Yuletide Recs, Part 2

[wakeupnew]

I am still very slowly reading Yuletide fics! There's so much good stuff!!

CANADIAN ICE DANCING RPF
two hundred billion galaxies (but i'd come home to you)
(This does an incredible job of painting a picture just how long Virtue and Moir have been together. It's heavy with all their shared history and there are so many throwaway comments and moments that pack a big, big punch. I loved the details -- how, in the post-surgery haze, Tessa is counting clean hair as her biggest accomplishment of the year and she's weighing the pain cost of a trip to the bathroom. The paragraph where she's yearning for Scott to come over made my chest hurt.)

At twelve, she falls in and out of love with Scott every day, with a regularity otherwise reserved for practice, homework, and changing her MSN name.

In every time he smiles at her, every time he puts his arm around her in the kiss and cry, any time they're learning something and he's trying extra hard. Out when he's frustrated or moody; when she tries to apologize and he shrugs her off, his face dark; when she sees the way he looks at other girls.

CAPTAIN MARVEL
A Reasonable List of Demands
(This is a short and sweet conversation between Carol and Rhodey about him catsitting Chewie and it is THE BEST, it has great characters voices and packed a ridiculous amount of laugh-out-loud moments into 570 words.)

"I am not qualified for this," Jim said.

It was such a patently ridiculous statement that Carol snorted, because she'd never met anyone as overqualified for every possible situation as Jim Rhodes. "Doesn't the entire DoD want you to run for president?"

A CHARM OF MAGPIES SERIES BY K.J. CHARLES
Separation Anxiety
(Saint as the most offensive Lady Crane that Crane ever could have dreamed of is sheer perfection. This whole fic is absolutely, 100% what happened after the end of the last book in the series. The character voices are dead-on and I laughed throughout, and especially the relationship between Crane and Merrick is beautifully drawn here. There's a line about how they built up their defenses together after Merrick's first wife died and shut the rest of the world out, and Crane dealing with the idea of Merrick not being with him is just ... A LOT, man.)

Strange days indeed when he had a swooning young lady in his bedroom. Stranger still was Merrick’s single-minded focus over in the armchair. Crane knocked back his glass and went for a closer look.

“…Are you darning her socks?”

Merrick’s head remained bent over his task, but his eyes flicked up in a clear warning: carry along that line of teasing and the Hawkes and Cheney would never make it to Shanghai intact.

CLUE
Miss Scarlet Rolls the Dice
(An utterly delightful look at Miss Scarlet through the years, with neat historical context, and all the ways in which the story of That Night is told wrong.)

Five minutes into the film and Mary knows that her secret is still safe. It’s her story, but it is also definitely not her story. There’s blackmail, and murder, and a brothel owner. But there’s also no woman under the age 25, the men are heroic or dashingly evil, and there’s a lot more sex than she remembers from that night.

At the climax, ‘Big Red’ lets the cop go because she’s realized she loves ‘Dr. Smarts’ too much to continue being a madam, and Mary laughs in the middle of the theater, and laughs even harder when a man angrily shushes her. Pulp baloney she can live with.

DEADPOOL
Book Covers
(I love this -- Ellie judging Yukio by the happy face she puts on, for so long, and then immediately folding and pulling her to the kitchen for hot chocolate the second that she sees her looking sad is A Lot. Her body lighting up like a Christmas tree, at Yukio's soft noise after tasting the hot cocoa; growing a shell to keep people out; the cuddling! Just lovely all around.)

"I'm not anti-happiness."

Yukio looks at her expectantly.

Ellie huffs. "I'm not. I'm just…not great at it. And people like to make women feel bad for not smiling, so I sort of…"

"Grew a shell," Yukio finishes.

"A firewall."

FANGIRL BY RAINBOW ROWELL
Sophomoric
(This is such a love letter to fandom, to fanfic, and, in particular, to Yuletide. Watching Cath's wariness shift to fascination and joy, as she gets deeper into the whole Yuletide sign-up experience, was an utter delight. She gets sucked into random copypasta after reading letters! Her dad finding Let's Play videos of people playing a trivia game from Encarta! Cath developing a feeling of protectiveness over her recipient! Cath finding the story hiding at the edges of the canon plot! And I loved the appearances from Wren, Reagan, Levi, and her dad -- all of it was just right, so them and so Cath. This was such a wonderful nostalgia bomb.)

