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Fanworks Reviews
In-depth reviews of fanworks of all kinds - because transformative works are works of art.
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Hey!! Thanks so much for the comment ^_^ I’m delighted you saw this - your poem is still one of my all-time favourites (and yeah, I still can’t read it aloud without getting choked up xD)
I think the production quality is just as good as it needs to be, and yeah, I can understand wanting to turn it around quickly in order to capitalise on the hype. Twitch Plays Pokémon was very much a fandom of the moment. Anyway, it’s beautiful - thank you for writing and drawing it <3
Review: We are the bold
Fandom: Twitch Plays Pokémon
Creator: circlejourney
Date Posted: 12/03/2014
Click here for the comic
“we are the bold.
we are the brave.
we fear
no tree
no fall
no cave”
We are the bold by circlejourney is, without exaggeration, one of my favourite poems of all time. With simple, beautiful words and images the artist conjures up the long, harrowing journey from New Bark Town to the Johto League: the triumphs, the defeats, the joys and darkness.
I must have read this poem a thousand times by now - I used to have it pinned to my noticeboard in my room at uni - and yet I can still barely make it through the whole thing without tearing up. I usually get as far as “We raised ourselves from darkness/to light” before the tears start to fall. The image of Burrito raising his head to the light as an Espeon, defying the calls to release him, is incredibly powerful - especially since Espeon is linked with the sun and light.
Combine that with the next line “and slowly we scaled/this glorious height”, accompanied by AJ and his team of humble, ordinary ‘mon silhouetted against the Johto League, and I’m finished before we even get to the bit about the Pokémon who were released.
(I’ll readily admit to being a complete sap, but that doesn’t make this fanwork any less amazing).
Keep reading
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This looks super cool! I haven’t tried it out yet, but I’m all in favour of fanworks recommendations ;) and this is a really clever tool. I hope it catches on!
What is GetRec’d?
GetRec’d is a personal project of mine that aims to add recommendations to AO3. It’s an API that processes data collected by a browser user-script/extension & returns a list of fics similar to the work you’re viewing.
Where can I get it?
For desktop:
Chrome extension.
Tampermonkey userscript. You can try it with Greasemonkey, but it tends to break some elements on AO3′s pages.
Android:
The Dolphin browser has a Tampermonkey add-on you can install the userscript with.
Side note: If anyone with iOS/Android skills wants to help by porting the extension to those platforms, please get in touch!
I’ve never used Tampermonkey, how do I install a userscript?
Download Tampermonkey for your browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Dolphin).Go here and click install. Click install again. Done!
What data does it collect?
When you view a fic, its id number, title, and category are collected, along with a list of users who have left kudos. This is done anonymously and not tied to you in any way. The engine makes recs based on the similarity of works, not by building profiles of users.
Why on earth are you collecting data this way???
AO3 doesn’t have an API, so scraping the information seems to be the way to go. I may automate the process further if this poses problems, but I’m working with limited resources and would like to keep the size of the database as low as I can. Collecting and pooling what’s currently being read seems like one way to select relevant fics without allowing things like quantity of hits, kudos, etc. to influence a rec and replicate discovery methods already available.
How does it decide which fics are similar?
GetRedc’d looks at the sets of users who have left kudos on each fic, and works out their similarity based on how much those sets overlap. If you want to be math-y about it, it determines the Jaccard index for each pair of fics.
Head over to the GetRec’d askbox if you have any other questions!
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Fan studies signal boost! And all proceeds to the OTW ❤
Ta-da! Straight from its debut this weekend in Chicago at SCMS 2017!
The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age is a collection of fanfiction stories from a variety of big western media fandoms - Star Trek, Star Wars, X-Files, Buffy, Doctor Who, HP, MCU, popslash, etc. vaguely modeled on The Canterbury Tales - each with a contextualizing essay by me and featuring introductions and other scholarly apparatus also by me.
This book was designed for classroom use - for teachers who want to teach a class or a unit on fanfiction (see a list of some current classes here at Fanlore) without sending their students to the wilds of the internet (and/or without bothering fanfiction-writing fans.) The stories were selected to represent a range of tropes and themes and also for their teachability.
The book was also created as a case study in transformative fair use; it was put together for an educational purpose and published with a non-profit scholarly press; all of the stories in this book remain available for free on the internet in their original archives; all royalties from the book are being donated to the Organization For Transformative Works & the Archive of Our Own.
A note to teachers: ordered together with The Fan Fiction Studies Reader (U. Iowa, 2014) or Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over The World (Smartpop, 2013), you have a course in a bottle: everything for your fanfic-teaching needs!
A note to fandom: This book is aimed at the classroom, not at fandom, though I have tried to write as fannish an academic book as possible & one with at least some of the spirit. (Also: I totally didn’t write that book copy up there about 50 Shades of Gray, I’m just saying. :D They don’t ask me about the book copy!)
