I was tagged by @loxxxlay and @wnnbdarklord… probably about 2 weeks ago, but I’ve been procrastinating because this is actually the kind of thing that requires some thought. But I’m finally doing it because who would pass up an opportunity to rec their own work?
Hello, you have been identified as An Awesome Fic Writer™. Congrats, you rock! So that all of your readers can shower you with some extra love today, please tell us your favourite five stories of yours and why you like them and then send this to another five fic authors you think deserve this title!
1. The Abyss Gazes Also (gen; Loki in the Void / Loki & Thanos fic, a.k.a. WTF happened to Loki between Thor 1 and The Avengers?)
This fic isn’t my favorite for the writing quality, which I’ll admit is pretty uneven, but because it’s the longest thing I’ve ever written (at 72k words, it’s longer than my dissertation); it’s the first fic I started writing when I got back into fanfiction in 2015, after 10 years’ hiatus; and it’s the fic that I’ve put the most thought into. It’s also been one of the most frustrating, both because I have trouble writing plot – introspection and conversations are where I’m most comfortable – and because nobody’s fucking reading it. (OK, not nobody, but very few people.) It’s especially frustrating when I see people on Tumblr complaining about the lack of Loki-in-the-Void fic that isn’t straight-up torture porn (hello!), or spitballing half-formed theories about what happened with Thanos, and I’m like, I have thought about this extensively! Here are my extensive thoughts! Yes, they are in fic form, and I don’t really want to rehash them in meta. I will say, though, that the few people who have read it have been very enthusiastic, and a remarkable number of the comments are people saying they’ve made it their headcanon about what happened, which is an incredible vote of confidence. Perhaps one of the things that makes me proudest is that the enthusiastic readers are split between people who would consider themselves “Loki stans/apologists” and Thorki or Thor&Loki fans who get annoyed about said Loki stans/apologists trying to absolve Loki of all blame. The fact that people in both camps like my fic indicates that I’ve come up with an account that assigns Loki just the right amount of culpability: he’s not completely innocent, but there are some major extenuating circumstances. (And maybe the two camps don’t actually disagree as much as they think they do… it may be mostly a matter of emphasis and group membership signaling.)
2. Desert Flowers (very mild Thorki; Thor and Loki get high and talk philosophy)
This is my first Thorki fic, written before I was really committed to shipping it, but it ended up kicking off my now 12-fic Thorki series Whatever is done from love. The funniest thing about this fic is that it started as a crack idea: what would happen if Loki got Thor stoned and then tried to get him to talk about philosophy? But then I took it entirely too seriously, thinking about when and where Loki would have gotten marijuana, and then suddenly it veered into issues of racism and morality and I really started thinking about Loki’s Jewish coding in Marvel media. And there are Nietzsche quotes, of course.
This is my first fully committed Thorki fic, with actual sex. I also think it’s probably my most consistently well-written fic. It seemed to flow more quickly and easily than most of my other fics; parts of it were fully formed in my head before I committed it to electronic paper.
4. Winter, Autumn, and Spring (Thorki porn with feelings; 10 years before Thor’s coronation, Loki tells him they need to end their affair)
I have kind of mixed feelings about this fic because the writing is sometimes on the florid side, but a lot of my Thorki readers say it’s their favorite. And I think it’s also one of my more original ideas. In the realm of canon-compliant fic, there’s a lot of first-time pre-canon Thorki out there, a lot of TDW prison sex, imagined reunions before Ragnarok came out, post-Ragnarok “where did that ‘I’m here’ scene go?” or “married life” on the Ark… but as far as I know, I’m the only one who’s written a fic bridging the gap between pre-canon Thorki and the tense, semi-hostile situation between them as the first Thor movie begins. And I think I did a reasonable job making it plausible, if I may say so.
5. The Third Time (gen; Loki dies for real in some vaguely described speculative version of Ragnarok, he and Thor have a last conversation)
This is the first fic I posted on AO3 (though I had started working on “Abyss” beforehand), and like “The Tree of Knowledge,” I think it’s one of my best-written. It’s more concise and precisely worded than most of my other fics, probably because I had it almost entirely formulated in my head before I wrote it down: it was worn smooth over the course of many showers, like a river pebble. I wish Loki’s actual movie death had permitted him as much dignity.