And through it all, Cath was reminded what had drawn her to writing fanfic in the first place. Yes, the obvious chemistry between Simon and Baz had compelled her to write. But the Simon Snow series wasn’t the first time (or the only time) that she wondered what happened next. What did that character do when he was off the page? What would she have done if she hadn’t died? She thought about these things when watching old movies or new TV shows. She’d wondered things like this about all her assigned readings over the years.

Evidently, she had not been alone in this. It was one thing to tell herself this. It was another thing to see it in action.

FANTASTIC 4 COMICS / SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE CROSSOVER
take my medicine, treat you like adrenaline
(I wasn't really paying attention when I skimmed the summary section, and then I got five lines in and I was like 'this was either by or for traincat' and I was 1000% correct and am also so pleased that she has excellent taste. I could hear Jake Johnson's voice on all of these lines -- I laughed throughout, especially at the Harry/Liz back-and-forth, "consider it your tip," and "you don't know my wife," oh my GOD. I love what a presence MJ has here and that she's still obviously incredibly important.)

The bartender sets down the cosmo. Johnny begins to drink it. His lips look obscenely red and Peter thinks they’re both here, they’re both adult men, his life in shambles, and he might as well just say what he wants.

“Look,” says Peter. “Pardon for saying this, or don’t, whatever, but I just have to tell you that you are the most gorgeous goddamn sun of a human being that I have had the pleasure to lay eyes on in what feels like lifetimes. I know we just met literally two minutes ago but I’ve been going through a lot lately, and I kind of felt like, if I didn’t tell you that, I might die. So. There you go.”

"GENGHIS KHAN" BY MIIKE SNOW (MUSIC VIDEO)
From Santa with Love
(There is a support group for reformed supervillains in the secret service HQ, of course there is. This is such a charming take on someone -- a supervillain -- putting his life back together and learning how to live in that new life, after blowing the whole thing up.)

Line dancing. Not even a lindy hop, or a tasteful foxtrot.

He leaves the room and pulls the door closed forcefully behind him. These people have no sense of culture and he wonders what he’s even doing here at all.

GOD'S OWN COUNTRY
Nice and Quiet
(Man, this is a perfect slice-of-life coda to the film. It feels just like it, from the tone to the setting to the dialogue. There are some gorgeous turns of phrase here, seamlessly knitted in with totally blunt, forthright dialogue; Gheorghe holding Johnny like a dragon guarding its treasure! Gheorghe knows how to calm the injured or irascible animals he works with, and Johnny's self-aware enough to know he's both! This is remarkable.)

"What's up with you, mardy arse?" his nan calls, immediately followed by a soft little huff of laughter from Gheorghe. They're out of sight the other side of the door, and when Johnny's finished stripping off his rain-soaked jacket and hat he goes in to square up to them, starting to make some half-hearted grouchy comment—thick as thieves, you pair, always fucking sitting round giggling like this place runs itself—that halts and fades in his throat when he sees what they're doing.

"In through the front door," Gheorghe recites in a vaguely befuddled murmur, his clever hands uncharacteristically awkward on a long pair of knitting needles trying to guide the tip of the right into the first stitch on the left.

THE GOLDEN GIRLS
The Funny Pit
(You know, before the archive opened, I would not have bet on a Purge AU of The Golden Girls working for me, but THIS IS SO GREAT! The character voices are perfection and all the dark Purge-based humor is so disturbing and funny.)

“Pussycat, don’t be jealous. So what if they’re late? Maybe they’re having fun!”

“I am not jealous!” Dorothy snapped. “And you can have fun without staying out until one in the morning! I conducted my Purge night activities early in the evening and came home at a decent hour!”

“Pft! Listen to Sandra Dee here!” Sophia said, folding her hands over her heart. Dorothy grumbled and kept pacing.

“You don’t need to be sarcastic, Ma.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll try to be nicer on the one night a year everyone’s supposed to be a huge jerk!”

