Yuletide 2013 recs: part 2!

[wakeupnew]

It turns out that when you sleep all afternoon due to sudden onset fever and then your fever breaks when you wake up after it's dark out, it's a lot easier to write a Yuletide recs post than it is to sleep.

Which is to say: I was a little delirious when I wrote some of these. I have apologies.

THE FIFTH ELEMENT
Life Important
(Leeloo and Corbin after the movie - I never knew I wanted this fic, but it turns out that I did; what a great series of snippets regarding their lives, with delightful character voices.)

"Mrs. Dallas, we're coming to visit for Winter Holiday," Leeloo says.

"Two months away! All sorts of things could happen in two months, hell, you married my son after a week."

"I think it was at least a month," Leeloo says skeptically.

GALAXY QUEST
Unsurprising
(Guy gets his moment in the sun. My heart grew three sizes this day!)

They film an interview with Guy to put on the first season DVD, and they have him say that he was on the show before, in a minor role. He briefly mimes his big Crewman #6 moment, because he knows that if people are gonna remember anything about the character, it's his death. When he gets his copy of the DVD in the mail, there's a whole 3-minute compilation of dozens of fans reinacting the scene.

SMOF
(If there was ever a canon that called for a meta fandom fic complete with zine [omg, the ZINE!], it's Galaxy Quest. This is awesome.)

Most of that stuff is optional. I’ve done some of it myself. But man, if you want to get anywhere in Galaxy Quest fandom, you Don’t Talk About GalaxyCon ‘99.

A GIRL AND HER PLESIOSAUR (comic)
Grace and Sally
(This is really sweet, with an unexpected STEALTH CROSSOVER that I appreciated. It might sound weird, but there's a cadence and a feel to it, especially to Grace, that reminds me of one of my favorite books of all time - Miss Rumphius, which I mean as the highest of compliments.)

Gracie crouched down at the water's edge while Sally nuzzled her hand. "Okay, Sally, you have to be good while I'm gone, okay? I don't know when I will be back. It gets really cold in the winter, so I'm making you a little nest out of this blanket, okay? So if you get too cold, you can go curl up in there, and please be careful, and I'll see you next summer, okay? I love you."

GOLDEN GIRLS
A Domestic Affair
(Blanche/Dorothy!! I laughed out loud multiple times, especially at Rose, who is wonderfully Rose-ish.)

“Well, I certainly jump-started his engine,” Blanche said with a sly smile.

“Oh?” Dorothy asked.

Blanche couldn't help but continue. “And he certainly took me for a ride.”

Dorothy stared at her. “Blanche, I'm starting to think you slept with a Buick.”

GRAVITY FALLS
to be a free someone
(Dipper has a tough time adjusting to life outside Gravity Falls. I loved this take on it!)

“Your sister’s a freak, Pines,” the captain of Piedmont High’s football team sneers on the thirty-eighth day of the fall semester, and, well, that’s how Dipper Pines winds up in the principal’s office for the first time in his life. Mabel thinks it’s cool – not on the same level as punching out a pterodactyl, but we can’t all be Grunkle Stans – but their dad doesn’t really share her sentiments.

Grunkle Stan's Meal Plan
(Sweet and funny, and appropriately gross!)

Grunkle Stan wasn't used to cooking for anyone other than Grunkle Stan. And Grunkle Stan's personal standards for food weren't high. Was it cheap? Did it fill you up? Could it be made with a minimum of effort? Great, perfect, finito. Grunkle Stan ate a lot of cereal, and canned baked beans, and macaroni and orange-powder-that-wasn't-quite-cheese. Besides, Stan's kitchen hadn't been changed since the Mystery Shack was built, and he didn't have a lot of fancy gadgets like 'spatulas' or 'toaster ovens' or 'a working refrigerator'. He was used to making do with what he had.

THE GREAT GATSBY
Vast Obscurity
(aberration's gift is really cool! Gatsby is an android, with programming referring to the green light! Daisy wears filigréed helmets in space!!)

His house could be seen from ours across the Starstream River: it was a crystalline tower, glittering and beautiful. It was inaccessible except by ship, of course, unless you wanted to drive the long way around. Jordan tells me his parties were legendary. He procured things no one else could—fresh fruit, real coffee, illegal and untested substances of all kinds, including the foggy liquid they called MoonShine. Beautiful colony ships, long black Kiyazashis and golden Melesis and Porsches red as the planetary dust.

HAPPY ENDINGS
Baby Dump
(BABIES. Everyone has babies and it is hilarious. And also slightly terrifying -- you have to question whether any of these people should have babies.)

