Literatti: Fiction By Deslea


Story Spotlight:
The Edge Of Reality

This story (4200 words) does end up as a hot First War Bellatrix/Tom encounter, but there are some really interesting bits along the way about the nature of Death Eater ritual and the grooming techniques Tom employed to secure his followers. It's one of my personal favourites. Read it here



Last updated: 21 February 2016

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deslea AT deslea DOT com

Administration



This page is for all the bits and pieces that don't have a proper home anywhere else on the site. It's really just for the die-hard fans or people looking for a specific piece of information.

+ Design History + Parental Advisory + Archivist's Corner +



Design History



I've always prided myself on having a beautiful home for my fic. A lot of my old designs are lost to history, but my last few can still be viewed for nostalgia's sake. I've tended to preserve the thematic designs where they match a collection, unless that theme no longer suits current standards. (For instance, the X Files Krycek/Marita theme isn't friendly to the much larger screen resolutions we have now).

2011-2014: Have To Believe We Are Magic

This theme was based on Harry Potter's Malfoys and Blacks. There was, briefly, a Snape, Narcissa and Lucius version that was quite difficult to read, and I quickly swapped it out for Lucius and Tonks.



2008-2011: Connections & Chronicles

This theme was based on Sarah Connor Chronicles' Sarah Connor and Derek Reese. It was quite large, in part due to the large monitors and resolutions available at the time. I was never completely satisfied with how I managed the small-versus-large monitor issue, but I loved the underlying graphic.



2002-2008: Searing Snow

This theme was based on X Files' Alex Krycek and Marita Covarrubias. It was lovely for a long time but not suited to later generation large monitors. The image shows how it appeared originally for most users.





Parental Advisory



Firstly, the hard word. The internet is an international forum. It is your responsibility to know what you are, and are not legally permitted to read, and to make your personal decision to read with due regard for the laws of your jurisdiction (and, in the case of minors, your guardians). Stories are marked with ratings and I recommend that you use them. I'm not a supporter of foam-padding the world. I provide the information needed to choose wisely, I believe, but the final choice is your responsibility.

So. That's the heavy 'don't come crying to me' part out of the way.

This site is not a kids' site. It isn't pornographic, but it's definitely adult reading. I write a lot of stories for an adult audience. There are stories here of people recovering from major trauma, such as war and rape. Stories of people who have faced terrible moral dilemmas. There's adult language. Not everyone in my stories does the right thing - a lot of my work deals with people who have done terribly wrong things and who have to learn to live with that truth about themselves. And there are sexual references here, too, although not usually of a particularly titillating kind. I expect that you are an adult, or reading under an adult's guidance, and capable of doing so with a bit of discernment.

Parents, the stories here are generally rated in some sort of helpful way. The rating systems vary from fandom to fandom. Some derive their ratings more or less from the norms of the Moving Picture Association of America (MPAA). NC17 means no children aged under 17. Usually NC17 stories will involve explicit violence or explicit sexual references and are not suitable for children. R is a softer version of NC17, and a lot of my work is R. R deals in adult concepts - recovery from violence, sexual identity issues, significant moral dilemmas, war or the threat of war, and so on, and may include low-level sex (less detail or not so graphic words, but you can probably picture in soft-focus what's going on). PG-13 is a higher level of parental guidance - stories that reference the kinds of things found in a R story, but in less graphic detail. PG is a lower level of parental guidance, and is pretty harmless - it may deal in adult dilemmas, but there is no real need for a sophisticated reader to understand the nuances, and no graphic sexuality or violence. In other fandoms, broad words like 'teen' or 'mature' abound, and they're usually pretty obvious.

To get some idea of the ways in which I've applied the ratings, NC17 was applied to one story in which the specifics of sexual activity between consenting adults was used as a power play, and another in which a woman grappled with and eventually overcame sexual dysfunction arising from past manipulation. R was applied to a story in which a man reared as part of a military project retained unusual and unhealthy philosophical beliefs about human life and his place in the world until very late in the story - the near-absence of corrective points of view makes this a story that should only be read by someone with the moral and philosophical maturity to understand that this doesn't represent a 'good' point of view that should be emulated. R was also applied to a story about a pair of adult siblings in a situation of extreme isolation and trauma who formed an incestuous attachment as a result. Again, this should only be read by someone with the benefit of moral and emotional maturity. PG13 and PG have been applied to a story where a hired assassin talks to his intended victim and then lets her go, and a story in which two terminally ill people agree to take part in risky military medical experiments - stories in which significant dilemmas are faced but there are fewer problems of 'wrong' POVs requiring sophistication and/or corrective.



Archivists' Corner



To contact me regarding archiving, please email deslea [at] deslea [dot] com.

1.1 Archive Policies - General

Please don't archive or link my work alongside actorfic. I'll bend a little on this - for instance, I'll allow it on archives that also archive parodies that show an actor and a character switching places. But no real person smut, please. It's not something I care to be associated with. I realise that's a very unfashionable and 1990s opinion but I still expect it to be respected.

