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anythingbutgrey(yeah yeah)
By Fairest Blood - A Snow White and the Huntsman Comment Ficathon
Welcome to By Fairest Blood, a comment ficathon for SWATH. Some quick guidelines:
What can I prompt and how do I do so?
You can prompt whatever you want that pertains to SWATH. That means pre-canon, post-canon, intra-canon, AUs, RPF — the world is your fanfiction oyster. Want to selectively erase certain aspects of canon from your memory? Go right ahead.
Prompts should contain the following format:
Characters/Ship (optional) - Timeline (optional) - Prompt (which may be a song lyric, quote, etc., but is not optional)
In other words, you can leave a character and/or a ship, and/or a timeline, which are optional, and a prompt, which is not. If you want, you can just leave a set of song lyrics and see what people do with them. If you want, you can just leave a timeline with those lyrics, or a just a character, or all three.
How do I respond?
There are no restrictions in terms of word count, format, tense, point of view, etc. Please title all of your response fics as such in bold at the top of your comment (make sure to close the bold tag!) since LJ took out comment titles because they're dumb:
Title - Character/Ship - Timeline
Presumably, your fics will contain these three things even if they weren't in the prompt. You can also fill prompts that have already been filled. If something speaks to you, as it were, it doesn't matter if there's already fic for it. You can write your own.
How do I promote?
Tumblr post if you want to promote there
Promotion link with image:
Other banners:
by me
by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yon_lougawou
If you feel inspired to make a banner of your own, feel free to link to it in the questions/comments thread below and I'll add it up here.
Text link:
By Fairest Blood - A Snow White and the Huntsman Comment Ficathon
Welcome to By Fairest Blood, a comment ficathon for SWATH. Some quick guidelines:
What can I prompt and how do I do so?
You can prompt whatever you want that pertains to SWATH. That means pre-canon, post-canon, intra-canon, AUs, RPF — the world is your fanfiction oyster. Want to selectively erase certain aspects of canon from your memory? Go right ahead.
Prompts should contain the following format:
Characters/Ship (optional) - Timeline (optional) - Prompt (which may be a song lyric, quote, etc., but is not optional)
In other words, you can leave a character and/or a ship, and/or a timeline, which are optional, and a prompt, which is not. If you want, you can just leave a set of song lyrics and see what people do with them. If you want, you can just leave a timeline with those lyrics, or a just a character, or all three.
How do I respond?
There are no restrictions in terms of word count, format, tense, point of view, etc. Please title all of your response fics as such in bold at the top of your comment (make sure to close the bold tag!) since LJ took out comment titles because they're dumb:
Title - Character/Ship - Timeline
Presumably, your fics will contain these three things even if they weren't in the prompt. You can also fill prompts that have already been filled. If something speaks to you, as it were, it doesn't matter if there's already fic for it. You can write your own.
How do I promote?
Tumblr post if you want to promote there
Promotion link with image:
Other banners:
by me
by
yon_lougawouIf you feel inspired to make a banner of your own, feel free to link to it in the questions/comments thread below and I'll add it up here.
Text link:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-06-07 01:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-07 02:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-07 03:23 pm (UTC)That was a gorgeous little vignette that sort of encapsulated all the things I loved about the film and fixed the things I didn't. So OTP with those two and you just clearly wrote out why.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-07 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-07 03:25 pm (UTC)And then I saw your prompt and was like, well damn. So pleased you liked it. ♥
no subject
Date: 2012-06-07 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-07 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-07 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-07 09:42 pm (UTC)TOO LONG FOR COMMENT. ;_____;
all hearts use their own tongues
no subject
Date: 2012-06-08 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-08 11:01 pm (UTC)Too long for a comment, so here you go! I hope you enjoy!
sometimes love is only sleeping (http://users.livejournal.com/_newworld/81436.html#cutid1)
no subject
Date: 2012-06-10 08:24 am (UTC)william(/snow white), pg
In the summer, he dreams of snow and, in the winter, he dreams of dust. Always, always, he dreams of fire and of screams; of a gate closing and a girl, dark as a lost shadow, just out of reach.
Snow White is dead, has been for near eight years, and William knows better than to wish for her anymore, knows better than to wake, screaming, reaching towards some unfathomable abyss. He knows better, but.
The seasons have dried up, along with the kingdom, vast and empty and black, black, black. The truth is that nothing has been salvaged, neither winter nor summer, no crops and no peoples and no sliver of hope. The truth is that the kingdom died right alongside Snow White; that William should have died with both.
He knows, he knows better; he is a prince. He knows better. But.
An army gathers within their keep, strung together with fear and hunger and a tasteless sort of courage. An army crowds together in their keep, with old sillhouettes in their eyes, and they are strung together more of desperation, of necessity, than of even a meager inch of belief.
They are barely an army, but an army they are still. They are barely an army, but they will fight.
There is a kingdom upon his shoulders and a title for which he is destined and a castle too, a throne. There is a world that is his mantle and William is bound and so he will fight. He is bound and he'll fight, but to win, well. It is another matter entirely.
