spark | Reading

Every now and then I get a craving like,

"I wish I could read [fandom] the way it was before [subsequent bad canon/creator behavior]."

The thing is, all the stuff I enjoyed the first time I read it is still there, but... it never feels the same. All that Avengers tower fic from 2012 and all that season 1 Teen Wolf fic, for example, actually don't taste the way I remember them tasting.

This is true of a number of foods that I liked as a kid, too. The smell of bacon or hamburger cooking are slightly nauseating to me now that I haven't eaten them in 20 years, but sometimes I still wake up from a dream wishing I could have the bacon cheeseburgers I ate at age 19 from the college dining hall once a week.

cimorene

Like oud or something. Not patchouli anyway. Because after shampooing it three times the night before last, I could still smell that on it yesterday every time it got in my face (the physically irritating part of the smell did wash out, but I personally dislike musks and think they're gross even when they don't make me sneeze). I can still smell it today too, but my hair is dry, and I don't want to shampoo it again yet.

So I guess this is no longer directly related to allergies, but I don't have a haircare tag or an "I fucking hate perfume flames on the side of my face" tag.

beatrice_otter posting in

fancake

Fandom: Silmarillion
Pairings/Characters: Luthien/Maedhros
Rating: teen
Length: 66k
Creator Links:

SpaceWall
Theme: marriage of convenience, old fandoms, small fandoms, book fandoms, rare pairings, AU (fork in the road), pretend couple

Summary: Centuries after the arrival of the Noldor and the Teleri in Beleriand, a celebration of Morgoth’s defeat brings the Crown Princess of Doriath and the Crown Prince of the Noldor together. To save this newborn peace from their respective fathers, they’ll do whatever it takes. Including... getting married?

Meanwhile, Lord Fingon of Himring faces the monumental task of healing Morgoth’s ills.

--

They regarded each other with quiet understanding, all the vast majesty of their respective lineages rendered unimportant by the connection between them. Music wound through the trees; harp and flute, surely joyous in context, sounded lonely in their solitude.

Reccer's Notes: Fëanor is a very complex character in the Silmarillion, who both has reasons for what he does and also does some terrible things. Fanon tends to sympathize with him, and also make him a good father to compensate for his other issues. SpaceWall takes the opposite track, leaning into his selfishness, his arrogance, and his suspiciousness. And then asks, if he had survived on Beleriand, what would have happened? If Fëanor, brilliant and terrible, were in command of the Noldor? Some things are better, some things are worse, (and Thingol is still Thingol), and so at a crucial juncture Maedhros and Luthien step forward to try and prevent disaster and war between the Noldor and Sindarin. And, in the process, they both learn a great deal.

Fanwork Links: By Other Means

beatrice_otter posting in

fancake

Fandom: Pride and Prejudice
Pairings/Characters: Kitty Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy
Rating: 106k
Length: teen
Creator Links:

Shem
Theme: marriage of conveneince, rare pairings, old fandoms, book fandoms, epic works, novel-length, AU, happy endings,

Summary: The day after the Netherfield Ball, a simple walk through the countryside has wide reaching consequences for Mr Darcy and a certain young lady from Longbourn.

Reccer's Notes: This is such an engaging look at a very different pairing and what might have been. It's long, plotty, with lots of good character work and a great slow burn.

Fanwork Links: To Bear is to Conquer Our Fate

runpunkrun

I started watching ~~Avenue~~ Department Q and it took me like four days to get through the first episode because it took FOREVER to get where it was going. I'd watch fifteen minutes, decide I didn't want to spend any more time with these assholes, and go do something else. Then the next day I'd watch fifteen more minutes. But once I finally got to the end of the first episode, I was like, "Ohhhh, I see."

