Theodosia (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
theodosia21) wrote2010-05-05 09:51 pm
theodosia21) wrote2010-05-05 09:51 pm
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My Favorite Long Fics, Part 1
Continuing my previous rec post, here is the start of my favorite long fic recs. While I've promised you ten (and that was hard enough- I have lots more I think are awesome) this is only the first, as I've been really busy lately. I'm about to start Finals, and I graduate from college next Saturday. Then I have to find a job. In short, if I wait until I have enough time to write up ten meaningful recs, it's not going to happen. So instead I'm breaking them up and posting as I have the time. Here's the first.
1. LoPiverse, A.J. Hall (akalegionseagle)
Fandom: Harry Potter (mainly), Vorkosigan Saga ('Time Shall Not Mend' is a crossover)
Summary: This is a series of nine fics of various lengths; the title "LoPiverse" comes from the first main book, Lust Over Pendle. Lust Over Pendle is a comedy of manners set in the Golden Age detective thriller genre, and is presumed to take place after the end of the seventh Harry Potter book, and, therefore, after the fall of Voldemort. It was written before the Order of the Phoenix, so it is not at all canonical.
Length: Epic (no word count provided)
Reason: This was the series that got me into fandom. I love it with a pure and everlasting love, because no matter how many times I go back and re-read it, it never lets me down. It's funny and clever and shows a keen insight into the complexities of human nature. It's Draco/Neville in a way that makes me believe in Draco/Neville, and has some of the best characterizations of Narcissa, Mrs. Longbottom, and Hermione I've ever read. It's as if Lois McMaster Bujold decided to write Harry Potter. And did I mention that it's funny?
Have a quote from Lust over Pendle:
During what wizards and witches were now coming to refer to as Recent Events Voldemort had had a simple initiation test for those recruits who - depressingly - had flocked to join him after his initial successes. If they wished to become a Death Eater they must kill a victim selected for them at random, within twenty-four hours, without assistance. Furthermore, if Voldemort's star should fall, it would be clear to the whole world that the individual's decision to take the test had been one of pure free will: no hope this time of sheltering behind Imperius.
Dying in the attempt was a honourable end (and, of course, neatly weeded out those whose incompetence might embarrass the Dark Lord later). Failing to carry out the test and surviving was not an option. Refusing the test, warning the intended victim, and then walking back to Voldemort's HQ to inform his second in command that one had done so was an act of such spectacularly suicidal stupidity that a depressed lemming would have earnestly counselled against it.
Even if the second in command concerned was the recruit's own father. Especially if the second in command was the recruit's own father.
Naturally, in the aftermath of Recent Events, when the wizard world had leisure to think once more, the question of Why? tended to arise. Various far-fetched theories were spun as to what exactly had happened the night Draco Malfoy went out to murder Hermione Granger, and returned some hours later, to tell his father that, actually, he thought becoming a Death Eater was a rotten idea, and he'd rather be excused.
Perhaps the best explanation was, after all, the simplest: Voldemort, whose grasp of his own psychology was, by that time, slipping considerably, had simply failed to appreciate that dislike, even intense dislike, is much further from hatred than it appears. Killing someone whom you have seen across the breakfast table for nearly half your life cannot be comfortably classified as mere garbage disposal, or the clinical negativing of a subject, however much you may have cringed inside at every bite of toast they ate for every breakfast of every week of that time.
Why, in any event, was not a question that occurred to Lucius Malfoy. His main objective was damage limitation. Thirty-odd years in the Dark Lord's service had polished his ability to regard people as things to a high degree.
Twenty minutes later Draco was lying in a deserted quarry forty miles from Voldemort's headquarters, already feeling the first effects of the Death in Life Potion his father had forced down his throat. As Lucius Disapparated he tossed over his shoulder two pieces of information. First, that the potion had been carefully designed to produce death and most of its after-effects, but in the wrong order. Decomposition commenced while the victim was both alive and sentient, and death, when it came, was a relief not only to the well-rotted victim, but to anyone strong stomached enough to remain in his vicinity. Secondly, that there was no antidote.
Some time later that evening, it appears, Lucius Malfoy mentioned to his wife that he had dealt with a potential family embarrassment.
This was a tactical misjudgement possibly never equalled since that of the general whose last words had been:
"Don't worry, they can't possibly hit an elephant at this dist-"
Legend, and the will to believe, clouds much of what happened next. Those allied against Voldemort were doing very badly at the time, and the impact on morale of the slightest victory was wholly disproportionate to its tactical value. Narcissa received the news quietly, but can have wasted no time. Within three hours Malfoy Manor, the fourteen top Death Eaters it was sheltering, and a cache of valuable intelligence information about Voldemort's plans had been turned over to his enemies with not a drop of allied blood being split.
As the advance party made their way unopposed into the enemy stronghold they found Lucius dead in the basement, an expression of extreme annoyance on his face. It was believed that he had committed suicide, lacking the nerve to meet either Voldemort or Narcissa alive.
By dawn Narcissa was standing over the best Potions wizard the allies could put at her disposal, holding her wand with an air of indefinable menace. Whether it was the threat, the sheer intellectual challenge, or the fact that against considerable odds she had found one of the few allied wizards who actually quite liked Draco, but Lucius Malfoy's confidence that the effects of the Death In Life Potion were irreversible proved as illusory as all his other hopes. Narcissa and her son had joined the allies, and the rest, as they say, was herstory.
