Ravenbell's Insane Journal

Bwaaah.

I've been a posting non-entity lately and this is an awful way to pop back in, but if you haven't heard, Stuart Carroll, AKA Minotaur, is gone.

He was one of the most influential members of slash fandom. When I first stumbled into the Net in the late 90s, everybody linked to his tips on writing gay sex scenes, and he saved a lot of us from the really egregious newbie mistakes that come back to haunt you years later.

I never met him. I wish I had. He sounds like he was a hell of a guy.

Upon reflection, there really isn't much to sum up.

Everything I wrote this year:

Avatar: The Last Airbender:
"If We Don't Kill Each Other First" (Mai/Jet) - PG

Darker than Black:
"Exception to the Rule" (November 11/Misaki Kirihara) - PG

Death Note:
"In Service of the New God" (Light/Matsuda) - PG-13

Eureka 7:
"Sweetest Tongue and Sharpest Tooth" (Anemone/Dominic) - R

Gundam Wing:
"A Developing Situation" (Heero/Duo) - R

Heat Guy J:
"Considering the Circumstances" (Clair/Daisuke) - NC-17. Locked to springkink.

Labyrinth:
"Tete-a-Tete By Moonlight" (Gargoyles Crossover, brief Jareth/Puck) - PG - 13
"No One Can Blame You" (Toby/Jareth) - PG-13

Naruto:
"The Price of Weakness" (Orochimaru/Sasuke) - NC-17. Dub-con, locked to springkink.

Yami no Matsuei:
"Better the Devil You Know" - Hard R

Weiss Kreuz:
"Novelties" - Hard R

Grand total: Eleven stories and 45,000+ words. That's about half as much as last year. Ack.

---

( And the writing meme... )

My yearly fic roundup should be up in the next few days. Until then, here's my cleaned up Yuletide 2008 fic. As this is a tiny fandom, it should be readable even if you aren't familiar with the canon material.

"Exception to the Rule"
Rating: PG
Fandom: Darker than Black
Pairing: November 11/Misaki Kirihara
Summary: A Section Four rookie gets some insight into his new co-workers while on assignment. Written for Yuletide 2008, based on a prompt by Sylverice2


( Click for fic )

Good morning!

I wrote Exception to the Rule for Yuletide this year, for the anime "Darker Than Black." It's a gen actiony thing with some romantic bits involved, and a giant dirt monster just because. I had a lot of fun with it, and my recipient seems to be happy.

However, since I went down to the wire this year and had no time to do a proper edit, let alone get a beta, I'll be posting a cleaned up version of the story to this journal and FF.Net in the near future to assuage my own nit-pickiness.

And I will NEVER, ever, ever again set a story in a specific place that I have never been to, because now I have to go to Shinjuku myself to figure out the damn layout of the municipal park to see if my chase sequence is even remotely plausible. And after a fruitless search for readable maps in English, I'm still not sure where the hell the shrine is supposed to be. I *know* it's in there. There are pictures!

But all in all, I had a great time this year.

And another yay! to my Yuletide Santa, Ames, for the story I got and continue to rec with gusto, Be Careful The Tale You Tell, about the further adventures of Mouse from Ladyhawke.

I've got more recs getting saved up for another post. That archive is really massive. I'm still somewhere in the N's.

And Happy New Year everybody!

Some haphazard Yuetide recs! Probably with more to come later.

I really should have done this before, and this year I have no excuse. The archive is overflowing with good stories for so many underappreciated fandoms - it's like fanfic nirvana has opened up.

First, the one written for me!

Ladyhawke: Careful the Tale You Tell - A very lovely sequel in which the Mouse, who still has running conversations with God, and who has taken up a new and entirely appropriate line of work, is unwillingly dragged back into the tale of Isabeau and Navarre. I love it to pieces, and if my Yuletide Santa is reading this, thank you, thank you, thank you!

( And onward, in reverse-alphabetical order. )

I wanted to wait until after I was done with Yuletide to post about the fallout of the announced cast of "The Last Airbender." Because I've been trying (and mostly failing) to keep a level head about this, and I really want to avoid getting overemotional and dragging my own racial experiences into it.

Now sure how successful I'm going to be on that front, but I want to try.

( Read more... )

Yuletide letter beneath the cut. Yay!

( Read more... )

A little reminder to sign up for this year's Yuletide Rare Fandom Fic Exchange if you haven't already. Deadline's tomorrow night.

I had kind of a bad experience last year, since the request for the fandom I had offered was for a pairing I couldn't get my head around no matter how hard I tried. So, this year I'm seriously narrowing down my offered fandoms to the ones where I know the source material inside out - and that I could imagine myself writing het, slash, gen, schmoopy fluff, or brain-breaking angst for. Still thirty-odd fandoms, though, so I have no idea what I'll end up with.

