(But by way of disclaimer, the list of stories I find to be improved by being gen is... um... I had one or two written down somewhere in case the question ever came up.)

I will cling to readers like you when my first choc_fic story posts.

Because really, it COULD have been gen, and taking it to slash involved a subplot, but there was a slash in the prompt! And, well, damn it...

I'd missed writing blow jobs

choc_fic? hmm? took me a minute. remembered. yay!

Also:

there was a slash in the prompt!

An obvious case of punctuational determinism! How could you be expected to do otherwise?

yay blow jobs!

[link] Choc_Fic.

AKA, a challenge of AWESOME.

An obvious case of punctuational determinism! How could you be expected to do otherwise?

I was helpless before it! It couldn't be helped!

I was helpless before it! It couldn't be helped!

Egg-zackly!

In other news, if I'm even going to try for Days of Awesome, my shows need to be so much more jewy. Tis sad.

I think I would have liked the story better if it had been gen.

Nutty is me in this. I ended up skimming the porn: I've read too much McKay/Sheppard to have any emotional attachment or response to the sex scenes. And like Nutty, I wish the story had been more ambitious, more challenging. Eh. Perhaps I'm just hard to please today. On edit: which is not to say it's not well-done; I just wanted more and different from it. Which is really my issue and not the writer's.

I also feel just a tiny bit snubbed, since the structure of telling the story through a variety of historical lenses, interspersed with straight narrative, is one I used less than two months ago, and got no more than a nod. Okay, yeah, not 55,000 words and I'm not Speranza, but it's not like the form was invented for that story...

Oooh! Linky link, 'Suela?

Fay, here: [link]

Like I said, neither epic nor slash, but it's not that unusual a format.

Eh, I sound all bitter and sour grapesy, which I don't mean to be.

I do think Cesperanza is very talented, but there is enough fannish awe that she's accumulated over time that I think fannish critical circuits get overwhelmed about her current work.

That's entirely possible.

For my part, I didn't register who the author was until I'd finished reading, and in point of fact I've heard some highly unflattering things about her conduct towards other fen which does not predispose me to fangirl her - indeed, quite the reverse. But I liked the story, and I liked the format. ymmv