Name: Oregonian (Signed) · Date: 30 Jan 2021 06:39 PM · For: the fairy ring doth dance and sing...

Hi, Noelle.

 

This is a beautiful fantasy, Noelle, just another example of the wide range of styles and genres in which you write.  

 

The writing just flows, the fairy world is so exquisitely described that I can see it in my mind, beautiful but eerie at the same tme, and the lover is so kind, so gallant, so protective.  And yet at the end it is Andromeda who manages to extricate the two of them from the perilous realm by giving her white rose.  (I, in her place, might not have thought of that, but she perceives that the fairy folk do not have the same ideas as we do of what is valuable.)

 

The strange events of their transitions into and out of fairyland are inexplicable, but the reader is caught up in the dream-like world and just accepts whatever happens.  Was it all just a dream?  No, because the rosebush is still by the boathouse door, although shriveled and brown now.  And the poem in her history book is just lovely and also the final proof.

 

A really enjoyable read!

 

Vicki

Author's Response:

Thank you so much Vicki! I'm so glad you enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun to play with the fairy tropes here.

 

Thank you for this lovely review :D

Name: Hawksquill (Signed) · Date: 30 Dec 2020 07:44 PM · For: the fairy ring doth dance and sing...

Hi, Noelle!  I absolutely LOVE anything fey so this is right up my alley.  What an odd pairing you got, but this is the perfect solution, I think.  Time travel, star-crossed lovers and eerie fey stuff?  Sign me up!

It starts out really strong and gives us a great sense of Andromeda as a character - I love the idea of her escaping the stuffiness of the snobby Slytherins and sneaking out to wear Muggle clohtes.

I loved your descriptions of Faerie best of all, it feels just like something out of Spenser or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. You play nicely with the common tropes about fairies (enchanted food, eternal dances) but I loved seeing it all from Andromeda's perspective.  It was also a clever choice because although Mungo and Andromeda come from such different times, putting them in a setting that is alien to both of them bonds them together and makes the hints of romance feel more believable.  They're both out of their element and turning to each other for comfort, and their own worlds are definitely more similar to each other than they are to Faerie.

It was so neat that even though Mungo knew more about fairy lore than Andromeda (telling her not to eat the food), she's the one who ends up making the bargain that saves them both.  I wonder how he felt about a lady from the future saving his life!

And the end just broke my heart, that last line in particular.  The idea that the sonnet she was reading for class was about her all along...I love little meta twists like that, particularly when they have to do with time travel or weird reality bending things.  But the idea of yearning for someone who's been dead for hundreds of years, and knowing they're yearning for you hundreds of years before you'll be born...oof.  It hits me right in the feels in just the right way.  It definitely packs such a big emotional punch for a short fic! 

Awesome job! :)

 

Author's Response:

When I was given the pairing of Andromeda/St Mungo, I was like, what am I supposed to do with this? I knew I would have to do time travel of some kind, and so I decided to take it one step further. Rather than having either St Mungo or Andromeda be the fish out of water the other one's time, I put them both in fairyland, so that they were both fish out of water. I thought it would bring them together quickly, because even though they are from such different time periods, as the only humans in the fairy court that night, they would instinctively be drawn together and work together.

 

Thank you so much for this lovely review!

Name: GKWriter (Signed) · Date: 07 Dec 2020 05:19 PM · For: the fairy ring doth dance and sing...

Hi Noelle, 

Just to start, I really enjoyed this! 

I liked how you used the tropes from fairy stories - the dancing and the food that causes Andromeda to lose her memories of the world outside. I also liked the little details like using the rose to pay for a way out and Andromeda escaping the common room for a sail on the lake. 

All the best,

GK

Author's Response:

Thank you so much! I'm so glad you enjoyed it :D

Name: prideofprewett (Signed) · Date: 27 Oct 2020 02:42 PM · For: the fairy ring doth dance and sing...

