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If you enjoy these stories or others, please do comment if you have anything to say. Perhaps because of reading on smartphones, commenting on stories is way, way down this year.
Reccing also seems way down, not to mention hard to find since it was taken off the yuletide com and moved to yuletide-recs. I am still seeing way, way more rec lists on individual LJs that are not crossposted anywhere, which is frustrating because the only way I can then find rec lists is by endlessly trawling through the friends list of the yuletide com. If you feel so moved, rec lists are nice and cross-posting them to yuletide-recs would make me happy.
Here's some more stories I liked a lot:
No Unworthy Aim. J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Hook should, perhaps, have died in England and awoken in Hell. Instead, he died in Neverland and awoke in the trenches of 1916 France.
A grown-up Wendy turns her maternal instincts to nursing, and meets Hook in Craiglockhart. Not actually grimdark, despite the premise. Unlike a lot of revisionist stories, it doesn't trash or eliminate the sweet (or, in this case, twee) elements of the original, but fuses them to the darker aspects imported from reality. It's a great concept, beautifully executed. I was wondering for a while if Peter Pan would make an appearance, but then I realized that he was there already: an entire generation of boys who will never grow up.
Fragile. Onmyouji (the movie.) I think all you need to know about the canon is that it's a fantasy Heian Japan, Abe no Seimei is a magician and the son of a kitsune, and Hiromasa is his perpetually befuddled sidekick with whom he has an extremely slashy relationship. Using a highly appropriate seasonal structure, this story runs them through an entire sequence of hurt-comfort tropes. It's id-tastic, sweet, funny, and generally delicious.
Folly to be Wise. Ben Aaronovitch's "Rivers of London" series. You probably need to know the books to appreciate this story, but it's a perfect little casefic of Peter, Lesley, and Nightingale investigating a haunting.
Carrefour. A novellette-length sequel to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, featuring the return of Anaesthesia, the rat-speaker girl. It's very funny, in the style of the book, and has great pace, lots of good character moments, and some cool worldbuilding.
Their Tragedy. Revolutionary Girl Utena. A strange, funny yet dark, metafictional story for a strange, funny yet dark, metafictional anime. It's the story of the shadow girls who function as the chorus. Requires canon knowledge.
Carry Your Men, and Their Dead Too. Justified. Three cops, one of them wounded, have been kidnapped and locked up with nearly nothing but a deck of cards; they start playing poker for very unusual stakes. I feel a little strange reccing this, since I'm not familiar with the canon and I'm sure half of it went over my head, but I started reading this and loved it despite being only vaguely familiar with the TV show via osmosis. If the show is anything like the story, it just jumped to the top of my to-watch list.
Reccing also seems way down, not to mention hard to find since it was taken off the yuletide com and moved to yuletide-recs. I am still seeing way, way more rec lists on individual LJs that are not crossposted anywhere, which is frustrating because the only way I can then find rec lists is by endlessly trawling through the friends list of the yuletide com. If you feel so moved, rec lists are nice and cross-posting them to yuletide-recs would make me happy.
Here's some more stories I liked a lot:
No Unworthy Aim. J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Hook should, perhaps, have died in England and awoken in Hell. Instead, he died in Neverland and awoke in the trenches of 1916 France.
A grown-up Wendy turns her maternal instincts to nursing, and meets Hook in Craiglockhart. Not actually grimdark, despite the premise. Unlike a lot of revisionist stories, it doesn't trash or eliminate the sweet (or, in this case, twee) elements of the original, but fuses them to the darker aspects imported from reality. It's a great concept, beautifully executed. I was wondering for a while if Peter Pan would make an appearance, but then I realized that he was there already: an entire generation of boys who will never grow up.
Fragile. Onmyouji (the movie.) I think all you need to know about the canon is that it's a fantasy Heian Japan, Abe no Seimei is a magician and the son of a kitsune, and Hiromasa is his perpetually befuddled sidekick with whom he has an extremely slashy relationship. Using a highly appropriate seasonal structure, this story runs them through an entire sequence of hurt-comfort tropes. It's id-tastic, sweet, funny, and generally delicious.
Folly to be Wise. Ben Aaronovitch's "Rivers of London" series. You probably need to know the books to appreciate this story, but it's a perfect little casefic of Peter, Lesley, and Nightingale investigating a haunting.
Carrefour. A novellette-length sequel to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, featuring the return of Anaesthesia, the rat-speaker girl. It's very funny, in the style of the book, and has great pace, lots of good character moments, and some cool worldbuilding.
Their Tragedy. Revolutionary Girl Utena. A strange, funny yet dark, metafictional story for a strange, funny yet dark, metafictional anime. It's the story of the shadow girls who function as the chorus. Requires canon knowledge.
Carry Your Men, and Their Dead Too. Justified. Three cops, one of them wounded, have been kidnapped and locked up with nearly nothing but a deck of cards; they start playing poker for very unusual stakes. I feel a little strange reccing this, since I'm not familiar with the canon and I'm sure half of it went over my head, but I started reading this and loved it despite being only vaguely familiar with the TV show via osmosis. If the show is anything like the story, it just jumped to the top of my to-watch list.
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