That said, I got not just one, but TWO Sancia/Alfonso Cantarella stories! AWESOMESAUCE! I made squealing squeeing noises and flapped my hands about in glee just because two people (or possibly one?) wrote my favorite characters from one of my favorite crack gothic shoujo series!
The first is If I Could Move Time, and it has Alfonso yearning and Sancia being guarded and wary and bonus reincarnation (whoo!). I love that it captures how constrained by politics and their own fears and desires they are, but mostly, Alfonso/Sancia yaaaay!
She does not dream at night, or imagine a place where it is possible to be loved and be more than a pawn. Where it is possible to have a love that does not need to be broken or looked down upon, where politics and birth do not determine their fate, where it is possible to be happy and free.
The second is Under Light, which has twelve-year-old Alfonso and fourteen-year-old Sancia and sex and is disturbingly creepy in a good way. My favorite thing about it is that it follows with the series and doesn't punish or look down on Sancia for having sex, and I love that wee!Alfonso thinks she's amazing no matter what.
But nothing he's heard helps, because right now, even in this dimly lit old servant's corridor, Sancia is breathtaking.
Her head is tilted back and she's smirking up at the man, so much confidence it makes his heart ache.
The Work of Chemists (Skip Beat!) - I gave up on the series a while ago, but I think I will have to pick it up again now. OMG. So this fic? Is hilarious. I would have been on the floor, howling, had I not been reading around one in the morning and trying not to wake up my entire family. It so amazingly perfectly captures Kyoko's narrative voice, and I love love love the over-the-top shounen "I must try harder to devote all I can to acting" and her plummeting from the heights of joy to the depths of despair to her cluelessness and just everything! And it has Moko-Kyoko too! I am just pulling out a single quote, but I honestly want to quote the entire fic.
Kyoko's heart was racing happily. She had been invited to visit Moko at home! Their friendship was growing stronger and deeper before Kyoko's very eyes! Would they braid one another's hair? Perhaps she and Moko could give one another a makeover? Or! Or Moko might open her heart to Kyoko, and shyly share her secret thoughts!
Azumanga Daioh's Romeo and Juliet (Azumanga Daioh) - This manages to perfectly capture the four-panel pacing of the original, with the addition of a delicate, understated romance (at least, as delicate as Tomo ever gets...). It's got great lines for all the characters, and I particularly love the Tomo. And the Osaka. And Ms. Yukari. And and... all of them, really!
"I tried to get into the movies once," Osaka replied. "It didn't work."
"You?!?" Yomi said with her mouth hanging open. "Did your parents try and get you in a commercial when you were a kid? Is your uncle a movie producer?"
"No, I just walked right up to the screen. But it turns out it's just a big piece o' cloth..."
and if they are not dead (Monster) - This is a lovely post-series fic full of tension and fear and ultimately the same forgiveness and humanity that the series shows, and just like the series, it's about what makes us monsters, but more importantly, what makes us human.
She takes the postcard upstairs to her flat, then searches for the other two while the kettle heats up. She fills a French press and, while the coffee is brewing, pins all three postcards to the board above her desk, isolated a little apart from the clippings of Dieter's team and the take-out menus. And then, gazing at the three sketches, she unwraps the last of the bread from Paris, pours a cup of coffee, and tips five spoonfuls of sugar into her cup.
The sugar is sweet. The bread is good.
Cinderella, Made of Steel (Sarah Connor Chronicles) - My favorite of the SCC stories this year. This gets Cameron-voice absolutely perfect, and just like Cameron, the fic is heart-warming, funny, sad, and terrifying, often at the same time. And while it's mostly about Cameron, it's also about Sarah and what she's lost, with Derek and John as lovely grace notes.
"Be quiet as you go up," says Cameron. "Sarah has not been sleeping well."
"Thanks," says Reese. "I don't want to be shot."
Cameron does not want him to be shot either. He would require medical attention. That would be bad. He might die. That would be worse. Cameron has not allotted time in her schedule for disposing of a body. She does not say this.
the sandwich story (Calvin and Hobbes) - Waaaah! This made me cry. When I was a kid, I named every single one of my stuffed animals and loved them and made them houses out of blankets and my sister and I would never buy just one (stuffed animals must be bought in pairs, so they will be each others' best friend). Now I'm back home, and I've forgotten the names of the newest, the ones bought closest to teenagerhood, and they all sit in the closet, gathering dust. This fic is about that.
