A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

This has been a wonderful Yuletide for reading, but not so much for people commenting. It would be great if people would comment if they enjoyed something, even if it's just "I liked this story." Especially my fantastic gift stories, which aren't getting half as much appreciation as they deserve.

Don't Need to Know Canon

The Cassini mission to Saturn. All you need to know is that the Cassini orbital, which was named after the 17th century astronomer who discovered four of Saturn's moons, was an unmanned robotic spacecraft that orbited Saturn for thirteen years, before burning up in Saturn's upper atmosphere to avoid contaminating its moons with Earth microbes.

7:55:46 AM, EDT. A planet, a recently deceased spacecraft, and an astronomer walk into a bar. Short and wonderful; despite the summary, not a joke.

Yearning's End. One of my favorite things about Yuletide are the odd little snippets of wonderfulness that turn up in Madness. Here, have a perfect sestina about the Cassini mission.

In the end, it was easy: a target, a fear of loss
Hardwired in, a yearning strong enough to brave space,
And a machine was taught (learned) to feel.

And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side - James Tiptree Jr.

The Locust. Letter of Fr. Francisco Nadal to Fr. Bartolomeo Strozzi, 1588.

Inspired by the story, but essentially original sf. Disturbing, creepy, and compelling: so, just right for Tiptree fanfic. (One commenter wrote, "It feels like I found it in an anthology I am somehow not old enough to be reading.") The author's note remarks, "I know this is way off in the weeds (and 100% less porny/100% more priesty than desired when I set out, augh) I couldn't resist your prompt to transpose the alien contact scenario of this story to other settings and places and their own baggage. Thank you so much for letting me take such weird liberties with this fabulous, bleak universe.There's already one semi-famous "Jesuits vs. sexy aliens" narrative out there but when have I ever let being derivative stop me?"

Need to Know Canon

Logan (2017 movie).

Hope is a dangerous hole (will you join me?). They miss the rendezvous. (In which Logan gets just a little more time)

That was one of the most well-done excruciatingly depressing movies I've ever seen. I loved Laura and will never watch it again. This story gives Laura and Logan a little more time and a lot more hope; it's sweet without being sappy, very much in-character, emotionally honest, and exactly what I wanted to read in the fandom.

Carrie - Stephen King.

No Peace in the Kingdom of Women. Carrie turns down Tommy's invitation to the prom, so Sue offers her own friendship instead. It doesn't go exactly as planned.

Sue/Carrie. Beautifully written, heartbreaking, dark but also hopeful.

If You See Her, Say Hello. Sue moves on.

Sharply written, sort of a five things but not quite.

Locusts in the Grass. An account of life in Christ's Blood, Maine - formerly Chamberlain - under the rule of Carrietta White. By Susan Snell, ages eighteen to twenty-three.

A short, nightmarish canon AU. It actually covers more time than noted in the summary; I'm not sure if that was a cut-and-paste error or yet another ultra-creepy implication.

This Yuletide I got THREE amazing stories! Check them out.

The Tale of the White Lady of Iffish. It is not told in the Deed of Seren how Tenar of the Ring became the White Lady of Iffish. This is that story.

A beautifully-written 8K Earthsea AU in which Tenar goes to Iffish, where Vetch and Yarrow live, instead of Gont. The language and themes are completely in tune with the earlier Earthsea books, and I highly recommend it if you like them.

Baby, Can You Dig Your Gal? In which Nadine makes some different choices, and things fall out differently.

A sexy and thoughtful AU of The Stand in which Nadine defies Flagg by having sex with Lucy Swann. It's tagged "lesbian sex as radical praxis:" fuck yeah!

For Glory or an Early Death. Nadine takes steps to end Flagg's claim on her, and the ka-tet finds a door in the woods.

An absolutely brilliant, engrossing 13K story crossing over The Stand and Dark Tower. Pitch-perfect Stephen King voice, resonant themes, and great ensemble character work, taking my prompts for both canons and running with them. I do think you need to know both canons.

What good things have you found so far this Yuletide?

The Yuletide archive is open! Browse! Enjoy! Comment! Rec! (There's a way to bookmark recs on AO3 but it's hard to browse; probably the best way is to rec on your own space, then link to your post at yuletide.)

Perhaps due to the longer length of time we had to write this year, there seem to be more than usual longer stories, from 5K+ to quite a few at 10, 15, or even 20K+. I have not yet read most of those and cannot wait. The ones I've recced here are all short, mostly around 2-5K; several of the mermaid stories are from the Yuletide Madness collection, which allows shorter works, and are under 1K. They all pack a lot into a short space.

The Minnow and the Dragon. A beautiful, deceptively simple but very well-structured story set in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea, capturing her prose and concerns to perfection. It could be an outtake from A Wizard of Earthsea, focusing on two of my favorite characters from that, Ged's friend Vetch and his sister Yarrow, some years later. Like the books, it's at once mythic and earthy, and in fact is about how the mythic is also earthy. Outstanding.

Selected Moments in Introductory Symbology. Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass. Excellent post-canon story, one of my favorites of all the "What happens next?" fic in this fandom, with a clever structure based on the symbols and meanings of the alethiometer that perfectly echoes the story's plot and theme. If you loved the characters and world in the first book but found later entries too preachy or straying from the aspects you originally liked, this story is for you.

