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Yuletide 2024 + Madness Recs
Dec. 30th, 2024 01:04 pmI'm not very consistent about making recommendations posts so this is not a slight against fics I've loved in prior years, just wanted to contribute something for this year!
A lot of these are five-minute fandoms so when feasible, I've linked the fandoms themselves. Beyond that, it's very roughly sorted in order of "likelihood of knowing canon"/"necessity of knowing canon."
Unauthorized Narratives (~500 words, G, no archive warnings apply)
Strange Planet is a webcomic you might have seen around, even if you don't recognize the name--it's about aliens who do normal Earth rituals but describe them with odd words to point out how absurd Earth humans are sometimes. This is about the familiar desire to consume Unauthorized Narratives when there is an insufficient quantity of Authorized Narratives available.
In Which a Miscommunication Proves Infortuitous (~600 words, G, no archive warnings apply)
In which a Visitor proves a Nuisance is a standalone comic about time-travelling assassins. Incompetent Time Traveling Saxophone Haters is a tumblr post about time-travelling assassins. Put them together and what do you get? Autocorrect shenanigans. The main collection has a couple other stories for the latter fandom with are also droll.
"Cryptography" was nominated as an anthropomorphic fandom, with characters Alice, Bob, and Eve. The "canon" is that Alice is trying to send a secure message to Bob, while Eve is trying to eavesdrop (see this xkcd and the others linked). All the fics for them were amusing, whether it's "is calling professors by their first names a sexist double standard or just a West Coast thing," "Alice knits Bob a marriage proposal in encrypted Braille, the Eve as unknowable aliens, or Victor and Peggy with "zero-knowledge proofs" (don't ask).
Love Is The Worst Cardiovascular Disease of All (~2k, M, choose not to warn)
What do you do with a Christmas-themed romance song that, by widespread consensus, is overplayed and annoying, not to mention not very Christmasy? Make it a fluffy horror story, obviously! This takes "gave you my heart" literally, and runs with a bunch of other idioms like "catching your eye," turning it into something sweet (and original).
Ammurapi, King of Ugarit (~15k, G, choose not to warn) is a retelling of Hamlet set in the Late Bronze Age Collapse. I don't really know anything about that era of history, but the way things transpire with the story-within-the-story and the poisoned sword at the end are very clever, the Polonius analogue is as long-winded as you could hope, and by Hamlet standards, it qualifies as a fix-it!
That Supreme Charm (~3k, G, no archive warnings apply): Princess Bride fic (tagged with both movie and book) featuring Fezzick's love of rhymes. Sweet portrayal of an autistic OC, wonderful wordplay, and great mental image of chonky baby Fezzik.
Her Christmas Wish (~5k, T, no archive warnings apply) Baby-Sitters' Club, Mary-Anne/Charlie post-canon fic. Cute and fluffy, but I also like the characterization notes, like how Charlie's relationships with his stepdad and birth father might have played out, and Kristy's career trajectory (combined with her lack of tact at times).
known now in part, to be known in full (~7k, G, no archive warnings apply) Kairos (Murry-O'Keefe family) series by Madeleine L'Engle. After Polly's time-travel incident in "An Acceptable Time," a parallel universe collides with the main timeline and adult Meg meets an alternate version of herself. Which at first seems like a terrifying callback to the Three Mr. Jenkins Incident, but turns into a lovely depiction of what it means for Meg to be a Namer.
something you do, not something you are (~4k, T, no archive warnings apply [but canonical character death]) Dune movies, Gurney Halleck character study, eventual Leto/Gurney/Jessica. Good perspective at Gurney in different ages of his life, and the contrasts between the Leto+Gurney and Duncan+Paul mentorship relations given the different political threats they faced.
Blossoms on the Vine (~1500 words, G, no archive warnings apply), for Uprooted, is an outsider POV on Kasia and Agnieszka, and sort of a counterpoint to the "don't get too attached to a girl born in a dragon year" philosophy espoused in the early chapters.
Last but certainly not least, my own gift!
Two Spies in a Theater (~6k, G, major character death [canonical, it's about ghosts]), for Debrief RPG. It's a script/screenplay format of one potential "production", so there's the spoken dialogue between the two characters, but then also notes from the different "actors'" POV, annotating and giving context on the dialogue--which is a great contrast to the themes of communication failure. If you have the ability to read PDFs, that version is really great for showing the different handwriting styles/sizes--page 18 in particular epitomizes what I love about these two and their dynamic. But the overall meta-ness of "being envious of alternate versions of yourself" is very appropriate in an RPG context. There are even "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" vibes!
If you're familiar with Debrief, strongly recced; if you're not, please play it and then come babble at me about it (I am some level of "screaming into a void always and forever" about the endless possibilities the game allows, an emotion which has been wonderfully reawakened by this gift...)