Brad stepped back up with a snappy step touch and got his touch on all over her. "You're just really worried we'll have another Max, though."

"We never should have named her after him. I swear, sometimes she has this look like she wants to sleep in a dumpster. Or with man nicknamed Dumpster."

"We will raise her right out of that, woman, I swear to you."

HAWKEYE / YOUNG AVENGERS
style is eternal
(A year of dog costumes. I cackled so much.)

It was 6 AM, all the lights were on and the dog was wearing antlers.

“I’m not awake enough for this,” Clint said, staring blearily into the kitchen. “Why the jingle bells?”

“We’re going caroling later,” Kate said, adjusting Lucky’s antlers just so. His tail thumped against her leg. “I wanted to make sure his costume fit.”

And Never Brought to Mind
(Hawkeye² in what starts as a quiet New Years Eve in, and then quickly escalates. I laughed out loud a ton, which is always the test, to me, of a Hawkeye fic's mettle!)

"Should we shoot them?" Clint asks doubtfully. "They're not violent. Doesn't this go against the Avengers charter?"

"I never signed a charter. I can shoot whoever I want. Young Avengers rules."

"Katie-Kate, there's only enough room for one Hawkeye to be a PR nightmare, and I called that before you were even born."

"Because it won't be a PR nightmare when they devour Times Square on camera?"

Stay, Stay, Stay
(This is the story that I desperately wanted, beautifully closing the gaps between Young Avengers volume 1 and volume 2. I suspect that I know who wrote it and I love you, though if I'm wrong, I love you also, author! STOP LOOKING AT TOMMY LIKE THAT, HE'S NOT DR. STRANGE)

Tommy swallowed around the sting. He’d spent his whole life being a problem, right up to the moment he’d brought his school down around him. Then Billy had shown up, and Kate and Eli and Jonas and Cassie, and they’d needed him to be something else. And it’d been good, it really had been.

Now it felt like everyone was trying to take it away.

Dinner and a Movie (and Saving the World)
(Eli and Tommy, with rad character voices and a story that made me tear up. The Bradley family cameos were so great and appreciated as well!)

It wouldn't have been too bad, falling into a bunch of garbage in front of his least favorite former teammate who had unexpectedly appeared out of nowhere. Tommy was adaptable. He wasn't expecting to see Eli in New York, but stuff happened. He wasn't expecting to land face-first in someone's bag of used paper towels and napkins, but stuff happened. He could just brush it off.

What made it cross the line from 'ordinary shitty day' to 'worst Christmas ever including the Christmas when he was in prison' was when the garbage bags started moving.

HAYWIRE
CIA Disney Princess
(Mallory is not the princess in the title! Awesome cinematic action scenes and a very fun confrontation.)

The security system had picked up a car making its way toward their home about an hour ago. She respected her father's paranoia. That was why she was sitting outside in a pair of practical shorts and a sports bra, wine glass in one hand, desert eagle in the other.

IRON MAN: ARMORED ADVENTURES
Running to Arrive
(PEPPER THE SHIELD AGENT!!!! What a fun story, and a great mash-up of the cartoon series and some comic characters/canons!)

“I’m going to do it,” she said. Tony looked up, staring straight at her.

“Well, yeah,” he said after a second. “Of course you’re going to do it.”

"Right," she said, exhaling. There were a million butterflies in her stomach. She punched the air.

Pepper Potts, Agent of SHIELD. It had a great ring.

"JOLENE" - DOLLY PARTON
Summer Rain
(To quote a reviewer: this is "femslash high fantasy mercenary AU"! I was surprised by the idea at first but wound up really enjoying the world-building and the romance.)

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” Merilyn said, holding herself very erect. “And the way he calls your name. I understand.”

It took Jolene a moment, but then she had to resist every urge in her body to roll her eyes. “Merilyn,” she said, forcing her voice to stay even. “He’s delirious.”

LILO AND STITCH
Escape Velocity
(Lilo and Stitch grow up and have SPACE ADVENTURES. It is exactly as great as it sounds. The author does an awesome job of adding to the quirk and whimsy of the movie.)

Lilo didn’t protest. She knew she wasn’t doing a great job of taking care of herself. Nani and Cobra Bubbles did some finagling to get Lilo a private room and pass Stitch off as a service animal. Stitch balked at the required harness until Lilo added iron-on skull patches and glued pointed steel studs to it. “You’re rocking a look,” she said dubiously, and Stitch turned around to admire himself in the mirror on the back of her dorm room door.