"Hobbes," Calvin says thoughtfully, perched on the sharply slanted roof outside his bedroom window. "Have you always been around?"
Hobbes looks very wise and takes a large bite of his tuna sandwich. His reply is muffled and incomprehensible around the food.
Calvin takes this to mean that Hobbes doesn't know, either.
5 Things Olive Snook Never Thought and One Thing She Did (Pushing Daisies) - A lovely little treat with Olive, Ned, and Chuck, and no quote for this, since it's so short.
Wearing the Sod Gown (Castle in the Sky) - I love Yuletide for giving me stories in fandoms I never would have thought of! It's been years since I've seen the movie, but all the same, this fic is wonderful. Like many of the other pieces I'm enjoying most this year, this is a wonderful coda to the series, and I really want this to be canon.
"People who can be free shouldn't, and the ones that should are chained to the earth until it's too late," he said.
Whole New World (Aladdin) - The genie, post-series, and the people who keep shaping your life and make-shift families (my favorite kind).
He wonders, sometimes, what freedom is worth, if he always returns to the same place; but Agrabah isn't just a place. For the brief and golden time that it exists (and relatively, for Genie, it is brief), it's home.
One Thousand and One and Counting (One Thousand and One Arabian Nights) - I am not entirely sure this fic makes sense without the request ("A woman tells stories to a man at night - stories that keep her alive. Let it matter that much."), but I love the interpretation of the prompt and the anger in the story along with the celebration of so many cultures.
"Yes, you are here to help," she agrees amiably. Keep him engaged, throw any tall tale at the monster to pacify him. "My sister," second cousin on her mother's side, actually, but English does not have a specific word for that, "says that as well. She wishes..."
Red Sky by Morning (Mythology - Chinese) - I wish I remember the Matsu (Mazu) legend more so I knew what this story was doing with it, but I love just seeing this in the archive and remembering hearing stories of her in history class back in grade school.
Until the world narrows to this, this point, this moment where she's standing by the harbor rocks, watching for ships at sea, blood-red clothes like a shout against the gray of sea and sky.
Fools and Their Money (Antique Bakery) - Bwahaha! Chikage being Chikage.
Chikage had picked an agricultural chemicals company that traded on the Nisei because according to him, it looked lonely. Tachibana set up a computerized trading account and bought him four shares, and that should have been that.
One Minute, Counting (Pushing Daisies) - Emerson! The coroner! A premise that is absolutely awesome.
And then he really was done. He swallowed. Goodbye uncomfortable metal slab, he thought. Goodbye Knit-Wit magazine and the sweet smell of yarn and the soft click-click-click that needles made when you got into a rhythm. Goodbye fresh crisp checks in the mail.
The Queen's Wedding Night (Attolia series) - Someone wrote sex in the Attolia universe and it worked! Giant spoilers for the second book, and I love that this fic has so much unsaid and so much hurt. No quotes for spoiler reasons.
I wrote:
Spoilers: Through volume 3 of the manga and episode 12 of the anime
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Summary: "We, amnesiacs all, condemned to live in an eternally fleeting present, have created the most elaborate of human constructions, memory, to buffer ourselves against the intolerable knowledge of the irreversible passage of time and the irretrieveability of its moments and events." - Geoffrey Sonnabend
Notes: Thanks to
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etothey for the beta and xsmoonshine for writing in this tiny fandom!Read Obliscence and the Plane of Experience (the Rememory Remix)
( Some commentary, same spoilers as for the fic )
I heard the tale told once in Cereus House where I spent my childhood, of how proud Azza and cruel Kushiel wagered a province between them for a night spent in Naamah's arms.
Bentou for Two (Nobuta wo Produce) - I'm not sure if this will work for people who haven't seen Nobuta, but this saved the ending a bit for me. It's Nobuta and Mariko, gradually learning to be friends, and I really needed to read that.
The square flat box, blue with green stripes, held a couple of egg rolls, some boiled vegetables, and a patch of rice with a pig's face drawn onto it with gome seeds.
Scenes from the Lives of Princes (Coffee Prince) - Again, I'm not sure if this will work for people who don't love the canon, but this gives me all the same warm fuzzies that watching Coffee Prince does. Just... awwwwww!
Years after Coffee Princess proves as big a hit as Coffee Prince, they'll be sitting in Han Kyul and Eun Chan's living room after dinner, and Han Sung will say, "Why don't you make the coffee, Han Kyul? Your wife must be sick of it, after doing it all day."
