straightforwardly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
straightforwardly) wrote2025-12-21 09:14 am
straightforwardly) wrote2025-12-21 09:14 am
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334 | rec-cember, week three
My theme for this week’s ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rec_cember post is A Year in Long Fic! In other words: a recs list of longfic that I read this year and very much enjoyed. For the purposes of this post, I’m defining “longfic” as “30K or more”, mainly because a higher minimum would have cut out fics I very much wanted to include. For the most part, I stuck with new-to-me fics, but I made one exception due to said fic’s relationship with two other fics on my list. I also decided not to include any of the Final Fantasy VII fics I read, not because they weren’t good, but because I feel like there would be too much overlap with the FF7-specific recs list I made back in September.
A couple of these fics I’ve recced here before, but most I’ve never mentioned. Organized in alphabetical order by fandom.
Fandoms included: Avatar: The Last Airbender, EPIC the Musical, Les Misérables, Miraculous Ladybug, MDZS/CQL
Arsonist's Lullaby (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Azula, currently 88K, WIP last updated 2024)
Nine days out from Sozin's Comet, you—Princess Azula of the Fire Nation—find yourself staring down betrayal at the Boiling Rock. Again. Because the thing is, you've been here before. And before. And before. And no matter what you do from here on out, it always seems to end the same: you lose everything on the one day you are more powerful than you will ever be again.
Your only hope is that maybe this time will be different.
(Will it?)
*
and all the years we should have had (EPIC the Musical, Penelope/Odysseus + Penelope & Eurylochus, currently 107K, WIP last updated 2025)
The ship came to their shores in the third year after the war ended.
One ship, just one, and Penelope stood on the clifftop near her husband’s palace and looked down upon the harbor below, and clenched her fist in her himation until it was wrapped around her so tight that it was imprinting its weave pattern onto her skin. Just one ship, and the men she could see disembarking were too few to be fifty, and none turned to hare instantly up the hill towards her.
Penelope turned away to head into the palace, to wait for the bad news to find her.
(odysseus chooses to sacrifice himself, and penelope chooses not to let him go)
*
In Which Is To Be Learned The Name of Enjolras's Fake Fiancée (Les Misérables, Enjolras & Cosette, currently 71K, WIP last updated 2025)
It was true, Cosette allowed, that he was nothing at all like the beautiful young man from the Luxembourg, but she must not judge him unkindly for that. The world was full of young men, and it would be quite tedious if all the handsome ones were handsome in the same way.
*
I (Wish I) Knew You (Miraculous Ladybug, Lovesquare, 49K)
University has been hard on Marinette. Making new friends and maintaining her grades is a lot easier said than done when she has to disappear at odd times to fight akumas. She's struggling, and with Alya away with family and Adrien painfully out of reach, she's never felt lonelier.
If only she could talk to someone who really understood her struggles... but it's not like Chat Noir would know anything about loneliness. Right?
Adrien has mastered the art of the smile. Even while his mind is on poor behavior, when he's caught beneath a barrage of unkind thoughts to himself, he's still able to keep his smile. Attend his friends' parties, maintain small talk, get through the day — and hopefully his friends won't realize how messed up he really is.
Everyone is out-pacing him. While he's barely getting out of bed in the morning, his friends are making waves, changing lives, getting engaged.
He can't even get his girlfriend to text him back.
So, sure. Maybe he's not in the best head space right now — but 'suicidal'? Ladybug's certainly just reading too deeply into things. But if her concern for Chat Noir's mental state is enough to get her reaching out, well, he won't turn down the opportunity to chat with a friend. Besides, Ladybug seems to be having a rough go of it, too. Maybe they can help each other out.
*
it burns as it moves you and its sequel, everlasting in a different moon (MDZS/CQL, Wen Ruohan/Jiang Yanli, 47K + 36K)
Jiang Yanli’s engagement is broken. In the wake of this, Wen Ruohan senses an opportunity.
(Jiang Yanli, who is still standing there, a lotus seed pod between her fingers, silent as the grave, thinks that perhaps this is how a fish felt, in a woven rush trap — not yet dead, but already on its way to dying.
Not yet dead, but certainly trapped within the small boundaries that had reduced its world to nothing, alone with panic until someone comes to strike the killing blow.
Jiang Yanli is a child of Yunmeng's waters. She has, in the past, been the one to put her hand in the rush trap and drag the fish from its final prison.
She had, in the past, been one to gut said fish in a single stroke along its belly and pull out its innards.
She knew how to not spoil the meat.)
