Echoes calling, voices falling; we know the names of everyone

( Pandemic ranting )

Onward to snowflake_challenge: In your own space, rec a fanwork (fic, art, vid, playlist, anything!) you did not create.

I'm going to share my Yuletide recs list from this year. It's got one of my own fics in it, but the remainder are by other people.

I'm not going to go through the list fic by fic and explain what I loved about each individual work (although if you click through to the comments on each fic on AO3, you'll see a comment from me pulling out the elements I particularly enjoyed. However, I will try to briefly summarise what I most enjoy seeing in fanfic, and what tends to be a common thread in all that I rec.

Firstly, I almost exclusively read fic in tiny fandoms — generally fandoms that only have a handful of works on AO3, generally book fandoms. Usually I'm not looking for works that try to mimic the writing style of the original (in fact I tend to find that distracting). Instead, what I enjoy is fic that makes prominent certain elements I enjoyed about the original: specific character dynamics, an underlying theme, a really strong sense of place. I find it even more impressive if the fic makes me take note of certain elements that the original canon only whispered in the margins, and brings those submerged elements to prominence. I generally prefer fic that has a lyrical, lush, or even portentous turn of phrase, unless it's a humorous canon/fic. And I really, really love fic that digs into the veins of fairytales, folktales, medieval literature, or mythology and finds a hidden seam of darkness, melancholoy, or just straight up weirdness to mine in fic.

What do you look for in fic, or in other fanworks?