Fandom Snowflake Day 4

[kelly_chambliss]

Day 4

In your own space, create a fanwork. Make a drabble, a ficlet, a podfic, or an icon, art or meta or a rec list. Arts and crafts. Draft a critical essay about a particular media. Put together a picspam or a fanmix. Write a review of a Broadway show, a movie, a concert, a poetry reading, a museum trip, a you-should-be-listening-to-this-band essay. Compose some limericks, haikus, free-form poetry, 5-word stories. Document a particular bit of real person canon. Take some pictures. Draw a stick-figure comic. Create something.

I may have to do this day's challenge three times, since I want to write a review of the film Carol and also feel the itch to drabble.

But the first order of business is a rec post. I find myself both sad and ecstatic: sad, because I have finished reading all the entries in this year's stupendous hoggywartyxmas fest, and ecstatic because the fest, always excellent, was simply top-notch this year. Rec-able story and art followed rec-able story and art with amazing regularity. Choosing a representative sampling for this rec post has been tremendously tough and also tremendously fun. I want to thank the Founder of the Feast, therealsnape, for running one of the best fests in HP fandom and all the clever creators for giving these wonderful gifts -- 12 days of the best holiday presents ever.

Just when I think there's nothing new to be written in HP, along comes hoggywartyxmas! Long may it reign.

(NB -- I've already recced my own fine gift here and some excellent Hoggywarty art here.)

HoggyWarty Recs

Nine Lessons and Carols by Anonymous (Filius Flitwick and the Hogwarts staff; G)
This story hits so many of my buttons: Flitwick fic!!! (there's not nearly enough of it). Imaginative uses of poetry. Excellent writing (I mean, I like a good fanfic sex scene as well as the next pervert person, but what I really find hot is good writing). Expert characterizations.

Above, Beneath, Betwixt, Between by Anonymous (Cuthbert Binns/Helena Ravenclaw; PG/R)
I adore well-written fics that give us a detailed, believable backstory for minor characters, and this story history of Cuthbert Binns is one of the best of this genre that I've had the pleasure to read. Definitely one to savor.

The Gift by Anonymous (Sybill Trelawney/Minerva McGonagall [sort of]; assorted Hogwarts staffers; PG-13)
I'm always impressed when someone can take a canon character I really dislike (like Sybill) and turn them into a fully-realized, complex human being and can show me how to find the empathy and understanding that I have been sadly lacking. "The Gift" definitely does the job -- and does it with an entire gallery of well-characterized Hogwarts figures. Throw in inventive magic and fine world-building, and you've got a winner.

To Build on Rock by Anonymous (Minerva, Neville; G)
Talk about inventive magic! This story has it in spades. Plus, you'll find wonderful depictions of Minerva (no-nonsense, wry, intelligent, deeply caring) and Neville (a believable, very likable grown-up version of exactly the way his canon self would have grown and matured). If you're like me, and you relish stories in which Hogwarts Castle features as a character, you'll love this version.

Nineteen Sixty-Six (Albus Dumbledore, Walt Disney; G)
This story of a meeting between Dumbledore and Disney seems so inevitable and fitting that you'll wonder why you didn't think of it yourself. An exceptionally beautifully-written story; I felt magically as swept away by the prose as Walt is by Albus's wizard transportation devices.

Bored of Governors (Minerva McGonagall, Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank, assorted Hogwarts staff [current and former and future], and a representative goblins, Squibs, centaurs, and merfolk; G)
Magic-world politics + thoughtful world-building + plus Minerva, Wilhelmina, and Griselda Marchbanks = a treat of a story. It's a fantasy of the way that diversity and cooperation ought to work.

And so many more gems -- a pithy, perceptive Albus/Alastor (of sorts), a delicious poetic parody of "A Visit From St. Nicholas," a well-done set of biblio-drabbles, a detailed artwork showing our friends partying at Rosmerta's, a Minerva/Severus ghost story, some lovely, bittersweet vignettes of solitary Christmases. . .I could go on, but you get the point: hoggywartyxmas is terrific.