All the King's Men (Cain Saga/Godchild) - This has everything I love about Yuki Kaori's series: poisons, absolutely insane plotting, hot like whoa, and Cain alternately being vulnerable, manipulative, and cruel. Also, zombie priest and dove! Embryonic shrew skull! The crack, I love it so much, and it doesn't hurt that the fic is extremely sexy as well.
Hypnotized by this strange sight, Crehador forgot the terrible suspicion which had brought him to this place, and watched as Cain, with a languorous sigh, let a single drop fall upon his small pink tongue.
Rehearsals (The Scarlet Pimpernel) - I have a giant weakness for The Scarlet Pimpernel, and this fic plays to everything I loved about the original. Percy and Marguerite grow up and learn to dissemble -- Percy's disguises have always been flashier, but I love that the author's Marguerite is so vivid and ruthless as well.
She was an unprepossessing sight that year, sulky mouth dominating her bony young face and straggles of greasy curls covering her eyes and her grimy cheeks - a year or two too young for the whorehouse but that was the most you could say.
Sefirot (Angel Sanctuary) - After this has been recced by several people, I have been saving it as a treat (it has taken me forever to get to the a's). And oh, I love this so much. Kabbalah and snippets from Alexiel's lives and Kira and Setsuna and oh! LOVE! Right now, my favorite section is "Geburah" because I am in love with bloody, icy Alexiel, but it may change any second. It's got reincarnation and sin and desire and I love it SO MUCH.
We spilled entrails and we rejoiced, and I could no longer tell where I ended and you began. Have you read your secret in me? Do you play a deeper game?
Nanatsusaya... am I your master? Or am I but your mistress?
A Taste of You (Angel Sanctuary) - I never thought I would like Kira/Katou, but I love this. I love the focus on taste, the gothic, lush, sinful imagery, the way Kira is cruel and casual, how the author weaves Setsuna and Alexiel into the fic. It also doesn't hurt that it's incredibly hot.
Kira has always liked the taste of cigarettes. He fancies that cancer is a spice, noxious and thickly sweet, one more forbidden fruit in a corrupt life.
Black Moon in the Afternoon Sky (After School Nightmare) - I'm in love with how this manages to capture the creepy, surreal, haunting atmosphere of the canon, with the gorgeous language and imagery, with the extremely hot Ichijo/Sou scenes, and I would rec it just for that. But I love it even more for how it treats Kureha and the penultimate scene, for making her just as important as Ichijo/Sou, for not ignoring her pain and rage and grief and love. If I ruled the universe, this would be how the manga ended.
On the way back, before you push the doors open, you can never stop yourself from wondering if the world ended while you were sleeping; if all you'll find above are the remnants of a holocaust, screaming shadows blasted onto bleached walls, or piles of corpses still bleeding from their open mouths.
The Last Rites of Wednesday Addams (Addams Family movies) - I love this, even though I've only watched bits and pieces of the movies on TV. I love the mother-daughter relationship, poisonings and all, and, ok. It's a rite of passage passed down from mother to daughter for hundreds of years! Involving things like being trapped in an Iron Maiden by choice! There really was no way I wasn't going to like this.
On their 18th birthday, each Nightshade woman is sat down by her mother - or, if her mother is fortunate enough to have been dismembered, eviscerated, set on fire, or otherwise deceased, another suitable Nightshade female - and given the Last Rites.
No, not the quaint little Catholic custom; this is a purely Nightshade tradition, handed down from each firstborn female.
The Walls of Sparta (300) - I wouldn't have read this were it not for
liviapenn's rec; there is a reason why I avoided seeing 300. This reads like the flip side to Luminosity's vid Vogue -- while the vid was about taking on the male gaze, the fic is about the people the male gaze doesn't even see. I love the rage in this, I love that it gives voices back to the women, the slaves, the captives. This is my canon and my story in a way that Frank Miller's work can never be.Her first husband, she initially thought, had joined the masters. He marched out and had not returned, he died with his oppressors. His friends were forced to the fight just as he was but--Persia! Blessed Persia!--they had run, they had fled and joined the liberators. They were free; she could imagine them with gold and silver, bronze and myrrh.
