all among the nodding trees

God, it’s that time of year again, isn’t it! This letter is extremely under construction; more TBA.

( Likes & DNWs )
( Fandoms: Cuckoo (2024); FX's Legion; Peeping Tom (1960) )

My brain is not firing on all cylinders right now, but I'm glad to kick off the Yuletide season and to read about what you want to write! My letters get longer every damn year, but I hope you'll be able to get something out of it all that sparks your imagination, and I in no way expect you to fit everything I describe into your story this year. That would be a headache and a half.

( Likes & DNWs )

( Fandoms: Asteroid City (2023); George Smiley Series - Le Carre; Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Harris; Hell House - Matheson; Strange Angels - Koja )

( Yuletide 2021: or, Who Knows What The Theme Is Here )

( Fandoms: Dune - Frank Herbert; Edward Edward - Lolah Burford; The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters; Mary Reilly - Valerie Martin; HBO's Rome; These Violent Delights - Micah Nemerever )

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.

This year for Yuletide:

Oranges & Lemons (AMC The Terror)
Characters: Captain Francis Crozier, Commander James Fitzjames, Captain Sir John Franklin
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Winter, Missing Scenes, Misguided Friendship Overtures
Summary: New Year’s Eve, 1845: Crozier drinks punch and mulls his options on Beechey Island.

turn not thy back to the compass
Relationships: Harry D. S. Goodsir/Cornelius Hickey
Characters: Cornelius Hickey, Harry D. S. Goodsir
Additional Tags: Mutiny Camp Era, Mutual Hurt/Comfort, Scurvy Blowjobs, Yuletide Treat
Summary: Goodsir takes stock of his practicals.

kiss the rod
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Cornelius Hickey
Characters: Captain Francis Crozier, Cornelius Hickey
Additional Tags: Dream Sex, Alcoholism & Recovery, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Gore, Major Character Undeath, Prophetic Visions, Yuletide Treat
Summary: Crozier’s past has come back to haunt him before, but not quite like this.

an ill-sheathed knife
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Cornelius Hickey
Characters: Cornelius Hickey, Captain Francis Crozier
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, Mutiny, Cannibalism, Pillow Talk, Yuletide Treat
Summary: Scenes from the private affairs of one Cornelius Hickey.

a sweete stroke on the lute
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Cornelius Hickey
Characters: Captain Francis Crozier, Cornelius Hickey
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Jacobean Dramatists, Sexy Stringed Instruments, Yuletide Treat
Summary: Crozier is a Jacobean theater impresario. Hickey is a play-patcher intent on taking him for a ride.

In non-Terror fandom news:

Close My Mouth (The Servant 1963)
Relationships: Tony/Hugo Barrett
Characters: Tony (The Servant 1963), Hugo Barrett
Additional Tags: Additional Warnings Apply, Power Dynamics, Yuletide Treat
Summary: This is Tony’s house, and the pair of them are the only living creatures in it.

deep red bells (The Stand - Stephen King)
Relationships: Nadine Cross/Randall Flagg
Characters: Nadine Cross, Randall Flagg
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hitchhiking, Additional Warnings Apply, Yuletide Treat
Summary: Nadine learns what she can about the great love of her life.

The Non-Belligerents (A Separate Peace - Knowles)
Relationships: Gene Forrester/Phineas “Finny”
Characters: Gene Forrester, Phineas “Finny” (A Separate Peace)
Additional Tags: Fix-it fic, Post-War, POV First Person, Yuletide Treat
Summary: Finny and Gene after VE Day.

beneath the golden hill (The Talented Mr. Ripley 1999)
Relationships: Tom Ripley/Peter Smith-Kingsley
Characters: Tom Ripley, Peter Smith-Kingsley
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fix-it fic, Domesticity, Confessions, Yuletide Treat
Summary: Tom and Peter, partners in disguise.


Out of the number of fics I enjoyed massively this year, I'd like to rec these:

Skin and Stone by scioscribe -- The Awakening 2011, 3k. Lovely post-canon casefic that serves as a showcase for Florence’s growth and independence as well as a shockingly swoonworthy depiction of her relationship with Robert. Great subdued ghosts.

cross the bridge as it burns by arbitrarily -- Babylon Berlin, 3k. Eerie many-layered journey through Gereon’s conscious and subconscious mind, wonderful canon tone and use of the theme of hypnosis. Plus, Charlotte/Gereon. [dreamy sigh]

Lucky Charm by galadriel -- Eastern Promises, 3.1k. Postcanon, Nikolai helps Kirill out in the shifting landscape of what’s left after his father’s downfall. Melancholy, gritty, and ultimately relieving.

