Makoyi's Fanfic Recs and Other Stuff

Title: An Unexpected Evening
Author:
Fandom: NYPL '67 Reference Cards
Genre: ?
Pairing: Uncertain Female Caller/Fellow Who's Worth Twenty Seven Million Dollars
Length: Short (1,931 words)

Author's Summary:
New Year's Eve 1966 - a mystery man and a fancy party - what more could a girl ask for?

Review:
I love the New York Public Library's find of old Reference questions. This fic is the imagined backstory to one of the more intriguing cards:
Phone message left mid-afternoon by a "somewhat uncertain female voice" on New Year's Day 1967: "I have two questions. The first is sort of an etiquette one. I went to a New Year's Eve party and unexpectedly stayed over. I don't really know the hosts. Ought I to send a thank-you note? Second, when you meet a fellow and you know he's worth twenty-seven million dollars because that's what the told me, twenty-seven million, and you know his nationality, how do you find out his name?"

The author reveal won't be for a bit yet, but this fic is lovely so I had to rec it right away.

An Unexpected Evening (on AO3)

Title: No Such Data Exists
Author: Quipxotic
Fandom: Dark Matter
Genre: Scifi, continuation (follows Season 1)
Length: Medium (12,340 words & counting)

Author's Summary:
What happens after the end of the Season 1 finale? (Beware: LOTS of spoilers!)

Review:
I just got into Dark Matter and have been looking or good fics - it's a really small fandom, unfortunately, but I did find this one that I liked. The characterizations are good and it sets out to answer the total loop that the season finale threw us for in the last minutes which is cool. It's WIP and by a rookie writer (but don't cringe yet, it's truly not bad so don't automatically cringe away from that My First Fanfic tag/warning) and they could probably use some encouragement so if you've seen Dark Matter, definitely give this one a try and consider maybe posting a short comment.

No Such Data Exists (on AO3)

Title: One More Time
Author: TheWinsomeWasp
Fandom: Queer As Folk
Genre: Time Travel (Redo)
Pairing: primarily Justin/Brian
Length: Very Long (106,080 words and counting)

Author's Summary:
The night of Brian's funeral Justin wakes up in his 17 year old body - what would you do?

Review:
I make no secret of my love of redo time travel, but this is fast becoming on of my favorites. I love the reassessment of priorities which is common to redo fics, but I also love the less common themes like the relationship Justin develops with his grandmother, how he pulls his resources (limited at the beginning) to make sure he avoids or at least does better with some of the bad things he knows are coming. And I LOVE the moment that Justin and Brian are reunited - the feels! Also, features artists, making art, and the art business which I love to see in fics.  It's not just all good things though - Justin's relationship with his mother, Michael's mother, and his old friends is lost - which is sad, but more real than if everything went his way.

One More Time (on AO3)

Title: Northern Lights
Author: silver_sun
Fandom: Rivers of London, Shetland (no knowledge of Shetland, a British police procedural TV show, is required to read this fic)
Genre: Casefic, Crossover
Pairing: hints at future Peter/Nightingale
Length: Medium (48,026 words)

Author's Summary:
The theft of three Pictish stone carvings from a museum in London lead Peter and Nightingale to Shetland. The reason for the theft is clear: The stones are ancient storage devices for magical energy. Who took them and why is a lot less so. That Shetland has its own mythology and magics which are far closer to that of Scandinavia than London doesn't help matters.
Between the lack of information, the cold and wet January weather and Nightingale's cold, Peter can't help but wish they were back in London.

Crossover with Shetland. No knowledge of Shetland, which is a police drama set in Shetland, is needed. The story is from Peter's POV, and any information about the three detectives, DCI Jimmy Perez, DS Alison 'Tosh' McIntosh and DC Sandy Wilson, who make up the core cast of Shetland will be found out where needed as Peter does.

Set post Broken Homes for Rivers of London and after series one of Shetland.

Review:
I really enjoyed this fic. The case was interesting and perfectly suited to the canon universe. The way the investigation progressed was believable and well-paced. While I like Thomas/Peter shipping well enough, I still prefer genfic so that may be why I found that aspect of the story to be out-of-character - otherwise, the characterizations were pretty good. I do think this fic badly needed to be proofread (badly enough that I stopped reading it on my ereader after the first chapter and opened it up in my laptop in calibre's editor and fixed my epub as I read -- if you're a serious grammar nazi, message me and I can send you a copy because I really don't want people to avoid reading this fic because it wasn't beta read). It also suffered from the same flaw as Midnight Riot where it tells what was just said in description rather than just giving the dialogue. This makes for a lot of long paragraphs and, at times, a slow pace to what could have been a page turner.

Northern Lights (on AO3)
My cover art for this fic

Title: Hear That Call
Author: isbmlamloi
Fandom: A League of Their Own
Genre: AU
Pairing: Jimmy Dugan/Dottie Hinson, implied Mae Mordabito/Doris Murphy
Length: Short (4.595 words)

Author's Summary:
Dottie goes home to bury Bob, then returns to see Kit pitch the World Series. Jimmy deals with the second year of the AAGPBL.

