I picked up a random (well, not completely random, because it was someone I'd critiqued during one of my attempts at catching up on fanfiction.net) review on my "Tale of Two Cities" one-shot: ( fandom-blind FFnet reviews )

And then a comment on a snippet I posted to a writer's group on Facebook (you are allowed to post 500 words every Wednesday, so I've been drip-feeding them bits of Hertha as 'work in progress' in the hopes of maybe gaining a 'like' or two -- it sometimes happens):

That's some very fine writing, and I am very hard to impress. What is the genre, may I ask?

Which more or less confirms my instinct that the only chance for Arctic Raoul is *outside* the fan-fiction ghetto; people like my writing for its own sake when they are not actually fans of the source material, but it just doesn't fit into the whole ring-fenced ethos of fandom :-(
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I didn't mean to write this. And then I didn't mean to post it.

But it kept writing itself sentence by sentence in my head, until, well... there we are.

And other people get to post their shipping porn, right?

(Slight problems in writing because Carton is of course an unquestioning Anglican of his era, and I'm an atheist and tend to operate unthinkingly on different presumptions :-p)

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It would be quick, he had promised her. There would be no pain. Probably there would not even be time to feel the blow. No more than a blink to pass between this world and the next.

Their lips brushed briefly, and then she was taken from his side. He turned for the first time to look up at the machine, and see her appear against that ugly scaffold that marred the sky; to meet her eyes once more and hold them with his own, so that from that high vantage point she need know nothing else. He found a smile, and saw her unafraid.

And then the blade swept down, and she was gone, severed from his sight in a motion too swift to follow. That face had been peaceful, and now it was mercifully not to be seen. There was nothing save a tumbled rag of dress, meaningless, to be heaved aside... and now it was his turn.

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