starfishstar

YULETIDE IS UPON US! I know you've all already heard me wittering endlessly about how much I've enjoyed participating in Yuletide (my first time!) But the stories are now revealed, and YULETIDE CONTINUES TO BE AWESOME.


I received three (three!) (3!) gifts, and I sincerely love and am blown away by them all. I just can't believe how lucky I am, and how kind and wonderful these writers are! Please allow me to rec:

• snow on snow, snow on snow (Seraphina by Rachel Hartman) – This is a stunning, detailed, thoughtful look at Seraphina a few years before the start of the novel, as she lives in the utter loneliness imposed by both her outsider status, and her family's fear of it. The story makes beautiful use of her only bond with someone who at least sometimes understands her (her dragon uncle, Orma), as well as the way Seraphina turns to music as the only outlet for her feelings. The prose, the attention to precise little world-building details, everything here is so perfectly true to canon. I mean it, I can't stop talking about how beautiful this is. I don't know whether or not this would make any sense to someone who doesn't know the canon, but it's so beautiful that I can't help thinking you ought to try. :-)

• Suite Infanta (Seraphina by Rachel Hartman) – Yes, I got two Seraphina fics! I can't even believe it! This is short, sweet and perfectly in character...and does precisely, precisely what I asked for in my sign-up, which is a glimpse of what life is like for Seraphina, Glisselda and Kiggs, as they navigate their public and private lives together after the events of the two books. It's also about Seraphina and music. And Seraphina and Orma. (I'd forgotten just how much I love Orma as a character, until these two fics reminded me.) It left me wanting more, more, more of these wonderful characters.

• The Strange Visitors (John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme) – And last but very much not least, this romp in the style of John Finnemore's eponymous storyteller had me laughing out loud. Only Finnemore could get almost abducted by aliens...but be so pedantic about it that the aliens eventually get frustrated and go away. :-)


Also, this one is not a gift to me, but it feels kind of like a gift, because it's in a fandom I nominated for Yuletide, requested for Yuletide, and have been relentlessly promoting all over the place ;-) So I was desperately hoping it might make it into Yuletide...and yes, there's a 221B Baker Towers fic!!! It's a gift to keerawa, the other person who also requested 221BBT, and it's so stunningly perfect for their request. (And so completely different from my own take on the 'verse – but that's the beauty of an open universe fandom!)

• Red Phosphorus (221B Baker Towers) – This is twisted, messy, dangerous, tough-young-streetwise-brilliant Holmes/Moriarty where Moriarty shapes Holmes, and Holmes makes Moriarty, and neither of them is ever going to be the same. I want so badly to know what their version of "The Final Problem" is going to look like.


ALSO! Yuletide has brought us a bounty of both John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme and John Finnemore's Double Acts fics. (Two takes on Bunning and Søndergaard from "Penguin Diplomacy," and three "Since you ask me..." tales! I think the fandom favorites are clear.)  ;-)

There are so many intriguing Lord Peter Wimsey and Call Me By Your Name fics that I'm having to bookmark those for later, and there's a fic for Jane, Unlimited by Kristen Cashore that I'm likewise bookmarking for later because it's a bit longer, but it looks fantastic – it's from Ivy's perspective, so it's Ivy, Unlimited.

There's a short story ("The Thing in the Walls Wants Your Small Change" by Virginia M Mohlere) that I only discovered because of seeing it requested in Yuletide; it's delightful and well worth a read, and the fics for it are fantastic! The Giant in the Cavern Brings Copper and Silver and Gold, which gives a brilliant look at the same story but from the tiny dragon's perspective, and Apartment Dragons, in which Caro's grandmother comes to visit.

I grinned at That Sunday Morning Feeling (Love, Simon), a perfect bit of next-day-after-the-Ferris-Wheel fluff.

There are two Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fics to remind us just how weird and alien Ford Prefect is (one features a cameo from Jack Harkness!)

And to bring things full circle, there's a third Seraphina fic that also makes beautiful use of Seraphina's relationship to music (apparently everyone in this fandom but me can write beautifully about music!) Legato.