The Fanfiction Reader is also available at Amazon.com or directly from the University of Michigan website, which was distributing a 30% off code at SCMS that is good until April 26, 2016: UMSCMS17. (Shout out to U. Michigan Press for their support of fandom, open access, and fair use.) Or there’s a big chunk available on Googlebooks if you just want to see what the hell the thing is.
#francesca coppa#fan studies#fan studies reader#educational resources#fandom#fanworks#the fanfiction reader: folk tales from the digital age
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I’ve seen five different authors take down, or prepare to take down, their posted works on Ao3 this week. At the same time, I’ve seen several people wishing there was more new content to read. I’ve also seen countless posts by authors begging for people to leave comments and kudos.
People tell me I am a big name fan in my chosen fandom. I don’t quite get that but for the purposes of this post, let’s roll with it. On my latest one shot, less than 18% of the people who read it bothered to hit the kudos button. Sure, okay, maybe that one sort of sucked. Let’s look at the one shot posted before that - less than 16% left kudos. Before that - 10%, and then 16%. I’m not even going to get into the comments. Let’s just say the numbers drop a lot. I’m just looking at one shots here so we don’t have to worry about multiple hits from multiple chapters, people reading previous chapters over, etc. And if I am a BNF, that means other people are getting significantly less kudos and comments.
Fandom is withering away because it feels like people don’t care about the works that are posted. Why should I go to the trouble of posting my stories if no one reads them, and of the people who do read them, less than a fifth like them? Even if you are not a huge fan of the story, if it kept your attention long enough for you to get to the bottom, go ahead and mash that kudos button. It’s a drop of encouragement in a big desert.
TL;DR: Passively devouring content is killing fandom.
#interesting discussion#fic reviews#fic comments#feedback on fic#I always hit the kudos button if I like a work and I've heard people complaining about those who leave kudos but don't comment#but I didn't think that not even leaving kudos at all was a widespread thing#(personally I just look at numbers of kudos on my works and don't compare the kudos to hits ratio)#which means that every kudos feels like an achievement :D
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Wow, this is cool! Squee at fanfic authors while you read!
I saw this post by @astropixie about how it’d be nice to review fics on AO3 as you read. A little while back, because I was so in awe of the Clexa fic writers, I made this userscript (can install on Firefox by using Greasemonkey and on Chrome, ETA: Opera, and Safari by using Tampermonkey) so that I could do just that. It doesn’t have the wattpad or soundcloud functionality, it’s just a little thing added on to a page, not something supported by the site itself, but it’s better than nothing.
The userscript is available here: http://pastebin.com/vYBCYWu4
ETA: FFN version: http://pastebin.com/addj3Xtm
Tampermonkey tutorial
#ao3 tools#fic reviews#fic comments#I continue to be in awe of the sheer creativity and resourcefulness of fandom
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❤
If AO3 had an “if you liked this story, you’ll probably like this one” recommend feature, I would probably never leave my house again.
#thank you for the signal boost!!!#sorry I haven't posted any reviews in ages#life has been hella busy but I've got one in mind to write next#chromalogue
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Signal boost! Fanfic authors (and fanworks creators of all stripes) deserve our appreciation :D This is an awesome idea.
August 21st: Fanfiction Writers Appreciation Day
I think this is a great idea! Also maybe we could rec our favorite fics on our blogs that day too? Mass sharing!
I’ll probs queue up fic recs to post that day. Sounds good?
#fanworks creators deserve in-depth feedback#and that's a lot of what I try to do with this blog#to give fanworks the credit they deserve#because I recognise that fanworks are a labour of love#and I love to ferret out and exclaim over the little details that get poured into them#also by the same token#this blog is a labour of love too#and I crave feedback for it#heh
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Review: We are the bold
Fandom: Twitch Plays Pokémon
Creator: circlejourney
Date Posted: 12/03/2014
Click here for the comic
“we are the bold.
we are the brave.
we fear
no tree
no fall
no cave”
We are the bold by circlejourney is, without exaggeration, one of my favourite poems of all time. With simple, beautiful words and images the artist conjures up the long, harrowing journey from New Bark Town to the Johto League: the triumphs, the defeats, the joys and darkness.
I must have read this poem a thousand times by now - I used to have it pinned to my noticeboard in my room at uni - and yet I can still barely make it through the whole thing without tearing up. I usually get as far as “We raised ourselves from darkness/to light” before the tears start to fall. The image of Burrito raising his head to the light as an Espeon, defying the calls to release him, is incredibly powerful - especially since Espeon is linked with the sun and light.
Combine that with the next line “and slowly we scaled/this glorious height”, accompanied by AJ and his team of humble, ordinary ‘mon silhouetted against the Johto League, and I’m finished before we even get to the bit about the Pokémon who were released.
(I’ll readily admit to being a complete sap, but that doesn’t make this fanwork any less amazing).
I followed the original Twitch Plays Pokémon while it was happening - not closely, I admit, but I did follow it - but then completely missed the follow-up, Twitch Plays Pokémon Crystal. So I learned about all of the events, the lore and the meta, from fanworks after the fact. And what an incredible lore.