I'm going to take this opportunity to pimp the story I got last year again: Dream's Labyrinth, a great crossover between "The Sandman" and "Pan's Labyrinth."

The less said about the story I ended up writing last year, the better.

"A Developing Situation"
By Ravenbell
Based on a scenario by ravensilver
Rating: R
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Pairing: Duo Maxwell/Heero Yuy
Summary: Problems arise in Heero and Duo's relationship while they're in the middle of their latest mission.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit, and no offense intended.

( Click for Fic )

I had a plan. I had a simple, easy, reasonable plan. Spend six weeks writing three five thousand word stories for the winners of my livelongnmarry auction before studying insanity and papers descended upon my head.

Now two weeks after the deadlne, I've got a grand total of ONE finished story, one that's going into a second draft with a new ending (needs more angst), and one that's just hit the ten thousand word mark and ain't looking back. How did this happen? How? I had a PLAN!

Fnergh.

Thankfully my requesters are awesome patient people who are very understanding about my complete and utter failure of time management.

Okay, enough whining.

Pimping a new Fic Fest, sickficfest, devoted to bad, bad characters doing bad, bad things. Prompts close tonight and claims run through the end of October.

The one fic I did manage to finish is posted below.

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"In Service of the New God"
By Ravenbell
Based on a scenario by Jessieheart (Yay jessieheart!)
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Death Note
Pairing: Light Yagami/Touta Matsuda
Summary: In an alternate world where Light prevailed and Matsuda was the only survivor of the Yellow Box Warehouse massacre, Matsuda still doesn't understand why his life was spared.

( Click for fic. )

veleda_k is officially the coolest and most awesome person in the world.

Remember my Muraki/Hisoka story, Better the Devil You Know?

Vel just posted a reader commentary on the entire frickin' thing over at dvd_commentary.
Part 1
Part 2

And if that weren't enough, she made an FST to go with it!

I am the luckiest damn fanfiction writer ever. I have to go comment and squee now. :)

It's been a while since I had anything finished to post. Right now I'm sitting on about 11K words of unfinished fic. I think I'm roughly at the halfway point for two of them, and nearly done with the third.

So in the meantime, I'm pulling out the reruns. Ganked from toxictattoo:

Sometimes it's ok to pimp yourself out. Post a list of your top five fics favorite you've written, regardless of fandom or the reason you love them. This isn't about the BEST things you've written, but what you LOVE most. Then tag five other people to do the same.

No tagging going on here, but I did indulge in some rambling. ( More beneath the cut. )

Hey all.

Livelongnmarry, in the interests of trying to hit their $50K donation goal, has reopened a few of the multiple-item auctions (No bidding. Buy-it-now only). For my part, the writing's going well. I hope to hit 6K words by the end of Sunday.

Thanks to ranalore, for the link to the DVD Commentary Challenge, which is exactly what it sounds like. It reminded me that I did one of these for one of my own stories the last time the meme went around, but never posted it.

So, well, waste not want not. You can find my kinky-but-smutless Farfarello/Nagi (Weiss Kreuz) story, "Once Upon a Time" with commentary below the cut. The original version is here.


( Once Upon a Time... )

Hey all.

I've been plugging away at the livelongnmarry stories. About 2500 words are on the page so far for Vel's and Jessie's combined and the plots are starting to coalesce nicely. I need to revisit the source material for the last one, though. I don't want to fudge the details any more than I have to.

I'll have to check with the awesome winning bidders first about posting and crediting issues, but to tease you mercilessly, one of the titles will most likely be: "A Bullet for the Body Electric."

Make of that what you will. Mwa ha ha ha.

( And here's a boring rant on pseudonyms and privacy )

Wow. My auction for livelongnmarry has racked up $75 in donation bids over four days. That's three different stories being auctioned off seperately, but still, that's crazy.

But I have to say it's really satisfying that my short-attention-span pan-fannishness is actually good for something. Since I'm not heavily invested in any one fandom, I never feel like I'm really part of any particular community, and fandom interaction doesn't come so easy for me. However, I do have the convenient ability to write decent fic for almost anything I have a passing familiarity with, and I have a pretty short squick list. Which means it is a lot easier attracting potential bidders, even with my wacky, obscure tastes and complete lack of fandom visibility.

I'm so glad I'm doing this. Three 5,000-word fics over two months is only about 250 words a day. And multiple stories keeps the high bids low and affordable, but sure adds up nicely. The auction ends on the 15th, and once again, my offer post is HERE.

And finally, one last springkink fic:

"No Goodbyes" (Bleach) - PG-13
The prompt called for Mayuri/Ishida and Stockholm syndrome. I looked into some potential consequences.

