SO MANY PRESENTS [fics] TO OPEN
Happy Crimble, world! I have so, so many Yuletide tabs open. What a glorious problem! (Thanks to my writer, who kicked off my reading binge with 4K of Agent Carter RPF pranking wars. What a good start!) The following are 12 stories that I inhaled last night that utterly, utterly blew me away. You have to read them. You have to. Italian-American werewolves! Canadian history musical theater! Threesomes of the 1950s! Rage and ukuleles!
These are in the order in which I could dig them up in my tabs. They're all goddamn magnificent. Please flail at me about them if you so desire. They're so good.
Slings & Arrows: Going Dark (2200 words)
Post-S3, Maria still has to put up with Darren and Richard. She is a stage manager above all, however, and she takes notes, because goddammit, someone has to. Screamingly funny and perfectly in line with Maria - and Anna!
Costuming note: if this is winter in Ottawa, why is Olive Diefenbaker wearing a fur-trimmed bikini?
A League of Their Own: What Gets Inside You (4100 words)
The summary is just "Mae and Doris in New York, 1957. Everything's changed," and that's true, but oh my god, oh my god, you can feel lightning in every sentence of this fic, the longing and the love of the game and their friendship and this incredible real sense of loss. I read a lot of fics last night in fandoms I've touched on over the years, and this one just. Oh my very heart, I really love this one.
The Cubs are playing the Dodgers, though it almost doesn't matter who's on the field, because it is summer and baseball is still all Mae knows or cares about when the days get long. A summer spent anywhere other than a ballpark feels wasted to Mae. Doris feels the same, or, if she doesn't, she would never say.
Post-Classical Hollywood RPF: c'est si bon (3K words)
It's… it's Eartha Kitt/James Dean/Paul Newman, and it sounds like the '50s and it feels like the '50s, and it's gorgeous, it's so rawboned and restless and perfect. Like, we also forget that so much was brewing in opposition to that cookie-cutter McCarthyite '50s, and I just really can't get over how rich and present this story feels. It's very particular in its language and dialogue, but it's the opposite of precious.
He tells her he doesn't understand his insides half the time but he sees infinite knowledge in her little flicks of the wrist. Eartha laughs and makes fun of him and keeps the flattery private, close to her heart.
Insurance Commercials: Accio Insurance (1500 words)
I'm not sure if there are always this many Harry Potter AUs, but this is a goddamn delight.
The boy stared at her hand, and then he said, "I'm a nail. I've been hanging out on this road for like a week, maybe two, getting nice and rusty and just waiting for your car to drive right over me."
"Mayhem's a natural Allstate," said the first dad. "Do you know where you're hoping to be Sorted?"
Key & Peele: There is never a portal that cannot be opened with ingenuity and respect! (3K works)
This is the other Hogwarts AU that I straight-up cannot get over. Goddamn delightful! Cardamine is just trying to get through magic school; her idiot brother Jamar has gotten himself turned into a cat.
"Mr. Washington will be fine in an hour," Dr. Moody said. "It's those cut-rate owl pellets. Supposed to be pure mouse, but clearly it's been cut with something cheaper. Vole, maybe shrew." She waved the students over to take a closer look as she crumbled a pellet on the lab bench. "See the skull and the little bones? Look at the shape of that skull. That's rodent of some kind, but that's not mouse. Always examine your ingredients before paying, that's what y'all gotta take away from this."
Moonstruck: Back in Old Sicily (2500 words)
Post-film. Loretta and her second marriage, and her new family and the trip to Sicily to win approval, and. I can't, I can't with how deeply felt the family is written here, how it made me understand something about Italian families that resonated an awful lot.
The first time Loretta Castorini got married, it was at the City Hall. It was a Tuesday and she had been wearing a grey dress with boots that had been wearing down in the sole and she hadn’t said a word to her parents until the papers were signed and what was done was done. Her first man was a good man, but not the right man, and there, she supposes, lies the difference.
Moonstruck: La Famiglia Che Uccide Unita, Resta Unita (1500 words)
WEREWOLVES. THIS IS AMAZING. Like, also deeply felt and rendered! BUT ALSO WEREWOLVES, AND THAT IS PERFECT.