He does not feel like one, but he is still a prince. Witches likely do not feel like witches either, he tells himself, but it is still a prince's duty to slay a witch, no matter how they each think of themselves. It is still his boon to fulfill, until he turn victorious or die at the creature's feet, clawing at her robes and regretting any crown set upon his head.
There is duty and there is justice and then there are dreams more tenuous.
He lays on the edge of the beach, watching the castle walls grow seemingly taller, watching the sea roll in and the whispering of trees, brittle. He climbs them anyway, towards an unsighted end in the sky, dreams of resting on eaves and picking apples. He climbs them anyway and teeters on the edge of the world, thinking of a land other than his own – lakes of ice and summer leaves, something to look forward to, a memory forged.
In the dreams he cannot help, Snow is a woman and not a child. She has hair dark as blood and lips like night, she has a throne under her fingertips; she has a shard of light in her eyes that William's never seen. In his dreams, she is a queen and she is alive and she is everything that he wants for himself, for the kingdom.
Are they not the same, he and the kingdom? Would she not save them both?
He learns, he learns, how to shoot a bow and an arrow; learns how to wield a sword. He learns, with lacerated fingers and a fringe in his eyes, how to fight for the world that he has been given, that he will one day mold into his own. His is not yet this kingdom, but he will have it, no matter how many bloody wounds, how many lives lost, how many times he collapses in the sand.
He will have it, even as his army dwindles, fraught with time and with bloodshed; even as the land finds a learned helplessness that they do not themselves understand and a terror in their eyes they do not themselves see. William, oh William, he understands and sees both, thinks of running from this world that he will not win – doesn't give in, doesn't give in, doesn't give in.
A flower blooms at the edge of the forest, alongside the beach, for the first time in near a decade. A flower blooms and that is even more powerful than the truth of any word, for it is seen with William's own eyes. "She lives," William says, promise in his smile.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-10 01:00 pm (UTC)She dreams of the forest, of the dark twisting trees that slithered up her arms and cold ground that pulled her under and wakes hearing Ravenna's words at her ear. Her chambers are dark when she wakes, the candles long snuffed out by the wind that drifts in through her open windows -- it had been a point of contention with her new guards, her open windows, her open door, the opened draw bridge but she hates locked doors now, hates feeling as if they'll stay locked and keep her inside forever -- and the room is now chilled. The mattress is too soft under her, pulling her with it's fine silks and golden threads. It makes her think of Ravenna, golden, bright and pulling her to her death.
Snow scrambles of the bed. Her breath still heavy and catching from the dream.
The forest pulling at her, taking her in; Ravenna doing the same.
She makes her herself stop from running to the door and curls by the foot of her bed. She's no stranger to nightmares. Every night since she was seven woken in her cell shivering from them.
It's only been the forest, the only the laid beyond her own, away from Ravenna's reach that she ever slept peacefully. She makes herself remember how the sunlight felt and how green the grass was under her and how alive it smelled. But that's not completely true.
Her feet don't sound on the stones as she leaves her rooms.
Between the Duke's sense of responsibility towards her and William's protectiveness Eric's quarter are farther from her than she would have like. She wanted him near the royal apartments, but there had been words thrown around all around her telling her it wouldn't be proper. Proper, she had wanted to say, is something she's not sure she understands anymore. But she had relented and Eric's chamber are farther than she would have liked.
There are goosebumps on her skin as she knock on his door. The castle is too quiet around her. The kingdom has started to heal but the quiet dark shadow of Ravenna's rule still permeates much. The castle still feels too close to Death, to Ravenna. It's not returned to being home yet. Snow feels uneasy as she waits for Eric to wake.
He opens the door, blinking down at her.
"Snow?"
"I can't sleep."
His eyes trail her face. She feels as they linger at her jaw, steady and blue, making her think of the sky. He reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, smile soft.
"Well, come on."
no subject
Date: 2012-06-10 01:00 pm (UTC)He hold the door open for her and she ducks under his arm. His bed is rumpled. Behind her he trails the halls as if waiting for the shadows to jump out at them. It is that that relaxes Snow. It's nice to know she's not the only one that still feels the edges of darkness in the castle.
Cross-legged on the bed, she wraps her arms around a pillow as she watches him close the door.
"I'm sorry if I woke you, but--"
"It is fine," he says, standing at the edge of the bed. Snow notes how much cleaner his shirt is that the one he wore in the woods. His trousers look smooth, unripped.
She sighs, "I can't sleep in the bed."
"Too soft?" His mouth almost curves into a smile as he sits on the bed. She dips towards him. Her knees touch his thigh.
"Yes!" She exclaims, grinning. "Wait, how did you know?"
The blue in his eyes darken for a second and then he shift, moving to lean back on the headboard. "Happens after you come back home from war."
Thinking of words she knows he rather not have her remember, she only nods and moves next to him. "Does it ever go away?"
Part of her thinks she'll never get used to the way he looks at her, heavy and full of meaning, some of which she's not sure she fully understands yet. However there is another part of her, one that is growing stronger, that enjoys the weight of his gaze.
"No, it doesn't." He slips an arm over her shoulders, "It might for you though."