One of my favourite things about the lore of Twitch Plays Pokémon Crystal is how it builds on the original TPP lore, exploring the legacy left by the “gods” and “kings” of Red’s team and its impact on the generation who came after them. We are the bold doesn’t dive into this as overtly as many other fanworks (some of which will be in my recs at the end), but I feel that it’s a subtext which is present the whole time.
We are the bold is all about the struggle to prove yourself equal to the challenges that life throws at you - not just physical trees and boulders and falls, but the shadows cast by those who have gone before.
“Friendships came,
friendships went.
To the darkness some were sent.”
I don’t think I need to spell out why these lines, and images that accompany them, affect me so much. But again, I’m struck by just how much emotion circlejourney can evoke with a few simple words. Of course, the artwork helps with this a lot, but the effect is completed by the subtle, understated poetry of the words that go with it.
I also love the sentence structure in lines like “To the darkness some were sent” and especially the climactic final lines, “the first/to rise/shall fall the last.” While the word order was probably born from wanting to end on the right rhyme, it adds a sense of grandeur to the poem, the perfect complement to its themes and imagery.
“but
when all
is done
and all
is past
the first
to rise
shall fall the last.”
Words can barely express how much I adore this last part of the poem. The whole thing is laid out and paced perfectly: the single isolated “but”, soft and almost greyed-out, above AJ clutching a Pokéball, looking like he’s realised something that just tilted his world on its axis; the way that the words are split up so that the poem accelerates towards the end, intercut with images of Lance and Dragonite, of Brian’s wing and LazorGator’s claw; and the final image of Brian perched on LazorGator’s shoulders, with their younger, laughing selves behind them.
The whole thing reads like the perfect example of why the lore of Twitch Plays Pokémon Crystal - and TPP in general - is so amazing. Fandom has many great examples of just how creative and ingenious the fan hive mind can be with very little material, but I don’t think the term “hive mind” was ever so literal as it is with Twitch Plays Pokémon. And nowhere else, I think, did it ever find so much profound meaning in such complete and utter nonsense.
For a little while now I’ve been thinking about investigating the fandom around Pokémon Go and possibly reviewing a PKG-related fanwork (I haven’t actually seen any yet, but come on, this is fandom. There’ll be some), when this poem suddenly came into my head. In a way, the omnipresence of Pokémon Go reminds me of Twitch Plays Pokémon. Oh, I know the scale is completely different; TPP, while it was pretty huge, was still a fringe phenomenon, and also didn’t last as long as Pokémon Go so far has. But to the people who were in it, it had the same all-encompassing feeling, and while it was happening, it was all they could talk about.
And if the fanworks that come from it are a fraction as creative as the ones from Twitch Plays Pokémon, then I for one can’t wait.
If you liked this, you’ll enjoy...
The epic story of Lazor Gator, the burdened hero. by LeChuck999 - If you don’t know the storyline behind Twitch Plays Pokémon Crystal - and even if you do - this comic is one of the best summaries. It tells the story of AJ’s Pokémon journey through the eyes of his starter, LazorGator. It’s also a great reference to the conflicting images of LazorGator in TTP fandom (experience hog versus strong protector) and to how much darker the lore of Crystal is compared to Red.
Eevee’s Choice by crimsonburn27 - This comic features a brilliant headcanon as to how Eevee - aka Burrito - came to evolve into Espeon, incorporating past lore from Twitch Plays Pokémon and how it carried over into the sequel.
Only ‘Mon by VelleVette - Similarly, Only ‘Mon explores the legacy of the original TPP team through a direct confrontation between Gold and Red, as the two square off against each other before their climactic battle.
#review#twitch plays pokemon#twitch plays pokemon crystal#circlejourney#tpp#pokemon#we are the bold#fan poem#fancomic#fanart#no gods no kings only mon#pokemon go#I cried at least five more times while writing this
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Fanworks Reviews is 1 today!
Happy Birthday, Fanworks Reviews!
Yes, as much as it might not seem that way (due to long gaps in my posting schedule), Fanworks Reviews has been going on Tumblr for one whole year. This time last year, I published my first ever review, of ‘The One With the Forgotten Two of Diamonds’, a Harry Potter fic that happened to catch my eye on the front page of AO3.
It got what felt like an amazing response at the time - 26 notes - and spurred me on to write another review, of ‘Comics: Team Natasha' a few days later.
Of course, not everything I publish here gets noticed that much, which is why I sometimes go weeks or months without writing another post. But I always come back to it :)
I started this blog because I have this huge love of fanworks and a burning desire to express that through words, express why, and give them the kind of credit and loving, detailed analysis that I see lavished on every other type of art, from film to comics to poems to theatre. I read - and watch and look at and sometimes listen to, but mostly read - an enormous amount of fanworks in my day to day life, and I come across the most incredible, thought-provoking, meaningful, layered, entertaining, cinematic, memorable, beautiful fanworks that just blow me away. I know you do too.
