eruthros

Recently I've been rewatching Star Trek: Voyager, and reading a lot in the Vorkosigan-verse, and the combination of those two things means that I've seen a lot of recs for two particular stories. And it made me think about the stories that get widely recced or read outside of the fandoms for those sources - the stories that many, many people have read with minimal canon knowledge, or without having read any other stories in the fandom, or without caring about the characters, or whatever.

To explain what I mean more clearly, here are some of mine:

1) Vorkosigan-verse, A Deeper Season by lightgetsin and sahiya

When I first read A Deeper Season, I'd read the Vorkosigan books but had absolutely no fandom knowledge - I didn't know where communities or archives or stories were - but basically the instant I told people I'd been reading the books, I got this rec. And I'm pretty sure that many of the people reccing it had only read this one story in the fandom, too, because I would usually get people who said "I don't read in the fandom, but ..." and "I don't even know the canon, but ..."

It is, in fact, an awesome story, and I love it to pieces. But the point here is not really about the story per se, it's about that kind of shared fannish experience without even being in the fandom. I suspect that it's still (one of) the stories people read despite not being in the fandom, because I occasionally see people on my rlist who say "I just read some Vorkosigan, where's the fic?" and there, in the first couple of comments, is "I don't read in the fandom, but A Deeper Season!" (Unless the post is about Ivan, in which case the recs are from a different fandom than the one I usually read in.)

2) Star Trek: Voyager, Talking Stick/Circle series by Macedon and Peg.

I watched the early seasons of Voyager sort of casually, and without much interest in fic, so IIRC I hadn't read much of anything before this story. Like most of the other things on this list, it was recced by someone; in this case, when I was complaining about the way that the Maquis-Starfleet tensions rarely came up on the show, and the way some of the Chakotay episodes made me flinch, somebody (sineala?) said "you know, someone has fixed that," and recced this series. And then I read it, and it was indeed great, and influential, in the sense that I often forget that Macedon's Chakotay backstory is not canon Chakotay's backstory, and then I started doing the same thing: people would say "I've never read any Voyager fic" and I would rec this story and nothing else because I hadn't read much else.

Much later, I read a bunch of other Voyager stories (Janeway/Seven! strange crossovers! Harry/Tom!), but Talking Stick/Circle remained the only thing I'd read in Voyager for two years or so. And now that I'm rewatching Voyager, I still see a ton of recs for it.

3) Harry Potter, A Most Disquieting Tea series by telanu.

This is kind of funny, now, since I've read a ton of Harry Potter fanfiction since, and since HP fandoms are so giant and sprawling and whatever. But back before I knew anything about Harry Potter fandoms, I had just read the books and maybe a couple of Harry/Ron and Harry/Draco stories by authors I'd followed in other fandoms. And then at least two people on my flist recced "A Most Disquieting Tea," and I went and read it, and I went "oh, all right." I think when I was linked to it there were only three or maybe four stories in the series, and I haven't actually read all of the sequels since, but at the time I could talk about it with many, many people who had read no other Harry Potter fanfic. (A couple of years later I went through Walking the Plank with serious dedication, and "A Most Disquieting Tea" is far from the best Harry/Snape story I read then, but it was still a big deal in my circles of not-in-the-fandoms earlier.)

I suspect that for other people, Cassandra Claire's Draco Trilogy was That Story from (a different part of) HP fandom, but I never managed to read more than a couple chapters of it. It was widely recced around me, but I never really got it in the same way.

So the interesting thing about this is, it's basically impossible to think about it for fandoms I was in when I was reading the fic. Like, Stargate Atlantis - I read a million stories, and I followed a bunch of recs, and I watched all the vids, so I have no idea what story or stories were widely read outside of the fandom. Was it one of the early ones, like maybe astolat's A Beautiful Lifetime Event? Was it helenish's Take Clothes Off As Directed? Or maybe cesperanza's epic Written By the Victors? But on the other hand, maybe Written By the Victors requires too much canon knowledge, and Take Clothes Off As Directed is, after all, a bdsm au, which is perhaps not as likely to be widely recced, and who knows which of the season one or two stories would be most popular. Or maybe it's something I didn't even really notice at the time, or something different from the stuff that was widely recced on my rlists. I have no idea.

Anyway! I'd be interested to hear about any of your experiences with that one (or two or three) stories that were widely read and recced by people not in the fandom.

1. Okay, so someone has done a Dalek Christmas carol. The Go Go's recorded "I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With a Dalek." Only it's not at all what I'm thinking of -- the Dalek says things like "I'd like some more plum pudding." I don't want "I'd like some more plum pudding" and "we'll hug under the Christmas tree" and the human chorus going "Merry Chwithmas." (Tonstant weader thwowed up.)

No. I want ominous. I want "Joy to the World" to be the scariest (funniest) damn thing you've ever heard. I want creepy. This is not it.

2. wiccanslyr did a SGA vid. McKay. To "White and Nerdy." It's at youtube here or available for download here.

3. I never really manage to read Yuletide. It's cool and fabulous but, dude, 1000+ stories? Nonetheless, I have enjoyed:

Lives by Breaking, a Pevensies-at-the-end-of-Wardrobe story.

Further Up and Further In, an Aslan's country story.

Changelings, a story in the Finder/Bordertown universe (Emma Bull). It's a happy story, but Tinker as a young elf made me sniffle.

Happiness is Fleeting, a Penny Arcade story that is almost exactly like a comic. Gabe! Tycho! Monkeys!

Of Mice and Myth, a creepy little HHGttG/Teatime story. With mice. Fantabulous.

The Long Con, a Vorkosiganverse story. Oh, Byerly! There should be more stories about By. And Ivan. And Alys throwing up her hands.

A Maze of Twisty Passages, All Alike, a Vorkosiganverse story. GREGOR. Gregor and Ivan. Go read it now.

Wag the Duck. Bloom County. Manages to get across the total weirdness of the strip in prose form. Also, it is a BLOOM COUNTY story. With lines like "In the last election, he had been opposed by a sincere but politically inexperienced ficus plant." And Binkley wakes his dad up in the middle of the night to ask if Madonna will ever be in a good movie.

Pop Life because it's a War for the Oaks story. Eddie and the Fey, one year later.