I think I win for biggest Internet slowpoke of the month.

By the time I figured out that livelongnmarry was running a fanwork (and other wonderful things) auction for the very awesome equal marriage cause, the bidding had already opened up and I thought it was too late to offer anything. Now it's three weeks later, and I check in and realize that, no, the ads are still going up, so I went ahead and posted an offer for fanfic HERE. Please drop by if you're interested. And check out the rest of the community for everything from hand-made sex toys to signed books from Pamela Dean and Tamora Pierce.

I have to say, I still feel a little bit skeevy about fanwork being exchanged for money in any circumstances - not because I think it's morally wrong, but because I'm paranoid about IP lawyers being, well, IP lawyers. That's why all the fandoms I'm offering are anime ones - because the Japanese copyright holders are way, way, way, way less likely to care. And as long as I'm still running dry on fic ideas, I might as well make someone else happy. And it's for a good cause.

Whoa - Hey, someone just put up a region free DVD player!

Stories posted so far for springkink:

"If We Don't Kill Each Other First" (Avatar: The Last Airbender) - PG
Mai and Jet squabble over the finer points of subterfuge and disguises while planning a rescue mission. Obviously AU in light of the big fat spoiler from Season 2.

"Sweetest Tongue and Sharpest Tooth" (Eureka 7) - R
Anemone confronts Dominic's affections, in her usual vicious, self-destructive way.

"Tete-a-Tete By Moonlight" (Gargoyles/Labyrinth Crossover) - PG-13
Puck invites an old friend to the Castle Wyvern for a little wine and trickery.

"No One Can Blame You" (Labyrinth) - PG-13
Toby meets the Goblin King again, at the age of fifteen.

"The Price of Weakness" (Naruto) - NC-17
A little old-fashioned Orochimaru/Sasuke non-con trauma smut. (Locked to community.)

"Considering the Circumstances" (Heat Guy J) - NC-17
Clair and Daisuke briefly put aside their differences, far, far from home. (Locked to community.)

All of these stories involve encounters or conversations between two people. This is in part because of the constraints of the prompts, but I think it's also due in part to me being in kind of a rut. Don't get me wrong - I like how most of these stories came out, but I'm not getting as much out of the challenge communities as I used to. I think I might try some genfic after this, just for the change of pace.

springkink has started posting for this round. I've mostly finished three stories out of my planned seven. This means I'm behind schedule, but not by too much.


yaoi_challenge is calling for nominations for an Anime/Manga Fandom Hot 40 vote-off thingy during their hiatus.

My picks:

1. Akio Ohtori (Revolutionary Girl Utena)
2. Kamina (Tengan Toppa Gurren Lagaan)
3. Spike Spiegel (Cowboy Bebop)
4. Jin (Samurai Champloo)
5. Howl Jenkins (Howl's Moving Castle) - and how am I the only one who's nommed him so far?!
6. Sanji (One Piece)
7. Lee Shengshun/Hei (Darker than Black)
8. Ryoji Kaji (Neon Genesis Evangelion)
9. George Koizumi (Paradise Kiss)
10. Iason Mink (Ai no Kusabi)

What? No "Yami no Matsuei" characters, I hear you cry? Well, the point of the poll is for hot characters, and while Tsuzuki, Tatsumi, Hisoka, Muraki, Watari and Oriya inspire a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings (and plenty of creepy, sadistic ones too), the hotness isn't really what I get out of them. Ditto the casts of "Fullmetal Alchemist" and "Weiss Kreuz." If there was something for screwed up woobies, that'd be different.

Hmmm... and I just noticed that nearly half of my list is composed of dead characters. Wonder what says about me.

Nearly forgot about this. Here's my entry for this round of yaoi_challenge. Awfully quiet in there this month.

Title: "Novelties"
Author: Ravenbell
Fandom/Pairing: Weiss Kreuz, Crawford/Schuldig
Rating: R
Warning: Discussion of sex toys, BDSM, and allusions to other activities, but nothing actually graphic. Profanity in abundance - I'm not kidding.
Summary: The best laid plans of mice and men and evil German assassins often go awry.
Word Count: 1100

Fake cut to the kinky degeneracy.

"Better the Devil You Know"
Rated: Hard R
Fandom: Yami no Matsuei
Pairings: Mostly Muraki/Hisoka, Hisoka/Tsuzuki
Warnings: One non-graphic rape scene, assorted violence, trauma, and the usual.
Word Count: 9,500+
Summary: Muraki's dream experiments with Hisoka take a dangerous turn.
Notes: Semi-sequel to "The Warmth of the Darkness," (which was a remix of wordsofastory's Five Things That Never Happened to Hisoka), but should also stand alone. Not beta'd.


( Click for Fic. )