But so often I see fanworks dismissed as derivative, as trivial, pointless, silly, not “real” writing or artwork or videos. I don’t have time here to go into the ridiculous fallacy of that notion and the modern idea of what is “original”, though I’m planning to devote a post to something similar in the near future. But I love fanworks, for every reason I’ve just stated and more. And this blog, this analysis, these reviews that I do, are my explanation as to why.
To every one of the 39 followers who’ve come to this blog over the past year, I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride. I hope you like it enough to stick around and read my ramblings for the next year, and the year after that, and the year after that.
And thank you.
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That feeling when you realise that you linked to the wrong fic in your very first post and no-one ever told you
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Review: the way you move is like a full on rainstorm (and I’m a house of cards)
Fandom: Inception
Author: sevenimpossiblethings
Date Completed: 12/05/2016
Summary: “Arthur is a rising pop star. Eames is his backup dancer. Ariadne runs his social media. Mal tries to run his life.”
Click here for the fic
I’ve very recently stumbled across sevenimpossiblethings, and all of their work without exception is completely delightful. Their fluff-centric approach to fic is practically tailored to my tastes, and I have spent a very enjoyable couple of days just reading through all their Inception fics.
the way you move is like a full on rainstorm (and I’m a house of cards) - which wins the prize for the fic with the longest title that I’ve yet reviewed - has become an instant favourite, and one that I’m already dying to re-read. I admit that at first I was dubious about the idea of Arthur as a pop star - and Eames as a backup dancer - but as soon as I started reading the fic I realised how completely unfounded those doubts were.
sevenimpossiblethings refers to pop singer!Arthur as a “necessary suspension of disbelief”, but really, I hardly had to suspend my disbelief at all. I think part of why it works so well is that we get just enough detail to set the scene, but not so much that it imposes a specific idea of what Arthur-as-a-pop-star should look like, leaving us to imagine whatever we think fits best.
So we get titles for Arthur’s songs and occasionally the subject matter, but no lyrics. We’re free to imagine what the choreography of each song might look like, what Arthur sounds like when he sings and plays the piano. When I read, I can hear the music in my head, but I’d be hard pushed to tell you exactly what it sounds like; I just know that I can hear it. I can visualise snatches of choreography, but I couldn't tell you what the dance steps look like. In other words, I think it’s one of those things where you let the reader’s imagination do the hard work and fill in what seems natural to them.
The other part of why pop singer!Arthur works so well is that he seems like himself. sevenimpossiblethings’ characterisation of Arthur, as well as all the other characters, is excellent. He is Arthur in the world of pop music - wearing suits, playing the piano, being slightly standoffish and socially awkward - instead of some sort of pop version of Arthur, and as subtle as that distinction might seem, it makes all the difference.
sevenimpossiblethings also manages to very neatly deal with the power differential that inevitably arises in fic AUs where one half of the couple is a celebrity of some kind, and the other isn't. Usually this kind of setup would result in a lot of sneaking around, tension over having to hide the relationship, over having to maintain a public image (sometimes in the closet), and stress about when to go public. While there is an element of that in the way you move is like a full on rainstorm, Arthur and Eames deal with their budding relationship in the spotlight in a manner that is amazingly mature and practical. (Can you tell I have a thing for couples with healthy, mature communication?)
In fact, Arthur outright acknowledges the potential "status differential" in a relationship between him and Eames during a conversation with Ariadne early on. I also like to think that his and Eames' jokes about "model couple communication" are a nod to the kinds of fraught misunderstandings that often plague fic couples in their position.
The only relationship in the way you move... which is more adorable than Arthur and Eames is the relationship between Arthur and Ariadne. I love reading Ariadne and Arthur as best friends even more than I love Arthur and Mal as best friends, and their friendship in this fic is nothing short of perfect. Ariadne and Arthur’s personalities complement each other extremely well, with Ariadne’s bubbly optimism balancing out Arthur’s methodical pragmatism, whilst also bringing out his more playful side. She’s a much-needed voice of reason in many situations, and you can see why a friendship with her was really all that Arthur needed in his life (at least until he met Eames).
To Ariadne: Is it weird that I never… bothered to make friends after you?
From Ariadne: Maybe? Who cares
From Ariadne: Also, you didn’t make friends with me. I made friends with you
Arthur’s social media following and the references to Twitter were another thing I loved, and I would happily read pages and pages of Arthur’s Twitter fans squabbling over whether or not he and Eames are a couple, and creating gifsets of the way they interact on stage. As always, leave it to a fanfic author to be able to depict fandom dynamics in the most realistic way possible ;)
The social media exchanges, together with the media headlines and the occasional full article, all help to show, rather than tell, Arthur’s rising stardom in the pop world, giving us a sense of his career progression from an outside viewpoint. This is much more effective than if we were simply told that Arthur’s fame was spreading. At the same time, through Arthur’s perspective, we experience the disbelief that he feels over the fact that this is even happening. It’s a very neat duality.
