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2017 Yuletide Recs #2
I love Yuletide. Thanks to everyone who wrote all the gorgeous things that I DEVOURED this week (ESPECIALLY MY TWO AUTHORS ♥)! That was great, let's do it again next year.
MAGNUS CHASE AND THE GODS OF ASGARD - RICK RIORDAN
Good with Their Hands
(I loved this gift for me. Hearth and Blitz after Blitz's brush with death in Hammer of Thor! I really appreciated the details--Blitz is concerned about sweating through his vests; OF COURSE HE IS. Hearth knows the names of all Blitz's furniture; OF COURSE HE DOES. Hearth being stuck on Blitz being hurt is so heartbreaking and so very Hearth. And I loved the humor and how much they care for each other.)
Brightness
(A fabulous treat for me: Blitz and Hearth in Boston! This is so lovely! I loved the little Boston details, especially the enchanted Charlie cards for the T [man, do I want one of my own], and how, even in the early days of their partnership, Hearth and Blitz are both prickly and loving as heck while watching out for each other.)
MASTER AND COMMANDER
And on the seventh...
(Jack and Stephen get MAROONED on a DESERT ISLAND and it is everything I could have wished for and more. All the period and nautical details made the story feel all the more lived-in and genuine, and the characterization and writing are really gorgeous. There's a call-back to Stephen's makeshift shell-knife, at one point, that made me legitimately gasp.)
Desaix
(Crossing this fandom over with Temeraire is brilliant and I was sold right from the start! The opening action scene is thrilling. I could read SO MUCH of this.)
MONSTER FACTORY - POLYGON
return the smart phone back to the big size
(The Final Pam needs a smart phone to show her pictures of her "lovely, powerful, perfect family," but she is too powerful and keeps breaking them. This is hilarious.)
NIMONA
don't wanna be broke
(I LOVE THIS. Ballister and Ambrosius putting the city back together again, and Dr. Blitzmeyer meeting Nimona while she's keeping order in the Forest. All the character voices are pitch perfect, but I especially loved Nimona--so defiant and defensive and wild and funny.)
THE PRINCESS BRIDE - WILLIAM GOLDMAN
The Fighter Grooms
(Oh man, I really enjoyed this; I feel like the tone of The Princess Bride is something that's tough to emulate, and it was done so beautifully here. I love the back-and-forth between Fezzik and Inigo.)
POD SAVE AMERICA RPF
A Boyfriend for Christmas
(Full disclosure, I don't listen to this podcast and I don't really have any clue who Jon Lovett is, but![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
unicorndust told me to read this so I did and it was delightful. FAKE DATING, PINING, FESTIVE FAMILY HOLIDAYS, my kryptonite!!! This is so sweet.)
THE SECRET GARDEN
Those Who Know Secret Things
(The kids grow older and there are lots of secrets and they all take care of each other and I'm growing incoherent because it's 4AM but I REALLY LOVED THIS; it's such a great take on Mary and Dickon and Colin growing up.)
SHE'S THE MAN
lights out paper town
(Olivia finds herself, after the movie, and eventually Viola gets there too. The comic timing here is killer.)
SIMON VS. THE HOMO SAPIENS AGENDA - BECKY ALBERTALLI
Simon vs. a Junior Prom for the Ages
(This is EVERYTHING THAT I WANTED from a post-book fic. The whole ensemble is perfectly IC and wonderful, I love everyone taking the shit out of Simon, and Simon and Bram are perfect. This fic is so very high school in the best possible ways.)
THE SIMS
It's Getting Hot in Here
(My god, the use of the game mechanics in this fic!!! Pure genius. It is hilarious to see a lot of weird Sims behavior treated as common sense, it turns out.)
STAR WARS: X-WING: ROGUE SQUADRON
and a flask of Whyren's Reserve
(I love shenanigans, Rogue Squadron, and stories about the early days of the Rebellion, and this packs all that in and more! I knew I was going to love it right from the start; Wedge and Tycho's silent reactions to opening the door on Hobbie and Janson were great. All the character voices are excellent!)
SUNGKYUNKWAN SCANDAL
Supplemental Lectures
(THIS IS PERFECTION, GOODBYE FOREVER. The Blue Messengers are all wonderful, and I love SO MUCH that Jae-shin gets reluctantly, hiccupingly roped into correcting their grammar and teaching them to write, and Yong-ha's carefree-until-concerned-about-Jae-shin flippancy is just right. I don't want to spoil things but this goes to many places that delight me on a personal level, especially the ending.)