1.2 Archive Policies - X Files

In general, I'm happy for my work to be archived on any X Files not-for-profit archive. I would like you to drop me a courtesy note if you're not a 'major' archive just so I can come and take a look. I've found some great sites that way. I always want to know ahead of time if you're a multifandom archive or if you work in some form other than a conventional webpage (eg, print zines).

That said, I'm not fond of some of my older work. Scully/Skinner specialist archives can have those stories because I know they still get asked for it now and then, but I'm starting to limit them to fans of that genre. I'd rather people not archive the Scully/Skinner stuff in general archives. I just think I've grown a lot as an author since then. There are also a few throwaway pieces I'd rather not see archived - these are indicated in the headers. Generally they will be pieces on the Wastelands page.

The following places and people can always have my fic and they never need to ask: Gossamer, Ephemeral, all Lara Means sites, RATales archive, the Ferret Cage, all ArchiveCentral archives, Glass-Onion, and Down In The Basement. WorldofX.de always has my approval to translate into German, and Dark Love Of The X Files always has approval to translate into Russian. If you run an archive or rec site and you would like a blanket consent, just ask. I'll probably say yes.

1.3 Archive Policies - Harry Potter and TSCC

I do not know the TSCC and Harry Potter archives very well and would like to be asked for archive permission. I will assess on a case by case basis.

2. Archive Logistics

In August 2003, I implemented scripts that will make it much easier for archivists to work with my stories. By appending ?format=plaintext to any english-language story URL, it will be possible for you to view a version of that story formatted in plain ASCII with lines. Prior to Harry Potter, these were broken at 65 characters, which was a fandom norm dating back to the 1990s. Stories since 2010 just auto-wrap. You should be able to save the output as plain text in most browsers. If you encounter any problems using this facility, please let me know. At present, this facility is available for all stories from the beginning of 2003 (whisperjack onwards). Older stories can easily be converted on request - it's only a few minutes' work for a single story, so don't hesitate to ask.

My stories are stored in many places on the web, not only in archives but also on other sites I administer. I do revise from time to time. The versions on this page will always be the most authoritative, and I would prefer for you to harvest from here where possible. You are also free to link to my stories if you prefer, but it would be good if you could let me know so that I can notify you in the rare event that any URLs change.


Spotlight On:
Lucius and Tonks, Harry Potter

"Lucius and Tonks, who I wrote a lot in 2012, started out as a happy accident. I wrote a novella (Two of a Kind) where they fell in with each other by chance after the war, while they were grieving Narcissa and Remus. It was supposed to be a love-through-shared-trauma-despite-being-worlds-apart kind of thing. But I found they had a really interesting pair of voices together, and in fact, there are synergies. Tonks is a Black, and in many ways a younger version of Narcissa, and she has reason to be repelled/intrigued by her family of origin. (We see hints of this in her enmity with Bellatrix, which seems to have been mutual – she took grim pleasure in seriously injuring Bella's husband). There is also a shared ruthlessness between them, though tempered by morality on Tonks' side. Tonks, with Kingsley, is an active political player in the Ministry for the Order, as much as Lucius is for Voldemort. There are also intriguing espionage possibilities rising from his position as Voldemort's senior lieutenant and hers as the Order's spy; those were central in Sons of July, The Substitute, and The Blue Vial. There are also suggestions in her relationship with Remus that she is susceptible to tangled relationships with older, unwise men, so Lucius isn't really that much more of a stretch."




About The Ratings

Ratings are roughly equivalent to those used by the Motion Picture Association of America.

G: General audiences.
PG: Parental Guidance. Adult concepts and dilemmas, but without graphic detail.
M (or R): Mature audience. Adult concepts and dilemmas, anti-social attitudes, people doing the wrong thing and not necessarily feeling guilty about it. Also includes low-level sexual content (a few soft-focus paragraphs with little or no direct discussion of body parts). Most of my work is M.
NC-17: No children 17 or under. May contain explicit and extended descriptions of sexual activity, brief but graphic sexual descriptions, or graphic violence. A couple of my works contain rape scenes; these are graphic but not sexualised, and are appropriately marked with content warnings.
Trigger/Content Warnings: I take a conservative approach to triggers and will generally warn for anything that might trigger reader trauma to do with violence, self-harm, or grief. If the term "dark themes" is used, this may mean too many dark themes to mention, a dark theme that I don't want to reveal because it's a plot twist, or a vague dark feel that doesn't have a more precise description. Caveat lector.



Literatti design and content © Deslea R. Judd 1996-2015. More creatives: http://video.deslea.com. The X Files, Harry Potter, CSI, Haven, Tin Man, Imagine Me and You, and the Terminator franchise are the property of various commercial entities that have nothing to do with me. The stories found here are derivative works inspired by those bodies of work, shared without charge, and are intended as interpretation and/or homage. No infringement on the commercial interests of any party is intended.