THE GREAT BRITISH BAKEOFF
Bakes to Die For
(BEING SORRY ABOUT RISKING PAUL'S SOUL AS AN AFTERTHOUGHT TO EVERYONE ELSE'S IS SUCH A MOOD. All the catchphrases, the little jokes, the camerawork notes - it's like a bonus episode! Albeit one wherein someone has challenged Death to a bakeoff for the right to continue to be alive. The original characters stand up just as well as the characters we already know and love, whose voices are all sheer perfection. What a delight!)

SUE
(looking on with concern) Oh no! What’s happened?

DEATH
It is difficult to judge how tightly to grip when one has neither flesh nor nerves.

SUE
That is a pickle. But they do say that ganache can cover many sins.

DEATH
That has not been my experience.

nice snap
(BODY SWAP AU!!! The character voices are dead-on and screamingly funny. I howled throughout, perhaps especially at Paul complaining that his feet hurt and Mary retorting that they're a sensible two-inch heel.)

“Absolutely fantastic,” Paul says, which is bad enough all on its own, but then he starts to reach out one tiny genteel hand towards Kimberley and Sue realizes with dawning horror the mistake that is about to occur.

She makes a split second decision and sharply kicks Paul’s ankle from behind the table, which on second thought may actually have been a pretty severe lapse in judgement. Paul winces, and Sue really hopes she hasn’t actually broken any of Mary’s fragile bird bones. She’s made a lot of mistakes in her life, but none of them have been quite so bad as “maiming classic icon Mary Berry on national TV.”

Prince of Darkness, Judge of Pies
(A contestant accidentally summons a demon during a particularly harsh judging from Paul. This is so funny! The character voices for our esteemed established quandrangle are just right -- lord did I want to punch pineapple-judging-Paul right in the mouth -- and Morgoth and Cecily fit right in and cracked me up.)

Morgoth glanced contemptuously through the hole in the tent, where Paul was now waving weakly at them, still lying in the grass. “You call that man a judge?” he sneered. “He is not fit to judge the worms beneath our feet!”

GREEN MEN SERIES BY K.J. CHARLES
Operation Lovecraft
(Man, this is sad as hell [though I also laughed throughout at the dark humor!]. Barney and Max are heartbreaking here -- there are a couple of particular gut punches that had me reeling. Their voices, and Randolph's, were perfect.)

Barney, all his tentacles withdrawn and appearing, as best he could tell, entirely like a man who hadn't been allowed access to a razor for several weeks, took a few paces closer to the bars, ignoring the way the uniformed men cowered away as he moved. "Why exactly would we be celebrating?"

Glyde glared at the men, fitting the key into the lock of the outer set of bars and sliding the gate open with no apparent fear. "Armistice, Captain Barnaby. The war's over."

镇魂 | GUARDIAN
Dare to Hold
(Zhao Yunlan can out-stubborn anyone! He's going to make the Black-Cloaked Envoy friends with the SID if it's the last thing he does! Shen Wei is the exception to all his rules! The way Shen Wei freezes and comes to a screeching halt when Yunlan tells him to stop! Even Shen Wei's stillness is expressive! And then the absolute feelings bomb that is the hairstyle change!!! Man, the characterization for both of them is fantastic here.)

Shen Wei stills. His Adam's apple bobs, but he doesn't flinch, doesn't pull away, doesn't avert his eyes. The glare he directs at Zhao Yunlan seems to say, Zhao Yunlan, why are you like this?, but also, You should know the answer to that.

Zhao Yunlan's stomach attempts to tie itself into a knot, because he doesn't, not for sure. There's a depth of feeling hidden beneath the professor's reserved kindness, beneath the Envoy's cold, impartial judgment, and there's still too much Zhao Yunlan doesn't know. Too much Shen Wei won't tell him.

down comes the night
(This one is really lovely and sad, again with a fantastic grasp of the characters. It goes much deeper than the show did into exploring Zhao Yunlan's anger after discovering that Shen Wei sacrificed himself while healing him. I only wish the show had given this much thought to the aftermath of that plot! Shen Wei is such an incredible martyr-face drama llama. )

Shen Wei had learned to love Dixing, over the years: its stark and menacing beauty, the murmur of underground streams in the far tunnels, the glittering of the ice in the deepest reaches. He had shared the exile with his people voluntarily for years and years after Kunlun's disappearance, before his duty demanded him to shift from internal politics to being the gatekeeper between two worlds.