Perhaps she shouldn’t’ve started by asking what was in his torture dungeon.
rec_cember post is A Year in Long Fic! In other words: a recs list of longfic that I read this year and very much enjoyed. For the purposes of this post, I’m defining “longfic” as “30K or more”, mainly because a higher minimum would have cut out fics I very much wanted to include. For the most part, I stuck with new-to-me fics, but I made one exception due to said fic’s relationship with two other fics on my list. I also decided not to include any of the Final Fantasy VII fics I read, not because they weren’t good, but because I feel like there would be too much overlap with the FF7-specific recs list I made back in September.A couple of these fics I’ve recced here before, but most I’ve never mentioned. Organized in alphabetical order by fandom.
Fandoms included: Avatar: The Last Airbender, EPIC the Musical, Les Misérables, Miraculous Ladybug, MDZS/CQL
Arsonist's Lullaby (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Azula, currently 88K, WIP last updated 2024)
Nine days out from Sozin's Comet, you—Princess Azula of the Fire Nation—find yourself staring down betrayal at the Boiling Rock. Again. Because the thing is, you've been here before. And before. And before. And no matter what you do from here on out, it always seems to end the same: you lose everything on the one day you are more powerful than you will ever be again.
Your only hope is that maybe this time will be different.
(Will it?)
I discovered this fic via a rec on a discord server, which I’m grateful for, since I’ve never heard of the website it’s hosted on before and thus otherwise never would have found this fic. Which would have been a shame, because I adored this. I love both time loops and second person POV, but what really makes this fic shine is the characterization. Azula’s characterization is top-notch, possibly my favorite take on her I’ve seen, and I love the careful way the author unfolds her character arc and the journey she goes on throughout this fic. It’s both incredibly believable and very satisfying to read through.
*
and all the years we should have had (EPIC the Musical, Penelope/Odysseus + Penelope & Eurylochus, currently 107K, WIP last updated 2025)
The ship came to their shores in the third year after the war ended.
One ship, just one, and Penelope stood on the clifftop near her husband’s palace and looked down upon the harbor below, and clenched her fist in her himation until it was wrapped around her so tight that it was imprinting its weave pattern onto her skin. Just one ship, and the men she could see disembarking were too few to be fifty, and none turned to hare instantly up the hill towards her.
Penelope turned away to head into the palace, to wait for the bad news to find her.
(odysseus chooses to sacrifice himself, and penelope chooses not to let him go)
I remember initially going into this fic with a sense of trepidation, feeling like the concept was one that could very easily be horribly executed... and then found myself with a case of “oops, it’s two in the morning and I’m still reading” instead. I think this fic does an incredible job of showing how Penelope comes to make the decisions she does, making it feel both believable and grounded. The characterization, attention to character dynamics, and attention to the world these characters inhabit are all stunning. One of my favorite aspects about this fic was the way the writer incorporated details about real life Bronze Age culture into the story in a way that felt both natural to the characters and added depth to the setting. It’s one of the major reasons why this fic has lingered with me all these months after first reading it. I also very, very much enjoyed the Penelope & Eurylochus dynamic in this fic, in a way that made me retroactively so much sadder about his fate in canon.
*
In Which Is To Be Learned The Name of Enjolras's Fake Fiancée (Les Misérables, Enjolras & Cosette, currently 71K, WIP last updated 2025)
It was true, Cosette allowed, that he was nothing at all like the beautiful young man from the Luxembourg, but she must not judge him unkindly for that. The world was full of young men, and it would be quite tedious if all the handsome ones were handsome in the same way.
The most recent read from all the fics I’ve included on this list! A fic I enjoyed so much, that I ended up going back to reread the entirety of Les Misérables for the first time since like 2016 because of it. I’ve always really liked the idea of Enjolras and Cosette interacting, and this fic does an excellent job of creating a believable and compelling scenario for why they would come in contact with one another. I love how much of this fic is about Cosette: her life circumstances, the ways her past shapes her even when she doesn’t fully remember it, her awakening as a political being and how she gets drawn into the world of Les Amis. I love many things about this fic, but Cosette’s character arc tops that list; it’s so satisfying. I also love what it does with Jean Valjean (and how the Amis view him!), and appreciate the historical details woven throughout the fic, particularly in regards to the Amis' political discussions.
*
I (Wish I) Knew You (Miraculous Ladybug, Lovesquare, 49K)
University has been hard on Marinette. Making new friends and maintaining her grades is a lot easier said than done when she has to disappear at odd times to fight akumas. She's struggling, and with Alya away with family and Adrien painfully out of reach, she's never felt lonelier.
If only she could talk to someone who really understood her struggles... but it's not like Chat Noir would know anything about loneliness. Right?