December is here, and I've finally finished compiling my recs from this year's Remus/Sirius Games! Wow, what a round of the Games this was. So many outstanding works. Even just my top picks (let alone ALL my recs) are massive in number.

At the top of the list are: Devil's Bridge by veeagainst, a stunning, terrifyingly plausible present-day AU of a fascist, post-Voldemort UK, with extraordinary world-building and wonderful characterization of Sirius and Remus. The Truth in Potions by shaggydogstail, a glorious canon-divergent AU that develops not just Sirius and Remus but all the friendships around them, and gives them a chance to get things right before it's too late. A Duet by mustntgetmy, a masterfully written and rare thing: a fic I was so glad I read despite the character death in it, because it comes through so clearly that what mattered was that their love existed. And Retrial by phoenixgal, where Remus is a podcast host investigating the (possibly wrongful) imprisonment of one Sirius Black, in an amazing execution of this creative premise.

Then there's Watch Me Go Blind by lefthandofglory and ruinsplume, an incredibly thought-out exploration of what it's actually to be a werewolf (and to love a werewolf). Hiraeth by llassah is a beautiful examination of what Order work and spying must have been like for Remus, that then gradually, cleverly goes canon-divergent AU. Whereas the time when you were mine by renaissance is a straight-up modern, Muggle AU that makes excellent use of a mix of texting, phone calls, and in-person conversations that play out in real-time across a single hour. And for total otherworldly AUs, there's Alone in Space by toyhto, a beautiful and moving story in which Remus and Sirius are both scientists in space.

Other fics dive deep into canon: Eclipse Season by theheartischill is an extraordinarily insightful portrayal of Sirius struggling with all his rage and frustration in his teen years. In Heart and Soul by shiftylinguini, the author takes what could be a clichéd trope (sex potion!) and creates something very original with it. And Obelus by theemdash presents a compelling case for how that so unbelievable canonical mistrust between Remus and Sirius could have believably come about.

I haven't forgotten art: The sun always comes by shigai is four gorgeously detailed images of Remus' life, his love for Sirius, and the deep camaraderie between the Marauders.

And those are just some of my recs! For more detail about those, and many others, head to my Remus Recs page and scroll down to "My favorite fics (and art) from the RS Games 2017" (at the bottom of the "Remus/Sirius" section, right before "Remus gen").


. . .
For those who don't know, I actually maintain a huge recs list; I just don't update it these days as much as I used to. It's mostly Harry Potter recs, but also some other fandoms (e.g., Torchwood). (I don't have Sherlock recs there only because my Sherlock recs would be so, so many and I've never quite been able to tackle the project of compiling them.)

My recs list, because it's so big, is divided into two separate pages:

RECS: THE MASTER POST, which is Harry Potter plus all the other fandoms.

RECS: THE REMUS RECS, because so many of my recs are in some way about Remus (Remus/Sirius, Remus/Tonks, Remus gen...) that I made that its own whole page.

These were put together in the heyday of when I was reading much more fic, so it's mostly a snapshot of my fic reading habits circa late 2013. But I definitely do add to them now and then! e.g., now, thanks to the massive outpouring of excellent fic from the RS Games. :-)

Day 5

"Post recs for at least three fanworks that you did not create."


Recs for just a FEW fics? Distill all of what I've read and loved down to just a few?? But how...???

The description for day 5 talked about the joy of multifandom recs, so I decided to take that as my prompt and my challenge: I'm going to rec across all the fandoms in which read I've significantly, but for each fandom I'll pick just ONE fanwork to rec. Yes, just one – from me who usually sends, to friends who are foolhardy enough to ask for recs, 14-page docs with subdivisions and footnotes. (A caveat, of course: This doesn't mean this will be my one favorite fic in each fandom, because that would be impossible. But I'll pick something I love, by an author I love.)

One fic per fandom.

Here we go.