Happily, the way you move... is already part of a series, You Can See It With the Lights Out, and sevenimpossiblethings has confirmed that there are a number of scenes which didn’t make it into the fic that will be posted as one-shots, so we can look forward to loads more stories from this lovely ‘verse. After reading the fic once (and mostly re-reading it a second time while writing this review), I’m hugely invested in these characters and the world that sevenimpossiblethings has created around them, and I can’t wait to read more.
If you liked this, you’ll like...
Back in Black by laiqualorelote: Rock band AU and possibly one of the most perfect AUs I have ever had the pleasure of reading (in any fandom). Featuring Arthur as a virtuoso guitarist and Eames as the bassist of the legendary rock band The Kick, who are reuniting after three years out of the spotlight. This fic is a joy from start to finish. If you haven’t read it yet, don’t waste a moment more.
Next Big Thing by earlgreytea68: If you enjoy the “Arthur’s fandom” sections of the way you move..., you’ll love Next Big Thing, which takes “fandom within a fic” to a whole new level of meta. Next Big Thing is a Home and Garden TV AU in which Arthur is a real estate agent and Eames is an interior designer. It’s a sequel to a much shorter fic called Fixer-Upper, though I think you can enjoy it without reading the prequel - but why not have both anyway?
Late Night Phone Call by sparkledark: Okay, it’s hard for me to explain why this fic is similar to the way you move... without spoiling you, though those of you who’ve read it will understand the link. AU in which Arthur mans an insomniac helpline and Eames is a regular caller.
Breaking News by involuntaryorange: News anchor AU. Like Next Big Thing, Breaking News goes down the “fandom within a fic” route (in fact, I’m pretty sure it was directly influenced by NBT) and it’s really funny and enjoyable, with some great “social media” scenes.
#review#sevenimpossiblethings#consultingreaders#Inception#music AU#pop AU#Arthur x Eames#Ariadne#fluff#friends to lovers#coming out#LGBT issues#music industry#pop music#inceptiversary#because I was going to post a review on the day itself but now it's like a week away and I don't want to revisit the fandom again so quickly
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Review: The Best Dance
Fandom: Harry Potter
Author: Blossomwitch
Post Date: 06/02/2015
Summary: “Sometimes you show up to the ball with the wrong date; sometimes you don’t realize who you’re happiest with until everyone else is gone and you find yourself alone for a moment thinking, this is it. At the Yule Ball, Hermione and Ginny experience such a moment. Implied femslash.”
Click here for the fic
The Best Dance by Blossomwitch, a Hermione/Ginny fanfic, is not a pairing I’ve ever thought to read before. Not because I have anything against it; far from it, I actually think it’s pretty brilliant now that I’ve read the fic. When I was heavily into reading Harry Potter fanfiction around 2007-2008, though, I mostly stuck to canon, hetero pairings, and in the years since, I’ve not sought out much that’s all that different. But Blossomwitch is one of my favourite writers in the Yu Yu Hakusho fandom, and when I came across this fic on her author page on FanFiction.net, the summary, especially the setting, intrigued me enough to give it a read.
What’s most interesting about The Best Dance, though, isn’t the pairing so much as the perspective it gives. The Best Dance is Hermione and Ginny’s fic; it’s their say, in a book (Goblet of Fire) which, perhaps more than any of the others (except maybe Half-Blood Prince) is overwhelmingly dominated by teenage hormones and macho posturing. During which, in a book told from a male point of view, what the women want and what they think is too often overlooked, misinterpreted or brushed aside.
You all remember the Yule Ball, I’m sure: that mess of horrible sexism in which Ron and (to a lesser extent) Harry snub and disregard their female friends in a quest to find the best-looking pair of girls to go with. Only to promptly ignore them for the rest of the night once they’ve been visible together for the required amount of time. The event at which Ron’s jealousy at Hermione having found a man to be with who is not him reaches its screeching, indignant, red-faced climax. Yes, that Yule Ball.
Blossomwitch’s choice to set this fic during the Yule Ball is interesting for two reasons: first, as I say, because it focuses on two women who were persistently sidelined during the whole mess that I just described; and secondly, because of Ginny, from whose point of view the fic is told. The Yule Ball was sort of a turning point for Ginny in a couple of ways; we know from Order of the Phoenix that it was where she started to let go of her feelings for Harry a bit, where she met Michael Corner and decided to go out with him.
So instead of Michael Corner whom she danced with and who made her start to look past her infatuation with Harry, why couldn’t it have been Hermione?
Because Ginny does start to see past her infatuation with Harry in a very real way: not just in the sense of realising that there are other fish in the sea, but by beginning to dismantle the idealised image of him that she used to have.
Hermione and Ginny’s conversation in The Best Dance provides some much-needed perspective on a series of events in which Harry and Ron both behave pretty badly. Hermione and Ron are both Harry’s best friends, but Harry will side with Ron in almost all circumstances where they haven’t fallen out over something. Half-Blood Prince is the first time where we really see that change. So it’s refreshing to have Hermione and Ginny address this tendency, drawing attention to something which is never really brought up in the books, biased as they are towards Harry’s viewpoint. Like I said, for once we get to hear from the women about what they think.
