kitewithfish

My brain tends to function in waves of intense interest in something, and since we entered lockdown, that's been largely on hold. It's not super fun.

But, happily, my brain took in the streaming Phantom of the Opera performance and decided, oh, it's time to get back into this! (25th anniversary at the Royal Albert Hall, on Youtube for the weekend and now gone)

I'm reading new fic! I'm getting into things! Woo!

Have some recs:

Title: More of an Aminta
Fandom: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Author: ConvenientAlias - at AO3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9595652
Pairing: Christine Daaé/Raoul de Chagny/Erik | Phantom of the Opera (THAT'S RIGHT, OT3, MOFOS)
Author's Summary: Christine and Raoul rehearse "Point of No Return" together, even though Raoul was never meant to be a Don Juan. But Erik is watching, and for the first time finds their chemistry together something other than infuriating. The way they complement each other is beautiful.

Of course, being Erik, he decides to make that beauty his own.

By putting Raoul into his opera.

Why I love it: So, Christine deserves better boyfriend options than she gets in this source material - Erik the Phantom is a murderous stalker, Raoul is a high handed aristocrat who has way too much power over her fucking job. The phandom's main conflict, about who should she choose, is simply rejected in canon AU where she doesn't have to choose, because Erik sees Raoul as desirable and transfers some of his Stalker Music Teacher energy onto Raoul. Raoul has to deal with the stuff that Christine's been handling, sees that it is really goddamn hard, gets into Erik as well, and learns about how hard doing opera is. The whole fic is a gem of worldbuilding - Raoul gets some horrible critical reviews, and it's fucking great. Erik doesn't murder as many people, he gets a nice boyfriend, and in theory, he learns to share. It's awesome.

Title: Her Walking Clothes (and sequels)
Fandom: The Great Mouse Detective (1986)Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Author: x_los at AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2470565
Author's Summary: (For both fics) (Set before the film.) Ratigan has always considered Basil’s disguises to be little more than a light amusement. That’s about to change. - Since unmasking Basil's best disguise, Ratigan has been assiduously courting the detective. It's taken years, but Basil has grudgingly admitted him into her life. Unfortunately, being part of Basil's life inevitably involves getting wheedled into spending the night in a pitch-black vault under a bank, unable to speak, to prevent a crime Ratigan would have preferred to commit himself. Be that as it may, Ratigan has always found the rewards of meticulous planning and patience to be delicious.
Why I love it: Since starting to watch the Granada Sherlock Holmes tv adaptations (1984-1994), I have realized one of my childhood favorite films is also a Holmes adaptation - the Great Mouse Detective (1986)! I didn't realize at the time, but this is actually just a really good Holmes story, and hinges on taking the Great Mouse Detective's world seriously. Ratigan, as portrayed in the cartoon film, is not very fleshed out, but when you blend in the inspiration behind him as carefully as x_los has done, you can get some really interesting stories. In this, Basil of Baker Street, the great mouse detective, is a ciswoman mouse who has cross dressed to dodge the kind of limitations that Victorian mouse society places on women -and she's also absolutely Sherlock Holmes as a mouse. Ratigan, the math professor mastermind behind many a plot that Basil has foiled, is a gay Irish sewer rat in a society where absolutely none of that is acceptable - and that fleshes him out in a way that the children's movies can't, and that Moriarty never really got. It's just a great story about enemies who truly admire each other, the weird ways that sex impacts the turns your life takes, and it's about literal goddamn fucking MICE. Ratigan's secret weapon against his enemies is a HOUSECAT. I should note, this fic series has a third installment that is quite tragic and while I think it's well executed, the second fic is a perfect place to stop if you're not feeling a story with major character death.