HARRY POTTER

My temptation, of course, will be to rec copperbadge all over the place, a favorite author I've followed through several fandoms. But I'm not going to do that – only one rec per author! Instead, for Harry Potter I'm reccing lyras, whose genfic has moved and inspired me many times over the years. Hard and almost arbitrary to choose which one out of many, but let's go with:

• A Reason to Fight by lyras – "Aberforth thinks he's finished with fighting -- until Neville Longbottom falls through the portrait door and into his life."


SHERLOCK

• Bel Canto by bendingsignpost – an all-time favorite story by a very favorite author (and a fusion, though you don't at all need to be familiar with the other source material – I wasn't!) John is the house doctor at an opera company and Sherlock is the younger brother of the aristocrat who owns the opera, but who is the mysterious composer living in the basement…? Such a well-written period piece. And such a brilliantly written...everything.


TORCHWOOD

I have two far and away favorite Torchwood authors; one is (again) copperbadge and one is nancybrown. nancybrown's fics are all fantastic, so again, kind of arbitrary to pick just one. But I'll go with:

• Got That Friday Feeling Again by nancybrown – a seriously brilliant take on Groundhog Day... Because who better to suffer through learning to become a nicer person through endless iterations of the same day than...Owen? (Also known as: "That One Trip to Glasgow Where Jack and Ianto Had Sex Five Thousand Times in One Day.")


MERLIN

Again, here it's tempting to rec the epic AU Drastically Redefining Protocol by rageprufrock (and I suppose by saying that, I have recced it), but I kind of assume any Merlin fan's already read it! So instead I want to rec:

• The Curious Incident of the Harpies in Broad Daylight, or, the Abbreviated Adventures of Gwaine and Lancelot, Not-Quite-Knights For Hire (While We Wait For Arthur To Become King) by kaydeefalls – a delightful romp featuring Lancelot and Gwaine, hanging around, getting up to things, until they can become knights. Also available as a wonderful podfic by lunchee.


WHITE COLLAR

Here's where copperbadge will get his rec, because this is a fandom I followed into only because I love everything Sam writes, and he sucked me into an entire new fandom just by how enthusiastically he talked about it... Yet another case where what I actually want to say is "just read everything by this author," but since I have to pick one:

• Four Meals by copperbadge – because it's so full of love of so many kinds, and because PeterandElizabethandNeal, and because copperbadge creates OCs like nobody else, so fully realized even if they only appear for a few lines of the story.


THE MENTALIST

• This was an early fandom of mine, so I no longer remember well enough to pick one favorite story, but I definitely remember many terrific, in-character casefics, as well as great stories of young Patrick and Angela, from an author called: 221b Baker Street.


MISS FISHER'S MURDER MYSTERIES

And here it's the opposite, I'm too new to this fandom to have read widely yet, but this is definitely my favorite author I've found so far; again, so hard and arbitrary to pick just one story, but I'll go with:

• Varying States of Muscular Undress by gaslightgallows (hearts_blood) – because like all the best Miss Fisher fics, it's funny and sexy and full of great Phryne-and-Jack moments, plus some lovely interactions with the other characters.

Hullo hullo, fyi: I've finally finished updating my huge list of fic recs! (I had done this already for my general recs, but now my separate Remus recs are complete too...)


My recs pages are:

RECS: the master post – this includes LOTS of Harry Potter recs, broken down by category (fics centered on specific characters, for example Luna, Neville, Hermione, Teddy, etc., as well as a whole bunch of great genfic, a few rarer pairings, and a few other categories like AUs, crossovers and humorous fics). Though much of the list is Harry Potter, I've got some recs for other fandoms, too, for example Torchwood, Merlin, and Cabin Pressure. (Why yes, I am British-TV/radio-centric!) And an especially fun final section called "other other other" (wonderfully offbeat cross-fandom fics!)

RECS: The Remus Recs – because I have so many of them that they deserved their own page. This includes subsections for Remus/Tonks, Remus/Sirius, Remus gen, and Remus in other pairings.

You can access either page by clicking those links above or you can search by my "recs" tag and then scroll down to the bottom to see both these same posts – which is probably a more accessible way to view them, since you'll see just the section headings showing, but the full recs themselves are behind cuts.


