![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Jukebox Reclist
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
jukebox_fest and it's been pretty amazing. (Jukebox is a gift exchange fest around music and music video canons. It's really awesome.)I got a great gift, based on Human Touch by Bruce Springsteen. The fic plays with the Soulmate trope a lot, and manages to hit all the things I like to speculate about with Soulmate fic. How much do soulmate marks mess with your psyche, how much do they shape you? Can you escape that kind of predestination? It's really cool, and I love it a lot.
Silver For Gold (1239 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Human Touch - Bruce Springsteen (Song)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Narrator/Woman (Human Touch)
Characters: Woman (Human Touch), Narrator (Human Touch)
Additional Tags: Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, last chances, Service Industry, Diners, Late-In-Life Romance, Romance, Taking Chances, Obsessive Behavior, Panic Attacks, True Love
Summary:
She's waited forty years to hear the right words. But what if she doesn't need them to find a happy life?
I've been reading a lot of the fic the past couple of days, and there's some really great stuff in the collection. I love how in most cases canon knowledge isn't really required - even though it's a small exchange, I don't think I've ever read so much fic in a collection, except maybe for Yuletide. Some general observations, there's a lot of fic about women, which I enjoy, and a lot of it is kind of creepy, which I didn't know I enjoyed this much.
My favorites so far, in no particular order:
Murder Ballad (1246 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Body Electric - Hurray For The Riff Raff (Song)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, POV First Person, Epistolary
Summary:
Said you're gonna shoot me down, put my body in the river.
This is what happened after. This is settling the score.
(Rec Note: I love Murder Ballads, and this story really managed to reflect what I loved about them.)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Mother Machine - Delain (Song)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Female Character(s)
Additional Tags: Science Fiction, Dystopia
Summary:
The computer intelligence Mother-B3 watches over her children, exactly as she has done for decades.
Something is about to change.
(Rec Note: Great worldbuilding, great AI character, and kind of hopeful in the end.)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Whipping Boy - Shearwater (Song)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Additional Tags: dubcon, Age Difference, Minor Character Death, Exile, Co-Dependency, Dystopia, First Kiss
Summary:
People said, The desert does things to men. It turns them wild. Aiden had trouble believing Caro had ever been tame.
(Rec Note: Sparse but haunting and brutal worldbuilding, the desolation and desperate clinging to life really got to me.)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Only The Good Die Young - Melissa Etheridge
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: OFC/OFC
Additional Tags: Urban Fantasy, Pre-Apocalypse, Coming of Age, Near Future
Summary:
Virginia's mom doesn't like me much...The fact that the glass she gives me along with our after school snack is secretly filled with holy water is a dead giveaway.
(Rec Note: Utterly charming narrator, lovely coming out/getting together story, and intriguing worldbuilding. I'd honestly read another 10 stories set in this universe, featuring these characters.)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Ghost of the Navigator - Iron Maiden (Song)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: Age of Sail, Mermaids, Supernatural Elements
Summary:
He had spent year after year, his whole life, following other men's orders and other men's maps. Now he was captain of his own fate and teaching himself a rough semblance of cartography as he seized this final chance.
(Rec Note: Really great and subtle story, with an ending I didn't see coming and made me immediately reread to really get it.)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bottom of the River - Delta Rae (Song)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Characters: Original Female Character(s), Original Child Character(s)
Additional Tags: Slavery, POV First Person, Motherhood, Childbirth, Drowning, Rivers, Transformation, Mythology References, Lovecraftian, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Summary:
They say a baby born with a caul can go between worlds, can conjure spirits, can never be drowned. They say it's good luck, too, but that part I don't believe.
(Rec Note: I have a lot of feelings about this story that I don't find easy to articulate. This really got to me, and it's really good.)The Last Year-King (5238 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Kings - The Pierces (Music Video)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Original Female Character(s)
Additional Tags: Ritual Combat, Post-Apocalypse
Summary:
Every year, a young woman goes up the mountain to challenge the Year-King for the bone crown. Every year, one of them dies and the other comes down the mountain as King. It is unusual for a Year-King to survive more than one such battle.
Lussa has survived and won three times. But her fourth battle, her third defending the crown, brings her a choice that she never thought she would face.
(Rec Note: Super cool sci-fi setting, interesting characters, and surprisingly hopeful in the end, considering the pretty dreadful world the characters grew up in)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Tardigrade Song - Cosmo Sheldrake (Song)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Exploration, Aliens, Schmoop, Implied Parthenogenesis, Tardigrades in Space, Homecoming
Summary:
True Tardigrade Facts:
Tardigrades, also known as water bears or moss piglets, are adorable
Tardigrades can survive in extreme conditions by entering a type of stasis
Tardigrades live in and around water
Some tardigrades reproduce via parthenogenesis
Some tardigrades have been to outer space!
(Rec Note: I feel like Tardigrades IN SPACE is recommendation enough on its own.)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: My Brother My Enemy - Sassafrass Singers
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Additional Tags: Sibling Relationship, Sisters, rural unpleasantness, outsider pov, Uncanny Valley, implied background noncon?, Period-Typical Sexism, Classism, exceptionally vague echoes of Norse mythology
Summary:
The Loksmer Sisters save a world, then let it drown.
(Rec Note: This is amazing. There are a lot of stories about water and death in the collection, and I think this is my favorite. It's haunting and compelling, sad and lonely, and dreadful and creepy. I loved it.)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Wonderland - Natalia Kills (Song)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character, Prince/Witch
Characters: Original Male Character(s), Original Female Character(s)
Additional Tags: Fairy Tale Style, Witches, Princes & Princesses, Developing Relationship
Summary:
She was a witch. He was a prince charming. They were never meant to be.
(Rec Note: Charming fairy tale type story, with enough of subversions and inversions of familiar tropes to make it interesting.)
scientia lumen vitae (41127 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Tu vas me manquer - Maître Gims (Music Video)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Characters: Original Male Character(s), Original Female Character(s)
Additional Tags: IN SPACE!, Clones, Far Future, Worldbuilding, Science Fiction, Developing Relationship
Summary:
On the Valhallan planet named Fólkvangr, the clone Loïc Treize has been working towards a cure for Thor's Virus throughout his entire life. He is not Valhallan. He was sent there to help. He was born to help, a fact of which he is acutely aware.
Eiður is Valhallan. He is a bluff, congenial military commander in the service of the Valhallan Commonwealth, and he is Treize's new custodian. His approach is wholly new, and Treize is drawn to him despite his society's strict rules. What he wants is forbidden.
From Fólkvangr to the lumenium mines of Þruðvangr and the military installations of Treize's people on the planet Nivôse, the pair have a lot of ground to cover. And when Thor's Virus strikes hard, they have no time to lose...
(Rec Note: I'm only halfway through, but I wanted to get my rec list in before author reveals. First, fucking amazeballs, someone wrote a NOVEL based on a song, just fuck, that's so great. Also it's really good! Definitely recommened for all sci-fi people in need of some long fic.)