What I've Been Reading Instead of Doing Any One of the Twenty-Three Things on My To-Do List

[thuviaptarth]

How to Break Your Heart in Four Easy Steps

1. Dorian Gray, The Lie (Yami no Matsuei)
   Part of the attraction of Yami no Matsuei for me is the idea that, finally, healing is possible, that the lost and abandoned can find families and redefine themselves. But the attraction is because, really, most of the time I have my doubts.
   
   Dorian Gray excels in particular at the distant--the distanced--narration of someone who can't let himself feel without falling apart, who's feeling things beneath the calm that are impossible to say, whose desperation makes him cruel in ways he can't even realize.
   
   
2. Nightfall Rising, Muscles Used in a Smile (Saiyuki)
   
   Pitch-perfect character voice and bonus points for summary by Sondheim. And, oh, how this gets beyond my conviction that really, they are so married, and feels like a punch in the gut. Tragedies of miscommunication, those are the worst.
   
   
3. Rackham Rose, Two Truths and A Lie (X/1999)
   
   Fanfiction about this pairing usually bores me, because there doesn't seem to be much to say that canon doesn't cover, and most writers sentimentalize it something awful. This isn't quite how I see it, but it's restrained enough and structured cleverly enough to work for me anyway.
   
   
4. Brigdh, Thy Faithfulness in Destruction (Yami no Matsuei)
   
   Another way the Nagasaki arc could have gone.
   
   

   He prayed without meaning to, a repeating litany of please and not so soon and I won't do this again, but the gods he knew had never had any particular interest in keeping him unscarred.

   
   

Solace

1. Eleanor K., Easy (Saiyuki)
   
   So there's this picture in Saiyuki v. 3, of Haikkai with his hands bound by vines above his head, blood trickling from cuts and the prick of thorns, with the caption God, please violate me. (This is not even the most disturbing random Hakkai picture in the series, although it's the one that best combines disturbing and OMG fucking hot.)
   
   The instant I saw it, I went looking for fic. My faith in fandom proved well-founded. "Easy" is my favorite of the three stories inspired by the picture that I could find; because it's hot, and it's lyrical without ever breaking from Gojyo's decidedly unlyrical voice, and it gets the characters down.
   
   
2. Brigdh, Summer's Day (Yami no Matsuei)
   
   This is one of Brigdh's earliest stories, which shows in the slight excess of introspection and in the amazingly convenient lube. But it already has her vivid description and her terrific sense of character -- both Hisoka and Tsuzuki read utterly true.
   
   And it's also hot. I didn't realize that would be a theme to these, but there you go.
   
   
3. Hth, The Honeymoon (Saiyuki)
   
   To be honest, my very favorite thing about this story may be a line in the summary: "You know how sometimes characters have a flinty exterior, and deep down they're sweet? This story is about Sanzo, who I believe has a flinty exterior and deep down, oh look, more flinty!"
   
   The flinty unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Or something like that.
   
   
4. Sleeps with Coyotes, Ado (Yami no Matsuei)
   
   I have a great weakness for Midsummer's Night confusion stories, except, oddly, for A Midsummer Night's Dream, which I can't stand. But I suppose a fondness for comedies of miscommunication goes along with my helpless love of tragedies of miscommunication, which makes sense in a weird way. It's also a screwball comedy thing, which is often attempted and seldom done as well as it is here.
   
   I was torn between this and "Change Into," which has one of the sexiest seduction scenes I've ever read, and no one touches or removes a single article of clothing.
   
   
5. For symmetry I'd like to put another X/1999 story here, but ... the problem is not the fandom fails to produce happy fic. It's that I haven't been able to find any that's any good. If you have any recommendations, please share.