all among the nodding trees

I received three fics this Yuletide, and they are all absolutely bangin' -- shit got very Victorian in here, and that's what I love most.

Flora's Adventures In Ghostland by RobberBaroness

Fandom: The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
Characters: Flora (The Turn of the Screw), The Governess (The Turn of the Screw)
Additional Tags: Pastiche
Summary: An excerpt from the beloved children's novel.

Cure for Sting of Wasp or Bee by scioscribe

Fandoms: Mary Reilly - Valerie Martin; Mary Reilly - All Media Types
Relationship: Henry Jekyll/Mary Reilly
Characters: Mary Reilly, Henry Jekyll
Additional Tags: Unresolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Moral Tension, Missing Scene
Summary: Mary resorts to odd scraps of paper to document a rather odd occurrence.

A Bloody Husband by libralien

Fandom: The Terror (TV 2018)
Relationship: Harry D. S. Goodsir/Cornelius Hickey
Characters: Cornelius Hickey, Harry D. S. Goodsir
Additional Tags: Oral Sex, Torture, Circumcision, Yuleporn, Crueltide
Summary: Hickey will make a believer of Goodsir yet.

*

I wrote five fics this year, most of them on a theme of midcentury homoerotica with a few exciting asides into late medieval homoerotica between people who should absolutely not have sex with each other. It will absolutely shock you to find that I like writing about weird hard-to-articulate trauma almost as much as big burly men.

Eclogue for Elfgrandfather

Fandom: The Browning Version - Terence Rattigan
Relationships: Frank Hunter/Andrew Crocker-Harris, Andrew Crocker-Harris/OMC(s) (past)
Characters: Frank Hunter, Andrew Crocker-Harris, OMC(s), Millie Crocker-Harris
Additional Tags: Character Study, 20th Century, Fainting, Chronic Illness
Summary: Andrew Crocker-Harris, in fragments.

This was a brand-new fandom for me this year and a really kickass opportunity to be very sad. The play is just exquisitely agonizing and loaded with the kind of midcentury queer subtext I would pay an arm and a leg just to channel, so I felt a lot of feeling writing this.

To Drag The Block for kutsushita

Fandom: The Folly of the World - Jesse Bullington
Relationship: Sander Himbrecht/Jan Tieselen
Characters: Sander Himbrecht, Jan Tieselen
Additional Tags: Gaslighting, Rope Bondage, Established Relationship, Consent Issues, Edgeplay, Past Sexual Assault, Breathplay, Not Safe Not Sane, Strangulation
Summary: The love of Sander’s life still manages to surprise him.

I've been meaning to get into this book for years and I finally did. All the historical politicking was a little hard for me to follow but damn, I loved the incredibly complicated Jan-Sander-Jolanda emotional triangulations and backstabbing. If canon-review and time had allowed I'd have written a matching Jan/Jolanda mindfuck to go with this one -- maybe that will be my new year's resolution.

Food For The Greedy for education

Fandom: Another Country (1984)
Relationship: Fowler/Guy Bennett
Characters: Fowler (Another Country), Guy Bennett
Additional Tags: Rough Sex, Taunting, Espionage, 1930s, Post-Canon, Hate Sex, Additional Warnings Apply
Summary: Fowler and Bennett lock horns, again.

I've written Another Country fic for education before and their prompts are always an incredible treat, but I decided to go off my (weirdly OTP-minded) beaten track here for some horny nonsense.

Serpentello for bloodletter

Fandom: Wolf Hall Series - Hilary Mantel
Relationship: Henry VIII of England/Thomas Cromwell, canon-typical Henry VIII of England/Anne Boleyn with some Anne/Henry/Crom vibes
Characters: Henry VIII of England, Thomas Cromwell
Additional Tags: Power Dynamics, Hand Jobs, Pining
Summary: Spóglia: a spoiling, a robbing, a stripping. Also a raiment, a clothing or weede. Also a mans mortall vaile or bodie. Also the skinne that any Serpent or Snake leaues off. Also a coffin of paste made for a Pie, a Tarte, or a Custard. Also any pillage, praie, bootie, prize, reprisall or spoile taken from an enemie. Also the outward skinne of any thing.

This fic ate my brain, but that was pretty convenient because I've been audiobook-marathoning the Wolf Hall books and Diarmaid MacCulloch's Cromwell biography back to back. I really really like writing gratuitous Crom monologue, even if I do mix my units of textile measure in here.

good boys do fine always for borevidal

Fandom: Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Relationship: Jack Merridew/Ralph
Characters: Jack Merridew, Ralph (Lord of the Flies)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Post-World War Three, Trauma
Summary: Merridew is Merridew once more. Ralph is something else.

I had a lot of weird stuff to synthesize in writing this fic -- I thought about including section break text drawn from English civil defense manuals from the period LotF is presumably set in, and held off because that seemed like a bit much even by the standards of "hey, technically it's canon" canon-level darkness.

I got home from holiday travel and immediately got sick as a dog, so I'm recovering by reading trashy novels and watching Netflix's The Witcher with my glasses off. The disability politics in this show are fuckin' weird and I keep thinking the randy little bard is Thomas Jopson.