Fancake

Fandom: Hilda the Plus-Size Pin-up
Pairings/Characters: Gen; Hilda, Hilda’s animals, Hilda’s viewers, Hilda’s kindasorta personified sourdough strains.
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 2,947
Content Notes: Author Tract (COVID hygiene); canon-typical near-nudism; COVID-19 quarantine and the stresses thereof; Food Porn; music and instrument care nerdery; social media; some of Hilda’s chickens are for meat; sourdough nerdery; vintage textile nerdery.
Creator Tags: Epistolary, Pandemics, Recipes, Yuletide, Yuletide 2020
Creator Links: (AO3) ellen_fremedon, (Bluesky) ellenfremedon, (Dreamwidth) ellen_fremedon, (Tumblr) fremedon

Theme: Food & Cooking, Epistolary, Gen, Modern AU, Old Fandoms, (Secret) Hobbies, Small Fandoms

Summary: Welcome to Off the Grid at Chez Hilda, updated every Friday or whenever I feel like it. My artwork is at the Patreon link, and I don't need to remind lovely folks like you to like and subscribe, now do I?

Reccer's Notes: Hilda in 2020 is a rural lifestyle vlogger, addressing her audience from COVID quarantine and coping with lockdown in her characteristic down-home resourceful fashion (chaining canon illustrations into a storyline.)

The modernized context turns her repurposable-as-clothing floursacks into a vintage estate artifact, rhyming two historical periods of struggle and make-do as she renders them into masks. In the course of her expositions on things like feral cat rescue and wafflemaking, she casually drops evidence of an impressive and wide-ranging education; this is a woman who, in her witty conversational folksiness, gladly learns and gladly teaches. (Wonder if she and Manly Wade Wellman’s John the Balladeer ever met?)

This Hilda lives in a community, though; as the quarantine grinds wearily on, she grows increasingly fretful in her seclusion, mounting the soapbox to rant about neighbors who refuse to mask or isolate (this is 2020, before vaccines became available), and the parasocial companionship of her audience becomes increasingly precious.

Oh, and Hilda shares a recipe for her hybrid sourdough/baking powder waffles, complete with considerate substitution suggestions for various dietary limitations. (“This batter keeps in the fridge for a couple days, allegedly. I’ve never managed to test it.”)

Fanwork Links: Hilda Shelters in Place, by ellen_fremedon for Topaz_Eyes, for Yuletide 2020.

Fandom: Neuromancer | Sprawl Trilogy - William Gibson
Pairings/Characters: Gen; Sally Shears | Molly Millions & Yanaka Kumiko
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 1,225
Content Notes: No Archive Warnings Apply (but a character’s dark backstory is hinted at.)
Creator Tags: Cyberpunk, razor girl, Friendship, Mentors, Mentor & Protégé, Yakuza, Missing Scene, Female Friendship, Backstory, Fanon
Creator Links: (AO3) LizzyChrome; (BlueSky): lizzychrome; (DeviantArt) lizzychrome; (Facebook) LizzyChrome; (Instagram) lizzy_chrome
Theme: Female Relationships, Backstory, Book Fandoms, Female Friendship, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Older Characters, Worldbuilding

Summary: How do Molly's claws and lenses actually work? Kumiko pries. (Missing scene from "Mona Lisa Overdrive.")

Author’s Notes: If you havne't read MLO yet, I won't spoil anything. I'll just set the scene, without giving anyway any important story elements: Molly is now middle-aged, goes by "Sally Shears," and is working as a body guard for a Japanese girl named Kumiko.

I do not own "Mona Lisa Overdrive."

This oldie was written probably over ten years ago. I originally posted it to Fanfiction.net, then took it down, feeling it was pointless. But in light of the new "Neuromancer" show coming out, I want to preserve this little ficlet, to see how my fanon explanation for how Molly's claws work compares to what (if anything) the show gives us regarding that explanation. After a quick re-read, I decided that no edit was needed. What you see here is what I originally posted ten or eleven years ago.

Reccer's Notes: This vignette expands upon an exchange in Mona Lisa Overdrive between aging cyborg mercenary Sally Shears (AKA Molly Millions, Cat Mother, Steppin’ Razor, Rose Kolodny, and Misty Steele—this lady’s got more names than a Wuxia hero) and her charge Yanaka Kumiko; Sally confides measured bits of her backstory to the crushstruck Kumiko, including stripping to bare a torso-long scar (from a near-fatal cagefighting injury, kept “to remind her of being stupid.”)

