Two Sets of Yuletide Recs
First and foremost, I have to rec the fics that I received:
Dresden Files, Fusion fic. First Noel. Take one little boy who's a magnet for magical trouble. Add his snarky and oh-so-protective ghostly tutor. Mix in an up-and-coming teenage thug named Johnny Marcone, a very deadly supernatural threat and a wonderful nonhuman guardian of Chicago, and you've got something that's the best of both canons.
Echo Bazaar. Hard to Find (The Missing Comtessa, the Duchess, the Traitor Empress, the Cheesemonger). This is the first Echo Bazaar fic I've seen, and it continues the story of the character--the Missing Comtessa--smashingly, not to mention capturing the atmosphere of the twisted world of Fallen London so well. If you know the game of Echo Bazaar, you'll love it. If you don't know the game, you'll STILL love it, plus the story may inspire interest in the game. Either way, you win!
***
A Study in Emerald. Black Shuck (Holmes and Watson). The Hound of the Baskervilles, as it happened in the Lovecraftian Emeraldverse. Creepy, dark and featuring an eldritch abomination you won't soon forget.
All Summer in a Day. The Sun Shone on Venus.A little girl who missed the sun suffered a terrible act of cruelty. This is what happened to Margot, after. Reading this was a thirty-years-delayed catharsis. It fixes the ending for "All Summer in a Day" in a way that I cherish. This is my headcanon now.
Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis/Tam Lin - Pamela Dean. Journey to Make, Horizon to Chase. An AU in which Susan goes off to Blackstock College, and all is definitely not as it seems.
Echo Bazaar/Hotel California - The Eagles. Being an Account of a Journey to the strange new California Republic (and a most peculiar Hotel therein). In which a character from the Neath of Fallen London is making a delivery of wine on behalf of one of the Masters of the Bazaar to, as the title says, a most peculiar hotel. Eerie, creepy steampunk, and utterly delicious.
Hark! A Vagrant. I Am Acton Bell's Metaphorical Manhood (The Bronte Sisters). Charlotte is inventing Dark and Depressing Pasts for their personas. Emily has gone from emo to corny in the space of an afternoon. Anne fucking hates her pseudonym and wishes she had sensible sisters.
Hark! A Vagrant. Well This Is Just Weird (Sherlock Holmes and the Various Watsons). The Brilliant and Cracktastic Case of the Missing Watsons. Read it, please. You'll love it.
Shakespeare - Richard II. Six Variations on Loyalty (Richard II, Henry IV, Edward, Duke of Aumerle). Six short scenes--one with Henry, two with Richard and three with Aumerle--in which Henry thinks about the loyalty Richard's people had for him and which Henry now covets, Richard thinks about loyalties and loves past and present and Aumerle tries to square the need to be true to Richard (who is both his friend and his lover) with the need to survive in Henry's regime.
Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms. Blueblood. Bluebeard, re-imagined and re-cast as a particularly predatory serial killer who uses dreams as bait, Bluebeard's wife as a trans street kid/prostitute, and Sister Anne as a young lesbian thief. Be warned; it's a horror story.
Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms. The Winter of Wolf. A very different version of Red Riding Hood, in which Wolf is a girl from a tribe suffering from drought, the grandmother is Grandmother Winter and the red cloak is the emblem of Spring.
Henry IV -Shakespeare. Too Late to Change Me. Academic AU set in modern-day Harvard University. Harry "Hotspur" Percy is dealing with the aftereffects of a meeting with Hal Monmouth's father (the head of Lancaster Inc.) and the FBI, fifty billion text messages from Hal and an extremely disgruntled girlfriend. Harry's life seems completely out of control
Jane Eyre. Were We Not Four? A madwoman, her nurse, a governess and Mr. Rochester's fiancée all think the upcoming marriage and what it will mean for them. I especially like Grace Poole's voice; she had no voice in the original, and I always wondered what she was like.
John Adams (2008). Les Fruits de la Révolution. Thomas Jefferson admires the French Revolution's eloquence. John and Abigail would rather trust in man's laws than man's passion and virtues. The author really has the 18th-century style of speech down pat, and it doesn't get in the way of the personalities of the three at all.