A couple of well-meaning fellow-drinkers had assured Richard very seriously that he had to be sworn in as Freeman of Highgate before he could buy a drink. He was halfway through explaining, with some embarrassment, that he had been the Greatest Hunter In London Below for some years now and he wasn't likely to fall for that one (again) when the Marquis arrived.
The Greatest May Appear the Least (Mushishi) - I think this is my favorite of the Mushishi stories this year. I particularly love that it's about Ginko and the scientific method; if it hadn't been
telophase's gift, I would have suspected her of writing it because of the focus on observation and deduction.Instead, he sat quietly and idly observed his surroundings.
Interesting: lush vegetation that should, by rights, be stunted and sparse.
Notable: a moon providing as much light as one might find on a stormy day.
Compellingly conclusive: the suggestion of a glow from the greenery reaching upward from the narrow valley.
The Ivory Horn (His Dark Materials) - I can't find a good quote for this one, but this is one of my favorite stories from Yuletide 2007. Will is looking for another way to travel between worlds, and nothing will stop him. I love how creepy this grows, how it doesn't back away from consequences, and oh my god, the concept and execution is simply brilliant. If you had told me about it beforehand, I would have scoffed and said it wouldn't work, but it does, and perfectly so.
The Pen and the Sword (the Anne books) - This is another of my favorites. I have a giant, giant soft spot for Rilla of Ingleside, which is my favorite of the Anne books because of Rilla, in all her practicality and romance and how she must grow up. Rilla and the rest of the Rainbow Valley gang are grown up here, and it's now 1939. I love love love how the voice of this sounds just like the books, I love how the characters are older and wiser and how much it hurts to see them going through another war, and I absolutely adore how brave they all are, even though now the glory of it is gone.
I keep as busy as I can; the old Red Cross has started up again, as if it had never been gone, and I find I can knit a sock as handily as ever I could, but the spice of it has gone; if we must have it all again then we must, but the girl who dreamt of heroes and admired a well-turned-out young man in khaki is gone forever, replaced by a woman who knows only grim necessity and endurance.
Fairy Tale of L.A. (Life) - Short and sweet and pitch-perfect Reese and Crews. I love the last line, which is just so Dani.
"What?" Dani says, still not used to the way Crews starts conversations, like he's tossing a grenade at you and expecting you to play catch.
The Crush of Cthulu (HP Lovecraft) - I don't actually know the Lovecraft canon, but this would have made me snort coffee up my nose, had I been so ill-advised to drink coffee while reading. I think the excerpt speaks for itself.
"The tale I am about to relate is a horrible one. It has dark pacts made with hideous creatures, things too twisted for the human mind to comprehend, and horrors beyond the stars who willfully violate the laws of Euclidean geometry."
The man bent his head down sorrowfully and I could feel the fear still emanating from him. He stood there, for what seemed to be aeons, and I could sense he was trying to build up his strength to tell me something, something that would forever scar my sanity, leaving my mind a pale shadow of what used to be.
He finally raised his head, and in a most doleful and anguished tone, he whispered three terrifying words that indeed, would later send me into a cataleptic state and a prolonged stay in Arkham's most prominent asylum. These words, I remember even now, as he uttered them and then stared at me with agony in his eyes.
"It has sex."
i live my life in growing orbits (Haibane Renmei) - Haibane fic! And it's small and delicate and quiet, just like the series, about recovery and growth and living. It makes me think of spring green tendrils of vine gently unfurling in the sunshine, of bean shoots in newly-turned earth.
What one notices is the coming of spring, not winter's passing. Small things, first: the gentleness of the air on a sunny morning, or the stirring of new leaves, or how the earth, no longer frost-hardened, yields just enough for one's shoes to make their mark.
A Heaven of Blackbirds (Fionavar) - I've always wanted Jaelle's story, and this one delivers. I particularly love that it has both Jaelle the High Priestess and Jaelle the woman, and though it's about the woman in the end, it never shortchanges how important priesthood is and was to Jaelle, how much Dana is woven through her life.
Oh Dana, she cried in the silence of her heart, grieving as she never had before. Why not me?
a solitary blue (Fionavar) - I'm not sure if people who aren't rabid Sharra/Diarmuid shippers would love this as much as me, but Sharra is my favorite character from the books, and I love how this captures her grief and the slow healing, how she is trying to find her wings again.
Her father does not ask her to return to Cathal when he departs in the spring, for which she is grateful: she would rather stay here in Paras Derval, where the memories of gardens are not as sharp.