It’s a precious moment of trust, an elusive commodity in both women’s lives; LizzyChrome elaborates upon this to let Sally hold forth on how her prosthetics work—a question that Gibson chose to bury under Rule of Cool, and that’s challenged two generations’ worth of illustrators and cosplayers.

With the upcoming Neuromancer series on Apple+TV, Molly finally leaves the roster of visually iconic SFF characters not yet defined in the popular imagination by a screen adaptation (1). The Molly in my head admittedly didn’t resemble Briana Middleton, but I look forward to seeing her interpretation of the role (as well as how faithful to the spirit of the book the script gets to be, now that Hollywood has gotten their hands on

(A) a Beloved Property™,

(B) whose cyberpunk dystopia is feeling uncomfortably real in a number of respects—thanks in no small part to megacorporations like Apple.)


(1) Gully Foyle from The Stars My Destination and Elric of Melniboné also come to mind.


Fanwork Links: Shears, by LizzyChrome.

Fandom: Hilda the Plus-size Pinup; Fixing a Flat (Norman Rockwell illustration)
Pairings/Characters: Gen; Hilda; three Norman Rockwell characters, two female and one male.
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 2,356
Content Notes: No Archive Warnings Apply, women solving their own problems
Creator Tags: magazine illustrations, Norman Rockwell - Freeform, Fluff, Plot
Creator Links: (AO3) moon_custafer; (DeviantArt) mooncustafer; (Dreamwidth) moon_custafer; (Instagram) mooncustafer; (LiveJournal) moon_custafer; (Tumblr) mooncustafer
Theme: Female Relationships, Crossovers/Fusions, Female Friendship, Gen, Heists & Capers, Old Fandoms, Small Fandoms, Stranded

Summary: Hilda’s fishing trip is struck by rain and then by two new acquaintances in need of assistance.

Author’s Notes: For moonlight69.

I needed to introduce a few additional characters to Hilda’s mainly single-panel world, so I did a mash-up with Norman Rockwell’s “Fixing a Flat.” Think of it as the Illustrationverse.

Reccer's Notes: A rec posted in honor of the U.S. Full Strawberry Moon, for reasons that will be apparent in the fic.

Moon Custafer constructs a story from several Hilda panels (plus a special guest Norman Rockwell work), in which Duane Bryers’ zaftig hillbilly wood nymph comes to the aid of two travelers stranded in the boondocks—a predicament complicated by a less friendly local. (A temporary problem-solving alliance (particularly against a common enemy) can count as a relationship, right?)

Hilda as portrayed in Bryers’ artworks seems to embrace solitude, and the scant fanfic I’ve seen doesn’t tend to show her interacting face-to-face with much of anyone but her animal friends and the odd Authorial Proxy; it’s fun to watch her socializing, and to see her given family, friends, enemies, and a history. (As well as actual clothing that she presumably wears now and then to pick up her crackers, trashy novels, and repurposable-as-clothing floursacks.)

Fanwork Links: Fixing a Flat by moon_custafer for moonlight69, for Yuletide 2018.

Fandom: Mo Dao Zu Shi
Pairings/Characters: Gen; Wen Qing, Wei Wuxian
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 1,046
Content Notes: F-M platonic friendship, past medical trauma (mentioned), mutual indebtedness, past moral injury (mentioned), detailed description of medical hand massage
Creator Tags: listen I firmly believe if hand massages were just part of physical societal norms; we'd probably have solved world peace by now; I'm allowed to project onto Wen Qing and Wei Wuxian; y'know as a treat; but also there is a dearth of Wen Qing and Wei Wuxian content on this blog and it's high time I started working on that ; . . . oh for heaven's sake I don't even remember how to use my own tags anymore; it's many things tonight but coherency hour is not one of them; Wen Qing; Wei Wuxian

Creator Links: Tumblr: hunxi-guilai; AO3: tombenough_and_continent
Theme: Non-Sexual Intimacy, Hurt-Comfort (mutual), Non-AO3 Fics

