minutia_r

"There are so many stories in yuletide," some of you may be thinking. "If only Minutia would tell me which ones are worth reading!"

Okay, so none of you are actually thinking the second part. Still, here are some of the yuletide stories I liked best, not counting my own gift, about which I have already written here. Be warned that these are mostly from really obscure book fandoms.

Any Given Dream
Fandom: A Suitable Boy
What makes this fic so great: It contains my favorite pairing (Maan/Firoz), writes them more convincingly than I've yet seen in fic, and then ambushes you with love for another character. Imtiaz just wants his baby brother to be happy, you guys. Also, the summary is a couplet, which if you're familiar with canon you know how appropriate that is.

Thirty-three Kisses and Counting
Fandom: Macdonald Hall
What makes this fic so great: The awkward teenage physicality of it. The supporting cast. Bruno Walton being an adorable dorkface.

In Another Time
Fandom: Count of Monte Cristo
What makes this fic so great: It's Eugenie and Louise, the best canonical lesbian couple in a Victorian novel ever! Also, gorgeous prose.

Bagthorpes v. Zombies
Fandom: Bagthorpe Saga
What makes this fic so great: For a while I was convinced I'd made these books up, because no one else seemed ever to have heard of them. This is pretty much exactly what I remember them being like. Best zombie apocalypse of yuletide, hands down. Plus, it contains this line:

‘Celia never did have much of an appetite,’ Uncle Parker said, stroking his wife’s back. ‘I wouldn’t let her – well – devour anyone. I assure you.'

Blood Will Have Blood
Fandom: Hark! A Vagrant
What makes this fic so great: It's Kate Beaton's Bronte sisters. It contains a magazine called Romantic Poets Gone Wild. What more do you want?

Four Castles Howl Built (& One He Had No Hand In)
Fandom: Howl's Moving Castle (movieverse)
What makes this fic so great: Very nice fleshing-out of the movie world, and any exploration of Howl and Calcifer's relationship is love by me.

The Seven Stolen Books of Westminster Abbey
Fandoms: The Middleman/Black Books
What makes this fic so great: So, uh, did you see the fandoms? Plus also, it includes Bernard tormenting Manny with a carnivorous book.

For the record: I am not going to link to the octopus story here, but I read it and liked it. It wasn't the Best Story Ever or anything like that, but it was clever and funny.

I asked the tireless dropsofviolet for Julia/Janet, and look what I got! It's short--well, it's actually fairly long for a comment fic--but it's full of solid details that make it very believable and sweet. And it's told from the point of view of an adorably bewildered Cat, so there's that.

(It occurs to me as I write this that this makes it a companion piece of sorts to Best, Janet, also by dropsofviolet, which gives Janet's point of view on Cat's relationship with Marianne.)

And if that isn't enough (or if, like me, you happen to be insatiable) you could do worse than read her funny take on Christopher/Conrad or a short and poignant story of Mordecai. This is relevant to my interests, yes.

Thing One: Today is a frabjous day, because calathea has posted a new story in the A Very Long Summer series! For the Love of Mike is, basically, the story of Rudy and Mike's wedding, interspersed with flashbacks to various points in their lives together, and . . . if you like Gordon Korman and are not opposed to slash for some reason, you already know you want to read this, so why am I still talking? A very worthy installment, replete with schmoopy moments, with a new original character in one scene that I wouldn't mind reading more about. Also, Rudy's mom continues to be terrifying and awesome. Also, reading about Rudy and Mike's boys makes me want to do more with the Bedes from A Matter of Life and Death.

I do have two very minor complaints, and they are a) everyone in Rudy and Mike's lives immediately thinks Rudy+Mike=True Epic Love Forever as soon as they see them together, and is ready to go on about it at length. Which, okay, but it gets a little wearing. And b) there's a lot of kissing. I like kissing as much a the next girl, but I also like to see it mixed up with other ways of physically demonstrating affection? Other PG to PG-13 ways of physically demonstrating affection, even. Though I am guilty of overusing kissing too, sometimes; it's just such an easy shorthand for love and romance and sex and all of that.