THE LIZZIE BENNET DIARIES
A Good Memory Is Unpardonable
(Lizzie and Darcy bring their families together. There was a gentle, content feel to this that I really liked, and the cameos from characters like Lydia and Gigi were note-perfect!)

“Never make me spend time with that woman again,” Lydia says in a panicked voice as soon as she’s out of earshot of Catherine. “I will move to New York and live with Jane if you try.”

MAURICE
Radiantly happy
(I enjoyed this, quiet and sweet, as a happy ending for Kitty Hall.)

They were soon fast friends who saw each other nearly every day, who walked on the streets arm in arm. Thinking about Anna made Kitty giddy with happiness, but it also reminded her of the way Sylvia had made her feel all those years ago, and how it all had ended with heartache for her, and it made her afraid it might all end badly with Anna too. But spending time with Anna was always so inspiring and exciting that she always forgot her fears, and Anna seemed to enjoy her company just as much as she enjoyed Anna’s.

Alec
(I liked many things about this fic -- a bit more realistic than the sweeping romance of the original, maybe, but still with Forster's happy ending; the sense of community and the original characters -- but Alec's voice in particular made me laugh out loud multiple times.)

Maurice watched him leave. "He was trying it on with me," Alec crowed as soon as the door shut.

"He wasn't!"

"You should have seen his face fall when he saw you. I could have had him in a moment."

MONKEY ISLAND
From Mêlée, With Love
(Oh man, this was an instant nostalgia bomb! The author does such a great job of capturing the wacky spirit of the games. Morgan will always be her parents' little plunder-munchkin!)

The day that Morgan Marley-Threepwood was born, the pirates threw a party on Mêlée Island. It was the middle of summer and the bright Caribbean sun was shining, Blondebeard fried up a batch of Plunder Island feral chicken and there was a peculiar mix of caber-tossing and spitting contests down by the harbour that may have actually resulted in more injuries than all of the insult competitions in the five preceding years put together. However, Stan had recently set up shop next door to the International House of Mojo where he peddled the latest in previously-owned prosthetics, so everything somehow worked out for the best.

MULAN
two hares running side by side
(Shang is the woman in disguise! I love Shui's disgust at Ping's initial hopelessness; interesting AU take!)

It doesn’t take her long to realize she’s serving with a bunch of incompetent fools; clearly the families of China sent barnyard animals—or at least boys demonstrating the general intelligence, not to mention manners, of beasts—in place of their sons. If even one of them has read or understood the Seven Military Classics, Shui will eat her slippers uncomplaining.

THE MUMMY SERIES
On the Same Page
(Evy and Rick have a new adventure, and also Talk About Their Relationship. I love their rapport and repartee, and Evy being Top Librarian Badass!)

Yet now, in the weeks and months following an all-too-real encounter with ancient history, it was hard not to feel a little on edge as she went about her duties. She found her steps quickening involuntarily as she passed through the galleries, and she skirted the sarcophagi rooms altogether.

“Silly superstition,” she scolded herself, muttering under her breath as she entered the library, closing the door firmly behind her. “Get a hold of yourself, for heaven’s sake.”

THE NIGHT CIRCUS - ERIN MORGENSTERN
Transformation
(What a gorgeous job someone has done of matching the book's writing and feel, and then adding their own story to it.)

With a joyful smile, Tsukiko tosses the flower into the air above her head. There are snowflakes falling from the top of the tent and as the flower reaches them it vanishes into the snow. The snowflakes become a rain of petals. She laughs aloud and raises her face to catch them on her skin. She is embraced by the scent of cherry blossom, the petals caressing her skin as they fall like gentle rain.

NOMAD / YOUNG ALLIES
Like carrying water in my hands
(This was listed under Young Allies, but I listed under Nomad since I'm more familiar with that series! Anya's grief over Rikki's death is searing and terrible, and I mean that as an absolute compliment.)

She still expects to hear Rikki's voice sometimes, the joyful one she used when they were punching bad guys. Rikki hadn't had a lot of joy in her life, but Anya's pretty sure she was the source of a lot of it (she's pretty sure she and Steve and punching bad guys were Rikki's favorite things). She hugs that to herself on the days when it's too hard, when she wakes up alone and has to make it through the day dealing with people who don't know what Anya's lost, or who know but they don't understand.

PARKS AND RECREATION
The Greater Night Vale Medical Community
(I've wanted a Welcome to Night Vale/Parks and Rec fusion ever since I first started listening to Night Vale, and I really enjoyed the ones that were written for Yuletide this year! ANN AND LESLIE ♥)

Ann got a weird look on her face, and she took a couple deep breaths. Then she said "I'm going to disinfect this and sew the lacerations up for you. Okay?"