THINK OF ENGLAND - K.J. CHARLES
A Bridge/A Chain
(Fen and Pat meeting for the first time, and then at the Armstrongs' party. Fen is marvelously blithe and funny, and Pat is so practical and--OH PAT--resigned to her new circumstances, in the first part.)
A Purr-fect Companion
(I don't think it is a spoiler to say that Daniel has somehow turned into a cat, and now Archie has to figure out what in the world to do. This is lovely; Daniel is The Most Daniel, even while a cat, and Archie is so sweet and loyal and, bless his heart, straight-forward.)
Playacting
(HONEYPOT SPY OPERATION. I love how comfortable they are with each other here, and how warm and funny they are! The character voices are fantastic.)
TRUE GRIT
Bulletproof
(The prose here is fantastic and I love every bit of the life that Mattie has made for herself. She is beautifully practical here; it's so hard to take a kid-character and age them up in a way where they're adult but still believably the same person, and this author makes it look easy.)
TWISTER
After the Storm (Comes The Rainbow)
(This is a cool take on the soulmark AU with some aspects that I've never seen before! Also it's just extremely Jo and Bill, all the way.)
VEEP
iowa, a place to grow
(OH AMY AND DAN. This is extremely Them. I can hear the actors saying the lines.)
WONDER WOMAN
Everything Must Burn
(After the movie, Diana and Etta hunt Dr. Maru. The characterizations and choices for each character were really interesting and felt very true to the movie, and I loved the additions of comic canon [Diana nonchalantly talking to geese!!] and details like la femme formidable!)
The Fairest Thing on the Black Earth
(Hippolyta and Menalippe lay Antiope to rest. Bittersweet and lyrical; really beautiful.)
On the Education of an Amazonian Princess, and the Perils Thereof
(Baby-Diana is an unholy terror who's driving all of her tutors to quit. This is so cute and funny!)
On a Lavender Night
(Diana and Etta go to a GERMAN LESBIAN BAR for ESPIONAGE PURPOSES and it is wonderful. They are both fucking marvelous here!)
Older Than I Once Was
(I love this. I wanted to know so much more, after hearing that in their brief dialogue in Blackfoot, "Chief" introduces himself to Diana as Napi, a demi-god trickster. This fic gives more in spades.)
MAGNUS CHASE AND THE GODS OF ASGARD - RICK RIORDAN
Good with Their Hands
(I loved this gift for me. Hearth and Blitz after Blitz's brush with death in Hammer of Thor! I really appreciated the details--Blitz is concerned about sweating through his vests; OF COURSE HE IS. Hearth knows the names of all Blitz's furniture; OF COURSE HE DOES. Hearth being stuck on Blitz being hurt is so heartbreaking and so very Hearth. And I loved the humor and how much they care for each other.)
"Do you want to… um…" Was he blushing? He was! And mumbling something impossible to lip read.
I am deaf, said Hearth innocently. You'll need to give me a hands on explanation.
Brightness
(A fabulous treat for me: Blitz and Hearth in Boston! This is so lovely! I loved the little Boston details, especially the enchanted Charlie cards for the T [man, do I want one of my own], and how, even in the early days of their partnership, Hearth and Blitz are both prickly and loving as heck while watching out for each other.)
Hearth clapped his hand on Blitz's arm before they went back into the station. Blitz thought of a dozen rebuttals--Look, let's just do what we can, we can just keep doing the day and night shifts, I'm sorry you have so many weird problems with people helping you but--but Hearth just signed Sorry.
That was the one thing he hadn't been ready to argue with.
MASTER AND COMMANDER
And on the seventh...
(Jack and Stephen get MAROONED on a DESERT ISLAND and it is everything I could have wished for and more. All the period and nautical details made the story feel all the more lived-in and genuine, and the characterization and writing are really gorgeous. There's a call-back to Stephen's makeshift shell-knife, at one point, that made me legitimately gasp.)