It’s an ancient family recipe. Rose maintains that it goes back at least ten generations on her side, passed from hand to hand and woman to woman, until it reached her grandmother, mother, and she. Loretta learned how to cook it at the age of seven, staring with her serious eyes over the bubbling pot of red sauce. She’s a quick one - she had it locked up in her memory by the time she was nine, could cook it by herself at ten. At her current age she can make the stuff in her sleep - one glass of red, a handful of basil, three glasses of pigeon pan drippings instead of freshly-killed lamb’s blood to fulfill the family’s need for marrow without having to set one of them loose in the park for a victim.
Hav, 20th-Century Literary RPF: Imaginary Planes (3K exactly)
I don't know either of these canons, though this makes me want to read Jan Morris' work, but it's sci-fi time-hopping Invisible Cities enough that I didn't have to know anything. It's fascinating.
Past the Medina, the weathered turrets of the castle (the Hav flag flying gaily) and the quick flash of tamed water from the canal. I could see the railway line stretching out beyond the city, a black ant trail to the looming bulk of the escarpment. The salt flats were on the left. Blix knocked again - “The House of the Chinese Master”- but I could only spare a brief glance enough to get an impression of one of those spikes used by accountants for sorting papers, this one hung instead with draperies of black lace, geometrically precise gardens clustered at the bottom. And then a patchwork of buildings that ran out abruptly, leaving nothing but the railway line and the wrinkled white surface of the salt flats, the unmade bedsheets of some absent giant.
Classical Music RPF: Decomposer Apocalypse (2300 words)
This was not remotely what I was expecting when I clicked into this tag, but someone wrote Beethoven as a zombie hunter, and I squealed when I realized who his groupies were.
And then in rapid succession, Beethoven downed his expresso, pulled a gun, and shot a zombie at point blank in the middle of the Vienna's Thursday morning crowd. Franz also fainted, which Felix unfeelingly thought was a little unjustified; from his position crouched behind the counter, he was the one person who wasn't immediately splattered by zombie brains.
Mr. Vogl, the Vienna's proprietor, wasn't going to be pleased either. After the incident with Elgar and the leprechaun hunters, a clear No Firearms on the Premises sign had been installed over the entrance.
Agatha Christie's Poirot: 5 Habits of the Detective Most Effective (1600 words, plus decorations)
I love Poirot. I love his voice and his fussiness and I love this 1930s Art Deco milieu. This is really an exercise in voice, but it's marvelous and immediately recognizable and you will enjoy it even without knowing the canon, I think.
Is not the most important castle oneself? The grooming of the mustaches which have come undone during sleep. The snipping of the hair juste un peux trop long. The applying of the wax and the twisting. The application of the cream to the scalp. The patting dry of the cheeks. Ah! Just right for the day.
For if you do not put your best foot forward both in the home and for the self, then what can you expect from the world, non?
Watership Down: Far Far Away (1200 words)
Oh my. Sometimes a post-canon fic comes along that just… huh, I never would have thought of that, but how neat. The weird, hallucinatory voice of Silverweed, the poet rabbit from the warren of snares, is an incredible narrative choice, and the way it ends up feeds so well into his character and his fascination with death and destruction.
He has never seen a fox, but he knows it is one; he had once dreamed he was a man with a loud metal stick, and he had pointed it at a quicksilver flash of red in a bush, and it had smelled very strongly of smoke and rot and very faintly of blood and fox. He, or perhaps they, had picked it up by the still-warm tail, the white tip unstained, and looked it over and approved warmly, and then Silverweed had woken up, the power slipping past his whiskers like dusk, and lain still in his burrow, waiting for a poem - but none had ever come.
Captain America RPF: ukuleles and other dangerous ideas (12K or thereabouts)
I. I don't know how to cope with this fic. It's 12K of slowly developing, utterly real and very hot Chris/Hayley, and it's so perfect it just makes my whole insides explode. I whisper-screamed the whole time I read this last night. It's flawless. It's flawless. Rich characterization, wonderful voices, exquisite build, hot sex with feelings and fun… I can't cope with this. I'm going to read it every day for the rest of the year.
Her agent calls her a week later to tell her they’re offering her the role, along with a decent multi-film contract, though Dale does warn her that Peggy’s character is not expected to appear in any subsequent films. Apparently Marvel likes to lock down their actors on the off-chance their characters are needed to appear again.