Snow leans against his side, happy to know he still smells like the woods. "Why for me?"
"You're a queen."
"I don't think that means anything."
His mouth touches her temple and suddenly she feels sleepily again. It's different than before in her room, when she had to force herself to believe she was comfortable in the bed. Now she feels like she close her eyes and dream of the forest; the one with the bright shining trees.
"It will," Eric's voice is steady. She's not sure she like the meaning that being a queen will change things, but she feels he's right regardless.
She means to say something, but instead she yawns.
"Seems you can sleep now," Eric says.
"Hmm, yes. Can I stay here?"
His arm tightens around her shoulder and for a second she thinks he's going to convince her to go back to her room like he's done other nights she comes visit him. She presses her cheek against arm just in case--she likes remembering his smell; it's the closest thing to safe she now knows--but tonight he rests his cheek against the crown of her head and nods.
When she falls asleep against his side she barely notices when he shifts them on the bed. She's already dreaming of the forest, it's dark twisting trees spreading and unknotting as the sun starts lighting it's path across their branches. The branches don't reach for her now. They move out of her way as she forges a path through the dark wood.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-10 02:43 pm (UTC)you can’t break that which isn’t yours
The first night they realise the royal bed lies empty the horses cry in the stables, the guards flow from the tower like a low-flying flock of ravens against the flagstones and the huntsman awaits the summons. It doesn’t disappoint.
They think they can bind her to a building of rocks.
‘So track her,’ says the duke. The princeling stands feet behind his father with a raised eyebrow.
Eric feels his feet sink into the newly-grown spring grass of the courtyard and throws the uneaten apple to William. ‘You think she is only your Queen. That’s a mistake.’
‘A mistake?’ The Duke’s voice rises shrill in the thin air of the night.
Eric exits the courtyard. ‘Not your first.’
He looks back as he passes the arch. William’s head has fallen as he sits below the apple tree and Eric sees a smile tugging at its edges as the Duke paces.
*
‘You should have been a thief,’ Eric says as he steps into the clearing.
From below a wilder tree than the castle has given her, the queen grins.
Eric sits on a log next to her and plucks at the grass.
‘You think the throne wasted on me?’
‘Only think what riches you could pilfer with the ivy so friendly,’ he replies, sliding down so that his back is against the fallen log.
‘The quietest of my jesters.’ Snow raises her hand and the ivy follows. ‘Here.’
He follows her eyes as the green as dark as ink follows her gesture to bind itself to his log. ‘My jokes aren’t for the court. You’ve been practicing.’
Her lips curve. He raises an eyebrow as the green vines find his sleeve.
‘How do you like my workroom?’
She meets his eyes then. He gives the clearing an appraising look, slowly, as the vines form patterns across his bicep. They don’t tighten, curving over the folds of the rough leather like a hills in a landscape. Looking away, he can’t feel them.
He could break the vines if he moved quickly enough.
‘It suits you well,’ he replies and means it. The grass is lush to the touch. The trees arch together around Snow like the supporting arches of the castle hall. It’s not the fairy glade but it is the greenest clearing in the still-dark kingdom. He likes it better. It speaks of a seed, not a hoard.
‘I’ve been practicing,’ his queen says in the silence. ‘They want me to read her books. To know her power. They don’t-’
It’s the first time he hears her express scorn. I have seen what she sees. I can kill her.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-10 02:43 pm (UTC)‘What power do you want?’ He raises a hand as the vines find the cuff of his jacket and start on his hand. He feels that - even when he looks away.
‘I don’t know yet,’ Snow answers. Her fingers spread and sink into the grass. Birds call.
He lifts his hand and the vines thread between the blades of grass to return to her.
‘They’d rather I sleep in a bed of furs,’ she says, eyes on the stars above the canopy.
He feels a tug on the vines crossing his palm and leans forward to follow it until the tips of his fingers press hers.
Her palm snaps flat to his and with a warrior’s reflexes, she sits, moves and puts a thigh on either side of his. She tilts her head and looks at him like a curiosity. He notices the fine wear of the court cut off at the knees - knees pressed into the grass.
‘The land seems to like you sleeping where you are,’ Eric answers and swallows.
‘The land,’ Snow repeats. She smiles and pushes her hair back behind her ear and waits with her eyes on him. Eric reaches with one vine-covered hand to do the same for the other ear. He presses a thumb against her cheek as his hand drops.
‘It’s yours, is it not?’
Snow doesn’t answer. She places a hand on his shoulder with a deliberate frown and pushes his shoulder back against the curve of the log. Her eyes are on her own hand against his shoulder. That same hand slides up to his neck and he feels her thumb against his throat.
‘Two weeks ago I had a room in a tower and a filthy mattress,’ Snow says quietly and stills. Her eyes glance up from her hand to meet his. ‘Now, they tell me so many things are mine.’
Eric feels the grin come unbidden and tangles his hand with hers in the grass. ‘They aren’t wrong about everything.’
She moves his hand to her waist and pulls him towards her.
END.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-10 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-10 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-10 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-10 11:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-10 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-11 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-11 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-11 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-14 01:09 pm (UTC)