And then I stayed up past my bedtime to watch the next three episodes. It's still fully populated with assholes, and not the charming kind, and you can't see Matthew Goode's handsome face because he's all worn out and beardy and also an asshole who parks his car like it's a bike and he's a twelve-year-old boy. Just, wherever it lands when he hops out of it. I didn't find Goode entirely convincing as either worn out or ~~beardy~~ an asshole, though, as there's just something too impish about him to pull either of those things off. Like that was really a job for David Tennant. Which the show kept reminding me of by naming Goode's partner "Hardy." Have none of these people seen Broadchurch? Goode was rather good at the out-of-control violence though, which made that extra uncomfortable. (It's a very violent show. Shootings, stabbings, bludgeonings complete with flying bits. Police personnel are responsible for about half of it. There's also references to mental illness (OCD, PTSD, panic attacks, arachnophobia, psychopathy), life-changing injuries, some self-inflicted dentistry, enclosed spaces, and the threat of sexual violence toward a teenager.)

I got drawn into the investigation and finished the show in less time than it took me to watch the first episode, but it leans a little too heavily on "unpopular asshole (believes he) is the only one who can solve crimes!!!" Goode's boss makes him head of an entirely new cold case department just so she doesn't have to deal with him, and in case you're wondering how seriously this new department is being taken, it's run out of the basement. (Other notable departments operating out of the basement: The X-Files, Fringe, and—also starring Anna Torv—Mindhunter.)

It would have worked better for me if Goode had been able to carry the show, since he is the center of it, but, in this form, he just doesn't have the charisma of famous assholes like our modern Sherlock Holmeses (Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Downey, Jr., Hugh Laurie, and, lord help me, even Benedict Cumberbatch) or even a less famous Alec Hardy. I think the show's at its best when it takes advantage of the whole cast. Goode's eager underlings Rose and Akram were a lot more interesting to me, but since Goode's deeply incurious about both of them, they're built in the little moments. And, although I've only seen her in two things (this and Giri/Haji), I always enjoy Kelly Macdonald. At one point Goode says something gross to Macdonald, his department-mandated therapist, and I made a face and when the camera switched over to her she was making the exact same face.

The aforementioned Hardy's entire personality is "shot in the line of duty, now partially paralyzed, unable to walk, and recovering." I wanted to like him, but I was suspicious of the disability narrative they were feeding me, which was also pretty one note.

We just don't know enough about the character to judge whether his suicide attempt made sense or was just lazy, ableist writing. I suspect the latter.

Content note that is also a spoiler.

But, eventually, there is teamwork! And Goode's Morck maybe even trying to be slightly less of an asshole, or at least a better father. His lodger Martin adds in some, like, nonconsensual found family vibes that I dug, as Morck doesn't want Martin's opinion, but he's getting it anyway because Martin's part of their family unit whether Morck wants him to be or not.

Watch Department Q if you like: investigations, gritty procedurals, Scottish accents, Matthew Goode, hyperbaric chambers.

sasheneskywalker posting in

fancake

Fandom: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Pairings/Characters: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Rating: Explicit
Length: 138,010 words
Creator Links:

paperclipbitch
Theme: marriage of convenience, future fic, slow burn, mutual pining, exes to friends to spouses to lovers, chess

Summary: “Don’t think of it as marriage,” Benny tells her. “Think of it as castling.”

Beth raises an eyebrow. “Am I the king or the rook in this analogy?”

Reccer's Notes: An amazing post-canon fic where Beth, frustrated by the period-typical sexism she keeps facing, marries Benny for convenience and now they’re stuck in a fake relationship full of unresolved tension, mutual pining, and all their messy issues (addiction, gambling, competitiveness). It’s smart, emotional, and so compelling. I loved every moment <3

Fanwork Links: you wait and you wonder who'll take on your odds

cimorene

Last night I was joylessly reading until way too late in bed, and then after I put my phone down, I suddenly started to notice my throat hurt a bit.

Now, I do have a perfume allergy that has caused my throat to swell mostly-closed in the past, but only about 5(?)x in the past 20 years, and only after a Lot (the perfume has to be concentrated close to my nose and mouth probably).

And yes, yesterday I had tried a new curl-reviving spray and I had been mildly annoyed by its perfume all day, but it hadn't irritated my nose right away the way dangerous perfumes (and also many others) do.

So when I started to worry that the product was causing an allergic reaction that might make my throat swell closed and kill me in my sleep, this was extremely unlikely for several reasons: the perfume had already proven itself not similar to ones that caused a reaction before, and also that's not really how anaphylaxis works, probably?