“So don’t worry,” Dale says. “This isn’t a long term commitment. She’s going to be a one-film character.”
This was originally posted on Dreamwidth, where it has
comments. I would love to hear from you at DW! If you can see this post, you can comment here using OpenID. Thanks!
These are in the order in which I could dig them up in my tabs. They're all goddamn magnificent. Please flail at me about them if you so desire. They're so good.
Slings & Arrows: Going Dark (2200 words)
Post-S3, Maria still has to put up with Darren and Richard. She is a stage manager above all, however, and she takes notes, because goddammit, someone has to. Screamingly funny and perfectly in line with Maria - and Anna!
Costuming note: if this is winter in Ottawa, why is Olive Diefenbaker wearing a fur-trimmed bikini?
A League of Their Own: What Gets Inside You (4100 words)
The summary is just "Mae and Doris in New York, 1957. Everything's changed," and that's true, but oh my god, oh my god, you can feel lightning in every sentence of this fic, the longing and the love of the game and their friendship and this incredible real sense of loss. I read a lot of fics last night in fandoms I've touched on over the years, and this one just. Oh my very heart, I really love this one.
The Cubs are playing the Dodgers, though it almost doesn't matter who's on the field, because it is summer and baseball is still all Mae knows or cares about when the days get long. A summer spent anywhere other than a ballpark feels wasted to Mae. Doris feels the same, or, if she doesn't, she would never say.
Post-Classical Hollywood RPF: c'est si bon (3K words)
It's… it's Eartha Kitt/James Dean/Paul Newman, and it sounds like the '50s and it feels like the '50s, and it's gorgeous, it's so rawboned and restless and perfect. Like, we also forget that so much was brewing in opposition to that cookie-cutter McCarthyite '50s, and I just really can't get over how rich and present this story feels. It's very particular in its language and dialogue, but it's the opposite of precious.
He tells her he doesn't understand his insides half the time but he sees infinite knowledge in her little flicks of the wrist. Eartha laughs and makes fun of him and keeps the flattery private, close to her heart.
Insurance Commercials: Accio Insurance (1500 words)
I'm not sure if there are always this many Harry Potter AUs, but this is a goddamn delight.
The boy stared at her hand, and then he said, "I'm a nail. I've been hanging out on this road for like a week, maybe two, getting nice and rusty and just waiting for your car to drive right over me."
"Mayhem's a natural Allstate," said the first dad. "Do you know where you're hoping to be Sorted?"
Key & Peele: There is never a portal that cannot be opened with ingenuity and respect! (3K works)
This is the other Hogwarts AU that I straight-up cannot get over. Goddamn delightful! Cardamine is just trying to get through magic school; her idiot brother Jamar has gotten himself turned into a cat.
"Mr. Washington will be fine in an hour," Dr. Moody said. "It's those cut-rate owl pellets. Supposed to be pure mouse, but clearly it's been cut with something cheaper. Vole, maybe shrew." She waved the students over to take a closer look as she crumbled a pellet on the lab bench. "See the skull and the little bones? Look at the shape of that skull. That's rodent of some kind, but that's not mouse. Always examine your ingredients before paying, that's what y'all gotta take away from this."
Moonstruck: Back in Old Sicily (2500 words)
Post-film. Loretta and her second marriage, and her new family and the trip to Sicily to win approval, and. I can't, I can't with how deeply felt the family is written here, how it made me understand something about Italian families that resonated an awful lot.
The first time Loretta Castorini got married, it was at the City Hall. It was a Tuesday and she had been wearing a grey dress with boots that had been wearing down in the sole and she hadn’t said a word to her parents until the papers were signed and what was done was done. Her first man was a good man, but not the right man, and there, she supposes, lies the difference.
Moonstruck: La Famiglia Che Uccide Unita, Resta Unita (1500 words)
WEREWOLVES. THIS IS AMAZING. Like, also deeply felt and rendered! BUT ALSO WEREWOLVES, AND THAT IS PERFECT.
It’s an ancient family recipe. Rose maintains that it goes back at least ten generations on her side, passed from hand to hand and woman to woman, until it reached her grandmother, mother, and she. Loretta learned how to cook it at the age of seven, staring with her serious eyes over the bubbling pot of red sauce. She’s a quick one - she had it locked up in her memory by the time she was nine, could cook it by herself at ten. At her current age she can make the stuff in her sleep - one glass of red, a handful of basil, three glasses of pigeon pan drippings instead of freshly-killed lamb’s blood to fulfill the family’s need for marrow without having to set one of them loose in the park for a victim.
