tpm_flashback | The Jewels of Ysgare, by KassXF

Title: The Jewels of Ysgare

Author: KassXF

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Q/O

Warnings: None.

Author's e-mail, web site and/or LJ id: The email addy on MA is listed as KassXF@aol.com, but I suspect that might be old. Her LJ ID is

wickdzoot.

Link to Story: http://www.masterapprentice.org/archive/t/the_jewels.html

Reason for Recommending: This is one of the first stories I read on the archive; I gobbled it up because not only was it nice and long - I adore long, meaty stories - it was terribly romantic, it was a first-time fic, and it contained copious amounts of Obi-Wan in peril. I think I learned the phrase "hurt-comfort" about the time I read this. I do have some issues with the fic, which you can read in the 'further discussion' section.

Quote from story:

Obi-Wan came to consciousness slowly, resisting it because of the pain in his head; his body ached nearly as badly, and his wrists were a pinpoint focus of agony, bound so tightly that his hands throbbed.

The murmur of voices teased at him, and a shocking drench of icy water brought him all the way up, blinking and gasping as the jerk of his body awakened every single ache. There was a single light, suspended from the ceiling, the water droplets on his lashes were like prisms, each ray of light hammering like a spike into each eye.

Extra Comments:

I gather that Kass was a fairly popular writer in X-Files before coming to TPM, and her popularity carried over. It's well-deserved, because she writes a gripping, kick-ass story. But because she was one of the first TPM writers (Jewels was archived in June 1999) and because her stuff was so popular, I think she was inadvertently responsible for some of the more irritating fanon cliches still existing in the fandom.

I certainly took leaves from her notebook; there are sentences in some of my earliest stories that consist of a single adverb, a stylistic quirk that now annoys me no end. Other quirks are the incessant use of commas where other punctuation might have served better, for example:

Being lifted from the chair was an exercise in self-control, he had to bite back a scream, reckoning that perhaps, he had a broken rib or two

Also, this, which I STILL see in fic and it drives me nuts, though I don't know if there's a proper grammar-offense name for it:

Deep, slow breaths and someone kicked the chair to which he had been bound, jarring him hurtfully.

Finally, Jewels' Obi-Wan is a little bit on the dainty side. Now, since Kass' stories were so popular, it's natural that people would borrow bits of her characterization - I certainly did, myself, until I grew more comfortable with a style and characterization of my own. But I think that this more delicate Obi-Wan provided the impetus for much of the Wimp!Obi fic that one sees. Like a game of telephone, the gap between Kass' original Obi-Wan and some of the more horrific Wimp!Obi portrayals is pretty wide, though, and as I said, I think her influence was inadvertent.

But all this aside, The Jewels of Ysgare is still one of my favorite stories, and I always read it with great pleasure.