yuletide 2018 recs

[dantealighieri]

so this was the first year i participated in yuletide, and i had a wonderful time! for those not in the know, yuletide is a holiday fanfic exchange for small fandoms, and it’s often the place from which wonderfully creative and weird fic originates. obligatory self-promo for the things i wrote, “the second interesting thing about angels” and “smiling, smiling,” which are, respectively, lovecraft fic and sarah monette’s the bone key fic. they were super fun to write, and i’m rather proud of the former in particular, which was my first foray into smut. aside from that, i got two amazing gifts, which naturally take first priority on this list!

aftermath

fandom: lovecraft mythos
pairing: nyarlathotep/randolph carter

this is so improbably charming— when i was shaking gifts i was rather curious to see whether or not the author would manage to write, in character, something tagged “fluff” for a decidedly non-fluffy ship, and they did! very well! it’s something of an exploration of what exactly an established relationship between these two would look like, and (tangentially) what about carter proves particularly endearing to nyarlathotep. it’s sweet and light-hearted without being out of character, which has got to be obscenely difficult to pull off for a ship like this one.

all the host of shadowy things

fandom: lovecraft mythos
pairing: nyarlathotep/randolph carter

this is one of those rare pieces of writing where it feels like the author reached into my brain, rummaged around, and came up with something that appeals so specifically to me it’s kind of uncanny. it’s amazing, and in terms of sheer artistry probably the best fic for this pairing (some of the best mythos fic, period) i’ve ever read. seduction couched in terms of madness! how absolutely appropriate! both the plot conventions and the writing style are lovecraftian without being overblown, and as a result this feels like nothing so much as a canonical coda to dream-quest. structuring the fic around a w.h. auden essay is entirely delightful, and plays cleverly into the modernist and intertextual nature of much of the source material. it’s wonderfully literary, both carter and nyarlathotep are flawlessly written, and it has the most perfect ending.

in addition to my gifts, i have a few other recs!

 

that which walks unseen

fandom: the bone key
pairing: booth/john pelham ratcliffe

god, i almost want to be upset that i was assigned to write in the same fandom as this fic and the next one, because both of them are so good that i personally think mine pales in comparison. it’s not easy to pull off anything romantic with poor awkward booth, but this fic does it wonderfully. the style is a flawless imitation of monette’s, the characterization is excellent, the Occult Mystery element is perfectly done, and all of those factors make it so that this fic feels completely at home in canon— which is, of course, not a necessary component of good fic, but one that’s definitely very impressive and is often a characteristic of excellent writing.

a letter from a private patron

fandom: the bone key
pairing: gen

this is a lovely twist on the stories in canon, in that it’s written in an identical style, but from the first-person pov of a character other than booth. it has an excellent claudia voice, and the central mystery (it’s casefic) is reminiscent of certain characteristic elements of canon (strange artifact, familial/society detective work, museum shenanigans— my god, my kingdom for the ending with dr. starkweather) while still being wonderfully original.

memento mori

fandom: ancient history
pairing: gen

so, remember how i said that often the weirdest and most wonderful fic comes out of yuletide? yeah. i didn’t know i needed intensely literary and very well-researched fic about martial, pliny, juvenal, and domitian, but this story made my classicist heart sing with joy. it’s so good! the atmosphere of flavian rome is perfectly captured— domitian is absolutely batshit crazy, pliny is sweet and reassuringly normal, martial is snappy and witty as ever and juvenal is, well, juvenal. what really makes this fic, though, is the details: the author clearly knows their classics, and every little piece is perfectly, wonderfully accurate.

on the subject of magnetic bodies

fandom: 16th century rpf
pairing: william shakespeare/kit marlowe

i am a huge sucker for anything unconventional as a controlling metaphor, and i am also a huge sucker for anything that incorporates the history of science, which is one of my all-time favorite subjects. this does both, and it’s also beautifully, delicately written, as well as thematically perfect. in my opinion the best fic is fic that adds something to the canon, has something to say about it, and this is a wonderful example.

a soldier’s return

fandom: discworld
pairing: maladicta/polly perks

so many of the writers in the discworld fandom are so good, i think, because the source material demands that they be so— to write discworld fic that isn’t blatantly ridiculous, you have to have something of the spirit that colors the original, and this does. it’s pratchettian without being a carbon copy of pratchett’s voice, and both polly and mal are perfectly characterized. what really makes this fic, though, are those delightful little turns of phrase so key to the original, the distinctive quirks of pratchett’s style that mark this fic out as a skilled homage.