Day 2: Snowflake Challenge
Day 2
Rec at least three fanworks that you didn’t create. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it.
I haven't had nearly as much chance to read as much fanfic as I'd like in the past year, but what I have read has been amazing. There's no theme uniting these - they're simply individual pieces that I enjoyed a great deal and that I think no matter the size of their audience, could always use one more look. The only criteria I tried to keep to was that I had to have read them this year (not necessarily made this year)
The newest of these recs since it literally came from Yuletide (and I know I've already recced it, but it is just that good!) This is an amazing example of when canon gets perfectly mimicked and added to in ways that make a super elegant sense. This is an expansion and deepening of the already murky world of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, one that gropes down past the already disturbing elements and adds an extra (in this case incest is part of that, but it drives the dynamic no more than it was already driven by the novel). It's really good and I highly recommend it.
where our boundaries were thinnest (17052 words) by suitablyskippy
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Constance Blackwood/Merricat Blackwood
Characters: Merricat Blackwood, Constance Blackwood
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Codependency, Unhealthy Relationships, Obsessive Behavior
Summary:
“There can’t be anyone else,” I said. “There isn’t anyone else. No one else exists except you and me and Uncle Julian and Jonas; all the rest of them are dead and only pretending to be alive. If you married a husband he would be dead and you would bring a dead man into our home, so you can’t.”
(There was nothing a husband could do for Constance that I couldn’t, except take her name away from her and give her a baby.)
This Supernatural fic was one of the handful of fics that I found it almost impossible to review mostly because I liked it too much - then I worried if that was embarrassing, and then thought, fuck it, who really cares? So I present, Sam and Dean with one thousand times the codependent relationship of canon (and that says a lot to be honest) and with a dynamic that never ever steps over the gen line and yet is more intense and more disturbing than most fics for all that. In the fic it's about the endurance and the aftermath of trying to reduce people to animals, and it's easily one of my favourite fics this year.
White Sand (21090 words) by Morgan
Chapters: 40/40
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Original Characters
Additional Tags: AU, POV Alternating
Summary: When the Gates to Hell opened the second time no one saw it coming. Stephen Hill saw it as a perfect opportunity to find more beasts for his games.
Much like the next rec I was super surprised that I'd never read this one before. I only skim through Wimsey fandom on occasion, and most of it is just a bit too happy for me (I have no idea why that's a problem with this canon). So naturally I present the most miserable (and also amazing!) fic that I can find to remedy that problem. It's canon divergent in the extreme - during Strong Poison, Peter fails to save Harriet from the scaffold. It's meticulous, it's touch with Harriet is superb, and it feels so possible.
'Tell Beauty How She Blasteth' (3927 words) by tree_and_leaf
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Lord Peter Wimsey - Sayers
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Peter Wimsey, Harriet Vane, Charles Parker, Miss Climpson
Additional Tags: Angst, Alternate Canon, AU
Summary: A Strong Poison AU of doom, in which Peter fails to save Harriet. This fic was inspired by discussions with nineveh_uk on LJ, where it was originally posted.
Again, like the fic above, I have no idea how I haven't read this before, but it is so good! It's fic for the Wire (canon divergent again) about McNulty and Stringer Bell and how things go down in a different universe where Stringer Bell is a professor and McNulty is the same mouthy cop. As a bonus, I recommend the author's other fic for the Wire - Games Beyond the Game which is Stringer/Avon (my favourite relationship on the Wire) and a complex, barbed wire take on their story and dynamic. Both of them are more than worth the time.
Dice for Decimals (4385 words) by Gileonnen
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Wire
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Stringer Bell/Jimmy McNulty
Characters: Kima Greggs, Cedric Daniels, Rhonda Pearlman, William "Bunk" Moreland, Lester Freamon, Thomas "Herc" Hauk, Stringer Bell, Jimmy McNulty
Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Profanity, Canon-Typical Sexism, Canon-Typical Racism, Alternate Universe, Economics 101, Significant Dry-Erase Boards, Detectives and String
Summary: Dr. Russell Bell is a week unshaven, with gold-rimmed glasses and leather-reinforced elbows on his court coat. He's professorial in a broad-shouldered Indiana Jones kind of way; if it weren't for the metal detectors at the entrance to the courthouse, McNulty would swear blind he was packing.
I will probably come back and add more recs to this post, as soon as I remember the password to my pinboard where I keep the treasure trove of all the things that I loved that I remember to bookmark.