Hav, 20th-Century Literary RPF: Imaginary Planes (3K exactly)
I don't know either of these canons, though this makes me want to read Jan Morris' work, but it's sci-fi time-hopping Invisible Cities enough that I didn't have to know anything. It's fascinating.
Past the Medina, the weathered turrets of the castle (the Hav flag flying gaily) and the quick flash of tamed water from the canal. I could see the railway line stretching out beyond the city, a black ant trail to the looming bulk of the escarpment. The salt flats were on the left. Blix knocked again - “The House of the Chinese Master”- but I could only spare a brief glance enough to get an impression of one of those spikes used by accountants for sorting papers, this one hung instead with draperies of black lace, geometrically precise gardens clustered at the bottom. And then a patchwork of buildings that ran out abruptly, leaving nothing but the railway line and the wrinkled white surface of the salt flats, the unmade bedsheets of some absent giant.
Classical Music RPF: Decomposer Apocalypse (2300 words)
This was not remotely what I was expecting when I clicked into this tag, but someone wrote Beethoven as a zombie hunter, and I squealed when I realized who his groupies were.
And then in rapid succession, Beethoven downed his expresso, pulled a gun, and shot a zombie at point blank in the middle of the Vienna's Thursday morning crowd. Franz also fainted, which Felix unfeelingly thought was a little unjustified; from his position crouched behind the counter, he was the one person who wasn't immediately splattered by zombie brains.
Mr. Vogl, the Vienna's proprietor, wasn't going to be pleased either. After the incident with Elgar and the leprechaun hunters, a clear No Firearms on the Premises sign had been installed over the entrance.
Agatha Christie's Poirot: 5 Habits of the Detective Most Effective (1600 words, plus decorations)
I love Poirot. I love his voice and his fussiness and I love this 1930s Art Deco milieu. This is really an exercise in voice, but it's marvelous and immediately recognizable and you will enjoy it even without knowing the canon, I think.
Is not the most important castle oneself? The grooming of the mustaches which have come undone during sleep. The snipping of the hair juste un peux trop long. The applying of the wax and the twisting. The application of the cream to the scalp. The patting dry of the cheeks. Ah! Just right for the day.
For if you do not put your best foot forward both in the home and for the self, then what can you expect from the world, non?
Watership Down: Far Far Away (1200 words)
Oh my. Sometimes a post-canon fic comes along that just… huh, I never would have thought of that, but how neat. The weird, hallucinatory voice of Silverweed, the poet rabbit from the warren of snares, is an incredible narrative choice, and the way it ends up feeds so well into his character and his fascination with death and destruction.
He has never seen a fox, but he knows it is one; he had once dreamed he was a man with a loud metal stick, and he had pointed it at a quicksilver flash of red in a bush, and it had smelled very strongly of smoke and rot and very faintly of blood and fox. He, or perhaps they, had picked it up by the still-warm tail, the white tip unstained, and looked it over and approved warmly, and then Silverweed had woken up, the power slipping past his whiskers like dusk, and lain still in his burrow, waiting for a poem - but none had ever come.
Captain America RPF: ukuleles and other dangerous ideas (12K or thereabouts)
I. I don't know how to cope with this fic. It's 12K of slowly developing, utterly real and very hot Chris/Hayley, and it's so perfect it just makes my whole insides explode. I whisper-screamed the whole time I read this last night. It's flawless. It's flawless. Rich characterization, wonderful voices, exquisite build, hot sex with feelings and fun… I can't cope with this. I'm going to read it every day for the rest of the year.
Her agent calls her a week later to tell her they’re offering her the role, along with a decent multi-film contract, though Dale does warn her that Peggy’s character is not expected to appear in any subsequent films. Apparently Marvel likes to lock down their actors on the off-chance their characters are needed to appear again.
“So don’t worry,” Dale says. “This isn’t a long term commitment. She’s going to be a one-film character.”
This was originally posted on Dreamwidth, where it has
comments. I would love to hear from you at DW! If you can see this post, you can comment here using OpenID. Thanks!