Merry Krysa-mouse + Yuletide, Percy Jackson
Yuletide! I haven't had much chance to read outside of my gifts, but that's in part because I've been spoiled this year :)
One of my prompts for Terra Ignota worldbuilding was for a completely mundane, low-stakes AU, like a coffee shop AU, for this very grand canon. My author took this in an unexpected but neat direction and wrote a fic centered around coffee worldbuilding for the series, exploring each Hive's relationship with coffee in impressive Mycroft-voice. Also, this title is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen:
Perhaps the Starbucks (1170 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Terra Ignota - Ada Palmer
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: 9A | The Ninth Anonymous (Terra Ignota), Jung Su-Hyeon Ancelet Kosala, Mycroft Canner
Additional Tags: Worldbuilding, Coffee Shops, Epistolary, Hives (Terra Ignota)
Summary:
You may think, dear Reader, in an age of anti-sleeps and kitchen trees, coffee shops would be an antiquated curiosity. Not so! Each Hive maintains its own customs, and each has some vital lesson to convey regarding that Hive’s history and character.
(A missing excerpt from Mycroft's account.)
I also got an awesome treat for my other new-Yuletide-request fandom:
Strange Meetings (3418 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Some Desperate Glory - Emily Tesh
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Avicenna/Magnus "Mags" Marston
Characters: Avicenna (Some Desperate Glory), Yingli Lin (Some Desperate Glory), The Wisdom (Some Desperate Glory)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Machine Learning, References to canon-typical homophobia, References to mass murder, the canon is the warning, Yuletide Treat
Summary:
"Why put us here, in this universe?"
Avi has two meetings after the events of canon. He isn't very happy at either of them.
-- which both provides the fix-it-like explanation I wanted for the weirdness about the book's ending, and some great insights into both Avi himself and a secondry character I liked a lot, and which I'm basically adopting as part of canon, because it does the thing the best fanfic does and further improves a canon I already liked a lot.
But I also want to take this opportunity to link again to my early Yuletide gift of Dragaera fic, since it was in response to my Yuletide prompt and merely couldn't be posted as part of the collection:
Our Relentless Dreaming (4431 words) by shealynn88
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dragaera - Steven Brust
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Morrolan e'Drien/Vlad Taltos
Characters: Morrolan e'Drien, Vlad Taltos
Additional Tags: Temporary Character Death, soulbond, spoilers through Jhegaala, Vlad POV, Shared Dreaming, connection over time, First Kiss, reference to canon suicidal thoughts, Light Angst, Hopeful Ending
Summary:
He looked up and changed completely-face shuttered, back stiff, feet planted. “You're here,” he said, and slowly, very slowly, he relaxed again.
“Do you know why?”
He shrugged. “Blackwand, I suspect,” he said finally. “He must have forged a connection when I killed you. When I brought you back.”
“Can you break it?” I wasn't sure I wanted him to, if I was honest. But I wasn't ready to explore that right now.
He smiled broadly, less triumphantly than was typical of our waking lives. But everything in the dreams had been different. He was different. “Perhaps,” he said. “But I get the sense you don’t want me to.”
And I could feel that he didn't want that, either.
Sadly there's no Dragaera fic in Yuletide proper this year, but I hope everyone goes and reads this brilliant Vlad/Morrolan shared dreams fic.
And if I count the early gift, that means I've gotten a ~Yuletide fic in each of the three fandoms I requested this year, which has never happened before and is SO COOL!
I did also manage to read a little bit in just the fandoms I requested, and the other fics I read are also really good:
Some Deseperate Glory: Dulce et decorum est (Yingli Lin-centric, T, 6.4k, CNTW/canon typical warnings apply) -- the other follow-up I wanted for this canon, to better understand how someone like Lin could allow Jole to turn Gaea station into that. Brilliant character study in time-skips from the destruction of Earthto the events at the end of canon, which complements the book perfectly (down to the title).
Terra Ignota: Children of Mars (OCs, gen, T, 4.3k, set centuries post canon) A really interesting look from a very different POV than any we get in the books, but with very clear and believable connections to Mycroft's time.
And not a fandom I requested, but the title caught my eye: Taskmaster RPF: Meet fruit. (Sue Perkins/Susan Wokoma, M, 2.3k) -- adorable, funny and sweet, just like the Team of Sues :)
**
L and I also watched the first two episodes of Disney+'s Percy Jackson series (and O had watched it on his own before that). I read the first... 4? books ages ago, and enjoyed them to a reasonable degree, but the rodents are both bigger fans than I. We also both watched the (bad) movie adaptations, but since we'd heard good things about the new Disney+ thing, including from L's (ex)-Roommate A, who is a huge fan, we wanted to check it out. And we liked it!