Old Spice Guy. Just check out the entire Old Spice Guy category. There are seven other stories in the category besides the one that everyone and their cat has recced, and they are all hysterical and ridiculous and made of win.
Othello -- Shakespeare. The Parrot Dupatta. Indian Raj AU, in which Desdemona is Dorothea Brabant, the English daughter of a Victorian-era bishop who has come to India to join her father; Othello is Selvam, an Indian who works as tax collector and district magistrate; and Iago is James Rigg, a churchwarden of mixed parentage. Shakespeare's story transfers beautifully, and--bonus points!--the story is told in multiple POVs, so you get to see how Dorothea and Selvam think and feel at different times. It's novella length, but DON'T let that put you off. It's believable and immersive and intense and just plain fantastic.
Portal. The Game is a Lie. GLaDOS talks at Chell about the world of Portal in a way that eerily, creepily meta.
Sense and Sensibility. Sense and Sense. In which Elinor's and Marianne's marriages are not precisely the stuff of fairy tales. Post-canon AU, which I have to say is quite logical, thanks to the sisters' personalities.
Tale of Genji - Murasaki Shikibu. Sparrow. After Genji's exile, two of his lovers meet. The story, which is poetic (quite literally), focuses on the themes of communication and freedom, and how both love and separation from love can be prisons.
The Sandman. Every New Beginning. Hob Gadling--hearing secrets from the Queen of Faerie at a wake, mourning, and learning something about how long friendships can end. Sweet and sad, with a hopeful ending.
Threadless T-Shirt Designs. Dear Shadow Alive and Well. In the endless prairie, there is a town that lives and dies in the space of an hour each day, only to be reborn and die again the next. A town inhabited by shadow people, living their shadow lives. And in this town there lived a little shadow girl, who would come to be an anomaly for three reasons. Based on this picture. But you don't need to see the picture to appreciate the evocative beauty of this story.
War for the Oaks - Emma Bull. Here Comes the Sun. Five things that never happened to Willy Silver. I like this one because it shows Willy growing and learning, and, despite not always understanding the mortal world, gradually coming to see that things like creativity and forgiveness and love are worth having.
***
Dresden Files, Fusion fic. First Noel. Take one little boy who's a magnet for magical trouble. Add his snarky and oh-so-protective ghostly tutor. Mix in an up-and-coming teenage thug named Johnny Marcone, a very deadly supernatural threat and a wonderful nonhuman guardian of Chicago, and you've got something that's the best of both canons.
Echo Bazaar. Hard to Find (The Missing Comtessa, the Duchess, the Traitor Empress, the Cheesemonger). This is the first Echo Bazaar fic I've seen, and it continues the story of the character--the Missing Comtessa--smashingly, not to mention capturing the atmosphere of the twisted world of Fallen London so well. If you know the game of Echo Bazaar, you'll love it. If you don't know the game, you'll STILL love it, plus the story may inspire interest in the game. Either way, you win!
***
A Study in Emerald. Black Shuck (Holmes and Watson). The Hound of the Baskervilles, as it happened in the Lovecraftian Emeraldverse. Creepy, dark and featuring an eldritch abomination you won't soon forget.
All Summer in a Day. The Sun Shone on Venus.A little girl who missed the sun suffered a terrible act of cruelty. This is what happened to Margot, after. Reading this was a thirty-years-delayed catharsis. It fixes the ending for "All Summer in a Day" in a way that I cherish. This is my headcanon now.
Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis/Tam Lin - Pamela Dean. Journey to Make, Horizon to Chase. An AU in which Susan goes off to Blackstock College, and all is definitely not as it seems.
Echo Bazaar/Hotel California - The Eagles. Being an Account of a Journey to the strange new California Republic (and a most peculiar Hotel therein). In which a character from the Neath of Fallen London is making a delivery of wine on behalf of one of the Masters of the Bazaar to, as the title says, a most peculiar hotel. Eerie, creepy steampunk, and utterly delicious.
Hark! A Vagrant. I Am Acton Bell's Metaphorical Manhood (The Bronte Sisters). Charlotte is inventing Dark and Depressing Pasts for their personas. Emily has gone from emo to corny in the space of an afternoon. Anne fucking hates her pseudonym and wishes she had sensible sisters.