This story probably isn't the best place to start A Very Long Summer if you haven't yet, but hey, the whole series is at the link.

Thing Two: Everyone thinks they can reboot the DC Universe better than DC. To be fair, most of them probably can. Here is Dresden Codak author Aaron Diaz's original and thought-provoking take on the Justice League.

One clever thing he did is say, "Well, Superman has to be Clark Kent, but Green Lantern and Flash have been various different people over the years, so why not make them entirely new characters? Who are a Japanese woman and an Indian man, respectively?"

I like his re-conceptualization of Superman, but the costume redesign absolutely does not say "working-class hero" to me; it says "steampunk" if anything. On the other hand, I like his Wonder Woman costume, but I'm not sure if I can get behind the living statue concept.

What I do like is the connections between the various character's backstories; it gives the whole thing an organic feel and also the sense of a bigger story slowly unfolding in the background.

One thing missing from Diaz's Justice League is Batman; as he points out it never made much in-character-and-continuity sense for Batman to be in the Justice League anyway. But he did reimagine Batman and Robin separately here: "Bruce Wayne is crazy bonkers and has way too much money. Stephanie Brown has nothing better to do I guess." If that's not a high concept, I don't know what is.

Look what I found while trawling through the DWJ archives on ff.net!

A Boy Less Ordinary

This is an old story--from 2005, in fact, before Pinhoe Egg if I'm not mistaken--so I apologize if everyone who might be interested has already read it. But in case you haven't--go, read, you won't regret it. It's 17,000 words long, but so worth it.

The summary, I have to admit, is less than inspiring,and it was that combined with the length which stopped me from looking at it on earlier passes through the archive:

Thomas Brown is an unusual boy, trapped in an entirely normal family. Then, one day, Tom intones an innocent little word: "Chrestomanci." Normality is about to get very, very strange.

It sounds kind of boring, right? And in fact, I got through most of the first chapter on the strength of the solid writing and the excellent Christopher, despite being mildly annoyed by the premise. I totally did not see the twist at the end of the first chapter coming. (Your mileage may vary depending on how much of a twist-guessing sort of reader you are. I almost never solve the mystery before the detective, I'm sad to say.) After that it was pure gold.

Here is what makes this fic so great:

I mentioned excellent Christopher, right? Seriously one of the best I've read, outside the books themselves.

Specifically, here we see Christopher establishing his habit of making the people who ask him for help at least participate in solving their own damn problems. Which is love.

And--I don't want to give too much away, and I'm not sure what the author's intention was, especially since this was written pre-Pinhoe Egg--but I think this story contains a very satisfactory origin for an important background character in the Chrestomanci books.

So, yeah. Read this.

And now for some fic that's not by me!

Estelle Green of Witch Week is such an awesome character. In less competent hands than DWJ's, she would probably have been a minor antagonist, or if on the protagonists' side, then comic relief. She's a solid beta in the social hierarchy, lacking either the charisma of an alpha or any sort of rebellious outsider glamor. She giggles, she copies the silly fads of the more popular girls, she only has to see a handsome man to fall head-over-heels in mooncalf, schoolgirl love. She's also fierce, brave, loyal, and utterly determined--and she has the best grasp of what to do in a crisis of any of the heroes. And this is not despite her previously-mentioned sillinesses, or even because of them, but simply in addition to them. People are complex, and Estelle Green is awesomely complex.

Brush Contact by Wild Iris is the story of what it's like to be Estelle Green during the time leading up to the events in Witch Week. You know how some fics make you go of course? This one made me go of course this is what it's like to be Estelle Green.

Also features bonus awesome Nirupam.

Go, read.

Anima

Fandom: Disney, Aladdin

Pairing: Jafar/Aladdin

Rating: NC-17

Summary: Follow-up to imaginary_golux's excellent story Jafar's Boy on disney_kink. What if, instead of abandoning Aladdin in the Cave of Wonders, Jafar had decided to keep him?

Warning: Rape.

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