The adaptation seems quite faithful so far, at least in the broad strokes I remember fro the books, so I don't have much to say about that, just about the casting. L and I both really love Mr D -- I think that's my favorite bit of casting (but also, I think, probably a particularly fun role to cast/play, because I'd liked him in the movies as well). I also really like this Percy! He's got something that actually does make him look like a Greek hero some of the time, and like a goofy troublemaker kid some other times, and vulnerable and sweet in the scenes with his mom -- it's perfect! Grover is also a big improvement over the movie version, I think, which just had him as comic relief -- this Grover is still funny, especially with the physical comedy of the goat legs, but he also feels like a full-fledged character. I like the casting of Clarisse (L: "she looks like a mean Zendaya"), and Chiron (although the visual of him in centaur form still wearing his suit jacket is SO WEIRD XD). L is much more of a purist about these books than I am, so she was annoyed that Percy's stepfather did not match his book description (but I actually liked the scene between him and Percy's mom; it shows the relationship as clearly dysfunctional, but you can kind of see why those two people would stay together, if only to have someone to watch the Knicks games with XD), and that Annabeth doesn't either. I am reserving judgement on Annabeth, myself. I have no real pre-existing mental image of her (I don't remember whatever book description she got), so her being Black is not really a factor, but she hasn't necessarily felt like Annabeth in a way that Mr D, Chiron, Percy, Grover, and Clarisse have. I feel like she's toned down from the books? or maybe it took longer for her and Percy's rivalry to manifest and I just don't remember. The one bit of casting both L and I are ver negative on is Luke. L thought she recognized him from one of the Kissing Booth movies (part of terrible movies night with Roommate A), but that doesn't appear to be the case? He looks very generically teen movie, though, and does not feel either like the Luke as Percy first knows him or like someone who will be good in his subsequent role. And Luke has always been one of the most interesting characters in the books for me, so that's a disappointment. But really the only one in these two episodes, so that's not too bad. L liked the CGI minotaur, which I was indifferent to, but I did like the harpy. Anyway, my main requirement for the CGI not look actively bad/not detract from the show, and I never felt it did that. Oh, and the monsters-disintegrating effect also worked well for me. I also enjoyed the (genuinely quite funny) chapter titles being used as episode titles.
*
Finally: Merry Krysa-mouse, my friends!
(Backstory is that B made a joke, pronouncing "Merry Christmas" as "Merry Krysa-mas" and then L took it a step further to "Merry Krysa-mouse" [krysa = rat, for the non-Russian-speakers]. Of course, I embraced this new holiday, and was even compelled to illustrate it. You are looking at the pinnacle of my artistic ability, y'all. Drawn from "life" -- i.e. a rubber Halloween rat (which is no more, as it melted/disintegrated several years ago -- horrifying pictures available upon request) and a box of mouse finger puppets.)
One of my prompts for Terra Ignota worldbuilding was for a completely mundane, low-stakes AU, like a coffee shop AU, for this very grand canon. My author took this in an unexpected but neat direction and wrote a fic centered around coffee worldbuilding for the series, exploring each Hive's relationship with coffee in impressive Mycroft-voice. Also, this title is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen:
Perhaps the Starbucks (1170 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Terra Ignota - Ada Palmer
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: 9A | The Ninth Anonymous (Terra Ignota), Jung Su-Hyeon Ancelet Kosala, Mycroft Canner
Additional Tags: Worldbuilding, Coffee Shops, Epistolary, Hives (Terra Ignota)
Summary:
You may think, dear Reader, in an age of anti-sleeps and kitchen trees, coffee shops would be an antiquated curiosity. Not so! Each Hive maintains its own customs, and each has some vital lesson to convey regarding that Hive’s history and character.
(A missing excerpt from Mycroft's account.)
I also got an awesome treat for my other new-Yuletide-request fandom:
Strange Meetings (3418 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Some Desperate Glory - Emily Tesh
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Avicenna/Magnus "Mags" Marston
Characters: Avicenna (Some Desperate Glory), Yingli Lin (Some Desperate Glory), The Wisdom (Some Desperate Glory)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Machine Learning, References to canon-typical homophobia, References to mass murder, the canon is the warning, Yuletide Treat
Summary:
"Why put us here, in this universe?"
Avi has two meetings after the events of canon. He isn't very happy at either of them.
-- which both provides the fix-it-like explanation I wanted for the weirdness about the book's ending, and some great insights into both Avi himself and a secondry character I liked a lot, and which I'm basically adopting as part of canon, because it does the thing the best fanfic does and further improves a canon I already liked a lot.
But I also want to take this opportunity to link again to my early Yuletide gift of Dragaera fic, since it was in response to my Yuletide prompt and merely couldn't be posted as part of the collection:
Our Relentless Dreaming (4431 words) by shealynn88
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dragaera - Steven Brust
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Morrolan e'Drien/Vlad Taltos
Characters: Morrolan e'Drien, Vlad Taltos
Additional Tags: Temporary Character Death, soulbond, spoilers through Jhegaala, Vlad POV, Shared Dreaming, connection over time, First Kiss, reference to canon suicidal thoughts, Light Angst, Hopeful Ending
Summary:
He looked up and changed completely-face shuttered, back stiff, feet planted. “You're here,” he said, and slowly, very slowly, he relaxed again.