Review:
Short but nice AU if Dottie's husband hadn't come home from the war. I love A League of Their Own and wish there were more fics for it - especially ones that still stay pretty true to the film and the actual history of the league. This fic does that pretty well, though obviously it is a little darker and less comedic given the nature of the AU. I had actually started reading this hoping there would be a bit more of the tagged Mae/Doris ship, but unfortunately there's only a few little hints of it - wear your shipping goggles :)

Hear That Call (on AO3)

Title: Nostalgia for the Light
Author: alizarin_nyc
Fandom: Ripper Street
Genre: General, Case-fic
Length: Medium (6,602 Words)

Author's Summary:
Inspector Reid, Sergeant Drake and Captain Jackson investigate a case that leaves them more than a bit worse for wear. At least they have each other.

Review:
If you're not familiar with this show, it's a fairly-new BBC Victorian detective show set in Whitechapel, London. It's still a very small fandom but this story is among the better casefics out there.

Nostalgia for the Light (on AO3)

Title: No Unworthy Aim
Author: Sinope 
Fandom: Peter Pan (J.M. Barrie)
Genre: General, Post-canon, Historical - WWI
Pairing: light Hook/Wendy (post-canon)
Length: Short (4,851 Words)

Author's Summary:
Hook should, perhaps, have died in England and awoken in Hell. Instead, he died in Neverland and awoke in the trenches of 1916 France.
While trying to aid the boys of England, Wendy Darling found herself confronted with a man who had lost his right hand, his past, and his ability to dream.

Review:
Great historical fantasy (WWI) and post-canon fic.  Wendy's characterization is great.  The romance is very light.

No Unworthy Aim (on AO3)

Title: The Magic School Bus Stops a Spell
Author: corbae
Fandom: Teen Wolf, Magic School Bus
Genre: Crack, Crossover
Length: Short (Words: 1,838)

Author's Summary:
It all began when Ms. Frizzle got the letter from her niece.

Review:
Unrepentant crack!fic, but kind of awesome for it.

The Magic School Bus Stops a Spell (on AO3)
podfic by Rhea, audiobook by Fire-Juggler (on AO3)

Title:  No Reservations: Narnia
Author: Edonohana 
Fandom: Narnia, No Reservations, RPF
Genre:  General, Crossover, Meta
Length: Short (Words: 6,228)
note: rec'd on fancake

Author's Summary:
I’m crammed into a burrow so small that my knees are up around my ears and the boom mike keeps slamming into my head, inhaling the potent scent of toffee-apple brandy and trying to drink a talking mouse under the table.

Review:
Anthony Bourdain meets Reepicheep!  I can't believe I haven't rec'd this one yet.  It sounds so crack-y but it's not.  It's well done as a story and it actually has something kind of profound to say.  This story is about a real travel show going to a perfect place but it's not quite what you might expect.  Because what they find isn't a predictably Narnia-esque discovery about goodness and faith as beauty (which would never work with a No Reservations crossover).  But nor is it, as in many deconstructions of perfection, that it's a place where surface perfection hides an ugly truth. 

They find, as so often happens in No Reservations, that traveling somewhere fantastic is seldom everything you'd imagined, but that doesn't make it any less perfect or less beautiful and that encountering new cultures is a journey of self-discovery but a relativistic one with meaningful uncertainty and bigger questions rather than the obvious answers of a life lived unchallenged.  And when it comes to Narnia specifically, they find that there is a strange power to perfect even if its not what they imagined perfect would be.  And in a weird way, I think that combination really speaks about a kind of faith independent of religion.  It's a faith that CS Lewis probably wouldn't recognize as such, but still.  And it does it without talking about faith at all, but by talking about Narnia.

And I'm not sure that message could have been told quite so well or quite so profoundly (and especially not so efficiently - this is less than 7k words, remember) without using Narnia's allegory and No Reservations' template of (paradoxically) ambiguous discovery as a medium - which I think represents the pinnacle of fanfiction.

Now, I don't actually know if Edonohana set out to write a profound commentary on faith and the clash of imagined ideals and reality.  It's entirely possible they just thought it would make for a funny story - and it is funny and it has beautiful descriptions for people and places and food (that amazingly manage to stand in pretty effectively for the missing visuals of No Reservations) too.  The Anthony Bourdain voice is incredible and just perfectly nails both the snarky irreverence and the relativistic acceptance of canon... which is a little trippy beside the allegorical fantasy world of Narnia.  Maybe I'm reading into this things that aren't actually there.  But that in itself sounds a lot like a line out of No Reservations, so maybe there's something to it after all.

No Reservations: Narnia (on AO3)
podfic available (on AO3) - though frankly the author got Anthony Bourdain's voice so spot on that I really recommend reading it because part of the magic of the crossover is how easy it is to hear him narrate it

Now with cover art: