Larry Hammer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
larryhammer) wrote2016-01-19 08:04 am
larryhammer) wrote2016-01-19 08:04 am
Entry tags:
"an addiction to the slumber / of disconnection and resonance / of memory that no longer has a shape
Yuletide 2015 brought us no less than five fanfics for Edward Gorey's animated introduction to PBS's Mystery!, which just by itself makes this a pretty good year. Some fics I especially enjoyed and want others to read:
All This Could Be Yours (The Martian) - AU divergence by having Commander Lewis also stranded on Mars. Continues far beyond the book's end to cover the aftereffects back on Earth. Longest fic of the season, and one of the best.
Miss Eleanor Tilney, or The Reluctant Heroine (Northanger Abbey) - Another long novella, retelling canon from Eleanor's POV (with considerable backstory and secret history). Ignore the self-deprecating "tongue-in-cheek" tag as this is a delight through and through, by the author in previous years of Fair Winds and Homeward Sail and Mansfield End (not to mention Rondo Allegro).
This American Life episode 141: A Whole New World. (Transcript) - Ira Glass and Sarah Koenig interview Steve Rogers, Hermione Granger, and Susan Pevensie about stepping from one world into another. Pitch perfect.
Two good character studies of Harriet Vane at Christmas time, both with voices spot-on:
Solitary as an Oyster (Lord Peter Wimsey) - In 1933, when she is still bitter and raw wounds.
Christmas at Duke's Denver (Lord Peter Wimsey) - In 1937, her first with Peter's family.
A Song for Ruatha (Dragonriders of Pern) - Menolly's first journey as a journeywoman Harper, to a hold that is still healing from the damages of the past generation.
A Piece in the Game (Kim) - In 1919, after the Great War, Kim is back in the Great Game, and now as an adult must decide (in the face of the Third Afghanistan War and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre) whether he is a Sahib. Nails the ending.
As far as verse-fics this year, the four are a mixed bag: The Bootlegger is a Prohibition Era rewrite of "The Highwayman" in the original verse form -- highly recommended. The Peggers' Tale is an original fabliau in stanzas, recounting a threesome of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry Plantagenet, and a lady-in-waiting, and is as rollicking and filthy as the title and form require. Also containing Henry is 26 December 1170, a Murder in the Cathedral fic in Eliotonian blank verse, in which Thomas gives a Christmas sermon -- I think a missing scene, but I'm not familiar enough with the source to be sure. As for the fourth, on the one hand +1 to the writer of Beowulf: An Adventure of the Missing Years for making King Beowulf (not yet old) face a roc, of all things, and for the valiant attempt at alliterative verse -- on the other, while it starts appropriately heroic, eventually it breaks voice with (half-)lines like "Anyway, the sword died," and then gives up and goes completely silly.
(I have to say, I'm disappointed in the paucity Asian fandoms outside of anime/manga. I should nominate some next year, even if again I don't participate.)
---L.
Subject quote from "Half Asleep," School of Seven Bells.
All This Could Be Yours (The Martian) - AU divergence by having Commander Lewis also stranded on Mars. Continues far beyond the book's end to cover the aftereffects back on Earth. Longest fic of the season, and one of the best.
Miss Eleanor Tilney, or The Reluctant Heroine (Northanger Abbey) - Another long novella, retelling canon from Eleanor's POV (with considerable backstory and secret history). Ignore the self-deprecating "tongue-in-cheek" tag as this is a delight through and through, by the author in previous years of Fair Winds and Homeward Sail and Mansfield End (not to mention Rondo Allegro).
This American Life episode 141: A Whole New World. (Transcript) - Ira Glass and Sarah Koenig interview Steve Rogers, Hermione Granger, and Susan Pevensie about stepping from one world into another. Pitch perfect.
Two good character studies of Harriet Vane at Christmas time, both with voices spot-on:
Solitary as an Oyster (Lord Peter Wimsey) - In 1933, when she is still bitter and raw wounds.
Christmas at Duke's Denver (Lord Peter Wimsey) - In 1937, her first with Peter's family.
A Song for Ruatha (Dragonriders of Pern) - Menolly's first journey as a journeywoman Harper, to a hold that is still healing from the damages of the past generation.
A Piece in the Game (Kim) - In 1919, after the Great War, Kim is back in the Great Game, and now as an adult must decide (in the face of the Third Afghanistan War and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre) whether he is a Sahib. Nails the ending.
As far as verse-fics this year, the four are a mixed bag: The Bootlegger is a Prohibition Era rewrite of "The Highwayman" in the original verse form -- highly recommended. The Peggers' Tale is an original fabliau in stanzas, recounting a threesome of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry Plantagenet, and a lady-in-waiting, and is as rollicking and filthy as the title and form require. Also containing Henry is 26 December 1170, a Murder in the Cathedral fic in Eliotonian blank verse, in which Thomas gives a Christmas sermon -- I think a missing scene, but I'm not familiar enough with the source to be sure. As for the fourth, on the one hand +1 to the writer of Beowulf: An Adventure of the Missing Years for making King Beowulf (not yet old) face a roc, of all things, and for the valiant attempt at alliterative verse -- on the other, while it starts appropriately heroic, eventually it breaks voice with (half-)lines like "Anyway, the sword died," and then gives up and goes completely silly.
(I have to say, I'm disappointed in the paucity Asian fandoms outside of anime/manga. I should nominate some next year, even if again I don't participate.)
---L.
Subject quote from "Half Asleep," School of Seven Bells.