Snowflake Challenge: Day 2

[toujours_nigel]

Day 2: Rec at least three fanworks that you didn’t create.

I am very lucky to be following a lot of people who not only write but rec widely, so I get to read very widely indeed. So these are from three separate fandoms, but all centre on female characters, two of them genderbent, and one canonically female. I love how this focus recontextualises and often changes the story.

Oldest, best known, and fandom classic, The Least of All Possible Mistakes, by the amazing rageprufrock, all of whose fic you should read as and when time permits. TLoAPM stars no-nonsense Detective Inspector Georgiana Lestrade, who is large and in charge and beset by a plague of Holmses, and vaguely befuddled to be falling for one of them. Pru's George is the sort of woman I want to grow up into, commanding and compassionate and exceedingly cherishable. While her growing relationship with Mycroft Holmes is central to the story, arguably as important are her friendships and camaraderie with the other women of the Met., her exasperated fondness for Sherlock and resigned affection for John and Anthea. I loved it to pieces the first time I read this fic, if it were a physical book I'd have turned it to tatters with my multiple rereads, and the audiofic by lazulus is a separate delight.

sovin is primarily a Les Mis writer, at least by proportion, but I first encountered the mist that cloaks the river, the clouds that hide the stars, which is a Nirvana in Fire fic, and fell promptly and deeply in love, both with her writing, and the character around whom the story is built. Canonical Yan Yujin, a sweet and deceptively intelligent young aristocrat, is something like Bertie Wooster with brains, and extremely appealing in his own right. Genderbent in sovinly's hands, Yujin is a masterclass of soft power and careful networking and the absolute necessity for young women to keep themselves largely hidden to hold onto autonomy. Yujin, unmarried ten years past adulthood and carefully brushing past the continuing implications of her childhood betrothal to [spoilers], assiduously maintains her relationships with other women (mostly canonical) and brings to the reader's attention the depth of female and familial connections that underpin the world of the show. Sovin also talks at some length about the fic on her tumblr, and I raged through the fic, through her tag, and then through the fic again in a matter of a weekend.

I found out about Work of all Saints, antistar_e's epic Coco fic through a rec by I think notbecauseofvictories. I hadn't watched the film at that point, but lack of knowledge of canon rarely stops me from consuming fanwork, so off I went. And then I spent the whole day reading the story, and then I watched the film and wept my way through it, so, uh, good decisions all around. Anyway. The fic is primarily from the perspective of Imelda Rivera, who falls in love, grabs onto her chance for independence, and sets off singing through early twentieth-century Mexico. She finds new people and friendships along the way, tries to figure out polyamory, and finds herself alone in a village with a toddler: metamour vanished, husband assumed vanished [but really spoilers]. She gets back up, learns a trade, sets up and runs a multigenerational household, and just... lives. She lives so completely that death doesn't do much to take away her vibrancy, and that is the sort of old lady I hope all of us manage to become. The fic is steeped in the material history of the time, and the intricacies of revolution, counter-revolution, insurgency and demographics of which I know less than nothing, but which make it feel real in a way that both throws the supernatural elements into stark relief and meshes with them.



ETA: I cannot believe I forgot to rec Erebor and Weeds, my favourite Hobbit genderflip series, by the inimitable leupagus.



.... I really hope we get to rec creators at some point during this, cause I can think of easily a dozen whose collected works have kept me alive and some semblance of sane.

Comments

[sunlit_stone]

Oooh, the Nirvana in Fire one looks amazing! Thank you :)

[toujours_nigel]

I've been reccing it to everyone, yeah. :)