It's Small Fandom week here at ER!
We'll be reccing in fandoms that have 5 or fewer reviews here, regardless of actual fandom size.


Title: (o>------
Fandom: Solar System (anthropomorphic)
Pairings: Ison/Dark Matter, Ison/Neptune, Ison/Jupiter, Ison/Sol
Categories: Journal entries, self discovery, crack that turns more serious, humor, loneliness, romance
Length: Medium (5,177 words)
Warnings: Discussion of future major character death

Author on LJ: fresne
Author Websites: fresne

Author's Summary: So, hey I'm ISON, or you know Ison, not to be all shouty at you, because I'm not a shouty Comet. Not like some. I also go by C/2012 S1, but I like totally prefer Ison.

I use this journal for writing about my thoughts and dreams and stuff. Okay, mostly my love life, which... gets complicated.

But I'm looking for that special someone, who makes me light up.

Review:
I'm a sucker for anthropomorphism; give me a mitten on a quest to find a lost mate or a deflated old basketball remembering the glory days, and I feel compelled to give it a look. So the first thing I read from Yuletide this year was the comet Ison's online chronicle of the trip through our solar system.

The glib way Ison speaks had me thinking I was in for a quick, funny read, and it is that, in part. But as Ison grows through disappointing experiences and moves from darkness toward light, we end up with a relatable story about loneliness and connection. Even as a young sounding Ison never drops the use of "like" and "dude," there's a depth to this story that has me thinking back to it weeks later. Ison finds serial monogamy a bit soul crushing, and Sol talks about the creation of the universe and the events leading up to Ison's one way journey, about the stuff that made us all coming from the same place.

But back to the humor... Earth especially made me laugh, and the images from 'LOL-stars' and online quizzes add to the cracky charm. Plus I loved the way Ison's up and down posts reminded me of LJ journals.

(Shout out to margi_lynn whose rec led me to this.)

(o>------

It's Small Fandoms week! Since I've been reccing small fandoms every week this month, I thought I'd do something special. So here is a story featuring not just one fandom that has less than five recs here, not two, not even three, but fo— er, five small fandoms. Six if you count Captain Scarlet, which only gets a walk-on part. Well, fall-on, but still.

Title: They Saved Milton Keynes
Fandom: Top Gear/Yes Minister/Wallace & Grommit/The Sky At Night/The Clangers/Captain Scarlet
Categories: Gen, crack, filkish associations, did I mention crack?
Length: Medium (7,800)
Warnings: May cause cackling, coffee snorting and uncontrollable bouts of whistling.

Author on LJ: ffutures
Author Website: Marcus's profile on Twisting the Hellmouth

Summary:
When Britain is in danger, and there isn't enough time to get help from the other major powers, the Prime Minister turns to a team with a history of solving unusual problems. After all, how hard can it be?

Review:
Really, all I should need to say is that this is another example of Marcus Rowland's brilliantly twisted imagination. An asteroid is detected approaching Earth, on a collision course with the city of Milton Keynes. Couldn't happen to a nicer place, but Prime Minister Jim Hacker is aware that some voters do live there, and letting them get squashed might not look good on his public record. With a limited budget and a space programme that consists of one man and his dog, he calls on a team used to doing stupid things with not much money: the Top Gear presenters.

From there on, things only get sillier.

The most wonderful thing about this story is that despite the ludicrous things going on, all the characters remain spot on. Marcus has the voices of everyone exactly right — I can well imagine Clarkson, Hammond and May delivering their lines exactly as written — and somehow makes the mix of real and imaginary characters seem perfectly... well, natural isn't the right word, but you know what I mean.

While a lot of this story (and all of the fandoms) is very British, I don't think that matters a great deal. As long as you are aware of Top Gear and Wallace & Grommit (and many people are), you'll have enough to understand what's going on. Besides, you'll be too busy laughing at the utterly insane logic driving the whole exercise to care.

They Saved Milton Keynes