Equinox: A Spring & Autumn Vid Exchange

I wrote two works for candyheartsex!

During the anon period, there was a tumblr post going around about how you should follow your heart and write fic for that 300-year-old novel! Write fic for that 70-year-old movie! And I had to laugh, because...

Renewed Liaison for parnassus
Les liaisons dangereuses | Dangerous Liaisons - Choderlos de Laclos
Marquise de Merteuil/Vicomte de Valmont
Canon Divergence, Fix-it, Parley

I sue for two items only: peace, and a renewal of the true amity that once existed between us.

This was a pinch-hit I picked up early. I've long hated the resolution of the novel, where Merteuil is cast low while Valmont is nearly valorized in death. (God forbid a woman be evil!!) So I wrote a new ending for them, one that is more symmetric in consequence, leaving them both war-ravaged, but with a path to become allies again.

Will they ride again, leaving ruin behind them? We can only hope. ;-)

There My Heart Forever Lies for Luzula
The Flight of the Heron
Ewen/Keith, Ewen/Alison, Keith & Francis
Brigadoon AU

After Culloden, word reaches the British garrison that Ewen Cameron is skulking at Ardroy. As a test of his loyalty, Keith Windham is sent with a company of men to arrest him. Keith goes, but is determined to protect Ewen however he can.

Ewen, however, has been granted a miracle: for Ardroy and all its people to vanish into the Highland mist, reappearing only one day in a century. Life will go on just as before, no longer touched by wars, armies, or time…

So, last year I watched the Gene Kelly version of the musical Brigadoon, which for those who don't know, is about a Highland village that gets snatched out of time in the mid-eighteenth century, only returning to Earth for one day every hundred years.

And on hearing this, I was like, "Oh, that was obviously to protect the village from the fallout of the '45..." And then it turned out the whole backstory for the miracle was to protect the village from witches. Witches!

And I thought "Well, that's stupid. Obviously a fix-it is required!" Quickly followed by, "You know, I have a handy '45 fandom right here..." And "Not only do I have a handy '45 fandom, there is an EMPTY SPOT ON THE MAP where Ardroy should be... just as if Ardroy had once upon a time been snatched away into the clouds!"

So I wrote a couple thousand words right then, wrote a couple thousand more while I was in Japan, and... then got inextricably tangled up in plot difficulties and let the whole thing languish, neglected.

But then I got assigned to luzula in candyheartsex! Luzula likes AUs that have a supernatural element, and she's actually been to that empty glen where Ardroy should be, and it was all too perfect an opportunity to pass up. So on a weekend visit to my mom, I spent the entire four-hour drive blocking out my proposed plot to grrlpup, and satisfied that it was doable if I wrote fast, I wrote some 2K words that day. And then... kept doing that.

So. Um. Is this an absurdly long story for an exchange with a 300-word minimum? Yes. Sorry. (I hope I didn't cut too much into your free time last week, Luzula!) But it was a beautiful excuse to finish a story that might not have gotten finished otherwise, and the oppty to gift it to someone who has actually seen that empty glen.

Anyway, 16.7K, eventual happy ending, and no knowledge whatsoever of the musical is required.

 

So in fact it was only a 250-year-old novel and a 70-year-old movie, but still pretty close to the mark!