The one fandom where I read a lot of fic but do not currently maintain a recs page is BBC Sherlock, simply because for a while I was reading so much Sherlock fic that I didn't see how I could possibly keep up with a recs master list! Now that my fic reading has slowed down, maybe I'll finally one day put together a list.

I do have one small sub-list of Sherlock recs, though: genfic recs of Sherlock and Mycroft as brothers. I've contemplated doing the same for a few other sub-categories. (Sherlock/Victor? Mycroft/Lestrade? brilliant crack-y AUs...?) So if anybody has requests – just ask! Usually all it takes to get me to put together a recs list is someone giving me a gentle but enthusiastic nudge.

Guys! Guys guys guys guys guys.

Wonderful huldrejenta wrote me a birthday ficlet, and it's a sweet series of birthday reflections from both Andromeda and Teddy, and it's lovely and I'm bowled over by this gift and I want everyone to read it. It's here: "Birthday Celebrations."

Thank you, huldrejenta!!

STARFISHSTAR'S FANFIC RECS

What can I say? For a while there, I was reading a lot of fanfiction... So I thought maybe others could benefit from all my bookmarking and notetaking!

Caveat: This list was mostly compiled in late 2013 and though I do add to it here and there, that was the last point when I was reading copiously and widely. If you find you share my interests and you're interested in more recs, though, leave a comment! It's possible I might have more ideas for you, and in any case I always love chatting about recs. :-)

These recs are mostly Harry Potter, arranged as follows:

–genfic, sorted by era (some of the very best stuff is in here!)
–the Remus Recs: Yes, I love Remus so much that he gets his own entire section. Includes Remus/Tonks, Remus/Sirius, Remus gen and Remus other pairings.
–character-specific story recs (these include dedicated sections for: Neville, Luna, Hermione, Lily, Lily/James, Andromeda, Teddy, Tonks, Sirius, and then a few miscellaneous pairings)
–AUs
–crossovers
–just generally good fun (fun, humorous fics of all stripes)


Then come a few recs for other fandoms:

Merlin, Cabin Pressure, Torchwood, White Collar, and some assorted others (Firefly, His Dark Materials, Narnia, fairy tales, even Calvin and Hobbes) and what I'm calling "other other other" (a couple of extraordinarily awesome, quirky crossovers). UPDATE: These "other fandoms" (i.e. everything that's not Harry Potter) now have their own post, since this one got too big! You can find them here: OTHER FANDOM RECS.)


I've also amassed a ton of BBC Sherlock recs (and a few ACD canon Sherlock Holmes recs, too) but they're so many that I still haven't figured out how to organize them in a useful way, so they're not included here, at least for now. If you've got requests, though, ask! I might have suggestions. And I do have one specific sub-list of recs: genfic recs of Sherlock and Mycroft as brothers.


Now to the recs... It's pretty much impossible to pick favorites when there's so much talented writing out there, but recs in bolded text are ones I especially recommend. Enjoy!


HARRY POTTER RECS


GENFIC RECS
( GENFIC RECS )

CHARACTER-SPECIFIC RECS
(note: there’s some overlap between these and my genfic recs above)

(THE REMUS RECS – link goes to an entire separate page including Remus/Sirius, Remus/Tonks, Remus genfic and a few of Remus in other pairings)

( NEVILLE-CENTRIC )

( LUNA-CENTRIC )

( HERMIONE-CENTRIC )

( LILY-CENTRIC )

( LILY/JAMES )

( ANDROMEDA-CENTRIC )

( TEDDY-CENTRIC )

( TONKS-CENTRIC )

( SIRIUS-CENTRIC )

( DUMBLEDORE/GRINDELWALD )

( PETUNIA/SEVERUS SNAPE )

( VIKTOR KRUM/UNDISCLOSED )

( NEXT-GEN PAIRINGS )

HARRY POTTER: AUs!
( AUs )

HARRY POTTER: CROSSOVERS AND FUSIONS
( CROSSOVERS )

HARRY POTTER: JUST GENERALLY GOOD FUN
( GOOD FUN )


OTHER FANDOM RECS (now moved to a separate post, HERE)


. . . . .