Tell It Slant (Fray) - Love! I love who is telling the tale, I love the rhythms of the prose, I love how it's about stories and legends and how it connects Mel with Buffy and Faith. It reminds me of that last panel in Tales of the Slayers, of Mel sitting on the table and reading an old book, the ghosts of all the slayers past gathered behind her in solidarity and sisterhood.
After two hundred years, the Slayer's back. She's a silhouette in the city, a shadow in the streets. She's death in the alleys when the moon is dark, hope in the ruins when the rain is cold. She carries a red crescent; it's her best friend and your worst nightmare.
She's the one girl in all the world, that old, forgotten chant.
Tell the story, even if you must tell it slant.
The Mountain and the Hawk (Ellen Kushner - The House of the Nine Doors) - First of all, OMG OMG OMG! SQUEEE! Someone actually wrote fic for this non-existent fandom, and that alone would send me completely through the roof! But moreso, I love the fic so much! I love getting a look at Eyas' background, I love the additional history and sense of place the author brings to the world, the contrast between the mountains and the city, between Eyas and Gwai, between Vrel and Eyas. And it's hot! Eeeeeee!
The mountains are a ring of teeth surrounding the city, sharp and broken and impassable in most places. They have, at different times in the city's history, been shield and sword, cocoon and cage, boon and bane.
Pipe Dreams (Nana) - And then someone wonderful wrote me a treat for Nana! Yaaaaay! I love how it gets at Punk Nana's vulnerabilities, the ones she doesn't know how to deal with, and I love that it fits in both Cute Nana and Ren, how it takes all those hints in the narration of the manga and makes them text.
His fingers are rough, the tips calloused. Underneath, she feels the lingering traces of soft hands and hesitance, and she arches into his touch, willing the dream to fade.
And now for the other stories! I start my way at the bottom of the alphabet and work my way up.
Houses and Rain (xxxHolic) - I love this fic so much. SO MUCH. I love the bittersweetness of it, the description of chocolate, the assorted spirits trying to be human, and the prickly, grumpy ame-warashi, who I don't actually remember from the canon, but this story makes me want to go back and reread it for all the bits she's in. I love the bits of Japanese folklore and how the little oden fox gets a bit, and did I mention the bittersweet wistfulness?
Foxes always know where to find good paper. It's because they hang out with scholars so much of the time.
Beginnings (Discworld) - Aww! Death, once again lost with those strange human customs.
As the stove began to heat up, he set to work on the tiny lives swarming within the kettle's water, releasing them each as it came closer and closer to boiling.
It was easier to make tea when one considered all the deaths required.
The Birthday of Eternity (Discworld) - Death + the witches! How can it be bad? Also, this has got awesome Nanny Ogg voice, and I love Nanny Ogg to bits. I think the Death-Nanny Ogg conversations may have already slipped into my personal canon, along with Nanny Ogg's topologically odd socks.
Death stared at the jug. It had a little porcelain udder, complete with four ineptly paint-splotched teats. The milk, however, was clearly meant to pour out a hole in its nose. Nanny Ogg did not seem to find it out of the ordinary.
Fiddler's Went A'Courtin' (Sandman) - I was a little wary of the premise, but the author carries it off beautifully. It's Fiddler's Green, in love, but wonderfully, delicately, and gently so.
Life as an occasionally anthropomorphic personification of an imaginary land means not having a particularly subtle subconscious.
Winter Words (The Blue Sword) - The quote I picked for this doesn't really illustrate why I love this fic; its voice is less obvious than some of the prior stories. But it feels like McKinley in how it focuses on the small moments, on the "after" part of "happily ever after," how both Harry and Corlath are trying so hard.
Harry's brother, Richard (who kept his honor so close Corlath at first mistook it for disapproval), spent much of his time in those long halls.
Petition (The Rabbi's Cat) - OMG! OMG! Someone wrote fic for Rabbi's Cat! Someone wrote GOOD fic for Rabbi's Cat! I was almost afraid to read this because I love the original so much, but I love this fic. It gets the rabbi down, but more importantly, it gets the cat perfectly. The cat's cat logic and cat theology is just wonderful.
"Cats know things," I inform him, smugly. It's true; we do. We hear more than people imagine. "Didn't you know, there is a feline Torah, and these are the stories we yowl to one another at night in the alleys of the city."