Animal Magnetism by deepandlovelydark -- The Good The Bad And The Ugly, 3.3k. Night after night, Tuco and Blondie play out the story of their old escapades, with occasional visits from beyond the grave. Slashy, funny, and a kickass Tuco character study.

I Went To Your Wedding by karaokegal -- Hail Caesar!, 3.9k. Hobie and Laurentz make it happen, with oodles of enthusiastic rope bondage and cameos from all the best scummiest reporters of silver-screen 1950s Hollywood.

Lion Rampant, Contourné by yeats -- The Lion In Winter/12th Century CE RPF, 1.6k. A great, textured, quietly sinister study of Eleanor’s mothering and Richard’s coming of age. (Coming-to-be?) Lovely and fitting missing scenes for the ultimate Christmas canon.

Sir I Believe You Dropped Something by Jackalope80 -- The Philadelphia Story, 3.4k. Wonderful witty every-which-way postcanon flirtations between Tracy, Mike, and Dex, nails the canon’s sense of time and place and has a gay bar interlude (!!!!), my greatest love in all things.

Someone Else’s Music by bakcheia -- The Picture of Dorian Gray, 3.8k. Lord Henry Wotton is visited by a familiar-looking spirit and Wildean shit happens. Killer atmosphere and wonderful muted melancholy.

You Are Who You Say You Are by scioscribe -- AMC The Terror, 10k. Hickey finds work as impromptu surgeon’s mate and a moral-ethical sea change begins to take place, coincidentally at the same time as he and Goodsir are falling in love. A great, cautious, and above all earned patch of redemption.

Night comes a-calling by lilliburlero -- The Night Manager, 9.2k, dense and multilayered and twisty Pine/Roper with the kind of wit and sharp edges this writer does especially well.

(I didn't get to rec these pre-reveals but scioscribe also wrote Always Be Somewhat Suspect, a pitch-black character study of Guy Woodhouse from Rosemary's Baby and his willingness to make a bad bargain, and Happy Families Are All Alike, which explores the landscape of VC Andrews' Flowers in the Attic brilliantly and bleakly.

 This is just a slice of the good stuff in the Yuletide collections right now (and of the stuff I’ve been reading) but I figured better now than later!

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. 

Hail and well met, Yuletide author! This is the time of year where traditionally I get really tl;dr talking about fanfic. Please don't feel obligated to write all my listed Likes in one fic or something -- if any of them make a handy springboard for the fic you want to write, go for it.

( likes/dislikes )

( fandoms: An American Werewolf In London (1981), Anno Dracula - Kim Newman, Fright Night (1985), The Hitcher (1986), Hail Caesar! (2016), The Lost Boys (1987) )

(Exchange letters for the past few years can be read here.)

Dear Yuletide Writer,

You are a champion of the world! My letters are traditionally a little long-winded, so I'll skip the introductions and just thank you up-front for writing for me this year. All the following details are totally optional and it's in no way an exhaustive checklist of things you've got to cram into one story; I hope you write something you're stoked about and have a great time this Yuletide. Format-wise, I'm wide open to whatever you want to try, whether that's weird experimental interactive fiction or blank verse or orderly third-person past-tense prose.

( fandoms: Apocalypse Now (1979) ; Gangs Of New York (2002) ; Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) ; Over The Garden Wall ; There Will Be Blood - minor edits10/21/15 )

A whole batch of recs for 14th Century CE RPF, 21 Jump Street (films), Archer, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Bletchley Circle, The Count Of Monte Cristo, Cthulhu Mythos, Elizabethan & Jacobean Playwright RPF, Frog & Toad, LA Confidential, Moby Dick, Penny Dreadful, Peter Pan, Shakespeare (Richard II & Henry IV), True Detective, Venture Bros, Wayne's World, and Withnail & I.

( I'll probably have more of these in a bit, augh, this was a very good year! )

First batch of semi-recs, delivered in brief, beginning with my own amazing gift-fic:

like brambles to the cedars (Thomas Of Woodstock, can be read as 14th century RPF if you like!) Really really lovely fic about a young, newly-married, newly-"Englished" Anne of Bohemia, her many virtues, and some sweet Czech songs.

And on to the rest, in no particular order!
( recs recs recs )