phineasjones

my assignment for the feedback challenge was

fox1013. her fiction lives here. first, a tiny bit of feedback to

boniblithe - you rock my socks for pairing me up with someone who clearly loves the crossover as much as i. thank you!

and now,

i was excited to see a firefly story in the mix, so of course i read a light in the darkness. first off, points for the interesting pairing - river/inara. it's not something that really would ever have occurred to me but you make it believable. river's voice is fluid and we readers get to hear the constant stream of -often rather logical - thought going on while she's not speaking, which leads to the seeming non-sequitors when she chooses to speak. we can see that it makes her seem crazy at the same time that we feel like we're right there with her, that we understand her. you also capture her inevitable annoyance at simon who is, after all, not as brilliant as river but who is always trying to comfort her with the obvious. He speaks to comfort her, he thinks, but he really speaks to comfort himself. there's some beautiful language in this story, my favorite part is the description of inara's touch on river's skin, Pinpricks of light on her night-sky flesh. you make the unusual pairing believable by tapping into inara's deep sense of compassion and her power to soothe and comfort. beautiful.

i just have to make quick mention of the o.c. fic, do you hear what i hear? which cracked me right the fuck up. charming and very seth and ryan.

i couldn't resist reading the angel/austin powers crossover - the many faces of evil. nope, couldn't help my wee self. and omg! of course! of course wolfram and hart would represent dr. evil. ahahaha. so many fabulous one-liners in this fic. but then the true stroke of genius is, of course, the double appearance of seth green. really, could any universe have too many? good on lilah, though, for choosing the one she did. :)

the last story i read - for now, i'm saving the others for later :) - was the madeleine l'engle femslash (wait, i just have to say that again, the MADELEINE L'ENGLE FEMSLASH!!!), nine moments in the life of an artist. i love that you take the time to point out the chronos/kairos cross... you obviously know and love your l'engle. you'd have to, to write something like this. i usually close a fic as soon as i see that it's in first person, it just rarely works for me. but this made perfect sense. reading poly's thoughts in her own words - and they really felt like her own words - feels right. and you so perfectly capture elements of her canon character - her braininess, her insecurity, her close ties to her family, the constant references to other people and events in the l'engle universe. l'engle herself does that so much, this just fits right in. and somehow it's perfect and natural that poly would come back around to thinking about max and about herself and what she wants. that she would end up with a woman like this, if only for a night. i especially love, To compare, things must relate; a kiss from Emily Gregory is only as much like a kiss from Zachary Gray as a grapefruit is like a brownie. and the whole theme of her searching for something/one to make her feel good in her own skin, good about herself, is perfect for her, for her story and her character. i'm so impressed.

thank you,

fox1013 for signing up for this challenge and giving me the chance to read your stuff.