all among the nodding trees

All the Carrie fics this year have been fucking fantastic.

Locusts In The Grass is from the Madness collection, so it’s on the brief side and might not get as many initial eyes as the main collection, but holy fuck, it’s great. It’s a glimpse of life in what’s no longer Chamberlain, Maine (as told by Sue Snell) and the burgeoning cult of Carrie White. 

No Peace in the Kingdom of Women is a gorgeous Carrie/Sue story and achingly fucked-up and sad -- it takes the events of canon in a different, less pyrotechnic direction but it’s heartachey and painfully teenage and fabulous. 

If You See Her, Say Hello is post-canon fic focused on Sue and the heavy imprint left by Carrie in her life; it’s about trauma and about having weirder shit happen to you than you can ever really tell about, and about choices.

There’s been some great horror fic this year in general, which makes me so happy.

Underworlds: The Life and Afterlife of Richard Upton Pickman is an art gallery retrospective building on the short story Pickman’s Model, and it’s delicious. This is exactly the kind of fictional document fic I love to read, and it tells a super creepy story while spinning a super plausible legacy for a troubling and troubled artist. I felt like I was reading it strolling through a tiny New England art gallery, and it was fabulous.

On a very different note: 

Mordre, She Wroot is a murder mystery spin on the Canterbury Tales, and from the title on I knew I was going to dig it -- it adds some new twists and turns but it’s such a treat to revisit these figures in a different context and to see the Wife of Bath SOLVIN’ CRIMES. 

For Glory, Or An Early Death is a crossover between The Stand and the Dark Tower series -- it’s a beautiful bridging of the two and its vision of Dayna/Nadine as a ship is troubling and fabulous. The ka-tet is great in this and (no spoilers, but) the way the meeting of their worlds plays out is so satisfying. 

If you’re not feelin’ the Dark Tower action, or even if you are, you also need to read Baby, Can You Dig Your Gal?, which is a Lucy/Nadine story about defeating evil through the power of sapphism and is amaaaazing.

This Sound of Glass is a Lucy-centric The Stand fic; it’s perfectly atmospheric and perfectly creepy, and has great Flagg interference making it all the creepier, but it also draws a wonderful textured picture of the plague survivors cautiously coming together again. 

Such Marvellous Things is a post-canon Moonlight fic about Chiron and Kevin and, indirectly, the next generation of kids in their lives -- it’s wonderful and poetic and vivid. 

On another note, Down To The Bone is a Sicario fic about Kate Macer being completely fucked over by trauma and memory and the work that Gillick is still doing since they parted ways. I really liked it. 

Balance Point is a lovely and artful Philadelphia Story fic that brings together all the romantic threads I want to see from canon in a Macaulay Connor/C.K. Dexter Haven/Tracy Lord triangulation, and it gives me great joy. It’s subtle and sweet. 

If you press me to say is a My Beautiful Laundrette fic (Johnny/Omar, naturally) that meets the biggest need I have with that film, which is post-canon long term relationship stuff to the max. It’s tinged with the subtle sadnesses of getting older, and it’s wonderfully tender. 

Soul Like a Knife is an Inglourious Basterds fic that made me so excited to see it in the collection -- I’ve wanted trans woman Shoshanna since I first see it prompted, and this fic totally exceeds that I could have hoped for. It’s a fraught glimpse at Shoshanna’s life at the theater between the murder of her family and the hatching of her ultimate revenge, with a careful and sensitive handling of identity and passing. It’s also Shoshanna/Marcel, my forever OTP, and I about lost it. 

On a very different note, the Flatliners fic Wait ‘til the Sun Shines, Nellie had me cracking up with zero dignity on Christmas Day. It’s David/Nelson and I never knew how much I needed “characters realize they’re totally obvious about being in love because of someone writing a trashy romance novel about them” in my life before now. 

I hope to make another one of these posts soon, but basically, there’s so much fic this year that kicked my heart’s ass and it’s amazing.