Summary: okay hang on, I’m still thinking about touch-starved Wei Wuxian in the Burial Mounds, because this is such an important time in his life

we talk about his childhood in Yunmeng, his time in Gusu; we speculate about those three months in the Burial Mounds, but those months (years?) he spends living with the Wen refugees, that unthinking kindness, that deep mutual appreciation, that love for quiet, simple joys despite all the darkness around him make him into the Wei Wuxian we know and love by the end of the story as much as any of the previous stages in his life

and yes, Wei Wuxian’s return to the Burial Mounds is horrible – he’s terribly, painfully, dreadfully lonely, separated from the siblings he once promised to go through everything for, isolated in the very place that both saved him and destroyed him, eking out a frantic, desperate existence from the soil of a corpse-mountain with no change, no future, no respite in sight

but at the same time, the Burial Mounds is one place in the world where he doesn’t need to hide

Reccer's Notes: A vignette of platonic mutual caregiving between hard-pressed Science Sibs Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing in the Burial Mounds, in which Wen Qing seizes upon Wei Wuxian and delivers a medical hand massage (with the clear understanding that she’s teaching him to return the favor.) The lengthy title is mine, derived from its Tumblr URL.

Fanwork Links: https://hunxi-guilai.tumblr.com/post/618087442089672704/okay-hang-on-im-still-thinking-about

My own AO3 outlink: https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/1411936

Fandom: Legend of Zelda
Pairings/Characters: Gen; Zelda, Link, King Rhoam of Hyrule, Ganondorf
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 398
Content Notes: No Archive Warnings Apply
Creator Links: Fuzzi_Fox (host.)
Theme: Magic, Gen, Spells & Curses, Strategy, Teams

Summary: My 5-year-old daughter's first fanfictions as she dictated it to me. She asked me to help her write the story and write down what she said. Like mother like daughter!

Chapter 2 now added since she made a new story.

Author’s Notes: My daughter told me she wanted me to write down her story. I figured I'd share it here because why not. So yes, this was quite literally written by a five year old. I just added punctuation. I found it adorable.

Reccer's Notes: I’ll admit that I don’t even go here (my knowledge of the Nintendo mythoi comes largely by osmosis), but I was delighted by Fuzzi_Fox’s readiness to support her daughter in a shared interest, and by Fuzzi_kit’s creative use of gaming strategy in having Team Hyrule exploit Ganondorf’s curse to their own advantage. (And teamwork, imagination, and the conviction that bad guys can be beaten are always messages worth encouraging.)

Fanwork Links: Evil mummy, by Fuzzi_kit via Fuzzi_Fox.

Fandom: The Untamed/Mo Dao Zu Shi
Pairings/Characters: Gen; Nie Huaisang, Jiang Cheng, Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji
Rating: Teen and Up
Length: 1,110
Content Notes: Please be advised this story contains a fairly blunt description of the butchering of game birds. This is exactly what it says on the tin.
Creator Tags: Literal Dead Dove, Qishan Wen Indoctrination (Modao Zushi), Butchering, Food as a Metaphor for Love, But Also As Literal Food Because They're Hungry, POV Nie Huaisang, Character Study, Podfic Available
Creator Links: westiec; westiec; westiec
Theme: Trope Subversion & Inversion, Friendship, Character Study

Summary: Nie Huaisang loves beautiful things, and plucking game birds is an exercise in destroying something beautiful. After which it's an exercise in picking off tiny bits of fluffy down that hide in the crevices and don't want to come out, and that's just annoying. He might hate doing this, but he does know how, so the motions come easily.

The Nie were butchers, after all.

Reccer's Notes:

Set during the Wen Indoctrination; bird lover and Non-Action Guy Nie Huaisang draws upon his bird-catching skills and familial background in butchering to feed his friends in a desperate survival situation—and darned if this joking play on a trope name isn’t a moving and insightful character study. (Which prompts the further thought that one person’s Dead Dove is another’s crispy roasted squab.)

(If you’re wondering, yes—he also manages to accommodate Lan Wangji.)

Fanwork Links: dead doves: please eat, by westiec.

Translation into Русский available: Мёртвые голуби, кушайте by Greenmusik and DrinkAndBite.

[Podfic] dead doves: please eat by fensandmarshes.