But my throat hurt and every perfume I could smell seemed to be aggravating it. So I decided that getting up at 3 am and showering all the perfumed products off would be a better use of my time than going downstairs to take antihistamines, painkillers, and a benzo. I shampooed my hair three times and combed conditioner through it in the shower, then put a folded towel on my pillow and slept on it after towel-drying, without applying my usual leave-in.

My throat feels a little better but still irritated today, and I took loratidine and paracetamol with breakfast. I wonder why my throat got irritated, though. I hope I'm not getting sick, but probably not; the last time I went to the store was Wednesday, so the incubation period for a respiratory infection wouldn't match up very well.

pronker posting in

fancake

Fandom: Dark Shadows

Pairings/Characters: Angelique Bouchard/Barnabas Collins, Julia Hoffman, Nicholas Blair, other canon characters

Rating: Unrated; my best guess is T for violence

Length: ~11,000

Creator Links: Link to author's blog

Theme: marriage of convenience, backstory

Summary: The witch Angelique married numerous times throughout her long life and liaisoned even more times. Her great beauty ensured attracting anyone she could use and discard.

Reccer's Notes: Angelique owned many family names throughout the 5 year run of the show, and this story encompasses her entire life from childhood on. The convenient marriage is the one to Roger Collins while she is disguised as occult student Cassandra Blair. This story rocks because literally each of her identities receives insightful exploration, though the main "Pairing" consists of Angelique/Barnabas, the most well-known of her loves. She loves too well and not wisely at all.

Fanwork Links: Angelique (The Devil Need Not Own You)

A new fandom tag, please?

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: sofa
Current Music: whoosh of properly functioning a/c

cimorene

Benjamin is one of several large and venerable potted plants inherited from Wax's granny, so he's probably older than I am; he has been in front of the east window in the kitchen since we moved here. However, he's had a hard time this spring after Sipuli peed in his pot several times to protest her litter box being smelly.

Once it got warm enough to not shock him in the process, Wax discarded all his old soil, shook and jiggled and rinsed his roots, and repotted him with new soil; and in apology for the trauma of that, she felt obliged to let him stay out for a while (but not fully outside, where the temperature fluctuations and wind and rain would be too much for him).

The thing is... Benjamin hasn't been pruned in a long time, and he's probably about six feet tall and four feet wide, now.

The porch isn't large.

As Wax put it when carrying out the recycling last week, it's not very convenient having your porch half full of tree.

She says she can't bring him inside, though, because he's enjoying himself so much (making lots of new leaves) that it would be mean.

beatrice_otter posting in

fancake

Fandom: MCU
Pairings/Characters: Steve/Bucky, Sam/Steve
Rating: explicit
Length: 127k
Creator Links:

ChibiSquirt
Theme: marriage of convenience, pretend couple, happy endings, genderfuck

Summary: Sarah “Gwen” Rogers was nineteen when she married Bucky Barnes, and she knew at the time just how stupid it was: it wasn’t exactly a brilliant move to marry a man who could never love her, even—or especially—when she knew that she was in love with him.

Neither of them could have predicted the war that came, and if they had, then they sure as hell couldn’t have predicted what would happen when Gwen volunteered for Project: Rebirth.

Reccer's Notes: This is one of the more interesting Captain America genderswaps: what would it do to the essential closeness and devotion of Steve and Bucky's relationship if Bucky was 1000% gay, and Steve was a cis woman? But they still cared about each other as much? They decide to get married, to protect Bucky from gossip, and things go from there. This is such an interesting take on their relationship, on how being a cis woman would affect "Sarah" (especially once she wakes up in modern America after being frozen for seventy years), and her relationship with Sam. All while telling the basic events of the movie.

