the deep moans round with many voices

Whoops, forgot to post this here last night! Anyway, the Ladystuck Blind Darkfic Challenge, to use the full name, is now open on AO3 for everyone to read. Authors remain anonymous for the moment, and a guessing game will start in a day or so (a Google doc of challenge participants is available for that purpose). There are 35 works by 33 creators.

And here are a few recs, while I am thinking of it. Bear in mind that they are all darkfic; you read at your own risk.

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Waste: 1,100 words. Doomed timelines aren't limited to the world of the game.

(No characters are listed, and I'm not going to mention them either because I think the slow realization is part of the intended effect, but they're pretty obvious as you read.)

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at the end of all things (or possibly the beginning): 2,700 words. Sometimes the Handmaid doesn't want to deal with the Condesce. But only sometimes.

(The Demoness and the Condesce, non-linear and chained by the horrible, dragging weight of inevitability that hangs over their intertwined history. Also blackrom of a peculiarly despairing flavor.)

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poor, sweet, dear, precious fefeta: 1000 words plus several illustrations. Sometimes, it’s easiest to smile.

(When the author uses the body horror and psychological horror tags? She is really, really not kidding. The story takes a joke character, says, "No. Pay attention. This is not funny," and then proves that lack of humor beyond a shadow of a doubt.)

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The Blinking of Eyes at the Sun: 1,700 words. For the first three sweeps of her life, Damara is unaware of the world outside. She has her room and the halls of the apartment she shares with her guardian. Locked doors are as familiar to her as the shuttered windows she finds everywhere. The few books that are provided to her do not speak of a world beyond the rooms she knows and for sweeps, she believes that everything there is exists within the rooms and halls.

She believes in many things that she realizes too late aren't true.

(This is now my headcanon for the Handmaid's childhood. Entirely psychological horror, though made worse by the physical abuse we know she suffers later on.)

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Fronting: 1000 words. What's it like having a malevolent god from outside space as your mother? Feferi Peixes knows. She knows all too well.

(When not even your mind is your own and despair will doom your entire species, what can you do but smile?)

I have achieved 3/4 of the minimum wordcount for my Ladystuck Blind entry, which is due tomorrow night. I also have a general pattern for the not-yet-written sections, but fuck it, I am tired and cannot brain. I will finish the fic tomorrow.

(I think it will be stupidly obvious which story I wrote, but then, I say that with the perspective of someone who has of necessity read every damn thing I've ever written -- including all the things that aren't fanfiction, let alone Homestuck fanfic -- so probably it is more obscure than I think it is.)

And now to bed.