That's one part of why I enjoyed this fic so much. The other is the romance, which is subtle but still very much there, and very realistic to the situation of two women who, up to this point, have only seen each other as friends and nothing more, and who suddenly realise they might have feelings which go beyond that.
As she and Hermione start to dance, Ginny has a moment when she realises that they're the only same-sex couple on the floor. This is another thing in Goblet of Fire that's hard to overlook once you've noticed it: the way that every single one of the romances, even the most minor of side pairings, is straight. Of course, I don’t need to tell you all that the Harry Potter series is incredibly heteronormative; I’m sure you already know that. But again, I like that Blossomwitch draws attention to it, because it’s an important part of the context to Hermione and Ginny’s dance: the fact that this is a bold step not just for their relationship, but in the social environment of Hogwarts.
The Best Dance has quite an open ending, and Blossomwitch mentioned that they weren’t sure whether the story might become the first part of a multi-chapter work. For now, it’s a stand-alone, and much as I would love to read more of this particular story about Hermione and Ginny, I also think it works very nicely as a one-shot. The story focuses on an isolated moment in time in which everything is different; whether it’s the beginning of something more, or just a moment that Hermione and Ginny never return to, is up to you to imagine.
If you liked this, you’ll like...
Discretion is the Better Part of Valour by GoldenDelicious: I don’t normally read fics that are written in second person, but this one is good. There’s a bit of tense confusion, and one or two Americanisms, but it’s very sweet and the feel of Hermione and Ginny’s relationship has a lot in common with The Best Dance. A little bit NSFW.
Pure By Choice by encrypt: All right, this has only the vaguest of links to The Best Dance in that it’s about Ginny Weasley and relationships, but you mustn’t miss this hilarious take on the various ships that Ginny Weasley has been a part of throughout the fandom. And if you enjoy that, there’s also a sequel: (Decidedly Not) Playing the Field.
didn’t i tell you? i can’t sleep without your arms around me (maybe it was a dream) by kwritten: I actually came across this fic specifically while looking for works to feature at the end here, and holy crap. What a fic. It’s so beautifully written, I can’t even. Just read it, read it, read it.
#review#Blossomwitch#Hermione/Ginny#The Best Dance#femslash#femmeslash#Harry Potter#the Yule Ball#Hermione Granger#Ginny Weasley#Ron Weasley#Goblet of Fire#hp:gof#fic rec#fanworks reviews
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Hey! You're so, so totally welcome ^_^ I think your gifsets are fantastic, and it shows how much work you put into them because they flow absolutely seamlessly and look just like a scene that was taken from the film.
As I said, I'm a huge fan and yeah, it was really fun to delve into the subtext behind the scene you created and analyse the way the relationships were presented there. I hope I did it justice ;)
And thank you for the reblog and the reply!
Just promise me one thing before you go? Come back home in one piece. That’s all I’m asking.
#cacw spoilers
more Laura Barton gifs /// more Clint Barton /// all gifs
#it means a lot to me when I get creators noticing and replying to my reviews as well :)#replies#spectralarchers
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I’m a huge fan of spectralarchers’ gifsets, and this one is one of my favourites. Something about it just made it stick in my head for days after I saw it.
First off, I love the fact that we see Clint and Laura actually having this conversation, rational and honest, about the fact that Cap asked Clint to come out of retirement to help him. Clint isn’t hiding things from Laura, or trying to sneak off in the dead of night to join the superhero cause, prompting a huge argument when Laura catches him, as we might have seen with so many other characters in a similar situation.
We’ve seen that MCU!Clint and Laura don’t have that kind of relationship, but it still would have been easy to skew the situation that way and engineer a confrontation for the sake of drama. Instead, Clint and Laura talk about it like rational, mature adults who are honest with each other - which is really the only way that they as a couple can survive the kinds of things that happen in their lives. Maybe this kind of honesty and rational discussion has been hard-won, through trial and many, many errors, but they still have it.
That’s not to say that the conversation is without emotion, though - the look on Laura’s face in the second gif and the way she gets to her feet shows all the different things that are going through her mind. She’s frustrated, resigned, grim - but not angry at Clint. He would have stayed in retirement for the sake of Laura and the kids; it’s she who persuades him to go.
Maybe Laura knew, or sensed that something like this would happen. They’ve both been keeping up with the news and trying to get in touch with Wanda; who knows how many other similar conversations they might have had, late at night while the kids are in bed, about what’s been happening. The Accords. The UN bombing.
I love most of all that it’s for Wanda’s sake that Laura persuades Clint to do this. “Don’t go for Steve. Go for her. Get her out of that mess.” MCU!Clint is a family man, and it’s pretty clear that he’s adopted Wanda as part of that family. Clint and Wanda’s relationship is one of my very favourite things about the later Marvel movies, and this is pretty much the perfect representation of the strength of that relationship as well as the one that Laura and Clint have.