Fanwork Links: You Would Be In Clover

sanguinity

Aeschylus (trans. Robert Fagles, 1966), The Oresteia

(content warning for murder and cannibalism)

Three-play cycle covering Agamemnon's not-so-happy homecoming from Troy and the cycle of murder and revenge that descends from it.

btw, this is something I quibble about while I'm reading/watching: the cycle of violence began long before the murder of Agamemnon. The first play does get into that, briefly -- Agamemnon's murder/sacrifice of his daughter, obviously, which led Clytemnestra to murder Agamemnon. A generation farther back, there's Agamemnon's father's murder of his nephew (Agamemnon's cousin), and then the father's subsequent feeding of said murdered nephew to the nephew's father (the murderer's brother) -- which is why the brother of the murdered nephew is now teaming up with Clytemnestra. Plus also some more familial murders farther back, in which a son was sacrificed and fed to the gods... Look, the family history is a mess. The point I'm trying to make here, though, is that Clytemnestra had a reason for what she did -- avenging her daughter! -- and the second and third parts of the Oresteia forget that, just treating her act as free-floating evil to be avenged. Is it worse to murder your mother, or leave your father unavenged, with no mention whatsoever that Clytemnestra had some very good reasons.

Which is to say: the going gets rough in this trilogy if you're a Clytemnestra fangirl.

(Also: I will never understand Electra. In a family where one parent is murdering daughters and the other parent is trying to protect or at least avenge them, I, as a daughter in the family, might side with the parent who was protecting daughters, not the one murdering them. But hey, maybe that's just me. "Oedipal complex" is badly named, but I see what Jung was getting at with "Electra complex".)

Anywho.

In Classical Athens, tragedies were composed and performed in trilogies, and this is the only complete trilogy still extant. Which is absolutely fascinating, because Part III is very different from Parts I and II! Parts I and II each center themselves on a murder of vengeance: Clytemnestra murdering Agamemnon (in retribution for his murdering their daughter), and Orestes (their son) murdering his mother, Clytemnestra, in vengeance for his father's murder. Very tragical, very shock-and-horror, very bloody, very parallel.

And then Part III...! Part III is a completely different thing! Part III is the question "How will this cycle of violence ever end?" and the answer is "With Athenian democracy!" And to give you a sense of how weird that is, it's as if we were watching a set of very intense plays about King Arthur and his knights, and then in act three suddenly John Philip Sousa starts playing, stars-and-stripes bunting falls from the proscenium, and we use the Power of the Ballot Box to solve Lancelot's problems. It's weird, man! We just jumped several centuries and to another polity! Lancelot is suddenly having a conversation with Uncle Sam about the virtue of democracy!

Anyway, a bunch of Athenian citizens have a vote on whether to acquit Orestes or not (they decide yes, because Dads Rule and Moms Drool), and then Athena does some pretty intense diplomacy with the Furies to talk them down into accepting a bribe instead of chasing Orestes forever.

Whew.

I will re-iterate something that I learned long ago with Shakespeare, and which holds here: I never get as much from reading a play as I do from seeing a staging. Here, I recommend the 1983 Peter Hall performances, which tried to stage the Oresteia as it would have been staged in Classical Athens: masks, entirely male cast, music and chanting, etc. The Peter Hall recordings really emphasized how parallel Parts I and II are (the reveal of the bloody tableau in both plays are exactly parallel), and there's some beautiful stuff with the net that Clytemnestra used to snare Agamemnon, coming back in part II to snare Orestes.

I will also point out something that's not obvious on the page: when the chorus is pearl-clutching about how unnaturally masculine Clytemnestra is... well. That's a man there. Wearing a dress. I can see him. It feels a bit like all the gender play in Shakespearean comedies, with a man playing a woman disguised as a man, and the text winking about it.

I will leave you with the 1983 Peter Hall stagings:
Part I: Agamemnon
Part II: Libation Bearers
Part III: Furies

runpunkrun

Dr. Sapphire "Saffy" Walden is the head of the magical department in an exclusive—and very old—English boarding school. She's a powerful magician, a dedicated teacher, and a middle-aged white bisexual woman. She lives on campus, eats all her meals in the cafeteria, and doesn't have much of a life outside the school, which has a bit of a demon problem.

The pace of this book is banananas. There's a big fight a third of the way in that, in any other book, would be the final conflict, but here it's just part of the background. The central question doesn't even solidify until halfway through the book, and the main problem doesn't come into focus until much, much later. Every conflict but the last comes on suddenly and is dealt with immediately and in between is the normal grinding minutiae of being a teacher and school administrator. This isn't a complaint. Emily Tesh knows what she's doing, and that is building a rich and layered world for her story to live in, a world so deep and detailed that the clues she sprinkles in don't stand out as anything but more of the same.

