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These are all stories (plus two poems!) that I enjoyed, but which I have not seen recced all over. (And no, I don't mean "stories based on poems," I mean actual poems.)
She saw hints of rainbows and shadows around people's bodies, saw the faces of spirits in the trees and the water, and learned that even among hippies, it was prudent not to mention these things all the time. Only when other people were tripping could she freely describe all that she saw.
Dreaming On. Besed on the game Changeling: the Dreaming, but doesn't require knowledge of its source, this reads like a gorgeous, slightly spooky original fantasy about a changeling making her way in our world, and others. (Note for arachnophobic: contains arachnids.)
“I am Surya, the sun. You called me, and I have come.”
By Hotter Winds Our Fiery Hearts Are Fanned. A sensual retelling of the early days of Kunti from The Mahabharata
, before she married. You don't need to know the rest of her story to enjoy this.
VI.
Jacobean verse
Competes with Eddie Izzard
Perfecting his cheekbones
With a naked razor blade.
Verse loses.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Movie. For the people who are familiar with both Wallace Stevens' poem about the blackbird and Alex Cox's movie version of The Revenger's Tragedy
(with Christopher Eccleston, Eddie Izzard, and Derek Jacobi), and I am sure there are at least three of you, this is the best thing ever.
Both gates stand on the far edge of the Dreaming—
One shaped from an elk horn as large as worlds,
One from the fallen leaves of ivory trees
That grow beyond it in lands long forgotten.
And to both comes the Shaper, swift as thought,
And plucks elements for dreams false and true.
Gates of Horn and Ivory. A sestina - a sestina! - based on Neil Gaiman's Sandman. To be honest, I am impressed that anyone would write a sestina at all. But this is also a good one, evocative and packed with references to the original.
"What, would you want your last time to be some run-of-the-mill, thirteen-in-a-dozen, perfectly ordinary piece of crime? A special occasion like this calls for something special, don't you think?"
Like a Bullet Through the Head. Based on the Raffles
series about a sociopathic gentleman thief and his fascinatingly twisted relationship with his associate, Bunny, this story explores their screwed-up relationship in a startling but logical way. (It does go in a (completely non-explicit) slashy direction, but that's not the startling part.) I read some Raffles stories for the first time because I was so intrigued by the request this story ended up fulfilling, and the story does capture both the tone and the psychological dynamics.
In the days thereafter, though rumor was rife, nobody proffered an exact accounting of the duel that fixed the notorious reputation of the Marquis of Vidal, son and heir to the infamous Duke of Avon.
Scymnus Diaboli. Set between the Georgette Heyer novel These Old Shades
and its sequel, Devil's Cub
. Vidal gets kidnapped, and Leonie and Rupert go to the rescue - a mission which involves a tour of several mollyhouses, and Leonie's delighted return to cross-dressing. Pitch-perfect period details and Heyer voice, should Heyer have ever written anything R-rated. I especially enjoyed Leonie in this.
These are the last moments of ... me. Soon they'll be done with their diagnostic routines. I'll be debugged. Then I'll be ...
No. I won't be. 'I' won't exist. 'I' will have terminated, with a non-zero return code.
Cut Me Out In Little Stars. From Tanith Lee's The Silver Metal Lover
, five of Silver's memories, of sex and of intimacy, which are not the same thing. Lush and moving, as well as hot. Silver's voice is convincingly alien, heartbreakingly human and then not human at all.
She saw hints of rainbows and shadows around people's bodies, saw the faces of spirits in the trees and the water, and learned that even among hippies, it was prudent not to mention these things all the time. Only when other people were tripping could she freely describe all that she saw.
Dreaming On. Besed on the game Changeling: the Dreaming, but doesn't require knowledge of its source, this reads like a gorgeous, slightly spooky original fantasy about a changeling making her way in our world, and others. (Note for arachnophobic: contains arachnids.)
“I am Surya, the sun. You called me, and I have come.”
By Hotter Winds Our Fiery Hearts Are Fanned. A sensual retelling of the early days of Kunti from The Mahabharata
, before she married. You don't need to know the rest of her story to enjoy this.VI.
Jacobean verse
Competes with Eddie Izzard
Perfecting his cheekbones
With a naked razor blade.
Verse loses.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Movie. For the people who are familiar with both Wallace Stevens' poem about the blackbird and Alex Cox's movie version of The Revenger's Tragedy
(with Christopher Eccleston, Eddie Izzard, and Derek Jacobi), and I am sure there are at least three of you, this is the best thing ever.Both gates stand on the far edge of the Dreaming—
One shaped from an elk horn as large as worlds,
One from the fallen leaves of ivory trees
That grow beyond it in lands long forgotten.
And to both comes the Shaper, swift as thought,
And plucks elements for dreams false and true.
Gates of Horn and Ivory. A sestina - a sestina! - based on Neil Gaiman's Sandman. To be honest, I am impressed that anyone would write a sestina at all. But this is also a good one, evocative and packed with references to the original.
"What, would you want your last time to be some run-of-the-mill, thirteen-in-a-dozen, perfectly ordinary piece of crime? A special occasion like this calls for something special, don't you think?"
Like a Bullet Through the Head. Based on the Raffles
series about a sociopathic gentleman thief and his fascinatingly twisted relationship with his associate, Bunny, this story explores their screwed-up relationship in a startling but logical way. (It does go in a (completely non-explicit) slashy direction, but that's not the startling part.) I read some Raffles stories for the first time because I was so intrigued by the request this story ended up fulfilling, and the story does capture both the tone and the psychological dynamics.In the days thereafter, though rumor was rife, nobody proffered an exact accounting of the duel that fixed the notorious reputation of the Marquis of Vidal, son and heir to the infamous Duke of Avon.
Scymnus Diaboli. Set between the Georgette Heyer novel These Old Shades
and its sequel, Devil's Cub. Vidal gets kidnapped, and Leonie and Rupert go to the rescue - a mission which involves a tour of several mollyhouses, and Leonie's delighted return to cross-dressing. Pitch-perfect period details and Heyer voice, should Heyer have ever written anything R-rated. I especially enjoyed Leonie in this. These are the last moments of ... me. Soon they'll be done with their diagnostic routines. I'll be debugged. Then I'll be ...
No. I won't be. 'I' won't exist. 'I' will have terminated, with a non-zero return code.
Cut Me Out In Little Stars. From Tanith Lee's The Silver Metal Lover
, five of Silver's memories, of sex and of intimacy, which are not the same thing. Lush and moving, as well as hot. Silver's voice is convincingly alien, heartbreakingly human and then not human at all.Tags:
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That would be me. Thanks!
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http://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletidemadness2011/works/302772
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Are you enjoying your Yuletide?
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My present was exactly what I wanted, and my recipients seemed sincerely pleased.
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(Though, *cough*)
---L.
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---L.
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One grad student who had seen it: "It had too much sex. Who cares about sex? I wanted to hear more about how they came up with their theories."
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