eccentric_hat

Oh hey, I never posted about Chocolate Box!

I wrote a gen fic, but it's about friendship and doing a craft together, which is much more Valentine-y than last year's somber meditation on unknowing:

where you tend a rose a thistle cannot grow (965 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Alison & Kitty (Ghosts TV 2019)
Characters: Alison (Ghosts TV 2019), Kitty (Ghosts TV 2019)
Summary:

Alison and Kitty in one of the disused rooms of Button House.

I binged all the episodes of Ghosts (the BBC version) at the end of last year and beginning of this one, and it was nice to be able to write a little fic for it while it was fresh in my mind. This fandom is very well-suited to my general ficcish formula of "write about a meaningful moment, with overtones of sadness."

I received an absolutely lovely story about the big poly family from Greater Boston; not only is this the fandom I wrote my Yuletide assignment for, it's actually by my Yuletide recipient, which is a very pleasing bit of full-circle-ness:

Workshopping (943 words) by Synergic
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Greater Boston (Podcast)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Poletti/The Family
Characters: Lily of the Valley (Greater Boston), Poletti (Greater Boston), Particle Physics (Greater Boston)
Additional Tags: The Family (Greater Boston), Slice of Life, Canon Trans Character, Canon Non-Binary Character, How do you tag for Poletti's Many Names
Summary:

Of all the rooms in his family’s house, Extinction Event Poletti loves the studios best.

Separately, and as a total surprise, I got a New Year's Resolution gift for one of my YT requests. It's about Kingston Brown from Dimension 20: The Unsleeping City, my favorite character from my favorite D20 campaign, and it's perfect:

long time running (1350 words) by somehowunbroken
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kingston Brown/Elizabeth "Liz" Herrera
Characters: Kingston Brown, Elizabeth "Liz" Herrera, Langston Brown, The Dream Team (Dimension 20: The Unsleeping City)
Additional Tags: Fluff, Non-Linear Narrative
Summary:

Kingston has always had this dream, even though dreams are for other people.

Except maybe this one can come true.

I almost forgot to post about my contribution and gift from Jukebox! I wrote a short story about animals on bikes, the canon being a music video about animals on bikes:

Never Mind the Weasels (1172 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Fahrrad fahr'n - Max Raabe (Music Video)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Summary:

Berlin has a lot more cyclists than it used to.

I received a really rich piece of fantasy writing inspired by Vampire Weekend's song Harmony Hall. This video has a lot of bugs in it, but I prefer it to the rather listless official music video:

Bread and Oranges (8213 words) by Kiraly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Harmony Hall - Vampire Weekend (Song), Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Nonbinary Character
Characters: Original Male Character(s), Original Non-Binary Character
Additional Tags: Magic, Traumatic Backstory, Sign Language, Ableism, Walking Canes, Revolutionaries, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Mentions of past genocide
Summary:

Twelve years after Sovran and his men invaded, the hall of the Stone Singers still stands - but no one has been able to call on their magic.

Some people want to find a way to change that. Some people just want to avoid notice and stay alive. Sometimes, those people care deeply for each other. Somehow, they'll make it work.

The Vampire Weekend song hints at a lot of political context without getting too into it, and while I can easily apply the lyrics to the here and now, they're also suggestive of a whole world with its own problems. This story provides that world, in a way that's both sweet and grounded. I'm extremely grateful for it.

Such good things have happened this Yuletide!

One of them is that I received a wonderful Anathem fic:

Forward By Torchlight, Guided By Stars (3589 words) by Artifactrix
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Anathem - Neal Stephenson
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Cord/Yulassetar Crade
Characters: Cord (Anathem), Fraa Erasmas, Yulassetar Crade
Additional Tags: discussion of canon-typical child neglect, attempts to derive 'good parenting' from first principles
Summary:

The Cord of five years ago, Cord thinks, would never have dreamed that one day she’d find herself sitting in the cold dirt with her long-gone sib, halfway across the world from Edhar, under a sky so dark that the stars shine in it thick as swarf on a shop floor. But here she is.

Cord and Raz have a chat.

I've been a bit of a broken record stuck on the song of "any new Anathem fic would be a miracle," but this is both a fulfillment of that most optimistic prompt and a smart, thoughtful, lovely work of fanfic, an able exploration both of the novel and of some ideas about childhood and parenting and being a person. I love it very much.

