Yuletide 2011 fic recs part 11: V, W, X, Y, Z

[psocoptera]

V is for Vorkosigan!

Burn the Topless Towers, about Aral's first wife, and Ges.

Money often costs too much, third parties consider the problem of Miles.

A Fine and Public Place, Ivan and By.

Domestic Affairs, Ekaterin and Miles.

Keeping the Peace, an interesting AU (Shards of Honor era).

So, you might be asking, do I want to read either of the long Vorkosigan stories, the 18K word fandom AU or the 47K word Ivan/By novel? I prefer to stick to positive recs - I've read plenty of Yuletide stories and found them disappointing and I usually just wouldn't mention it - but I think it's actually possible that someone could be reading this who reads in the Vorkosiverse but hasn't automatically read every word of Yuletide Vorkosific yet and thus might actually be interested in my opinion. Which is that I read both and am not recommending either.

As far as Y being for Young Wizards - I sometimes forget that I am not actually into this fandom. I mean, I love the first three books and they're important to me, and I love fanfiction about them, but what I really care about is Nita, and secondarily Kit, and Nita & Kit, and Nita/Kit, and really not so much their sisters and their friends and their sisters' friends and the whole secondary cast that becomes important in the later books. (I guess Dairine stars in High Wizardry but I mostly read it for the Nita parts.) Of course I like Tom and Carl - who wouldn't like a gay couple smuggled into a kids' book in 1982 - but, enh, anyways, no recs this year.

I in fact only have one final rec for this year, which is Astolat's story, which I never would have read based on the fandom, but is of course excellent: Force Majeure. Washington and Hamilton + AU with magic.

Best-of list coming soon!

Comments

[myalexandria.livejournal.com]

dude, Force Majeure is epic. I read it like four times. Love.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I was driven to *learn about the history of the Revolutionary War* on wikipedia. Always a sign of a quality fic ::grin::.

[myalexandria.livejournal.com]

I seriously considered buying the biography of Hamilton! Also I watched that Lin-Manuel Miranda video about twenty-five times in a row.

[crystalpyramid]

Nita and Kit had siblings? I must have totally blocked that fact.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Have you read the later books?

(It's funny, in my head the division is clearly between the first three and the later 6+ (there's at least one more announced and I see no reason she would stop there) but if you look at the publication dates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Wizards#Books) three and four were fairly close together and the biggest gap is between four and five. I'm pretty sure that I read the first two in the late 80s and three shortly after it came out, and then didn't read four until much later, and so the division is really about how old I was when I was reading them, but I would love to do a complete re-read and see if I can substantiate my sense that Something Changed in the feel of the books (philosophy, scope, cast, tone, all of the above?).)

[crystalpyramid]

I guess I haven't really. I've read SYWTBAW, High Wizardry, Deep Wizardry, those two books about cats that are sort of in the same setting, and then after A Wizard Abroad came out I read it and sort of lost interest and stopped following the series.

[aryky.livejournal.com]

Heh - the division in my head seems so obviously to be between three and four that I was actually flabbergasted to read you saying that three and four were published fairly close together. But I guess "published fairly close together" here is still enough for there to have been three books that I read as the books in the series, and then the fourth book was the one that had come out after I'd already read the entire series (although apparently only a year or so later).

The most important single line in High Wizardry to me - possibly one of the formative quotations of my childhood - was Dairine "beating her hands against the walls of life, knowing there had to be more." Okay, apparently the actual quotation is "beating her fists against the walls of life, knowing that there was more, more." Still, considering that I was going from memory. . . yeah. That quotation really meant a lot to me. So I loved Dairine in High Wizardry. But, yeah. I'm not all that interested in shipping her with the bishounen alien prince or whatever goes on with her in later books. Much as I am generally in favor of bishounen alien princes on principle.

[glassonion]

I think it's actually possible that someone could be reading this who reads in the Vorkosiverse but hasn't automatically read every word of Yuletide Vorkosific yet and thus might actually be interested in my opinion

Y'know, you're allowed to just refer to me by name; i wouldn't be stressed about it. :>) Anyway, duly noted, and thanks.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

You were not my only candidate! ::grin::

[glassonion]

Heh, i should have gone with my first phrasing, which was more along the lines of, "i'm so vain, i probably think this comment is about me." But anyway.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Hee.

[ccommack]

I should hope not! Harrumph, harrumph!

(Also, what is it about the Vorkosigan Saga that >70% of its fanfic gives me the reaction of "*falls over ded*"?)