“Do you know why?”
He shrugged. “Blackwand, I suspect,” he said finally. “He must have forged a connection when I killed you. When I brought you back.”
“Can you break it?” I wasn't sure I wanted him to, if I was honest. But I wasn't ready to explore that right now.
He smiled broadly, less triumphantly than was typical of our waking lives. But everything in the dreams had been different. He was different. “Perhaps,” he said. “But I get the sense you don’t want me to.”
And I could feel that he didn't want that, either.
Sadly there's no Dragaera fic in Yuletide proper this year, but I hope everyone goes and reads this brilliant Vlad/Morrolan shared dreams fic.
And if I count the early gift, that means I've gotten a ~Yuletide fic in each of the three fandoms I requested this year, which has never happened before and is SO COOL!
I did also manage to read a little bit in just the fandoms I requested, and the other fics I read are also really good:
Some Deseperate Glory: Dulce et decorum est (Yingli Lin-centric, T, 6.4k, CNTW/canon typical warnings apply) -- the other follow-up I wanted for this canon, to better understand how someone like Lin could allow Jole to turn Gaea station into that. Brilliant character study in time-skips from the destruction of Earthto the events at the end of canon, which complements the book perfectly (down to the title).
Terra Ignota: Children of Mars (OCs, gen, T, 4.3k, set centuries post canon) A really interesting look from a very different POV than any we get in the books, but with very clear and believable connections to Mycroft's time.
And not a fandom I requested, but the title caught my eye: Taskmaster RPF: Meet fruit. (Sue Perkins/Susan Wokoma, M, 2.3k) -- adorable, funny and sweet, just like the Team of Sues :)
**
L and I also watched the first two episodes of Disney+'s Percy Jackson series (and O had watched it on his own before that). I read the first... 4? books ages ago, and enjoyed them to a reasonable degree, but the rodents are both bigger fans than I. We also both watched the (bad) movie adaptations, but since we'd heard good things about the new Disney+ thing, including from L's (ex)-Roommate A, who is a huge fan, we wanted to check it out. And we liked it!
The adaptation seems quite faithful so far, at least in the broad strokes I remember fro the books, so I don't have much to say about that, just about the casting. L and I both really love Mr D -- I think that's my favorite bit of casting (but also, I think, probably a particularly fun role to cast/play, because I'd liked him in the movies as well). I also really like this Percy! He's got something that actually does make him look like a Greek hero some of the time, and like a goofy troublemaker kid some other times, and vulnerable and sweet in the scenes with his mom -- it's perfect! Grover is also a big improvement over the movie version, I think, which just had him as comic relief -- this Grover is still funny, especially with the physical comedy of the goat legs, but he also feels like a full-fledged character. I like the casting of Clarisse (L: "she looks like a mean Zendaya"), and Chiron (although the visual of him in centaur form still wearing his suit jacket is SO WEIRD XD). L is much more of a purist about these books than I am, so she was annoyed that Percy's stepfather did not match his book description (but I actually liked the scene between him and Percy's mom; it shows the relationship as clearly dysfunctional, but you can kind of see why those two people would stay together, if only to have someone to watch the Knicks games with XD), and that Annabeth doesn't either. I am reserving judgement on Annabeth, myself. I have no real pre-existing mental image of her (I don't remember whatever book description she got), so her being Black is not really a factor, but she hasn't necessarily felt like Annabeth in a way that Mr D, Chiron, Percy, Grover, and Clarisse have. I feel like she's toned down from the books? or maybe it took longer for her and Percy's rivalry to manifest and I just don't remember. The one bit of casting both L and I are ver negative on is Luke. L thought she recognized him from one of the Kissing Booth movies (part of terrible movies night with Roommate A), but that doesn't appear to be the case? He looks very generically teen movie, though, and does not feel either like the Luke as Percy first knows him or like someone who will be good in his subsequent role. And Luke has always been one of the most interesting characters in the books for me, so that's a disappointment. But really the only one in these two episodes, so that's not too bad. L liked the CGI minotaur, which I was indifferent to, but I did like the harpy. Anyway, my main requirement for the CGI not look actively bad/not detract from the show, and I never felt it did that. Oh, and the monsters-disintegrating effect also worked well for me. I also enjoyed the (genuinely quite funny) chapter titles being used as episode titles.
*
Finally: Merry Krysa-mouse, my friends!
(Backstory is that B made a joke, pronouncing "Merry Christmas" as "Merry Krysa-mas" and then L took it a step further to "Merry Krysa-mouse" [krysa = rat, for the non-Russian-speakers]. Of course, I embraced this new holiday, and was even compelled to illustrate it. You are looking at the pinnacle of my artistic ability, y'all. Drawn from "life" -- i.e. a rubber Halloween rat (which is no more, as it melted/disintegrated several years ago -- horrifying pictures available upon request) and a box of mouse finger puppets.)