Noelle! You create such an adventurous mood from the very beginning! I love this hidden rebellious streak of Andromeda we see. The little detail of her hiding her school robes beneath the mermaid statue tail was absolutely brilliant! And you get this sense of urgency from your writing that she is pining for an adventure. 

 

Your world building of his fairy land is spectacular! I felt transplanted into it, and like Andromeda, felt similarly transfixed by all your descriptions of what it all looked like. I especially loved your vivid descriptions of the manor. And I love the continuous references of how she drew strength from Mungo. He's such a perfect gentleman, really. <3 And the way you have them confiding in one another over this meal that is not all that it seems, it was just lovely. The way you had them find similarities between them in spite of living in different time periods was also very clever. Some things are just universal, I guess? :)

 

I also loved how you made Andromeda the hero of her own story, and she's the one who rescued them! And that ending was super touching with the ballad and the sentiment of her feeling an unexplainable presence by her side during trying times in her life. I just absolutely loved everything about this! I will definitely be checking out that Mungo fic you wrote as well! :)

 

<3 Courtney

P.S. I know I am trash and owe you a review on Infelix Ego. I swear, I will get to it! <3

Gifted for the fangtastic grimtown carnevil

Author's Response:

Thank you so much! I feel that Andromeda would absolutely have a rebelious streak in her, otherwise she would not have run off with Ted Tonks.

 

It was so fun to play around with the fairy tropes in this story. 

 

Thank you so much for this lovely review! I'm so glad you enjoyed it :D

Name: pookha (Signed) · Date: 02 Oct 2020 04:46 AM · For: the fairy ring doth dance and sing...

 

EvS review

 

Yes, you are so very, very correct. The fey have their own laws, their own rules and they may be arcane or strange to mortals, but they follow them. Oathbreaking is taken seriously and not generally allowed.

 

I really like the common fae tropes here; the eating of the faerie food and the dancing until you drop. You did them very well, and they fit extremely nicely in your story. 

 

This is one of those truly strange time slippages that happen with the fey. Inexplicably brought together for what strange reason only the fey know, but probably to tie some knot in time that had to be done. If she hadn't become his Andromeda, who knows what would have happened. Would he have been lost in time? Would she have been lost to the fey?

 

This was beautifully done and I loved it.

 

Author's Response:

It was so fun to play with the fey tropes in this story. I definitely think that if Andromeda or Mungo had come into this world alone, they would have had a hard time escaping it. Even though they were from different time periods, I think that having another human present helped them not be completely overwhelmed by the fey's magic.

 

Thank you so much for reading and reviewing!

Name: magemadi (Signed) · Date: 25 Sep 2020 06:56 AM · For: the fairy ring doth dance and sing...

Hey Noelle! I’m here with your entry review for my Crackship Challenge. :)

Ahh I am so excited you combined this with Paula’s challenge, because it really adds a layer to the time travel aspect that occurs with Andromeda & St. Mungo, and raises the stakes for their time together, however brief it actually is. I feel like I tell you this in every review I leave for you, but your description here, especially of the fairy court and how it’s beautifully dangerous looking to Andromeda and Mungo is wonderful. Don’t eat the food, silly humans!! Thank goodness Mungo’s got some sense in him, I swear Andromeda coming from 1970 clearly has much less life experience with the odd things like fae compared to Mungo, lol.

While their “romance” is very short, it’s heightened by the circumstances for sure, and because they got taken to the fae realm at the same time so they had to lean on each other, as the only humans present that night. Andromeda being so willing to part with her wand to escape with Mungo is something I’d love to know more about, and why you made that her first thought of payment to the lute-playing fairy. Also, thanks for the sad bit at the end with the ballads and the ghost of what could have been yet never would have been between them. Overall though, great job with this! Good luck in Paula’s challenge as well! I’ll have the results posted soon. :)

~Madi

Author's Response:

Ok, so I loved writing this crack ship. I think this might have been my first time travel attempt, which was both fun and a little scary. I tried to give it an overall fairy-tale feel, so there is some insta-love going on here for sure.

 

Thank you so much for running this challenge!