crack_van | Dress Me In Silk by Maya (R)

Fandom: YAMI NO MATSUEI
Pairing: Oriya/Muraki; hints of Muraki/Hisoka
Length: about 2300 words
Author on LJ:

incandescens
Author Website: http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~maya/fanfic/fanfic.html

Why this must be read:

If you know Maya's work from any of her fandoms, everything I'm about to say will be redundant. You already know why this is a story you have to read: it's Maya, and since this little jewel appeared in the 2003 Yaoicon anthology rather than on LJ, you might have missed it.

Jewel is the right word for this story: Maya condenses an extraordinary richness of sensory detail and of emotional complexity into a story with the density and dazzle of a cut diamond.

Newcomers to YnM could be forgiven for suspecting that Muraki's popularity within the fandom stems from nothing more than a classic fangirl tropism in the direction of Teh Pretty, of the sort that leads us to pretend that a character who is, you know, evil -- in this case, a rapist and a serial murderer -- isn't really that bad. Or to make up excuses for his behavior, or to find ways to redeem him after all -- you know the sort of thing.

But in fact, one of the compelling aspects of YnM (at least in the manga version) is that Muraki's allure is a matter of canon, and the other characters' feelings about him are less straightforward than one might expect. "Dress Me In Silk" is a gorgeous example of what a writer as gifted as Maya can do with this material -- and of why Muraki's popularity as a character isn't quite the sign of fandom shallowness a person might otherwise think.

Dress Me In Silk