(Partial) Meme Answers

[brigdh]

laura47 asked "Top 5 fanfic authors".

Ah, this is such a difficult question! It depends so much on what I'm in the mood for, and what I've been reading too much of, and a million other factors. Plus, I'd inevitably forget someone, and I hate to leave people off such a list. Instead, here is "top 5 fanfics I've read recently" (in the order I read them):

1. Thistledown by Violette_Royale. 90k Merlin genderswap AU, Merlin/Arthur in non-magical 1140s Europe. Merlin is a nun and Arthur is a knight who seduces her. God, that sounds awful. But this story is amazing and epic, and the writing is so beautiful, and the sex is so hot, and I love it to little pieces.
2. Sing When They Burn by Bagheera. Vikings, Ragnar/Floki, Ragnar/Lagertha/Floki. By the way, did I mention I briefly got into Vikings fandom? Because I did. This story is excellent, and the writing is poetic, and it mixes myth and history into the show in the best of ways.
3. Dans le Défit de la Coutume by Elspethdixon. Benjamin January mysteries, Ben/Shaw, with mentions of Ben/Rose and Ben/Hannibal. Did you guys know there are only four pieces of Benjamin January fanfiction in existence? A fact which I must now concede to be true, having spent days attempting to google up more. Anyway, this story would be great even if it were competing with a larger pool. It is sweet and the character voices are perfect.
4. A Lonely Fire by Eva. Django Unchained, gen, focusing on King post-movie. The writing here is so beautiful, and this story actually made me retroactively appreciate the canon and characters more. This is that rare gem of fanfiction that's better than the original source. (Granted, I wasn't especially enthralled by the original source.)
5. when we lay down our weary guns by GroteskBurlesque. Post-movie fix-it epic (almost 40k), which ends up in a Django/King/Broomhilda threesome. I have to admit that I've spent a lot of time reading Django Unchained OT3 fic due to the lack of fic for certain other OT3s set in the mid-19th century America, but this story is genuinely awesome, happy and touching and so well-written and well-characterized. I did not know I needed this after the movie, but I really, really did.


tsarina asked "Tell me your favorite animes. (I need to watch something new)".

Hahaha, I haven't seen a new anime in ages. You might well be more up-to-date than I am. Still:

1. Yami no Matsuei. My all-time favorite. Incredibly slashy shinigami angst about their abusive childhoods in between avoiding/being attracted to a magical serial killer. That is a terrible description of what is actually an amazing show.
2. Revolutionary Girl Utena. I'm currently in the middle of watching the anime, though I've seen the movie and read the manga years ago. Reworking of fairy tale archetypes to make a point about growing up and gender. The movie is gorgeous, despite lacking a great deal of coherence.
3. Ouran High School Host Club. Incredibly cracky series about a super-rich, super-elite high school, in which the most popular boys form a host club. Starring a poor girl disguised as a boy. The set-up makes no sense, but allows for the self-aware, mocking use of shounen-ai tropes to great comedic effect.
4. Fullmetal Alchemist. The original! I haven't seen the new anime, though I should. Set in vaguely pre-WWII Europe, this starts off as a fairly standard "I will become stronger!" boy's adventure, but quickly becomes about the cost of war, and ends up so much more heart-breaking than you would ever have guessed from the first few episodes.
5. Samurai Champloo. Silly but touching, two samurai and a young girl go on a road trip across a deliberately anachronistic medieval Japan to find the girl's father. The soundtrack consists mostly of hip-hop, and the series uses a great deal of similar cultural markers (graffiti, record scratching, etc), which you would think would be a bizarre combination, but it somehow works so well.

silverflight asked "Top 5 characters you like!"

1. Benjamin January. Honestly, I could just talk about five characters from the Benjamin January mysteries, but I will refrain and only discuss Ben. He is described at one point as a "knight-errant" and that is so true; he's angry at the injustices of the world, he desperately wants to protect those he loves, his sense of right and wrong determines a lot of his actions. But he is also lonely and awkward, a complete and total romantic (in both the capital-R and lower case-r senses of the word), and has a relatively silly sense of humor. He is a bit more earnest and serious than most of his family and close friends, but also very kind. I adore him.
2. Alec. (From Ellen Kushner's Riverside series) Oh, Alec. You are crazy and self-destructive and full of repressed passion and I LOVE YOU SO MUCH DON'T KILL YOURSELF, OKAY.
3. Hisoka. (From Yami no Matsuei) Hisoka, Hisoka, Hisoka. I just want to read about him forever; I want him to have a happy ending at the same time that I kind of want him to break the heavens. He is stubbornness personified, the incarnation of the refusal to submit. I love that about him.
4. Sanzo. (From Saiyuki) He is a priest who thinks (who does?) he knows better than the gods. HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE THAT? He is fierce and angry and cynical and in complete denial of his own idealism and loyalty, but is all the more awesome for that. Speaking of, I need to catch up with the manga and Saiyuki Gaiden; I still haven't read the last handful of chapters of either. I got spoiled with the Tokyopop editions, and then they went out of business.
5. Peter Grant. (From Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series) Not really one of my fannish favorites, but it's nice to talk about something different. He is not a very good policeman (despite that being his job), but is funny and geeky and sweet and clever, and has one of my favorite first-person narrative voices in a long while.

I'll get around to answering the other questions soon, though the original meme is here, if you'd still like to ask something!

Comments

[somebraveapollo.livejournal.com]

Ohhhh, I love those Django fics - I'd not read A Lonely Fire before, so thank you for reccing it! It's an interesting fandom, Django is. I loved the film actually, but I think fic is so easy to get horribly wrong - the OT3 is potentially glorious but has to be very particularly balanced. And it's lightyears different from Ben/Rose/Hannibal, who are all realists - like, they are romantic and passionate but always rational and aware about their identity and surroundings. Their love is tame, and mature, I think. Broomhilda/Django/Shultz, meanwhile, are enjoy drama, and there's a lot of heroic grandeur going on between them, which is hard to capture with fic. But the ones you linked really worked!

Also, I love your list of favourite characters. Peeeter. I love his voice so much, and the - naturalness with which he is written. Like, I know people like that! I am a person like that! It's really cool to see that in books. Apparently the fourth book is coming out next month - can't wait!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Broomhilda/Django/Shultz and Ben/Rose/Hannibal are in no way accurate emotional parallels (and "tame, mature"- I agree very much), but the combination of the "married couple plus their friend" dynamic and a vaguely similar setting were enough for me to seek out the fanfic. Which I then enjoyed reading for its own qualities! Plus, I happened to have seen Django Unchained for the first time last month, and so it occurred to me as a potential canon when I was trying to come up with something to read. (I also tried Pepper/Tony/Bruce from the Avengers fandom, which turned out to be terrible, or at least the story I read was, and Sherlock/Watson/Mary, which was not great but not bad, either.)

I love Peter! I am very excited for the new book, particularly because the last one ended on a bit of a cliffhanger.