humanist + humorist

I’ll start adding Yuletide fic to the regular multifandom rec posts at some point. And, as usual, all my fic recs are gathered on Tagpacker, where you can filter by fandom and pairing and other good things.

But first, a post on what I gave + what I got!

I was one of the people who originally nominated the Moon Knight comics to the tag set (and then went to the evidence post to distinguish it from the definitely-ineligible MCU TV series; here’s the disambiguation comment, since I’ll probably want to reuse it next year).

Got an amazing comicverse fic as my gift! It’s from the 2021 run, and it’s all about how the House of Shadows knows one (1) trick — manifesting dangerous horrors beyond mortal comprehension — but now that it has a Favorite Human to take care of, it’s going to use that trick to Help.

The Homes We Need (5131 words) by estelraca
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Moon Knight (Comics)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Steven Grant & Jake Lockley & Marc Spector, Jake Lockley & Greer Grant Nelson, Steven Grant & Matt Murdock, Marc Spector & T’Challa
Characters: Jake Lockley, Steven Grant (Marvel), Marc Spector, The House of Shadows
Additional Tags: Character Study, Healing
Summary:

The House of Shadows does its best to protect those who have offered it a home, though the people who visit don’t always appreciate the pains it is going through to do so.

Someone else nominated the 2021 (MacKay) run specifically, and everyone else’s Yuletide fic ended up being MacKay-era. But I pitched nominating the comics in general, just to keep my era options open…and it paid off when I found someone requesting a comicverse take on Layla.

Which is how I got this:

Scarlet and Moonlight (4767 words) by ErinPtah
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Moon Knight (Comics), Moon Knight (TV 2022)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Marlene Alraune/Steven Grant, Gena Landers & Jake Lockley
Characters: Layla El-Faouly, Marlene Alraune, Marc Spector, Steven Grant, Jake Lockley, Gena Landers
Additional Tags: Marvel 616/MCU Crossover, Comics AU Layla El-Faouly, Layla El-Faouly-centric, Multiplicity/Plurality, Team Moon Knight is in So Much Denial, Alternate Origin Story, POV Outsider
Series: Part 16 of standalone Moon Knight fics
Summary:

Phantom thief Layla has finally tracked a stolen artifact to some rich couple’s collection. Shouldn’t be too hard to break into their mansion and retrieve it, right? This Steven Grant and Marlene Alraune are probably total pushovers.

(Spoiler alert: they are not total pushovers.)

In research for this, I also went and looked up the issues with the original 616 Scarlet Scarab. They’re, uh, not good. It’s a throwback-to-WWII book about a team consisting of mostly white-American and white-British superheroes, for these specific issues they’re fighting in Egypt, and they call themselves…The Invaders. This is not ironic! They earnestly think this is a cool Avengers-style name for a good-guy team-up!

So a researcher called Dr. Abdul Faoul gets himself some superpowers, calls himself the Scarlet Scarab, and starts fighting the Invaders. Namor is the only team member to say “uh, you know, this guy might actually have a good point.” The group’s only substantial selling point to Dr. Faoul is “we aren’t as bad as the Nazis,” and that’s not exactly a high bar to clear!

For all the other nonsense that shows up in the Moon Knight comics, at least they’re always clear on “Marc’s vigilante history as a white American mercenary in the Middle East/North Africa was a bad thing.”

The first big thing I wanted to do with comicverse Layla, then, was “she tries to retrieve an artifact that rightfully belongs in her home country, and once Marc-and-company figure out her deal, they agree 100% that Layla should have it.”

The second big thing was contrasting the comicverse Marlene/Steven-and-the-guys romance with the TV version of Layla/Marc-and-the-guys. Which is why I wanted to use a version of the 1980s status quo — it’s the point in the comics that’s most similar to Layla/Marc in the MCU, in terms of “their relationship is pretty good day-to-day, but Team Moon Knight is keeping some major secrets, even though their love interest is very firm that she just wants them to be honest (and has so far been cool with every weird thing she does know about).”

As a reader, you know that if this universe goes the same way as mainline canon did, Team MK is going to implode that relationship eventually. (Also their relationship with Duchamp, and Gena, and basically all the Avengers except Tigra, and, and, and…)

But it leaves the tantalizing possibility that they might not! The route to “being honest and forthright and developing actual coping skills” — the route that we hope MCU Team MK will take — is still open. At least for now.

…and Marlene is low-key aware that Team MK might blow everything up, and has made the conscious decision that the good times right now are worth having, whether they last forever or not.

I wrote one other Yuletide fic! And for once, it’s not related to Moon Knight at all!

Jeeves & Wooster is one of my standby offers, a thing I’m always confident I can write. (Along with the Oz books.) I wouldn’t have offered Wings, the 1990 TV series…but as luck would have it, it was on Hulu until not long before Yuletide assignments went out, so I had recently rewatched a bunch…and the recip requested both series, and said they liked crossovers, and wham.

There Once Was A Man From Whatsit (2704 words) by ErinPtah
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Jeeves – P. G. Wodehouse, Wings (TV 1990)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Bertram “Bertie” Wooster, Reginald Jeeves, Brian Hackett
Additional Tags: Crossover, Alternate Universe – 1990s, Canon Past Character Death, POV Bertram “Bertie” Wooster, Brother Feels
Summary:

Columnist Bertie Wooster, accompanied by his PA Jeeves, catches a flight out of Nantucket on Sandpiper Air…during which Jeeves steers him into a surprisingly heartfelt chat with Captain Hackett.

(Canon setting for Wings, some time around the middle of the show. “AU where the whole series happened in the 1990s” for J&W.)

Brian’s parents were MIA from a young age, close to the general fanon about when Bertie’s died, which got me thinking about what a good conversation they could have (and how masterfully Jeeves could prompt them to have it!)…and the rest snowballed from there.

I didn’t remember the exact age, or all the particular details about what happened to each parent, so it’s a good thing there’s a Wings wiki. In the days after assignments went out, I was basically haunting the site during my commute, making sure all the details lined up.

A perfect case of “this fic never in a million years would’ve existed without Yuletide, and boy am I glad I got the assignment that prompted it.”

You can’t tell now, because I redated everything after reveals — but this was legit the 4th fic added to the Yuletide 2022 collection. That’s how fast it came together.