For my part, I wrote a fic for Mark Helprin's beautiful strange aggravating un-novel-like novel Winter's Tale, and I'm pretty pleased with it:

Reward (2471 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Winter's Tale - Mark Helprin
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Beverly Penn/Peter Lake
Characters: Peter Lake, Beverly Penn, Harry Penn
Additional Tags: References to a canonical character death
Summary:

Peter Lake is thinking about the past.

This story seems to have been strongly influenced by my sophomore year of college, specifically the paper I wrote about The Invention of Love and that one dialogue in Hedwig and the Angry Inch that goes something like: "Do you believe love is eternal?" "Yes." "What does that mean?" "That it creates something." "You mean like procreation?" "No." "Then recreation?" "No. Just creation." Surprisingly, it has less to do with the time I spent in New York, which is when I read this novel. I was worried about revisiting it, and there are parts I flinch at a little, but I'm happy I read it again. It's complicated but Helprin's women, while not a sufficient vision of womanhood in their supernatural giftedness and their moral assuredness, still feel valuable to me, and his vision of social change and interrogation of the notion of justice is a provocative one that I'm glad to have.

Surprisingly, and unrelated to Yuletide, someone also wrote an Imperial Radch fic and used part of the backstory that I came up with for my Drunk History!

Plans, as usual (1523 words) by Purple_Luna_Moth
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Anaander Mianaai, Lieutenant Tisarwat (mentioned)
Summary:

Anaander Mianaai drinks tea, muses on history, and makes plans, her ability to do so being only slightly impeded by the fact that she is currently five.

So that's really cool! I never planned on becoming part of an Anaander Mianaai Backstory Fandom but I'm really pleased to be here now.

I had a vague thought of writing up some other recs for fic I read this year, because there's a bunch of it, but really you can just go to my AO3 bookmarks for that.

I've been toodling around in the Yuletide archive for a few days now and have come up with some favorites. Maybe there will be more! I hope so, actually, as there are literally thousands of stories; I have been picking the ones I read by following the winds of circumstance and mood and it is not at all methodical. Here are some I think you should read:

Reconaissance (1000 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Gem of Sphene, Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen | Breq, Kalr Five | Ettan, Translator Zeiat
Summary: There was a plan: to locate the AI cores before the Usurper could, to return to Ship and form a plan to retrieve them. I was to succeed, or I was to die. Bodies are precious, now, but not so precious Ship could not afford to lose one segment, in pursuit of something this important.

I feel extremely lucky to say that this is my gift! It's about Sphene, and it's poignant and careful and feels very true to the series. It's exactly one thousand words long, and somehow I admire this about it; it is one of the most economical Yuletide stories I've ever read, and gives everyone their due through the eyes of a very old, very reserved, very untrusting narrator.


( Seven more! Jeeves & Wooster, Northern Exposure, Weekend Update, Grantchester, Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Emily Post's Etiquette, Aubrey-Maturin )

I fell down a hole of Pride and Prejudice fanfic recently, especially genderswapped Pride and Prejudice fanfic, after not really reading any fic since Yuletide (and doing a pretty poor job of reading Yuletide stuff too). I told caminante I would post some recs, so without further ado, here they are:

Genderswap

First Impressions by anghraine

A pretty straightforward AU where Elizabeth is a man, Darcy is a woman, and the plot otherwise runs along fairly familiar grounds. Enjoyable mostly because Henry Bennet and Catherine Darcy are both delightful to spend time reading about.

The young Miss Darcy did not deign to associate with anyone beyond a coterie of her own connections, bound together by ties so incomprehensibly convoluted that no outsider could hope to decipher them. Even the Bingley sisters, ambitious and often impudent with it, had not quite aspired to acceptance by the likes of Diana Howard and Catherine Darcy.

A Long Engagement, or the Improvement of Human Reason, as illustrated in the long and tortuous courtship of Edward Bennet, squire, and Philadelphia, Lady Darcy by hele and Tulina

The one where everybody is genderswapped--Elizabeth, Darcy, Bingley, Jane, their parents, their siblings, EVERYONE (except for Kitty and Lydia, who don't exist; the authors figured that if Mr. and Mrs. Bennet had three sons, they would likely not have so many children). As a result, this is very AU, and it takes a while to get into the flow of things (it was especially difficult for me to get my head around the switched Mr. and Mrs. Bennet). But the result was a delightful story, a long luxurious one where the relationship develops much more slowly; in the meantime it is made clear both that P&P is a difficult story to turn happy if all the affection is on the lady's side, and that your Regency England can be rather more expansive if your protagonist is male--both facts that made me a little sad, but were put to good narrative use.