The furore was amazing. As someone said, "Never in the whole history of the struggle against Voldemort was so unexpected a reversal inflicted so effectively by one so stunningly photogenic". Others might justifiably feel they had contributed more to Voldemort's defeat; Narcissa, however, got the book deals.
1. LoPiverse, A.J. Hall (aka
legionseagle)Fandom: Harry Potter (mainly), Vorkosigan Saga ('Time Shall Not Mend' is a crossover)
Summary: This is a series of nine fics of various lengths; the title "LoPiverse" comes from the first main book, Lust Over Pendle. Lust Over Pendle is a comedy of manners set in the Golden Age detective thriller genre, and is presumed to take place after the end of the seventh Harry Potter book, and, therefore, after the fall of Voldemort. It was written before the Order of the Phoenix, so it is not at all canonical.
Length: Epic (no word count provided)
Reason: This was the series that got me into fandom. I love it with a pure and everlasting love, because no matter how many times I go back and re-read it, it never lets me down. It's funny and clever and shows a keen insight into the complexities of human nature. It's Draco/Neville in a way that makes me believe in Draco/Neville, and has some of the best characterizations of Narcissa, Mrs. Longbottom, and Hermione I've ever read. It's as if Lois McMaster Bujold decided to write Harry Potter. And did I mention that it's funny?
Have a quote from Lust over Pendle:
During what wizards and witches were now coming to refer to as Recent Events Voldemort had had a simple initiation test for those recruits who - depressingly - had flocked to join him after his initial successes. If they wished to become a Death Eater they must kill a victim selected for them at random, within twenty-four hours, without assistance. Furthermore, if Voldemort's star should fall, it would be clear to the whole world that the individual's decision to take the test had been one of pure free will: no hope this time of sheltering behind Imperius.
Dying in the attempt was a honourable end (and, of course, neatly weeded out those whose incompetence might embarrass the Dark Lord later). Failing to carry out the test and surviving was not an option. Refusing the test, warning the intended victim, and then walking back to Voldemort's HQ to inform his second in command that one had done so was an act of such spectacularly suicidal stupidity that a depressed lemming would have earnestly counselled against it.
Even if the second in command concerned was the recruit's own father. Especially if the second in command was the recruit's own father.
Naturally, in the aftermath of Recent Events, when the wizard world had leisure to think once more, the question of Why? tended to arise. Various far-fetched theories were spun as to what exactly had happened the night Draco Malfoy went out to murder Hermione Granger, and returned some hours later, to tell his father that, actually, he thought becoming a Death Eater was a rotten idea, and he'd rather be excused.
Perhaps the best explanation was, after all, the simplest: Voldemort, whose grasp of his own psychology was, by that time, slipping considerably, had simply failed to appreciate that dislike, even intense dislike, is much further from hatred than it appears. Killing someone whom you have seen across the breakfast table for nearly half your life cannot be comfortably classified as mere garbage disposal, or the clinical negativing of a subject, however much you may have cringed inside at every bite of toast they ate for every breakfast of every week of that time.
Why, in any event, was not a question that occurred to Lucius Malfoy. His main objective was damage limitation. Thirty-odd years in the Dark Lord's service had polished his ability to regard people as things to a high degree.
Twenty minutes later Draco was lying in a deserted quarry forty miles from Voldemort's headquarters, already feeling the first effects of the Death in Life Potion his father had forced down his throat. As Lucius Disapparated he tossed over his shoulder two pieces of information. First, that the potion had been carefully designed to produce death and most of its after-effects, but in the wrong order. Decomposition commenced while the victim was both alive and sentient, and death, when it came, was a relief not only to the well-rotted victim, but to anyone strong stomached enough to remain in his vicinity. Secondly, that there was no antidote.
Some time later that evening, it appears, Lucius Malfoy mentioned to his wife that he had dealt with a potential family embarrassment.
This was a tactical misjudgement possibly never equalled since that of the general whose last words had been:
"Don't worry, they can't possibly hit an elephant at this dist-"
Legend, and the will to believe, clouds much of what happened next. Those allied against Voldemort were doing very badly at the time, and the impact on morale of the slightest victory was wholly disproportionate to its tactical value. Narcissa received the news quietly, but can have wasted no time. Within three hours Malfoy Manor, the fourteen top Death Eaters it was sheltering, and a cache of valuable intelligence information about Voldemort's plans had been turned over to his enemies with not a drop of allied blood being split.
As the advance party made their way unopposed into the enemy stronghold they found Lucius dead in the basement, an expression of extreme annoyance on his face. It was believed that he had committed suicide, lacking the nerve to meet either Voldemort or Narcissa alive.
By dawn Narcissa was standing over the best Potions wizard the allies could put at her disposal, holding her wand with an air of indefinable menace. Whether it was the threat, the sheer intellectual challenge, or the fact that against considerable odds she had found one of the few allied wizards who actually quite liked Draco, but Lucius Malfoy's confidence that the effects of the Death In Life Potion were irreversible proved as illusory as all his other hopes. Narcissa and her son had joined the allies, and the rest, as they say, was herstory.
The furore was amazing. As someone said, "Never in the whole history of the struggle against Voldemort was so unexpected a reversal inflicted so effectively by one so stunningly photogenic". Others might justifiably feel they had contributed more to Voldemort's defeat; Narcissa, however, got the book deals.
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So yes, that! Thought you might like to know. <3 <3 <3
I found your dw by way of the link you provided on your ff.net account that you provided a link to on you delicious by the way. Only mild creepyness!
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