Every time I read a children's fantasy book where the kids confront the enormous problem all by themselves and I was crying, weeping, begging, Please find a trusted adult, this book heard me and answered. But, as we learn, even that can have its pitfalls.

Contains: children in peril, past child death; demonic possession; life-changing injury; and while there is f/f romance, it's not in any way the focus of the book.

garryowen posting in

fancake

Fandom: Star Trek AOS (Reboot)
Pairings/Characters: Kirk/Spock
Rating: Teen
Length: 4,249 words
Creator Links:

waketosleep
Theme: Marriage of convenience

Summary: Kirk nearly turns a simple trade mission into a diplomatic incident. Luckily, Spock will do a lot to cover his captain's ass.

Reccer's Notes: What I love about Kirk and Spock is that there are so many different takes on who they are and how they'd act, and, in the hands of a good writer, every one of those is believable. In this story, Kirk is a totally obnoxious doofus who makes a major diplomatic blunder (as he does) and has to marry Spock to save face and a dilithium trade deal. Spock is tolerant and eye-rolly.

Kirk/Spock is one of my favorite pairings for marriages of convenience because these two are so married already, and they usually have a high degree of love (even if platonic) for one another at the time of the marriage. That quality is on display here.

This is the first story waketosleep wrote in this fandom. It's short and sweet, and worth revisiting even if you read it in 2009 when it was originally posted.

Fanwork Links: Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known

beatrice_otter posting in

fancake

Fandom: Captain America
Pairings/Characters: Bucky/Peggy, Peggy/Steve, Steve/Bucky
Rating: teen
Length: 37k words
Creator Links:

crackdkettle
Theme: marriage of convenience, kidfic (has kids, accidental baby), pretend couple,

Summary: The Commandos find Bucky in a Hydra facility just days after Steve crashes. A few months later, Peggy comes to Bucky for help: she’s pregnant with Steve’s child and she wants him to claim the child as his so the SSR won’t experiment on it to try to crack Erskine’s formula. Over the next several years Bucky slowly learns how to navigate the life that was meant for Steve — as a husband, father, and founding member of SHIELD — while never giving up the search for the man he lost and still loves.

Reccer's Notes: I love the way crackdkettle handles Bucky and Peggy's mutual grief, and the different ways they handle it, and the slow course of their healing.

Fanwork Links: A Better Version of Our Past

beatrice_otter posting in

fancake

Fandom: All About Eve
Pairings/Characters: Addison DeWitt/Eve Harrington
Rating: Gen
Length: 1634 words
Creator Links:

AuKestrel
Theme: marriage of convenience, future fic, kidfic (has kids), small fandom, old fandom, post canon,

Summary: You see, society and theatre (and aren’t they really the same thing? - someone, please, offer Mrs. Albert Knickerbacker her smelling salts) are built on the sand of lies: lies of omission, lies of commission, old-fashioned deceit, dishonesty, and compounded misunderstandings.

It takes only a rudimentary understanding and a halfway-capable grasp of human nature to begin to sift the truth from the lies.

Reccer's Notes: All About Eve is a classic 1950s drama about a young actress (Eve Harrington) who advances her career by playing a sweet innocent, attaching herself to an aging star (Margot Channing, played by Bette Davis), and stabbing her in the back. At the end of the movie, Eve marries a witty, snobbish, and super-queer-coded theater critic (Addison DeWitt). This is his perspective on their marriage and their daughter. The narrative voice is very strong, it feels like the movie.

Fanwork Links: Till I have the possession of everything she touches

Mods, can I get a fandom tag?

cimorene

We live in a tiny town with only one commercial street, but spread out with low population density. Our island of Ålön is about 77 square kilometers (about 44 square miles), and most of it is farms and forests.

My late MIL's summer cottage was fifteen minutes by car out towards one of the corners of the island, in the village of Levo, but what a world of difference! Behind its little orchard stretched fallow and planted fields; across the winding road lay a little forest, and on the other side of that the bay of Finland. (The neighbors gave permission to park extra cars in their field and to use their little scrap of sand and dock for swimming.) The music of the evening in Levo was birdsong and the rushing of the wind.