He watched Jack stride away on his errand, the skin of his bare back patchily-flushed with heat and effort. Jack moved with energy and purpose, his head up, for all the world as if he had just finished one of their leisurely breakfasts and was off to the topmain. Or maincross, or foremain, or whatever he called his various inexplicable places high on the masts. That would be the first sight of the ship, when she returned.
Stephen counted his pulse and watched the horizon over the sea.
Desaix
(Crossing this fandom over with Temeraire is brilliant and I was sold right from the start! The opening action scene is thrilling. I could read SO MUCH of this.)
Jack sighed, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Why, what did you do this time? Have you been eating the Doctor’s pills again?”
The dragonet lifted her head, a hint of indignation in her pale eyes. “Only as a philosophical experiment. He says there has been almost no research into the effects of human medications on dragons: only half a dozen papers in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Pah, it is absurd! How are we ever to learn what dosages work if we do not try them?”
MONSTER FACTORY - POLYGON
return the smart phone back to the big size
(The Final Pam needs a smart phone to show her pictures of her "lovely, powerful, perfect family," but she is too powerful and keeps breaking them. This is hilarious.)
A pressure redistributing glove, Metal Husband, two witnesses holding plexiglass screens between her hand and the phone, and it still warped itself into a pretzel.
“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” said one witness, staring in horror back at the ruined remains of the phone. It honestly really looked nothing at all like a phone any more. Now it just looked like a smoking, husk-like corpse that embodied less a smart phone and more That Which Was Once A Smart Phone But Was Since Punished For Its Hubris
NIMONA
don't wanna be broke
(I LOVE THIS. Ballister and Ambrosius putting the city back together again, and Dr. Blitzmeyer meeting Nimona while she's keeping order in the Forest. All the character voices are pitch perfect, but I especially loved Nimona--so defiant and defensive and wild and funny.)
“Oh, no, I can’t leave,” said Doctor Blitzmeyer. “I’ve got too much to do, and not a lot of time to do it. It’s nice to see I’m not the only human who isn’t afraid of the Forest, though.”
“Who said I’m human?” Nimona asked. She grinned a little too wide and let her teeth get a little too long.
Doctor Blitzmeyer barely blinked. “Sorry, didn’t mean to assume. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in helping to advance the cause of scientific understanding, would you?”
THE PRINCESS BRIDE - WILLIAM GOLDMAN
The Fighter Grooms
(Oh man, I really enjoyed this; I feel like the tone of The Princess Bride is something that's tough to emulate, and it was done so beautifully here. I love the back-and-forth between Fezzik and Inigo.)
"I, too, spent my whole life being my father's son," Inigo said. He set aside the bucket and leaned against Fezzik, being careful to avoid the bruise. The menthol tang of liniment mingled with the almond scent of Inigo's hair oil and the campground reek of dust and dung and smoke and sweat, so familiar he hardly noticed it. "Now I suppose I am learning how to be... myself."
Fezzik wrapped an enormous arm around him and rested a hand the size of a ham on Inigo's thigh. "At least you are not... on the shelf!"
POD SAVE AMERICA RPF
A Boyfriend for Christmas
(Full disclosure, I don't listen to this podcast and I don't really have any clue who Jon Lovett is, but
unicorndust told me to read this so I did and it was delightful. FAKE DATING, PINING, FESTIVE FAMILY HOLIDAYS, my kryptonite!!! This is so sweet.)This was, Ronan reflected, a monumentally stupid idea. “I don’t want to make Christmas about me coming out or whatever—I was hoping I could bring you and let them make their own assumptions from there.”
There was a brief pause while Jon processed this. Then he said, “So you want me to pretend to be your boyfriend.”
THE SECRET GARDEN
Those Who Know Secret Things
(The kids grow older and there are lots of secrets and they all take care of each other and I'm growing incoherent because it's 4AM but I REALLY LOVED THIS; it's such a great take on Mary and Dickon and Colin growing up.)
Men from the local parish come to court her. Men who have returned from the service like her father. Men who have land and a decent yearly income.
She takes tea with them and does her best to be polite, for her uncle's sake, if nothing else. She is not unaware that he would be entirely within his rights to simply arrange a marriage for her. When he asks how these meetings went, though, and she says, "He's quite accomplished," or "We had a nice stroll," he says, "This is your home, Mary. Do not leave it until you have good reason."
SHE'S THE MAN
lights out paper town
(Olivia finds herself, after the movie, and eventually Viola gets there too. The comic timing here is killer.)