Hark! A Vagrant. Well This Is Just Weird (Sherlock Holmes and the Various Watsons). The Brilliant and Cracktastic Case of the Missing Watsons. Read it, please. You'll love it.
Shakespeare - Richard II. Six Variations on Loyalty (Richard II, Henry IV, Edward, Duke of Aumerle). Six short scenes--one with Henry, two with Richard and three with Aumerle--in which Henry thinks about the loyalty Richard's people had for him and which Henry now covets, Richard thinks about loyalties and loves past and present and Aumerle tries to square the need to be true to Richard (who is both his friend and his lover) with the need to survive in Henry's regime.
Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms. Blueblood. Bluebeard, re-imagined and re-cast as a particularly predatory serial killer who uses dreams as bait, Bluebeard's wife as a trans street kid/prostitute, and Sister Anne as a young lesbian thief. Be warned; it's a horror story.
Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms. The Winter of Wolf. A very different version of Red Riding Hood, in which Wolf is a girl from a tribe suffering from drought, the grandmother is Grandmother Winter and the red cloak is the emblem of Spring.
Henry IV -Shakespeare. Too Late to Change Me. Academic AU set in modern-day Harvard University. Harry "Hotspur" Percy is dealing with the aftereffects of a meeting with Hal Monmouth's father (the head of Lancaster Inc.) and the FBI, fifty billion text messages from Hal and an extremely disgruntled girlfriend. Harry's life seems completely out of control
Jane Eyre. Were We Not Four? A madwoman, her nurse, a governess and Mr. Rochester's fiancée all think the upcoming marriage and what it will mean for them. I especially like Grace Poole's voice; she had no voice in the original, and I always wondered what she was like.
John Adams (2008). Les Fruits de la Révolution. Thomas Jefferson admires the French Revolution's eloquence. John and Abigail would rather trust in man's laws than man's passion and virtues. The author really has the 18th-century style of speech down pat, and it doesn't get in the way of the personalities of the three at all.
Old Spice Guy. Just check out the entire Old Spice Guy category. There are seven other stories in the category besides the one that everyone and their cat has recced, and they are all hysterical and ridiculous and made of win.
Othello -- Shakespeare. The Parrot Dupatta. Indian Raj AU, in which Desdemona is Dorothea Brabant, the English daughter of a Victorian-era bishop who has come to India to join her father; Othello is Selvam, an Indian who works as tax collector and district magistrate; and Iago is James Rigg, a churchwarden of mixed parentage. Shakespeare's story transfers beautifully, and--bonus points!--the story is told in multiple POVs, so you get to see how Dorothea and Selvam think and feel at different times. It's novella length, but DON'T let that put you off. It's believable and immersive and intense and just plain fantastic.
Portal. The Game is a Lie. GLaDOS talks at Chell about the world of Portal in a way that eerily, creepily meta.
Sense and Sensibility. Sense and Sense. In which Elinor's and Marianne's marriages are not precisely the stuff of fairy tales. Post-canon AU, which I have to say is quite logical, thanks to the sisters' personalities.
Tale of Genji - Murasaki Shikibu. Sparrow. After Genji's exile, two of his lovers meet. The story, which is poetic (quite literally), focuses on the themes of communication and freedom, and how both love and separation from love can be prisons.
The Sandman. Every New Beginning. Hob Gadling--hearing secrets from the Queen of Faerie at a wake, mourning, and learning something about how long friendships can end. Sweet and sad, with a hopeful ending.
Threadless T-Shirt Designs. Dear Shadow Alive and Well. In the endless prairie, there is a town that lives and dies in the space of an hour each day, only to be reborn and die again the next. A town inhabited by shadow people, living their shadow lives. And in this town there lived a little shadow girl, who would come to be an anomaly for three reasons. Based on this picture. But you don't need to see the picture to appreciate the evocative beauty of this story.
War for the Oaks - Emma Bull. Here Comes the Sun. Five things that never happened to Willy Silver. I like this one because it shows Willy growing and learning, and, despite not always understanding the mortal world, gradually coming to see that things like creativity and forgiveness and love are worth having.
***