let us be calm and wise

I got two completely delightful stories, both about helpful people finding their places (so, y'know, my Hufflepuff heart is right here for this, especially at the moment.)

no direction but its own bright grace (2726 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Labyrinth (1986)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Sarah Williams (Labyrinth), Original Characters
Additional Tags: Spring, Water Spirit, Post-Canon
Summary:

“The crows said you could help me.”

A glorious bit of Sarah, in college, figuring things out and being clever and helpful about using words right, and an excellent crow. Among other things.

And Here It Starts (The Magic Is Just Beginning) (1820 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Female Character(s), Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, Salazar Slytherin
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Hogwarts First Year, Worldbuilding
Summary:

It's the first year of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And no one knows what to expect.

A charming look at the first students at Hogwarts, with some lovely worldbuilding touches (I particularly love the wagons.)

So, worldbuildingex is a fanfic (and original fic) exchanged focused on worldbuilding - people can make nominations and requests that include characters, but the prompts are generally about the world behind that. (And "Any or no Characters" is a thing, as are things like in-universe meta, etc.)

My past works for this exchange include an email discussion list about the Leverage folks Pseudonyms are Expected, and a collection of notes and documents found behind a desk in the Rivers of London universe, Ephemera, Librarian. (And I've gotten some great gifts and have lots of recs you can find from this tag.)

Someone nominated the concept of "Goose that chases you toward your soulmate" for this year's round, and both I and my recipient apparently saw that in the nominations list and went "Oh, huh, fascinating."

Local Customs is the result. Imogen, hapless geology professor from Great Britain, goes to the Isle of Birds (imagine it roughly near Gotland, a series of linked islands with a lot of birds, a strong Scandinavian influence, and a lot of geese references.) Imogen is on sabbatical, she's busy, and mostly she cares about rocks. Geese are not rocks.

Read on if you're curious about how the story got like it did, and some of my thoughts on worldbuilding details that didn't make it into her POV. (It got several comments with questions and responses to bits of the worldbuilding, so this is also my post for explaining this in hopefully coherent order for the people who like that sort of thing.)

( Details )

For those not familiar, it's an exchange focused on worldbuilding (like it says on the tin) and in-universe meta and commentary are welcome formats for many requests. It produced some really cool stuff last year, and again this year! (Some of which I don't have the canon knowledge to fully appreciate.)

Here's the full list of works (author reveals are next Friday), but there's only 71 works, so a very manageable number to browse.

My gift
I got a lovely and charming story, original fic, about a bookstore with a touch of magic. (The books are not magic. The building is not magic. And yet...) I really love all the little details in here - the plays, the cat, the Soviet-era SF....

Blackwood's Books

( Other recs )

All the happy! My recip really loves the story I wrote, and has squeed over it mightily.

I really really love my gift, Shelve Under: 18.2 Fiction, Adults’ which is 1927 Rivers of London in the Bodleian of someone cataloging a dead wizard's books, and is there anything more perfect?

I'm quite liking the range of things in the exchange in general - I've got a long list of tabs to work through, but there's only 73 works which is a lot more manageable for reading than Yuletide!

(Should mention: the exchange focuses, unsurprisingly from the title, on worldbuilding: people made requests about different things they'd like. Plot is not actually required: in-world meta was a fine thing, for example.)

And why yes, I have been reading fic since I woke up this morning, why do you ask?

( Other current recs in alphabetical order by canon )