Trismegistus

Prompt 4: Fanwork Recommendations

This prompt asked those of us playing along at home to share "anything and everything fannish that you love" including things you've created yourself. So I decided to take it a step further and share something of mine in every fandom where I've written more than five fics, as well as the initial fanwork that got me into the fandom in the first place. So without further ado:

The X-Files
Runes – by glacis
Once upon a time, when I was but a wee Trismegistus, I decided to finally click on “X-Files fanfic,” whatever that was, because it was between seasons and had exhausted all the other XF-related stuff on the Internet. (And given that this was back in the days of dialup, there was not much XF-related stuff on to begin with. There was not much Internet, in fact.)

What I clicked on was “Runes.” It was (unbeknownst to me) a sequel. It was (unbeknownst to me) slash. It was immediately apparent that the story addressed Interests I Had Not Previously Known I Had. The version linked above is somewhat different then the one I remember reading (and reading and reading). I imagine it’s been edited somewhat in the intervening years, but it’s close enough.

So there you have it: the story that got me into fanfic, in the fandom that, well, got me into fandom.

As Spring Approaches
This is certainly not the first XF fanfic I wrote, nor is it the raunchiest, or the most involved, plotwise. But it is the first fic that I finished and thought to myself, Wow, this is substantially, objectively better than anything I’ve written before. Which was a cool feeling.

One day, I may finally get around to archiving this and all the other fics—good and bad—I wrote in this fandom on AO3.




Saiyuki
Break of Day – by HTH
If I was going to ship anyone when I started reading Saiyuki, it was going to be Sanzou/Hakkai. I mean, come on. You have Comfort!Hakkai giving Hurt!Sanzou a wise and gentle pep talk right there in the first chapter of the first volume (back when Sanzou still had his cute little ponytale, even!). I knew that Western fans were into Hakkai/Gojou but I just didn’t see it.

Then I read this fic by HTH.

It knocked the breath out of my lungs. It still does when I read it now. And in 2k words plus change, it turned me into a lifelong 58 shipper. HTH was not a prolific author, but they were the reason I fell for this fandom, as hard as I did. I always wish they’d written more.

Ikka Danran
Romantic, adversarial, or otherwise, I’m primarily motivated to write fic to explore the relationship between two specific characters, with the result that my stories rarely feature much from a supporting cast. This fic was, I think, my first major foray into an ensemble story. It’s also one of my few forays into Sanzou’s POV, which was terrifying and fun in equal measure.



Death Note
Theoretically – sub_divided
I actually got into Death Note through some phenomenal Japanese doujinshi circles that have unfortunately left no trace on the Internet. In the spirit of that, I offer this fic from sub_divided, who is one of many authors I lost track of after the great LJ exodus. It's a shame because her Death Note fics were ace, as evidenced by this fic, with its strong characterizations, spot-on dialogue, and twist that could have come right out of the manga in its heyday.

Boredom
Death Note was still several years away from its conclusion when I wrote this. It was creepy and discomfiting to write, and popped out of me all at once. Incidentally, I still think many of the speculative series conclusions and Death Note rules the fandom came up with are better than anything canon did.



Harry Potter
The Familiar – by Resonant
My fic reading and writing preferences have generally focused heavily on characters confronting Big Challenges or Uncomfortable Truths, and Snarry was pretty much optimized for these tropes from the outset. So you may imagine my surprise when the first Snape/Harry fic I read—completely at random—was Resonant’s “The Familiar.” It is widely—and rightfully—regarded as a classic. And even though canon Snape and his relation to Harry took a much darker (and more cartoonish) turn, this fic remains as delightful today as it was when the author penned it years ago. Resonant's eye for character interactions and development, and sly humor, is second to none.

Last Words
This was the second HP fic I ever wrote, for the (eighth? iteration of the) Snape Fuh-Q-Fest. I struggled and struggled and struggled, and then it poured out of me, to the tune of nearly 9k words, which was exponentially more than the word count of all my other fics over the preceeding five years.

When I finally dug it up to archive it a few years ago, I was amazed at all the attention I’d put into setting and atmospherics, and how strong those elements where in a fic where I thought I'd been focusing on two very specific characters.



The Goblin Emperor
Say It With Flowers - Serenade
I jumped in to writing for this fandom without reading much fic, but the story I’ve linked above (a gift to me, no less!) is one of my favorites in a fandom that boasts an insanely high concentration of talented authors. Its tone and characterizations are spot-on, it’s wonderfully gentle and delightfully humorous, and its take on a standard fandom trope is just...well, you’ll have to read it because I won’t spoil anything more here.

The New Emperor’s Nohecharis
It took so many drafts to get this fic right. So. Many. Drafts. But in the end, I think I did.



The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
victorious (over the failings of man) - SearchingforSerendipity
I actually wrote the first fanfic for this novel on AO3 (something I that still tickles me to this day), but so far as I know, SearchforSerendipity's "victorious" is the first fic written from this particular character's POV. It is a clever concept, delightfully executed, and very much fun to revisit.

Far Away, At Home
This fic takes place in my old neighborhood in Tokyo, and was great fun to write because you can see tons of properties built by the descendants of one of the main characters all over the place to this day. This is also something of an ensemble piece, and I enjoyed writing that aspect of it too.



The Blake & Avery Series
Eternity In An Hour – DoreyG
Like everything DoreyG writes, this is blazingly hot, and gets right to the heart of what I like about these two as a pairing.

He would be free in the morning to go where he would
My first full-length fic in this fandom. It was challenging—but fun—to try to capture the feel of the novels with this particular turn of events, and I think I did pretty well.

Omake
I can't decide whether MCU counts as a fandom (in which case I've written five fics for it) or whether each of it sub-franchises should count. So in the spirit of compromise, here's my favorite of the MCU fics I've written.

これで以上です。

Was a really great movie; better, in fact, than I'd been expecting (and far more satisfying on every level than Infinity War). It certainly did not feel like I spent over three hours in the theater.

Some quick first impressions, featuring ( spoilers! )

All in all, a really satisfying movie that I don't regret spending the money and hassle to see in the theater.

これで以上です

...and enjoyed it tremendously, which I was not expecting. It is a consistently entertaining movie. Peter Parker is amusing without being smarmy and the script wisely chooses to develop an antagonist versus a villain. One scene in particular took me by complete surprise and was nail-bitingly tense in the best of ways. Also, Donald Glover.

But really, they had me in an early scene when Peter is heading into high school to Spoon's "The Underdog," and I kept waiting for the chorus to kick in and it never did. Such a wonderful little wink to the audience.

Ironically for a movie about a spandex-clad high school student who shoots webs out of his arms and fights crime, it was the arrival of the "DC Metro Police" during a scene at the Washington Monument that catapulted me right out of the movie: No! Wrong! US Park Police have jurisdiction downtown! MPD can't do anything there!

The other was the movie's set-up, in which Tony Stark uses his power and influence to take control of post-Avengers alien invasion clean up from an earnest, blue collar, everyman Joe via a horde of wooden bureaucratic proxies. Just, no. That's not how government contracting works. If someone like Toomes got the job, that means it was probably a small business set aside, and not even a corporation with Stark's power and influence could ever hope to wrest that away from them.

That grousing aside, though, it was still a damn good movie.

これで以上です。