Mostly recs

[sophia_sol]

Every now and then I wonder if I should rethink the colour choices of my journal layout. Yes, I am in fact aware that they are eye-searing to people other than me! The worst bit is that I am a total hypocrite: I grumble to myself when other people do their journals in hard-to-read colours, and thank the universe for my precious "zap colors" bookmarklet. And yet. Here I happily sit with a journal that requires one to read text against a bright yellow background. Classy, Sophia.

And now, have some recs. Because I feel like reccing! This is a rec set of: things that are not my major fandoms. Mostly because for my major fandoms I'd be sitting here going "but I can't neglect these five dozen other brilliant stories that also need reccing!"

A Garden in the Punjab, by rosie_rues. The Secret Garden, gen. Oh my goodness this fic is so lovely. It's about Mary's ayah, and her daughter, and gardens, and it is gorgeous and also just a great story.

Notes from the desk of the Barrayan Cultural Liaison Officer, by ankaret. The Vorkosigan Saga, gen. This is a hilarious epistolary fic in the form of the sorts of emails that the poor Barrayan Cultural Liaison Officer has to deal with on a regular basis. It is just priceless.

Putting the Natives at Ease, by burntcopper. Narnia, gen. In which the Pevensie children disconcert their parents after their return from the countryside. It's told from the perspective of the parents, and it is really effective.

Oath by Elementalv, a Selective Sampling, by kumquatix. Supernatural, Dean/asexual!Castiel. This fic is a...sort of a remix, done in a fascinating way: the author took the original story by Elementalv and cut it down into a shorter story containing only words by elementalv, but with a very different overall meaning to the story than the original fic. It is fascinating!

Four Myths about Jean Calvin that Exploded in Martin Luther's Face, by abigail89. Historical rpf, John Calvin/Martin Luther. See the title? And the pairing? YEAH. It is exactly as awesome as it sounds.

Baby-sitters Club The Next Generation #6: Byron and the God of California, by zelempa. Baby-sitters Club, Byron/Jeff. Um. I never read the Baby-sitters Club books. And yet this fic is entirely endearing and lovely and I enjoyed it so much! It is clearly building on a lot of things from the original books, in a loving way, and also just as clearly a very enjoyable story in its own right.


Okay, that's all the recs for now! I hope you enjoyed the fics.

You know, I should do this more often: just randomly do rec posts. I could even do thematically-based ones, like slavefic, or marriages of convenience, or telepathy, and so forth! I mean, hell, I might as well get some use out of my obsessive organization of my delicious.* And it would be fun!

*which is alas still incomplete in its organization!

Comments

[calvinahobbes]

ooh, recs!

I'm so glad to see kumquatix' fic on there, I really enjoyed that. It's funny how it so precisely tied in to what we talked about re: confused expectations, how we all read fic expecting different things, and how sometimes when you don't think that sex is a natural conclusion to, well, anything, that some fic endings just seem abrupt and counter-intuitive. Um, yes, I like that fic.

(And, you know, I never would've said anything, but OMG yes your layout -- so eye searing! ;oP )

[sophia_sol]

Yeah, kumquatix's fic does do a very good job of illustrating that conversation, you're right! It's a brilliantly done fic.

(It really is, isn't it... Yesterday I attempted, out of curiosity, to change the background of the part with the entries to white and leaving everything else the same, but it made the journal look so tragic and washed out that I had to change it back. Maybe someday I'll be able to convince myself to change the colour scheme for the good of humanity, but not yet.)

[calvinahobbes]

Hahaha, that's so sad. But it's your journal so you totally get to decide what it looks like. That's what ?style=mine is for! ;o)

[sophia_sol]

Very true! Although the more I think about it the more I maybe do want to change it. The question would be what to change it to, because just changing the one element from yellow to white throws the whole thing off. I think I'd have to rebuild from the base up, redesigning the colours, and I have no idea where I'd even begin!

[calvinahobbes]

I can totally sympathize! Usually when I feel that itch to redesign my journal coming on, I end up losing a day to the fiddling process and then spend the next week feeling depressed about how it's DIFFERENT :oP

[sophia_sol]

Yeah, that sounds about accurate! Should be...fun, when I actually do it.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, I love the Barrayaran epistolary fic. SO MUCH.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Suggestion for themed recs: EPISTOLARY FIC. :D

[sophia-sol.livejournal.com]

I know, right? Isn't it GREAT?

Also, I LOVE your suggestion for a themed recs post. I'll totally be doing it! (I very nearly included a second epistolary fic in this post, but I figured more variety was what I was aiming for)

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

I think my favorites were the novelists. Oh man.

Epistolary fic is one of my very very favorites, so I am always looking for more of it!

[sophia-sol.livejournal.com]

Yeah, those were totally my favourites too (oh, the poor Cultural LIaison Officer!), although the ones from Jackson's Whole were awesome as well. Well, really, all of them were awesome.

I have discovered to my chagrin that I only started tagging for epistolary fics relatively recently, which is tragic, since I know there's lots more in the back recesses of my delicious that I won't be able to find. Alas! It's too bad I didn't think from the very beginning to tag for more things.