(Now let me bask in the warm fuzzies this gives me instead of the sadness of Clint having to leave his family behind and go on the run to save Wanda)
Just promise me one thing before you go? Come back home in one piece. That’s all I’m asking.
#cacw spoilers
more Laura Barton gifs /// more Clint Barton /// all gifs
#mini review#(except not so mini oops)#spectralarchers#ca:cw spoilers#civil war spoilers#gifset#ca: cw#clint barton#laura barton#hawkeye#wanda maximoff#scarlet witch#well-written healthy marital relationships ftw
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Me: *spends lunch break writing a seven-paragraph review of a Tumblr gifset because FANWORKS ♥*
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Review: Not Over-roasted, Just Lightly Charred
Fandom: Welcome to Night Vale
Author: Fluffifullness
Post Date: 11/10/2014
Summary: “Carlos just really likes coffee. And other things.”
Click here for the fic
“The man at the counter, community member or barista or whatever else have you, is incredibly handsome, obviously curious, and (perhaps) unintentionally foreboding. He smiles, murmurs something about hearing Carlos’ introduction, and, more loudly, begins to speak in a voice as deep and dark as the void of consciousness itself.
“Welcome,” the man at the counter says, but the greeting sounds stunted, unfinished, until he adds in a lower voice, clandestine, almost, “to Night Vale.””
I felt like I had to start this review off with a quote, so that even those who haven’t read the fic yet will know what I mean when I say that Not Over-roasted, Just Lightly Charred is a fic that is as mysterious, lyrical, beautiful and downright strange as the podcast that inspired it.
To say that it’s a coffee shop AU (I mean café AU, sorry Cecil) doesn’t really do it justice: it is the whole of Welcome to Night Vale, everything that it is and all the things that are important about it, condensed into the odd world of this insular little café where things don’t quite make sense like they should.
If Night Vale really were a café and not a weird little town in the middle of the desert, this is unquestionably what it would be like.
Fluffifullness describes Not Over-roasted as being “more like a collection of little coffee shop AU headcanons than a full-fledged AU”, but this works exceptionally well for a Night Vale fanfic, the disconnected little epithets giving the narrative a surreal, dreamlike quality.
Cecil, in this fic, is a barista, yet still somehow manages to be a radio host. He is described as having “a voice like a song, a voice never wasted for all that he never stops talking (news, traffic, weather, opinions and politics and science, Carlos’ favorite – an entire, almost literal broadcast all for a single, isolated location – but maybe that’s why it never feels isolated).”
It’s a bit random (and yes, I’m aware of the irony of saying that about anything remotely to do with Night Vale), but it works, and it’s simultaneously so funny and so right that Cecil, even in a universe where he’s a barista in a café, manages to find a way to broadcast his every thought into the world.
The fic draws heavily on podcast canon for its plotline, and owing to its particular narrative style, some of the events that take place are referenced in a vague, sidelong fashion, relying on the reader’s knowledge of canon to fill in the gaps. While this mostly works, it can be confusing to someone less familiar with the podcast storyline. Take for example these two lines, which are so oblique I’m still not sure what they’re referring to:
“Dana came back. Carlos came back, or – or he came close, fell short, lost track of the address and found another café, and an interesting one at that, only – only there was still Night Vale, somewhere, and – but –"
This writing style adds to the fic’s hazy, dreamlike atmosphere, but there are still times when I would have appreciated a bit more detail and clarity, which I think could be done without sacrificing style. Still, for those know the Night Vale storyline well enough to catch all of them, the references are like a sly wink and a nudge, all the more rewarding to those who understand them.
One of the great joys of AU fanfic is seeing the creative ways that characters and characteristics from canon translate into the new universe, the ways that authors reinvent them to fit the setting. I will probably say this for every AU I review, because it never stops being true. Not Over-roasted is particularly delightful because it takes the coffee shop AU, that classic, reassuringly ordinary setting, and combines it with the surreal weirdness of Welcome to Night Vale to create something at once more familiar and more strange than the original.
Most coffee shop AUs depict the bizarre world of fandom at its most normal; not so with Welcome to Night Vale. A glow cloud, winged creatures named Erika, a cat who never touches the ground: all of these and more pop up in clever ways you wouldn’t expect - again, like sly little winks to the original. Some aspects of Night Vale become, if anything, even more odd in a café setting, like John Peters (you know, the farmer), who manages to own a farm and yet somehow spend all of his time inside a café.
(Okay, actually, being a peach farmer in the middle of a desert who also grows imaginary corn might still be weirder than that).
Not Over-roasted sticks with the canon tradition of not describing its characters’ physical appearances, with one key exception: Cecil. Cecil’s appearance in Not Over-roasted is interesting to me because it diverges from the most common fan-depiction of Cecil as pale-skinned with black and white hair, glasses, sleeve tattoos, and occasionally a third eye in the middle of his forehead.
