises he has no notion of how to be a father.

yukta: So they go, back to Nisadh after everything, Nala godlike in his divine raiment and Damayanti lovelier with the turning of years.

mugdhakriti: Hidimbi is not young when she meets Bhima, not by human standards, nor by those of her own long-lived folk.

dvitiya: She thinks better of Madri, once her anger abates.

kuhaka: When he is four and his sister one and all the brothers it is unsafe to remember in his waking hours ranged between five and twenty, a mendicant comes to Gandhar from the fertile plains of the Ganga, a woman a handful of years younger than his father, and “wary as a goat,” says Vrihadvala, and shrugs when Suka hushes him.


The only pattern I can see is that most of these stories begin after something significant has happened in the larger narrative, and the first line is a retrospect/summation. idk, I'm bad at spotting patterns.