Olivia steps closer. “Viola. Do you want to kiss me right now?”
Viola scrunches up her face, groans. “Ugh. Maybe? It’s not a specific right-at-this-moment desire. More like a lowlevel constant yearning.”
SIMON VS. THE HOMO SAPIENS AGENDA - BECKY ALBERTALLI
Simon vs. a Junior Prom for the Ages
(This is EVERYTHING THAT I WANTED from a post-book fic. The whole ensemble is perfectly IC and wonderful, I love everyone taking the shit out of Simon, and Simon and Bram are perfect. This fic is so very high school in the best possible ways.)
Bram: But seriously
Bram: I expect to be wooed.
Simon: Wooed? The 1940s called, they want their word back.
Bram: Shut up. Is it wrong to want a little romance in life?
THE SIMS
It's Getting Hot in Here
(My god, the use of the game mechanics in this fic!!! Pure genius. It is hilarious to see a lot of weird Sims behavior treated as common sense, it turns out.)
"Anyway, if you're that hard up for company, do what I did at your age."
"Put up an ad for a roommate?"
"That would be far more sensible." Grandma's expression said she was surprised Senna thought Grandma had ever been sensible. "No, I just trapped some poor schmuck in conversation outside my house until he agreed to marry me."
STAR WARS: X-WING: ROGUE SQUADRON
and a flask of Whyren's Reserve
(I love shenanigans, Rogue Squadron, and stories about the early days of the Rebellion, and this packs all that in and more! I knew I was going to love it right from the start; Wedge and Tycho's silent reactions to opening the door on Hobbie and Janson were great. All the character voices are excellent!)
Tycho took the bottle from Wes and sniffed the contents. He coughed. “Oof.”
“Puts hair on your chest,” said Hobbie.
“Yeah, and burns it out of my nose,” said Tycho.
SUNGKYUNKWAN SCANDAL
Supplemental Lectures
(THIS IS PERFECTION, GOODBYE FOREVER. The Blue Messengers are all wonderful, and I love SO MUCH that Jae-shin gets reluctantly, hiccupingly roped into correcting their grammar and teaching them to write, and Yong-ha's carefree-until-concerned-about-Jae-shin flippancy is just right. I don't want to spoil things but this goes to many places that delight me on a personal level, especially the ending.)
His preoccupation did not go unnoticed. Jae-shin woke bleary-eyed one afternoon to find Gu Yong-ha leaning elegantly on the doorframe of the room Jae-shin occupied in his father's house. Seeing Jae-shin awake, he came forward, flipping open his fan.
“I seem to recall that last month, you were only on night duty one day out of five,” he drawled. “The rest of the time you lived in the daylight, like a human. You looked so well-rested, I almost couldn’t recognize you. But now!” He snapped his fan shut and leaned down to tap him on the chin with it. “Unkempt, sunken-eyed, and extremely close-mouthed -- ah, there’s the Geol-oh I’ve known for so long.”
THINK OF ENGLAND - K.J. CHARLES
A Bridge/A Chain
(Fen and Pat meeting for the first time, and then at the Armstrongs' party. Fen is marvelously blithe and funny, and Pat is so practical and--OH PAT--resigned to her new circumstances, in the first part.)
She leaned forward with a sweetly confiding look. "That's really why I need a companion, you know. Daddy's too busy with work to leave home often, and Mummy's health isn't very good. And since I'm far too young and female to be trusted on my own, I need to find someone else to travel with me."
The surprisingly arch tone in which she made that final statement almost startled a laugh out of Pat. She managed to turn it into a smile at the last moment.
A Purr-fect Companion
(I don't think it is a spoiler to say that Daniel has somehow turned into a cat, and now Archie has to figure out what in the world to do. This is lovely; Daniel is The Most Daniel, even while a cat, and Archie is so sweet and loyal and, bless his heart, straight-forward.)
The cat meowed at him.
"Your conversation is as good as any at the club," he added.
The cat looked affronted.
"Better than any at the club," Archie amended.
Playacting
(HONEYPOT SPY OPERATION. I love how comfortable they are with each other here, and how warm and funny they are! The character voices are fantastic.)