Once Upon a Bird (Princess Tutu) - I love the language and the imagery in this one, the way it feels like a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, only through a warped mirror.
You follow a trail of shining pebbles, or maybe they are candy eggs, the kind that taste of sugar and cream and fruit from the summer's first harvest, the kind that witches tempt children with. Even in a dream you know better than to stop and taste one, just to see.
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bb_shousetsu's summer specials, the femslash vid show for VVC 2007, and a few random pieces of fic. So, what are your favorite femslash fic or vids?
xsmoonshine for remixing my story!I realized that I had never gotten around to reccing the Yuletide pieces that I beta-ed, which is a real shame, because they're both wonderful. So, in the spirit of "better late than never":
- Stories Darkness Tells You, by untrue_accounts (Fray) - Harth and Melaka and the monsters within. I love the flow of this one and how informed by fairy tales it is, particularly the fairy tales in which evil sisters chop off their toes and girls in red shoes dance themselves to death.
Excerpt: When they were very small, they slept in the same bed and dreamed the same dreams; this stopped when they grew big, when the girl began to acquire curves and the boy began to get his height, when the girl began to run with dangerous men and the boy began to dream true. - Blood and Ink, by edonohana (Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy) - It's Theo before, during, and after he becomes the Kestrel, and it touches on the very things that I love most about the Westmark trilogy: what wars do to people, what people do about wars, and what happens when the war is over. I love the voices, both of the characters and of the narration (sausages!), and I love that Theo and Mickle are still trying to figure it all out.
Excerpt: "It's only ink on paper," said Justin.
"So is a constitution," said Florian.
And now for the Remix ones:
- Apocalypses and Other Fairy Tales (Keys remix), by yhlee - It's Fred and Willow after the apocalypse, and they've only got each other. Another dark fairy tale, this time in Yoon's dream-like prose. I really like that Yoon doesn't forget that Fred is a woman who lived in a cave for years and that she is a survivor, not just the cute and girly love interest that she so often is on the show.
Excerpt: Once upon a time, there lived a girl in a cave. The girl was clever and the girl was quick, and no matter what monsters came after her, the girl always got away. - What Will Be Told (the Gospel remix), by minnow1212 - I lied. Feathers, Lightsabers, and Lead wasn't my only favorite remix; this is the other. I have been waiting all week for the reveal just so I could squee about this and make other people read it! I got to beta this, which largely involved my reading every other paragraph, looking up, and then swearing, "Damnit! Why can't I write like this?"sullensiren's A Path Unvaried is an awesome story, and minnow1212 takes her story and adds to it so that it becomes the seed for myth and legend and folklore, which brings it right back to Sandman, which has always been about the power of Story. I love all the different narrative forms in the story -- gospel and talk show interviews and children's rhyming games. Brilliantly executed and highly recommended.
Excerpt: Many stories are told of Prez Rickard: some documented, some plausible, some contradictory, some clearly impossible. (Some of the documented ones are false; some of the impossible ones are true. This is the way of stories.)
Admin notes: I started reading in reverse order, just for the heck of it. Why yes, I am one of those people whose last names start with a letter in the second half of the alphabet!
I think I've made it through all the fandoms I'm interested in; I skipped all of the Stargates and Star Treks and SPN, which is why this list is coming out so quickly.
So without further ado,
remix_redux recs! Fandoms included are: Yami no Matsuei, XMM, VMars, Narnia, Heroes, HP, Buffy, Angel, and Bleach. Spoilers below the cut for Buffy S7 and X-Men 2.( Recs here )
remix_redux is now up! And some lovely person wrote Moshi Moshi Mochi ("In the Pink" Blues Remix) from my Crossroads and it is awesome and has green mochi!
You are all welcome to guess which one I wrote, and I will even promise a drabble, although given the rate I am writing these days, you will end up getting it two years later....
Yay! *runs off to read stuff*
I'm also not reccing anything I beta'd before the reveal, just because... I dunno. Just because. But rest assured, they will be fully recced afterward, because I love them muchly.
Into the Black (Heroes) - It's been odd reading Heroes fic, because I'm still figuring out the voice of the show. But I liked this one a lot. Nathan Petrelli can and can't fly.
In a Dark Wood - a retelling of Beauty and the Beast with zoology and movies. Some parts are a little too close to Robin McKinley's Beauty, but there are enough original details to make me fall in love with the same story again. And I adore the last line.
