"Fires of Home"
by
Thatpote
Well, whaddawe have here?
This is Xenalicious pretending to be deep and seeking meaningful literary offerings even in such uncouth arena as is that of Xena fan fiction...
Why, you ask? Well, you never know, I might have to apply for a government job or something soon enough, and it won't do for them to only find smut on my website when they do the background check... Or something. You know.
So - "Fires of Home" by Thatpote. Not to be confused with Thispote. They're not really related.
But, yeah. The story.
So, I was searching the UFF (as I often do), and came across this description - "This story is written as though it were an early scholar's translation of one of Gabrielle's scrolls, (from which the television show is supposedly derived or at least, that's the conceit, right?) So it is intended to read the way these dusty, medieval, academic translations read."
Yawn.
And then I thought to myself - if the person who wrote this is brave enough to send out a description as colorful as that out on the World Wide Web, the least I can do is go and make fun of their story (not that I'd *ever* do anything like that!). So I did. Go to the website, that is. And scanned through the story in order to find some nicely convoluted "Thou didst not, didst thou?" kind of sentences. And then a strange thing happened.
I actually read the whole damn thing. And liked it. I think. Well, no, okay, I did, but I'm still not sure how I feel about that. I mean, come on! A medieval translation of Gabrielle's scrolls? I've tried reading some of the other (unmentionable) stories where the author has tried to adopt the old/archaic/native way of speaking and it got so convoluted, I had to drop breadcrumbs to find my way through a sentence. Imagine my surprise when this one turned out to have not just a very distinctive writing style but also quite a palatable one as well.
I won't tell you about the plot, it's quite simple and the story's short enough I'd give too much away. In the end, anyway, that is not the reason I'm recommending this story to you. If you want to pretend you're smarter than you are, but don't feel up to reading Shakespeare, this is the story for you. The writing is new and fresh and light and will remove all unwanted odors from... Wait, wrong commecial.
Ach, all this trouble for a tiny little story! You could've read it by now! Go, and stop friggin' bothering me! Don't you see I'm at work and busy? Gah!