Here one block behind city hall and the police station, in the village of Parsby, we sit in the midst of urban decay, as mentioned recently. Our little street contains three inhabited houses and two abandoned wrecks that the city owns and is allowing to fall into public health hazards, with asbestos everywhere, roofs caving in, broken windows, and fallen trees and power lines. The street leading down to the back of the police station contains two more inhabited houses and three more decaying wrecks, and the city tore all the pavement on it up last January to fix the pipes and hasn't paved it again yet. Across the other street (we live on the corner) is a big clot of densely-populated midcentury apartment buildings, whose retired inhabitants risk their lives on the above-mentioned poorly-maintained ripped-up road in winter (it's a steep hill).

Because our town is rural and the driving age for cars is 18 in Finland, the plague of Parsby (and small towns everywhere) is teenagers on mopeds. The music of the evening in Parsby starts with wood pigeons, thrushes, and the distant buzzing of cars on the highway, but is interrupted periodically by the deafening roar of mopeds speeding by under the window and teenagers practicing being cool and adult by shouting the equivalent of "FUCK" at each other. (I fantasize several times a week about an externally-mounted loudspeaker that would play a voice yelling "Shut up" towards the street.)

It would've been impossible to quickly walk to the store from Levo, though.

mific posting in

fancake

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay, Jeannie, other OCs like John's cousin, mother and sister, and Rodney's nieces.
Rating: Explicit
Length: 12,417
Content Notes: no AO3-type warnings apply
Creator Links: Brighid on AO3, Brighid (aka mz_bstone) on sga_flashfic, librarychick_94 on AO3, librarychick_94 on Audiofic Archive
Themes: Marriage of Convenience, First time, Pining, AU

Summary: A marriage of convenience has some very incovenient complications for Rodney, as he deals with the fact that he's still in love with John Sheppard.

Reccer's Notes: Written for a Harlequin challenge, this has the classic structure with John persuading Rodney to marry him so as to access an inheritance and get control of his family's aeronautics company, and Rodney, who's carried a torch for John since childhood, going along despite fearing John will break his heart. It's mostly a complete AU although Rodney used to be in the Stargate programme, and John used to be in the Air Force, so I guess it could be a very divergent canon-divergent AU. The writing's fresh and amusing and of course it has the requisite happy ending. As it dates from 2005 (and is anyway an AU) several details differ from canon, like Rodney's and John's families. A fun, romantic read, and an SGA classic.

Fanwork Links: The Convenient Husband pt 1 & part 2, and an excellent podfic read by librarychick_94

beatrice_otter posting in

fancake

Fandom: MCU
Pairings/Characters: Katy Chen/Shang-Chi
Rating: Mature
Length: 53k
Creator Links:

NyxEtoile,

OlivesAwl
Theme: marriage of convenience, AU, going home, friends to lovers, everyone thinks we're dating, competence, characters of color,

Summary: As they walked out, she could feel Shaun stewing and probably pissed off beside her, but he didn’t say anything, so neither did she. Instead she pulled out her phone and googled San Francisco marriage license.

They were in the elevator before he finally spoke. “This is not something I’m willing to let you do.”

“Okay, well, getting deported back to fucking China is not something I’m willing to let you do, so where does that leave us?”

Reccer's Notes: Shaun has a problem with his immigration status. His best friend Katy offers the obvious solution: a green card marriage. This changes many things, but others stay the same. This fic explores Shaun and Katy's life together, from marriage to school to the Snap to the events of the movie, in a fun and engaging way. I love the way both characters are written, but especially Katy--she really gets a chance to shine, when she's not shoved into the Funny Best Friend role.

Fanwork Links: Sing You a Song of Devotion

beatrice_otter posting in

fancake

Fandom: Endeavour (TV)
Pairings/Characters: Endeavour Morse/Joan Thursday
Rating: teen
Length: 57k
Creator Links:

Pink_Dalek
Theme: marriage of convenience, kidfic (has kids), AU, fork in the road, small fandoms, domestic, friends to lovers,

Summary: An AU starting from when Joan came to Morse's flat in "Harvest." What if he'd told her what he felt wasn't pity? What if she'd told him about the baby? Things could have been very different. No Series/Season 5 spoilers.