Cucumbers and Country Casuals (Bridget Jones' Diary) - *snorfle* awesome Bridget-voice. I haven't seen the second movie, so I can't say how it fits in movie canon, but the Bridget-voice really sounds like it's been taken straight from Helen Fielding's notebooks.
Rift of Touaoc (CJ Cherryh's Morgaine books) - very long, but oh so satisfying. It's on Morgaine and Vanye's relationship, but as slow and delicate and quiet as it is in the book (with much less of the confusing plot bits). The narrative voice and the character voices sound just like Cherryh, and I can't decide if I like the author's Morgaine or his/her Vanye more. They are both wonderful.
Compared to making his way into the control room, it should have been near far more complicated a business entering the archive house. But Heaven smiled on him --
do not mind me, Vanye thought severely at whatever angels might be guarding him, my lady has far more need of you
-- and the guard they had posted at the far side of the archive house was no better than any uyin of Andur-Kursh, and reacted the same to a low whistle and a tossed pebble.
The Taste of Honey (Sandman) - I usually don't like reading Sandman fic because it's so hard to live up to Gaiman's standard, but this fic does. At one point, it's a little too close to "The Sound of Her Wings" for comfort, but then... oh, the ending.
And the prose, oh, the prose.
By the time they cross the creek (Dream over the arched bridge, Death over the skipping stones) she has acquired a packet of pralines in newspaper, a cats' eye marble, a gift certificate for six free violin lessons, and a balloon shaped like a dripping thing with too many legs.
I've been making my way through (hush, let's not mention the time) from the bottom up, and here are some stories that I've enjoyed so far.
Lighting the Lamps (Earthsea) - Ged and Tenar and second chances.
stone plant (a story in reverse) (Circle of Magic series) - Evvy and Briar. Briar's kingdom is plantae and his order is Rosethorn and his family is Daja and Sandry and his everything else is Tris.
a hemisphere of light (Freedom & Necessity) - It slips so neatly into the book's voice; James and Susan have a holiday with an unexpected guest. I love the Susan voice in this one.
Cioppino Royale (Good Eats) - It's Good Eats! It's just like an episode! Well, without the recipe. But it has W and random food facts and crazy plots and everything!
Jane Narf (Pinky and the Brain) - I think this is the most brilliant fic that I've read so far in the Yuletide archive, and I haven't even seen Pinky and the Brain. Read this even if you haven't, but read this especially if you've read Jane Eyre. I laughed all the way through the credits.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective (If Somewhat Unnecessarily Violent) Assassins (Neverwhere) - *snorfle* So. I make a lot of fun of business-speak, but really, this fic is so much better at it than me! The title really says it all.
[Recs] edonohana's Saiyuki incarnations that never happened
edonohana's Autumn Gold, an incarnation that happens soon after Gaiden and is completely heartbreaking in the best sense. I've already reread it three times, and it still kills me.And while you're there, go read Three, an incarnation that never happened, as well.
campfuckudie and reading all the Gojyo-Hakkai threads (damn you, rachelmanija, this is all your fault!). To be honest, from what I've read in the Saiyuki fandom recs space, these recs probably won't be new to anyone, mostly because I stole them from
permetaform_rec and cicer's recs. But I don't care, because I need somewhere that links to all my very favorite stories so I don't keep forgetting where they are!1. I am not observing the usual anime/manga pairing thing in which whoever's first in the pairing is the seme.
2. I've found that I tend to like "day in the life" type fic in this fandom, which is funny, since the manga's about kicking youkai ass and angst and etc. But many of the ones that I love the most have this beautifully simple language and a wicked sense of humor. Also, while I am in no way complaining about the plethora of Hakkai/Gojyo smut out there (I live for Hakkai/Gojyo smut! You have no idea how many hours of my time Hakkai/Gojyo smut has taken up!), I am sad because I can't find that many of the four characters just interacting. I love the pairings. But I love the ikkou too.
3. Speaking of things I like, there should be more Gaiden fic! More! Preferably with references to sakura and pinky promises and the Angst to Come! (yes, Gaiden is still feasting on my brain, why do you ask?)
4. The pairings are either smut or just the two interacting. I generally read the Sanzo/Goku relationship and Hakkai/Gojyo relationship as having extremely slashy subtext at the very least and as out and out on the path to married coupledom at the almost but not really most, because again, obsessed.
Some spoilers for Hakkai's past below.
( Recs )
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