As always there isn't a hint of guile to him and on any other man, Daniel would assume that all this is preemptive jealousy for the events to come but this is Captain Archibald Curtis: hero, excellent in bed, good man and a genuine worrier for Daniel's safety.
TRUE GRIT
Bulletproof
(The prose here is fantastic and I love every bit of the life that Mattie has made for herself. She is beautifully practical here; it's so hard to take a kid-character and age them up in a way where they're adult but still believably the same person, and this author makes it look easy.)
This was too sour, Mattie thought. A man cannot have but one path in life available to him, and be damned if his footsteps falter half way down it; she certainly did not spend her remaining years, after her fourteenth, hunting murderers in the territories, despite all evidence to suggest she had some kind of proficiency in the matter. She had made her home, kept her privacy, raised her young sister, invested, farmed, taught, and had struggled on in a world which could be cruel to a woman of stout health and plain features.
TWISTER
After the Storm (Comes The Rainbow)
(This is a cool take on the soulmark AU with some aspects that I've never seen before! Also it's just extremely Jo and Bill, all the way.)
"Oh, God," he groaned, leaning back and casting his eyes up at the roof of the cabin. "You just had to step all over the moment, didn't you. I don't know why I ever expected anything else."
"You know, I don't know why you did, either," she grinned, then reached out to pull him back in for another kiss.
VEEP
iowa, a place to grow
(OH AMY AND DAN. This is extremely Them. I can hear the actors saying the lines.)
She's probably going to fuck him in New Hampshire. She's probably going to fuck him straight through Super Tuesday. She fucking hates the campaign trail.
WONDER WOMAN
Everything Must Burn
(After the movie, Diana and Etta hunt Dr. Maru. The characterizations and choices for each character were really interesting and felt very true to the movie, and I loved the additions of comic canon [Diana nonchalantly talking to geese!!] and details like la femme formidable!)
"Some of them were quite attractive, though." Diana smiled, her soft, small, sugar-sweet smile that in turn made her somehow even more beautiful. "Are Gertrude and Alice married?"
Etta nearly choked on her tea. She coughed a few times, pressing a handkerchief to her lips, and Diana raised her eyebrows again.
The Fairest Thing on the Black Earth
(Hippolyta and Menalippe lay Antiope to rest. Bittersweet and lyrical; really beautiful.)
The old rites immediately flooded back into her mind and Hippolyta would allow no one else near enough to help tend Antiope. She drew Antiope’s eyes closed, put Antiope's sword back into her limp hand, and placed one of her hands over Antiope’s forehead and the other over her chest, then bent her head to pray that her spirit would find her way home. A hand on her shoulder punctured her focus, and she turned with a shout in her mouth, hand clenched and ready to lash out, only to find Menalippe before her.
“I have a right,” Menalippe said firmly, unwavering before Hippolyta’s grief and fury.
On the Education of an Amazonian Princess, and the Perils Thereof
(Baby-Diana is an unholy terror who's driving all of her tutors to quit. This is so cute and funny!)
Mastani smothered her laugh. “What does that make you, the fourth tutor?”
“The fifth. It’s been less than a year,” moaned Gordafarid. “We are Amazons, we aren’t meant for the nursery. I’m sure Diana will be perfectly pleasant to teach once she’s reached the age of reason, but now…”
“Shall we begin to hope some iron-willed governess dies on the field of battle with a goddess’s name on her lips?”
On a Lavender Night
(Diana and Etta go to a GERMAN LESBIAN BAR for ESPIONAGE PURPOSES and it is wonderful. They are both fucking marvelous here!)
As they sat down, Diana stared curiously at the fresco on the wall behind them. It seemed to involve a lot of scantily clad women playing lyres and frolicking around a pool. Etta squinted, then blushed: a few of them appeared to be frolicking rather intimately.
"But they are Greek!" Diana exclaimed. "How delightful!"
Older Than I Once Was
(I love this. I wanted to know so much more, after hearing that in their brief dialogue in Blackfoot, "Chief" introduces himself to Diana as Napi, a demi-god trickster. This fic gives more in spades.)
"Can I ask why?" Steve says.
"You can ask," Napi shrugs. "But all you need to know is that I don't work for you. I'm not in your army, and I don't fight for you. If you have something that you want me to do, you should probably start by asking me what I want in return, and not bringing things you think I need. You don't know me. You are not my friend. Don't insult me."
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