Mrs Bennet was reading in the drawing room when they arrived, but she laid down her book. She was, Edward could tell, curious about their impressions of the newcomers, and seemed particularly eager to know what Mr Bennet had thought.

His enthusiasm knew no bounds. Miss Bingley! Her 20000 pounds! A lady of certain rank! Who was, indeed, a very handsome and young widow, if very proud and above her company; still, it lend the assembly a certain charm. Noble charm, no doubt.

Five Sons Mr and Mrs Bennet Never Had by biichan

What it says on the tin! A very fun little set of vignettes that genderswaps each of the Bennet daughters, one by one.

In fact, Bingley seemed to be quite enthusiastic at the prospect of introducing Darcy to John Bennet, having confided in him that Bennet was, in fact, "the best man I have ever had the experience to know." (He then reassured Darcy that he was a close second.)

Not Every Gentleman by hele

This one is hard to summarize. Longbourn is home to Mr. Bennet, his daughter Jane, and his son Edward, who strikes up a friendship with the new residents at Netherfield. Long and deliberate and careful, and it surprises you. The author warns that it's "problematic gender-wise," and while I found this a frustratingly vague warning to have hanging out there, I don't know how to improve it without spoiling things. It's a fascinating and ambitious piece of work, one that really stuck with me.

Edward shared an amused look with his father before continuing thus--
'Mr Darcy is very tall, very serious and very proud, and I am afraid that he disproves of me for some reason.'

'And, patently, you of him!' Mr Bennet cried. He observed Edward over the fingers of his crossed hands, and appeared to be excessively diverted. 'You have not even granted him half his friend's agreeableness, my son. Is he so very handsome that you begrudge him already the ladies' attention?'

Also, shout-out to this LJ post about a hypothetical different genderswap by lettered, though I don't remember how I found it.

Non-Genderswap
I think the above may in fact be all the genderswapped P&P fic there is to find, but here are a couple everyone-is-the-same-gender ones that I also liked:

In Essentials (much as it ever was) by Vangie (who has apparently gone on to a successful career writing romance novels under the name Tessa Dare)

AU in which everyone has had a slightly different summer before Netherfield is let: Elizabeth has already been to Pemberley, and Georgiana didn't make it to Ramsgate and never tried to elope with Wickham. Fun watching the relationships develop along different lines, while hitting most of the novel's major beats.

"Mr. Darcy of Pemberley in Derbyshire, allow me to present Mrs. Bennet of Longbourn, and her daughters."


Elizabeth could not retrieve the gasp of "Pemberley!" that escaped her lips, and she curtsied deeply in an attempt to hide both her blunder and her resulting blush. Unfortunately, even had Mr. Darcy himself been inclined to overlook her exclamation, Sir William was determined to pursue the topic.

Season of Courtship by anghraine

The only one of these which is entirely canon-compliant! It's set immediately post-canon and covers the span of Elizabeth and Darcy's engagement. There's not much plot but it's remarkably perceptive character-wise, and it gets more mileage and sensuality out of a Teen & Up rating than I've seen in some time. Also, it does a really good job of thinking about what marriage meant in that period (e.g. that the wife would give up her legal identity and seldom see her family) and portraying characters who have always known that's what marriage is and are lucky to have found a partner they trust. And it sketches in more of the Bennets' neighbors in Meryton. Quite a fair set of accomplishments for something billed as fluff.

“He may be a good master,” decreed Mrs Long, “but that doesn’t mean he will be a good husband. Say what you like about Eliza Bennet, but I pity her.”

The other ladies were fully prepared to follow her lead, but soon found themselves in a peculiar sort of quandary. It was difficult to pity someone who had no idea of her own misfortune. On the contrary - she seemed quite delighted with her situation in general, and with her betrothed in particular. She was absorbed in him almost to the point of incivility, talking to him when he was near, and inattentive when he was not. Her eyes often followed him wherever he went, with a peculiar intent expression that Mrs Long in particular found almost indecent.

I tend to get embarrassed by talking about things I like. I'm good at talking about things I believe or find interesting, but it is a little difficult for me to admit in public that something has, say, filled me with glee to the extent that I clapped my hands about it in my empty apartment.

However, darkest_light said she would be interested, and I think it is possible other people would be too, so I'm going to tell you about some of those Jeeves & Wooster fanfics.

( Under here! )