HAWKEYE
Hawkeyed
(This is so sweet and funny; I love Kate's utter inability to deal with her feelings. The tone is very much that of the Fraction comics!)

"Okay well," Clint said. "You know that you... like America, right?"

"HA HA HA HA," Kate said. "Of course I do! She's my best friend! What you do to your friends is like them, I'm pretty sure even the Avengers aren't too dysfunctional to understand that—"

Cut and Run
(This is DELIGHTFUL. Once again, Kate Bishop's inability to deal with her feelings is a little sad but mostly very funny. The humor is excellent and so are all the feelings!!! There is a key moment in which the Hawkeyes wrestle and the way it resolves had me howling. And I love the look at what a future in the Marvel comics universe might look like; one where superheroes age and retire instead of being retconned to be a bit younger every once in a while.)

"The Avengers split up like ten years ago," she responded automatically, although she was still wearing that glassy expression. "And don't call me Katie."

"It was more like five or six years," Clint said. "I don't think anyone ever meant for it to be permanent, you know? But most of the people who could've pulled things together were busy with their own stuff"—like going to therapy—"and I don't think any of us have gotten old enough to start thinking about legacies in anything other than a 'I've died six times, someone else might as well use my cool name and color scheme' way."

HOW TO BE A WEREWOLF (webcomic)
First off, I just want to make a quick plug for the comic; it's about ... well, genarti, who wrote this fic, says it best: "At root, it's about finding your own strength and learning to be yourself, and doing all that within the limitations your body and/or brain might impose on you, but learning what's really a limitation and what's something you can work around, and doing all that with the support of the people who love you (and who are probably doing their own version of this too.)" It is funny and kind and feminist and quirky and extremely queer; the art is fantastic and it updates every Tuesday and Thursday. Everyone just loves and supports each other so much! Check it out if that might be up your alley - it's so wonderful and there's like no fandom and I want to yell with more people about it!!

With a Little Help
(This was one of my giftfics this year and I am OBSESSED; it is so sweet and funny and perfectly Malaya and Vincent! THE MOST SIBLINGS: They make fun of each other, throw weeds at each other, and are so, so supportive of each other; it's wonderful, I cried a little bit ngl. I guessed that the author might be genarti and I knew I was right by the time I got to the end, because there was so much warmth and thoughtfulness and loving humor that sounded like her always-gorgeous work, and also so much dedicated research put into Vincent's plant-nerd life. The character voices and details are perfection. Even the tone of the narration sounds just like the comic, which is something that I always think is so hard when you're going from an image-based canon to a text-based medium. Just the best. ♥)

“I’m gonna – I’m gonna make Long Island Cheese Squash Pie. Oh my god. I’m going to make cheese squash pie and I’m going to make you take it to a, a potluck or something and explain it to people.”

“The 4H fair,” he suggests, and “Yesss,” she hisses, and they share a glance of perfect accord. They’re going to do this, and whether the pie wins a prize or not, the Dysangco Walters siblings will have won. In their hearts, and also in the moral victory of making people read a label like that and try to figure out what the hell it means.

She’d fistbump Vincent, but his hands are all covered in dirt.

INDIANA JONES MOVIES
Willie Scott and the Accidental Child Acquisition
(This is SO GREAT. Short Round shows up at Willie's door, post-Temple of Doom, and Willie unexpectedly finds herself with a new charge. The character voices are perfect, the period detail is neat, and the characterization of Indy, even in absentia, is great; it's pretty enlightening to think about what he's like through the eyes of other characters from the movies, instead of getting the Hero Edit. This will always be my personal canon now!)

"I told you, Doctor Jones is busy," Short Round said, seemingly unconcerned. He was sprawled on the couch, fanning himself with his cap.

"He's gonna be busy getting his face punched when I catch up with him," Willie muttered. It was just typical, honestly. Of course he'd go jaunting off on another adventure and leave her to clean up his mess.

Comments

[traincat]

The author of 'treat you like adrenaline' is a friend of mine and when she posted your comment saying that this was either by or for me I laughed a lot, I have to admit. It's true!

[wakeupnew]

I didn't even realize it was Peter/Johnny at the point when I had that lightbulb moment, either! Then I was really sure. Your influence spreads!!

[vae]

Hey, you rec'd me! Thank you so very much!