gracchi

Dear Author,

It's been a few years since I've been able to participate in this exchange and I've missed it! I am generally quite easy to please so long as you avoid my DNWs, so I hope you enjoy writing a fic for me!

I've got a bunch of different pairings/OT3s with different preferences for each. The one thing that I most want for all of them is that the requested pairing/OT3 fall in love by the end of the story (if they aren't in love already) and a reasonably happy ending. By "reasonably" happy, I mean, the situation around them can be kind of dark, but they're together and that's what matters.

The first most important DNW is: infidelity. I am just not here for that.

I'm totally fine with people having pasts in which they loved/were with/were married to other people but by the time the characters get together, I want them both to be single. Or, in the case of an OT3 where two thirds of the characters are married to each other, they both need to be enthusiastic about inviting a third member into the relationship.

Some other DNWS:

+ PWP. Porn is fine, I just don't want the porn to be all the fic is. And porn is in no way necessary--you can write the most rated G fic ever if you like. I love all ratings equally.
+ Instalove/love at first sight (for anyone other Wangxian--infatuation at first site is okay for them--or Peter falling in love with Harriet because canon). As an ace person, it's super important to me that characters actually know each other before they fall in love.
+ Modern AUs of historical/fantasy fandoms. Canon divergence/what ifs are amazing, though, and if you want to twist the setting a little bit (giving Hodel magical powers or making Lan Wangji emperor or something), go for it. I just do not want to read about any of these historical/fantasy characters working in a coffee shop.
+ Major character deaths (unless someone comes back to life à la Wei Wuxian)
+ Character bashing
+ Unmitigated fluff (some fluff is fine! But I'd like some deeper feelings to dig into.)
+ Onscreen noncon
+ Focus on babies/children
+ Watersports/scat
+ BDSM outside the bedroom


General likes: angst, especially if it ends happily; getting together; hurt/comfort; mutual pining; in character characters; complicated relationships between women; good worldbuilding; longfic; outsider povs; location/setting as character; political intrigue; forced proximity; good people trying to do the right thing; bad people trying to do the right thing; found families; siblings; porn with feelings; character A having to rescue/defend character B; total devotion/us against the world dynamics. I also love the other characters in these canons, so bringing them into the fic in large supporting roles is great!

Now onto the requests.


( The Queen's Thief )


( Six of Crows )


( Fiddler on the Roof film )


( The Untamed )


( Shadow of the Moon )


( Spinning Silver )


( Life with Derek )


( Lord Peter Wimsey series )

And we're back with book updates!

What I finished:

+ Lady of Perdition, the 17th (!) Benjamin January book by Barbara Hambly. This is one of the field trip books that's set outside New Orleans, this time in the Republic of Texas, which sounds like it was hell for anyone who wasn't a white dude, even more so than the rest of what would become the southern US later. The inciting incident of the book is so harrowing in concept (though not in actual description) I don't even want to speak of it but is very much a reality of being Black in the antebellum US.

It's also one of the ones where we meet up with a character from an earlier book, and those always make me wish I weren't reading the series so very slowly. The last time we met said character, it was back in book 7! Which I read several years ago! So I had vague memories of her and much stronger memories of the vibes of that book. But Hambly does a good job of reminding us of what we need to know without being heavy-handed.

Lots of good Ben-and-Hannibal stuff in this book, though, as always when we're away from New Orleans, I miss Rose and everyone back home. And as always with every single book in the series, I spend the whole time going, "When will Ben get a bath and a good meal and a full night's sleep?????" Poor guy is in his 40s, won't someone let him rest? If you're into whump, you don't get much better than Ben. I want to wrap him up in blankets (actually, no blankets, since all the places he goes are so very hot) and let him sleep for a thousand years.

All in all a good but not standout entry in the series. A thousand bonus points for a plotline involving stolen archives, apparently based on a real occurrence! THE TEXAS ARCHIVE WAR WAS A REAL THING.

+ The Incandescent by Emily Tesh, which I appreciated a lot but did not love. Tesh is a great writer, and this book has a fantastic premise--one of those dangerous magical schools books, but told from the perspective of one of the instructors. What makes this work so well is that Tesh clearly has a background in education and the book is, in many ways, an exploration of what it's like to be a teacher, both in the basic dealing with administrative tasks and finding time to grade papers and also in the struggle to connect with and inspire students. The book is suffused with real details of what teaching in a British school is actually like, and I always enjoy a take-your-job-to-ficbook take.

Our main character is, as in Tesh's last book, another strength. Tesh writes fantastic flawed characters--Walden isn't as immediately off-putting as Kyr from Some Desperate Glory, but her besetting sin is pride and it's a doozy. She's so well-intentioned and trying so hard and she's way more likeable than Kyr starts out, but also, like, LADY. So realistic in the depiction of an academic with a PhD and a certainty that her understanding of her field (in this case magic) is superior to everyone else's. The book is about her learning her limitations and to appreciate other people's insights and I liked that a lot.

We get a fun outsider pov of the four students who would, if this book was written by anyone else, be the main characters, and I must say that I would absolutely read a fic bout Will pining for Nikki. The magical system is quite fun and distinctive and lends itself well to formal study.

So yeah, I think this is a very strong book, I really liked it, but it didn't scratch any particular itches for me that would bump it up into the tier of books I love. Still, I like Tesh's writing so very much and can't wait to see what she does next.

+ Miss Silver Comes to Stay, the 15th(!) Miss Silver book by Patricia Wentworth. As usual, I don't have a great deal to say; I always enjoy a Wentworth book, but they're always doing loosely the same thing. I do appreciate her commitment to having the victim be someone we really hate.

+ The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. I haven't read this one since my British Gothic Fiction class in undergrad. (This was a summer semester class and there were only four other people in the class, and I think I was the only one who really wanted to be there. But I really wanted to be there, so hopefully I made up for the others' lack of enthusiasm.)

I remembered this as more of a horror story, but I think that's me confusing it with the film adaptation The Innocents, which is a banger of a movie and highly recommended. The book is also a banger, but it feels much more like a psychological thriller than a horror story imo. The fun of it is the perspective of our main character, an example of the gothic governess type, whose mind we're immersed in. Is she crazy? Is she evil and lying to us? Is everything she's describing really happening?

This is a book about suggestion and subtext, and I love that about it. More is not stated than is, which is always really effective in a ghost story. In this case, though, the things that aren't stated aren't related to the actions or appearance of the ghost/monster/killer but instead to the nature of the damage the bad guys are doing to the alleged victims. The book is more chilling than scary, which I'm into.

This was apparently James's selling out book, and I, for one, wish he sold out more often. There can never be enough gothic novels in the world as far as I'm concerned.

What I'm reading now:

+ Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie. I read most if not all of the Poirot books in middle school, but that was...over twenty years ago, so I remember nothing about this particular one. Shoutout to scripsi for mentioning it as one of her favorite Christies!