"I figured you would amputate," said Leslie, suspiciously. "Are you sure you're a qualified medical professional?"

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Park
(I dug the little Night Vale-y touches, and I especially loved Ann and Leslie's friendship.)

He could have been describing Leslie Knope. She was the most impossible thing in this town. Mostly it seemed impossible that she wasn’t dead yet.

“The dog park,” the City Council said as one, their voices a horrible cacophony that made Ann’s skin want to rip itself off and run away, “is forbidden to dogs.”

Subject: By the way, how often do you talk to Joe Biden?
(I mean, I feel like the excerpt really speaks for itself -- Senator Elle Woods and senatorial candidate Leslie Knope exchange emails. Cute and fun!)

Dear Elle,

Hi! How are you? How did you get through Election Day when you ran? How did you get through that night? How did you not throw a remote control through your television set in your anxiety and premature rage? Was your husband supportive and encouraging, or a useless nervous wreck whose only redeeming quality at the moment is firmly planted on a couch cushion anyway? Was your best friend helpful? Or did she too have a small child who takes precedence over you even in this time of dire need? I've done this before. Why am I freaking out? Sure, it was on a much smaller scale. It wasn't going to determine my entire future, probably. But it happened! Why am I so nervous? Why must I care so much about my career as a public servant? What happens if I don't win? What happens if I do win? This is terrifying WHY DID I DO THIS ELLE

Stand In The Place Where You Live
(LESLIE KNOPE RUNS FOR PRESIDENT; the format is neat, and it gave me so many feelings, jesus.)

“No one but you has this number,” Leslie tells her, tinny. “We’re being flattened in the polls, Ann! Everything is terrible. Everything is a terrible sucking pit of despair.”

“Everything is not a terrible sucking pit of despair,” Ann tells her, sitting on her coconut-fibre welcome mat while talking to the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States. Wow. “It’s way too early to say anything either way. Anything could happen in six months. Anything could happen tomorrow."

THE PRINCESS DIARIES
queen and consequence
(I was sold from the first two paragraphs -- what a perfect portrayal of Mia. I don't even want to say anything else because the surprise of it was hilarious!!)

Mia was alternately sprinting and speed walking through the palace. She would slow down when she passed staff and repeat under her breath, “A queen does not shriek, a queen does not shriek, a queen does not shriek,” until she was free to sprint again.

“NICHOLAS,” she finally shrieked when she reached the east wing of the palace. She rushed into the room she had given him to use as an office for all his country gentleman/official royal boyfriend needs. His pouf of hair looked up and his eyes swiftly followed, eyebrows lost somewhere in between.

PRINCESS PRINCESS (comic)
The Monsters Under the Bed, and Other Friends Sadie Made
(Oh, this is perfect! Sadie is so sweet and kind and brave, and Amira's support, and OLIVER being so damn cute!)

"Oh, there are lots of monsters small enough to hide under your bed," Claire says. "And most of them love to eat little girls. Especially little girls who stuff their faces with cookies all day."

"I don't eat cookies all day," Sadie tries to say, but Claire talks over her, like usual.

THE PROPOSAL
There Are No Tampons in Dystopia
(I have a weakness for banter-y romantic comedies, and this fic captured the tone of the movie so well!)

"Don't you have a girlfriend?" she asked. "Just buy whatever you'd get for her."

"Great suggestion," he said. "I wish I'd thought of it. One thing, though: I don't have a girlfriend."

He could almost see the exasperated look on her face. "Well, Andrew, imagine that you have a sexy, powerful, extremely busy girlfriend, and then buy the tampons that she would use."

THE RAGE OF JONATHAN FRANZEN (blog post)
Delete Selected Email?
(The fact that there were multiple Yuletide fandoms based on Mallory Ortberg's blog posts this year is hilarious and excellent. The original post is so funny, as were the comments, and the author has built upon it in a way that had me rolling.)

Title: Jonathan’s Excellent Adventure
Summary: Jonathan Franzen enters a magic library where books can swallow you and bring out into their worlds (the old fashioned paper kind – e-books can’t do magic!). Here, Jonathan meets Alice in Wonderland, Dorothea Brooke, Don Juan, Vannevar Morgan, Rosencrantz, the Little Prince, Elinor Dashwood, Sherlock Holmes, Sir Lancelot, Anna Karenina, Paddington Bear, James Bond, and Princess Buttercup. Jonathan gets angry at every single one of them.