#feedback february

In exchange, I will eat a whole lemon. Skin and all.

Please don't eat a whole lemon!🥴 Unless you're into that, in which case you do you. 🍋

1. Recommend a fic that lives in your brain rent free.

See, normally I'd say Soldier's Heart, but I don't think I can recommend a fic you already know because you wrote it...

Outside of that, I'll never forget Close Quarters and how @fulcrumstardust made [redacted] one of the hottest things I've ever read.

14. Recommend your favourite fic.

That's as impossible as choosing a "favourite" book! I don't have a single favourite fic, I have dozens for different fandoms, ships, and moods.

But my favourite recent fic about one of my favourite characters is @rain-sleet-snow's silver queen, 100k words of Tolkien backstory which does that thing the best fanfiction does of putting flesh on canon's bare bones and turning it into a living being.

😭 A fic that ripped your heart out (but it hurt so good)

darkness, moonrise, @a-whale-bone's Rogue One/His Dark Materials fusion - like the original movie, its tragic ending is heartbreaking perfection. 

💯 A fic that makes you think #writergoals

Oh, so many! All of the fics that do things I can't do: plotty action/drama, or complex dual timelines, or low-stakes but still compelling modern AUs like the switch.

👀 A fic that you love a normal amount

Say Anything was a formative movie for me and The Biggest Fool is the perfect post-canon coda. If I were a Hollywood producer, it would have been filmed as the sequel.

😊 A fic that made you smile on a bad day

👌🏼 A fic someone else recommended to you

@linearao3 recommended l’appel du vide on their tumblr - and it was an excellent rec! Canon-divergent Kaz/Inej where they're both just as messed up.

👍🏽 A fic you bookmarked recently

Drive You Mild, an old school Star Wars Luke/Mara fic I've been meaning to read for some time (which was also, I think, a rec from @toooldforthisbutstill).

[I'm going through this list in random order]

16. femslash shoutout?

chaos, yet harmony by @rain-sleet-snow

I don't even go here (where "here" is Star Wars animated canon) so to be frank, I have no reason to care about Ahsoka Tano as a character, much less get invested in her relationship with Jyn. But this compelling epic AU of two "galactic drifters" slowly drawn to each other (it starts with Ahsoka encountering Jyn just after Saw abandons her) made me do both.

9. a fic that made you cry?

Asylum by @linearao3

Leia's voice in no one can stop me, not even gravity or nasa by magneticwave is hilariously acerbic:

At the other end of the connection, Luke is frowning from underneath his overdramatic hood. He’s growing a beard, she thinks--the connection is fuzzy--but it’s coming in patchily and makes him look like the kind of drunk you find dead face-down in a puddle. Han’s people, if you will.

17. a fic that felt like a warm blanket

I love bedsharing fics so much I could rec a whole list of nothing else! This top-tier one definitely feels like a cosy down blanket wrapped around you.

For some reason, I think of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs every time I re-read Where We're Going (Fuck Where We Were) - it used to be Maps, now it's Spitting Off the Edge of the World. (I also remember @rifle-yes mentioning a specific song by a Mexican rock group, but I've lost the YT link so I can't find it again...)

2. fic you reread the most times

I re-read all of my faves multiple times (see above), but the highest count overall has to be either or the path the walker by @rain-sleet-snow or Janus by @englishable.

Thank you, kind anon!

Bookshop AU:

I've recced Jaded's An Open Book many times before, but it's still my first thought for this trope. (Honorary mention to Swiping wrong, an incomplete fic by @estherlyon)

Fairy tale AU:

Straight fairy tale retellings can feel flat or predictable, so I usually prefer stories with fairy tale elements. But then I start to wonder exactly where the dividing line is between fairytale and fantasy AUs; a dragon or princess alone does not make a fairy tale. 🤔 In the end, for me the definition relies on the language & tone of a story as much as the plot & characters. 

So, @imsfire2′s beautifully written by stardust and moonlight is woven around a witch living alone in the forest, and a man with a terrible curse on him... what could be more fairy tale than those archetypes?

I also loved @englishable’s The Stroke of Twelve, a witty & charming Finn/Poe tale reminiscent of The Princess Bride:

And here, as you may already know, is where the grand search ought to begin: a proclamation trumpeted throughout the countryside that whosoever fits this dainty glass slipper – or this mask, in our case – shall take the crown prince for a husband.

Really, though, what sort of political sense does that make? A risky gamble, if you ask my opinion. 

Time travel AU:

Straightforward time travel seems to be surprisingly rare these days; most of the fic in the tag is time loops and other assorted "timey-wimey" tropes (all of which I enjoy, don't get me wrong).

But your ask reminded me that I'd been meaning to read every choice a thousand times, which I loved, so thank you!

After they die on Scarif, Chirrut and Baze wake up twenty years earlier on Jedha, just after the Imperial occupation began, and try to find out if they can alter the future they remember. 

Sometimes, though he'd never say it to Baze, Chirrut wonders if he's changing things just so he has some new memories, so he's not reliving the same twenty years he did before.

p.s. if you like timeline weirdness in general, I’d also recommend these!

The Bor Gullet pulls apart Bodhi’s past, present, and future, and time gets complicated: In the future when all’s well 

Two different time loop fics from Jyn’s POV:

Circle

We’ve Been Here Before

Even Kay gets a turn at it: K-2SO and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day