ermingarden | Snowflake Challenge #12: Recs Countdown

Snowflake Challenge promotional banner with image of snow-covered mushrooms and green moss. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31.

We'll just ignore the dates on the Snowflake promo banner, shall we? Anyway, I was delighted by the "Recs Countdown" format but then had a hard time coming up with categories appropriate for each number, so they're a bit random, but without further ado, I present to you...

Five Dragonlance fics:

Travellers (46k) by Allthatisnot
The Raistlin/Magius Dragons of Eternity fix-it my soul was yearning for.

Wither and Bloom (38k) by Skull_Bearer
Excellently unnerving take on both the Tower of Palanthas and the Curse of Raelanna, from a superb Dalamar POV. And it's gorgeously illustrated!

A Dragonlance Carol (9k) by fayolin
This was my Yuletide gift this year and it's amazing! Brilliantly Dickensian.

The Lord of Nothing Series (350k+, ongoing) by ceremonial_motions
Raistlin learns what his plan to kill Takhisis would have led to earlier than in canon. Raistlin/Dalamar, phenomenal canon divergence.

Lucky (1.5k) by

rachelmanija
A little bit of Raistlin & Tanis from the Chronicles days. A nice look at that relationship, with great Raistlin and Tanis characterizations.

Four favorite fics not on AO3:

Luke Skywalker and the Outer Rim Profiteer (Star Wars, 22k) by Niralle
A hilarious spoof of a certain kind of Expanded Universe novel. Excellent outsider POV!

Growing Pains (SW, 156k) by ruth baulding
A series of vignettes from Obi-Wan's apprenticeship.

The Tempered Steel (Silm, 113k) by Lyra
A rightly renowned account of Maedhros' captivity, rescue, and recovery.

A Long and Weary Way (LotR, 445k), and its appendices, by Canafinwe
Aragorn captures Gollum and brings him to Mirkwood. Things repeatedly go sideways along the way.

Three unexpected but brilliant crossovers:

Testing Limits (SW x Portal, 28k) by

atamascolily
"What if the AI Luke encounters on the Eye of Palpatine were GLaDOS" is a question I would have never thought to ask but that absolutely needed to be answered. A brilliant fic that can be enjoyed with minimal or no knowledge of Portal.

Love is All You Need to Destroy Your Enemies (Night Vale x Dresden Files, 222k) by shadydave
Carlos from WtNV and Carlos from the Dresden Files are the same person! Also, mind-bending time travel.

A Star to Steer By (SW x Stargate, 99k) by dogmatix and norcumi
Honestly, I know nothing about Stargate. But I do love this fic. Absolutely fascinating AU take on the Jedi and the clones!

Two fics that felt like sequels to canon:

Ciel D'Oro (The Name of the Rose, 19k) by CenozoicSynapsid
After leaving the abbey, William and Adso get tangled up with a murder in Pavia. This was a Yuletide gift for me back in 2020, and it still blows my mind whenever I reread it - it truly feels like a sequel, and it's just utterly brilliant!

The Lost of Winter (Cemeteries of Amalo, 20k) by

fiona15351
Set after The Grief of Stones, as Thara tries to adjust to the loss of his abilities as a Witness vel ama and he and Iäna inch vaguely in the direction of romance. Also, there's a mongoose. (Full disclosure: I did beta this fic - but that's not why I think it's great!)

And one thing I wrote myself:

The Archives of Beleriand series is probably my favorite of the things I've written; it is also the reason I know how to code footnotes on AO3. Check it out if you like weird academic pastiche! (And the art by

fiona15351 and Fandom_fun13 is so lovely!)