The popular fan headcanon for Cecil Palmer looks something like this.
(Painting by Lho Brockhoff, featured with permission)
Plenty of other fan depictions of Cecil exist, I know, but in the little Night Vale fanfic that I’ve read, this is always how he looks. So to encounter Fluffifullness’ dark-skinned, long-haired Cecil was a welcome surprise.
The romance between Cecil and Carlos is one of my favourite things about a fic with so many things to love. It’s subtle and understated, not really a plot point so much as just woven underneath everything, with little glimpses occasionally peeking through. I’m sure we all remember the early days of Cecil and Carlos’ relationship in the podcast, and how Cecil knew his own feelings immediately, with no hesitation about announcing them on air; it took Carlos a lot longer to come to terms with how he felt.
It’s fascinating, therefore, to read that slow and emerging development from Carlos’ perspective, to read him grappling with emotions with more difficulty, really, than he approaches many of the far more outlandish and bizarre aspects of Night Vale. And it makes the ending that much more warming and satisfying as a result.
If you liked this, you’ll like...
Polling Place by tikistitch: If you enjoyed the unabashed weirdness of Night Vale in Not Over-roasted, just lightly charred, this is it turned up to eleven. Polling Place is so bizarre and so hilarious and off-the-wall and silly that it could genuinely be an episode of Night Vale itself. Don’t miss this fic.
Voidbucks by MostFacinorous: A coffee shop AU set in the canon Night Vale universe. Cecil is temporarily working at Voidbucks when he meets Carlos, who has a very... scientific approach to his coffee. Pure adorable fluff.
Home for the Holidays by messyfeathers: One of my personal favourite Night Vale fanfics: Carlos takes Cecil home to meet his family at Christmas. A really cute, heartwarming winter holiday fanfic.
#review#fluffifullness#welcome to night vale#wtnv#coffee shop au#carlos the scientist#cecil palmer#carlos x cecil#old woman josie#dana cardinal#steve carlsberg#pamela winchell#john peters you know the farmer#desert bluffs#khoshekh#the glow cloud#all hail
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Mini-Review: Sherlock: Series Four - Teaser
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Creator: John Smith
Upload Date: 04/04/2016
youtube
Last month, to coincide with the beginning of filming for BBC’s Sherlock series four, John Smith, creator of some incredible VFX fan videos, released this imaginary teaser trailer. You might remember John Smith as the maestro who brought us Sherlock meets The Doctor, the ultimate Wholock fan video. (I am definitely going to do a full review for that video very soon. How soon depends entirely on my self-restraint).
John Smith wrote in the video’s summary that the trailer took them a total of fourteen months to make, longer than any other single video so far. I was amazed that this short video could take longer than something as complex as Sherlock meets The Doctor, but after rewatching it a few dozen times and watching the VFX breakdown, I began to see how it was possible.
Unlike most of their other videos that were adapted from existing footage, the series four teaser was created from scratch, every intricate background detail sculpted from the ground up. I think that John Smith obviously had a specific vision in mind for this teaser trailer, and pulled out every stop they had to make sure it was realised.
(I’ve also got to say, if you want to spend a huge amount of time working on a teaser trailer and still have it be timely when it’s finally posted, Sherlock is definitely the right fandom to be in).
The effect is totally worth it. A number of commenters on YouTube said that they almost thought (or did think) this was a real teaser for Sherlock series four, and if I hadn’t known going in that it was a fan video, I probably would’ve thought the same. The level of detail poured into it is just mind-blowing. Every time I rewatch this video, I notice something else, something different.
The lighting, the textures, the slow panning movement of the ‘camera’, the echoing voiceover: all of it comes together to create a perfectly chilling, suspenseful atmosphere, capped off by the shot in the last few seconds of the video. If you can, I recommend watching this in full-screen on a large computer monitor or TV, because the experience is just amazing.
Content-wise, the trailer mostly just hints at what might be to come, which is an advantage of this being only a teaser trailer: John Smith can leave most of it to our imaginations. What we see in the trailer could equally have been enacted by Moriarty, returned from the dead (hey, I wouldn’t put that past the Sherlock writers at all) as by a henchman or impersonator.
John Smith seamlessly combines Moriarty’s lines from The Great Game with The Reichenbach Fall to recall Sherlock’s previous clashes with Moriarty and create the perfect ominous overtone for what we’re seeing on the screen. We’re reminded that Moriarty hasn’t yet made good on his promise to Sherlock from The Great Game - “I will burn the heart out of you” - and of just how sinister a villain he can be. If this were a real BBC teaser trailer for Sherlock, it would be the perfect setup for the upcoming series: hinting at everything yet giving nothing away, and promising only that we’re in for a hell of a ride.
#mini review#John Smith VFX#Sherlock#fanvid#fan video#Sherlock Season 4#Sherlock Series 4#VFX#Moriarty#The Great Game#The Reichenbach Fall#BBC Sherlock#Sherlock Holmes
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