A lot of these are five-minute fandoms so when feasible, I've linked the fandoms themselves. Beyond that, it's very roughly sorted in order of "likelihood of knowing canon"/"necessity of knowing canon."
Unauthorized Narratives (~500 words, G, no archive warnings apply)
Strange Planet is a webcomic you might have seen around, even if you don't recognize the name--it's about aliens who do normal Earth rituals but describe them with odd words to point out how absurd Earth humans are sometimes. This is about the familiar desire to consume Unauthorized Narratives when there is an insufficient quantity of Authorized Narratives available.
In Which a Miscommunication Proves Infortuitous (~600 words, G, no archive warnings apply)
In which a Visitor proves a Nuisance is a standalone comic about time-travelling assassins. Incompetent Time Traveling Saxophone Haters is a tumblr post about time-travelling assassins. Put them together and what do you get? Autocorrect shenanigans. The main collection has a couple other stories for the latter fandom with are also droll.
"Cryptography" was nominated as an anthropomorphic fandom, with characters Alice, Bob, and Eve. The "canon" is that Alice is trying to send a secure message to Bob, while Eve is trying to eavesdrop (see this xkcd and the others linked). All the fics for them were amusing, whether it's "is calling professors by their first names a sexist double standard or just a West Coast thing," "Alice knits Bob a marriage proposal in encrypted Braille, the Eve as unknowable aliens, or Victor and Peggy with "zero-knowledge proofs" (don't ask).
Love Is The Worst Cardiovascular Disease of All (~2k, M, choose not to warn)
What do you do with a Christmas-themed romance song that, by widespread consensus, is overplayed and annoying, not to mention not very Christmasy? Make it a fluffy horror story, obviously! This takes "gave you my heart" literally, and runs with a bunch of other idioms like "catching your eye," turning it into something sweet (and original).
Ammurapi, King of Ugarit (~15k, G, choose not to warn) is a retelling of Hamlet set in the Late Bronze Age Collapse. I don't really know anything about that era of history, but the way things transpire with the story-within-the-story and the poisoned sword at the end are very clever, the Polonius analogue is as long-winded as you could hope, and by Hamlet standards, it qualifies as a fix-it!
That Supreme Charm (~3k, G, no archive warnings apply): Princess Bride fic (tagged with both movie and book) featuring Fezzick's love of rhymes. Sweet portrayal of an autistic OC, wonderful wordplay, and great mental image of chonky baby Fezzik.
Her Christmas Wish (~5k, T, no archive warnings apply) Baby-Sitters' Club, Mary-Anne/Charlie post-canon fic. Cute and fluffy, but I also like the characterization notes, like how Charlie's relationships with his stepdad and birth father might have played out, and Kristy's career trajectory (combined with her lack of tact at times).
known now in part, to be known in full (~7k, G, no archive warnings apply) Kairos (Murry-O'Keefe family) series by Madeleine L'Engle. After Polly's time-travel incident in "An Acceptable Time," a parallel universe collides with the main timeline and adult Meg meets an alternate version of herself. Which at first seems like a terrifying callback to the Three Mr. Jenkins Incident, but turns into a lovely depiction of what it means for Meg to be a Namer.
something you do, not something you are (~4k, T, no archive warnings apply [but canonical character death]) Dune movies, Gurney Halleck character study, eventual Leto/Gurney/Jessica. Good perspective at Gurney in different ages of his life, and the contrasts between the Leto+Gurney and Duncan+Paul mentorship relations given the different political threats they faced.
Blossoms on the Vine (~1500 words, G, no archive warnings apply), for Uprooted, is an outsider POV on Kasia and Agnieszka, and sort of a counterpoint to the "don't get too attached to a girl born in a dragon year" philosophy espoused in the early chapters.
Last but certainly not least, my own gift!
Two Spies in a Theater (~6k, G, major character death [canonical, it's about ghosts]), for Debrief RPG. It's a script/screenplay format of one potential "production", so there's the spoken dialogue between the two characters, but then also notes from the different "actors'" POV, annotating and giving context on the dialogue--which is a great contrast to the themes of communication failure. If you have the ability to read PDFs, that version is really great for showing the different handwriting styles/sizes--page 18 in particular epitomizes what I love about these two and their dynamic. But the overall meta-ness of "being envious of alternate versions of yourself" is very appropriate in an RPG context. There are even "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" vibes!
If you're familiar with Debrief, strongly recced; if you're not, please play it and then come babble at me about it (I am some level of "screaming into a void always and forever" about the endless possibilities the game allows, an emotion which has been wonderfully reawakened by this gift...)