I know I’ve recced this fic before, but considering that it’s probably the fic I’ve reread the most in this past year, it definitely deserves a spot on this list. 2025 is the year where I discovered buggachat as a fic writer, and I’m now fully obsessed with their work, with the above fic still being my absolute favorite. To quote what I said back when I first recced it:My Love, My Lifeline (Miraculous Ladybug, Lovesquare, 87K)I’ve read and enjoyed a good number of this fic author’s longfics recently, but this is hands-down my favorite. I love so much of what this fic does and the choices it makes. I love how Marinette struggling with her social life as a young adult serves to give her a satisfying parallel emotional narrative to Chat’s own loneliness, and the way their dynamic develops through via those catalysts. I love the handling of Adrien’s situation, and the narrative choices that get made to explain how he’s gotten to this point. And I love the way all of those elements combine to give us a reveal that is both surprisingly funny for a fic which is as emotional as this one is, and yet fits it so well. It’s honestly one of the best reveals I’ve ever read, on a number of levels: how it happens, why the characters figure it out, and how they react in the wake of that new information. It just rang so true on every level.All of that remains true!
Adrien has mastered the art of the smile. Even while his mind is on poor behavior, when he's caught beneath a barrage of unkind thoughts to himself, he's still able to keep his smile. Attend his friends' parties, maintain small talk, get through the day — and hopefully his friends won't realize how messed up he really is.
Everyone is out-pacing him. While he's barely getting out of bed in the morning, his friends are making waves, changing lives, getting engaged.
He can't even get his girlfriend to text him back.
So, sure. Maybe he's not in the best head space right now — but 'suicidal'? Ladybug's certainly just reading too deeply into things. But if her concern for Chat Noir's mental state is enough to get her reaching out, well, he won't turn down the opportunity to chat with a friend. Besides, Ladybug seems to be having a rough go of it, too. Maybe they can help each other out.
Considering what I just said above about how I’ve fallen in love with buggachat’s fics this year, it probably isn’t surprising that I lost my mind when they dropped a new one this October/November. The chapters were being dropped on a regular schedule, and on update days I was literally sitting there with the fic up on the screen, constantly refreshing until the new chapter dropped—something I’ve never done before in all of my years of fandom.
This was such a fantastic read. What I especially loved about this fic in particular is how it’s very much not “Chat Noir is depressed & Ladybug tries to support him when she finds out”. Rather, they both get to be Not Doing Well, in their own ways; they both get to be struggling and messy and imperfect, in a way I deeply appreciate. Buggachat writes about mental health so well—Adrien’s depression, Marinette’s anxiety spirals—in a way that rings true to me. It never ever feels like issue fic; rather, it feels like they’re their canon selves, as they deal with the situations this fic puts them in. Also: top-tier identity porn. I was constantly dying (positive) but also often laughing at all the ironies of their conversations and situation.
*
it burns as it moves you and its sequel, everlasting in a different moon (MDZS/CQL, Wen Ruohan/Jiang Yanli, 47K + 36K)
Jiang Yanli’s engagement is broken. In the wake of this, Wen Ruohan senses an opportunity.
(Jiang Yanli, who is still standing there, a lotus seed pod between her fingers, silent as the grave, thinks that perhaps this is how a fish felt, in a woven rush trap — not yet dead, but already on its way to dying.
Not yet dead, but certainly trapped within the small boundaries that had reduced its world to nothing, alone with panic until someone comes to strike the killing blow.
Jiang Yanli is a child of Yunmeng's waters. She has, in the past, been the one to put her hand in the rush trap and drag the fish from its final prison.
She had, in the past, been one to gut said fish in a single stroke along its belly and pull out its innards.
She knew how to not spoil the meat.)
And now it should be clear why I included one reread into this list! I believe I’ve recced “it burns as it moves you” before, but this year the sequel dropped, so of course I had to go and read the two back-to-back. First and foremost: that Jiang Yanli characterization!!! I adore her characterization (...have you noticed a theme to my recs this post), and the character arc she goes through in this series is so compelling to me. I also really love the worldbuilding and general character work being done here, particularly the fleshing out of the Wen Sect and Wen Ruohan himself. This is such a beautifully written story, and one that's always a pleasure to return to.live a little larger (MDZS/CQL, Wen Ruohan/Jiang Yanli, 58K)
Perhaps she shouldn’t’ve started by asking what was in his torture dungeon.
I cannot overstate how fond my memories of reading this fic are. This is such a fun story; I remember spending the first half of the fic essentially giggling and kicking my feet while reading, and then being hit with all the emotions in the second half. Never has Wen Ruohan been so compelling as when Leaf writes about him, and the Jiang Yanli characterization is, again, a delight. As a note, the longer version of the summary mentions that this is an alternate universe of “it burns as it moves you”, but I think it can also be read on its own—the main connections are that it uses the same worldbuilding and character work as a framework, and there are deliberate parallels between the two that you’d notice if you’d read both, but the stories take place in different timelines.