A Land So Wild and Savage by Elanne; Laura Ingalls Wilder
I love so much the way this fic shows us Charles' interior--his wanderlust, his deep and abiding love for his family, the compromise he's made between the two impulses--in a way that we could never see from his daughter's perspective. I read these books as a child until they were pretty much falling apart and I have read them again as an adult, but not until I read this fic were the parents' motivations made so clear to me. In the book, Pa and Ma really read as ciphers; what are parents anyway filtered through their young children? Certainly not real people. LOL This is so beautifully written and at its end, I am left in tears. Amazing.
A Wall-E Christmas by Jheen
This is just precious. What does Wall-E need most for Christmas? Bonus points for awesome integration of the humans.
Breathe by Trollprincess
What a lovely little coda to The Shawshank Redemption.
Die Hard 4.5: I'll be Hard For Christmas by Aja
I think this fandom is hard to write in. I think it's hard to skirt the line between making McClane too soft and making him so hard that he's not even a real person. I think sometimes that taking these characters and moving them from archetypes to PEOPLE is a fuckload of work. Which is probably why I like writing in this fandom so much. But I digress. This fic is a superb blend of political action on Capitol Hill with John McClane's interior monologue. There is a secondary character, Amit, who I promise you will find at least as interesting as killing a helicopter with a car and enough one liners to make the Yuletide gay. :)
A Very Short Sermon by Solvent90; Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility
This whole fic is the most wonderful grace note, the melody--pure and simple and sweet--that continues when the words in canon stop. This is Elinor's first Christmas as Mrs. Ferrars and it is blessed.
Next on Mythbusters: Can Luggage Move Itself? by Tigerbright
This is funny. Like, really, really funny. The voices of all the Mythbusters crew are spot on (I like that Jamie and Adam really aren't the focus here) and the footnotes are to die for.
What Became of Marie Le Fleur? by Sarah Brandt; Beauty and the Beast (Disney)
You guys know how much I love taking peripheral characters and giving them vital and meaningful lives. Their commentary on main characters is subversive and interesting; their perspective often changes what we think canon means, who we think characters are. This is a great look at how Marie might change after Gaston dies.
A Storybook Story by Thelastgoodname; Princess Bride
You know how sometimes you feel like fanfic writers have interviewed an author and asked hir if s/he could go back and write it like s/he really wanted to, what shape would the story take? And then stolen the answer? This is one of those stories. Funny and perfect in every way from the voices on down.
Afterwards by Bookwormsarah; Dead Poet's Society
I was in such good company this year in the archive, I'm surprised anyone even read my story after reading this one. It's a fantastic what happens next for Todd--how Keating changes him, how Neil changes him, the growth he finds all on his own. This chokes me up, y'all. This brings tears to my eyes and makes me love this movie much more fiercely than the rewatch would have led me to believe I could. Not to make this rec all about me, LOL, but I love that we both took the same idea (the DPS doing a version of Midsummer Night's Dream) and used it for very different ends.
As Long Ago as Forever, There Lived a Prince by Cinaed; Ursula K Le Guin's Earthsea
Oh, my. Oh, my. This is lovely. For me, the Ged/Arren just leaps off the page from the second they appear in print together and this a wonderful acknowledgement of that relationship. The prose here is so like LeG's but is never merely derivative. I love the framing device. Pretty much, I love the whole damn thing.
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