Reccer's Notes: In the show, Morse and Joan have a flirtation and chemistry and some light pining, but nothing ever comes from it because we know from the other shows (Endeavour (TV) is a prequel) that Morse never married. Instead, Joan had an affair with a married man, got pregnant, miscarried due to abuse, became a social worker, and married someone else. There are a lot of AUs where Morse and Joan get together, and this is one of my favorites. When he finds out she's pregnant, Morse asks Joan to marry him, and off they go from there. Both of them have a lot to learn about life together, and I enjoy watching them and their children grow and change.

Fanwork Links: An Unexpected Family

beatrice_otter posting in

fancake

Fandom: Vorkosiverse (Ethan of Athos)
Pairings/Characters: Terrence Cee/Ethan Urquhart
Rating: Mature
Length: 20k
Creator Links:

fresne
Theme: marriage of convenience, worldbuilding, small fandoms, book fandoms, old fandoms, rare pairings, telepathy, pretend couple, post-canon, family,

Summary: Terrence Cee had spent most of his life feeling like a jumpship caught in the gravity well of a blackhole. Engines on full bore. Only able to keep out of the crushing center, but never able to escape. Now in his new life on Athos, he found himself unsure of how to find a new pace.

Ethan wondered if there was a way to get his love life gestating again. Not frozen like zygotes stored in a bio-freezer against some eventual future.

Reccer's Notes: Ethan of Athos is a largely stand-alone book set in the Vorkosigan universe. It tells the story of Ethan, a reproductive specialist from an isolationist planet that is entirely men (because they believe women are inherently sinful). When they need new ovarian cultures, Ethan is sent off into the larger galaxy to purchase them, and ends up having an adventure. Along the way, he meets a man named Terrence Cee, genetically created in a laboratory to be a telepath, who tried to slip telepathic genes into Athos' ovarian cultures because he believes that if telepaths are a minority, they will always be feared and exploited. Since everyone on Athos reproduces artificially, putting telepath genes in their ovarian cultures will mean that future generations will be entirely composed of telepaths. At the end of the book, Ethan agrees to use the telepath cultures, and invites Terrence to live with him and be a co-parent--a relationship which can be sexual, but isn't necessarily.

This story is a lovely exploration of what happens next. The worldbuilding is excellent, taking the hints from the book and expanding them into a fully-realized world. The characters are all well-written, and the relationships feel real, as Terrence tries to adapt to Athos, and both of them try to figure out what they want from each other and how to work towards it.

Fanwork Links: Time Enough

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spark

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Page Summary

cimorene - Did the memory change, or did my taste?
cimorene - There must have been a musk in that curl spray
beatrice_otter in fancake - Silmarillion: By Other Means by SpaceWall
beatrice_otter in fancake - Pride and Prejudice: To Bear is to Conquer Our Fate by Shem
runpunkrun - Department Q (2025)
sasheneskywalker in fancake - The Queen's Gambit (TV): you wait and you wonder who'll take on your odds
cimorene - Not a satisfactory situation or explanation
pronker in fancake - Dark Shadows: Angelique (The Devil Need Not Own You) by Laramie Dean
cimorene - Benjamin the benjamin ficus is living in the enclosed porch for the summer
beatrice_otter in fancake - Captain America: You Would Be In Clover by ChibiSquirt
sanguinity - Hum 110: The Oresteia
runpunkrun - The Incandescent, by Emily Tesh
garryowen in fancake - Star Trek AOS: Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known by waketosleep
beatrice_otter in fancake - Captain America: A Better Version of Our Past by crackdkettle
beatrice_otter in fancake - All About Eve: Till I have the possession of everything she touches by AuKestrel
cimorene - Shades of Local Color in the Villages of Ålön
mific in fancake - SGA: The Convenient Husband by Brighid
beatrice_otter in fancake - Shang-Chi: Sing You a Song of Devotion by NyxEtoile and OlivesAwl
beatrice_otter in fancake - Endeavour: An Unexpected Family by Pink_Dalek
beatrice_otter in fancake - Vorkosiverse (Ethan of Athos): Time Enough by fresne

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Style: Night Sea for Tranquility III by branchandroot

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