In canon, as the story goes on Lyra loses a lot of what made her such a memorable character early on. In this story, she's back to her spiky, impulsive, curious self, all the way down to the lying tongue and the fierce realness beneath; as she matures, she becomes more herself, not less. (Note to shippers: this Lyra loves Will and always will, but goes on to love others as well rather than pining alone forever.)

The Spirit of St Mary Mead. Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Someone made the inspired prompt, "Miss Marple is sometimes associated with Nemesis; what if she literally was an immortal incarnation of justice, maybe a genius loci of St Mary Mead?" I really hoped someone would write this, and not only did someone, but they absolutely did it justice, tracing Miss/Mistress Marple's gently relentless pursuit of truth and the exoneration of the wrongly accused through English history.

It was a particularly ordinary grove, or so the commander of the nearby Roman camp thought, and was at a loss to explain the locals’ belief in it as a sacred place; the site where a genius loci might be found. Aerten, they said she was named, and his men in turn called her Atropos or Nemesis.

hands fall together. Killjoys. This reads so much like canon (a sf show vaguely along the lines of Firefly) that it might work as an entry to it. (So you don't need to know more than that Dutch and Johnny are space bounty hunters.) Dutch and Johnny have an adventure early in their partnership. Dutch knows that trust kills and Johnny has more than is healthy, but sometimes our points of vulnerability are what bind us together in the best of all possible ways. Dead-on dialogue and a neat use of both fairytale and video game motifs.

End in Fire. Clever and well-plotted crossover between Stephen King's Firestarter and Daryl Gregory's horror novella "We Are All Completely Fine." (If you only know one canon: the former is about Charlie McGee, a pyrokinetic girl who is captured by and escapes from an evil government agency, The Shop, and the latter is about survivors of various horror scenarios in group therapy, including Greta, who is also pyrokinetic.) Unexpectedly but plausibly characterized, with a memorable grown-up Charlie and a darkly comic and disconcertingly believable depiction of evil yet underfunded shady government agencies a la Men Who Stare At Goats.

Arse-chive of my Own: Pounded in the Butt By the Lack of Tingleverse Fics in Yuletide 2016. Hilariously absurdist Yuletide/Chuck Tingle metafiction crossover. I close my eyes as he shoves inch after inch of fic inside me. I knew how big he was but it feels even more incredible being his recipient. Just when I think he's all the way in, a few more pinch hits slide in at the last minute, increasing his girth even more.

(Does anyone not know Chuck Tingle, maestro of bizarre Amazon metafictional erotica in which hard buckaroos are pounded in the butt by personifications of creamed corn, fighter jets, the state of California, Chuck Tingle's Hugo Award nomination, and their own butts, all to prove that LOVE IS REAL? If not, meet Chuck Tingle: Slammed In The Butt By Domald Tromp's Attempt To Avoid Accusations Of Plagiarism By Removing All Facts Or Concrete Plans From His Republican National Convention Speech; Turned Gay By The Existential Dread That I May Actually Be A Character In A Chuck Tingle Book; Pounded In The Butt By The Sentient Physical Manifestation Of The Year 2016)

A gently bittersweet short story, ostensibly a Victorian paper on collecting mermaid songs but actually a story of lesbian longing, which you can read in full for free here (it's short and lovely, I recommend it), A Ladies' Guide to Collecting Mermaid Love Songs, produced a set of beautifully written short stories this Yuletide. I loved every single one I've read so far. If this is the sort of thing you like, read the original and then enjoy the riffs on it:

A Mermaid's Guide to Collecting Humans

Humans don’t know love, but they believe they do. That is their weakness.

When they hear our songs, they say, here they sing of hope; here, they sing to lure us; here, they sing of despair.

They categorize and organize, and think it makes them safe. It is their weakness; it is also their blessing.

What they do not always understand is that every song we sing is a song of love.

Dreams in Glass

Last night, I dreamed that my bed was a boat. Its practical, dark sheets and thick blankets billowed out into sails. The mermaid songs surrounded me. Stars in the water. Stars in the sea. Miss Mori came to my bedside [the aft side], and clung to the bed frame, watching me. Her dark, wet hair draped against her shoulders. Her small fingers gripped tight against the wood. Her eyes, sad and searching. Her tail, unseen, unspoken, but beckoning nonetheless.
I ached to jump into the water with her. The ocean was created before man. The ocean will exist long after the last trumpet has sounded. I ached for its ancient embrace almost as much as I ached for Miss Mori's. I wanted a tail. A dark, glittery tail to twine against her silvery scales. We would twist together like the dark and light koi in my great aunt's Oriental etchings.

A Ladies' Guide to Recording Dances of Elves

Type 4, the Couple’s Dance

This final type of dance we encountered only once. It began as a Sway of Longing (Type 3), but unexpectedly, the yearning was answered by a mate. The little companions locked eyes and circled each other, dancing round and round, coming closer before again drifting apart. Sometimes, it seemed as if they had all but forgotten about the other, but as if connected and guided by invisible spider silk, they were gradually pulled closer and closer. And at long last, they clasped each other’s hands and danced and swirled around as one.

A lovely picture that we could only capture in our hearts, since all the photographic plates we had brought were exposed already. Miss Mori described the scene as similar to “blossoms blooming in spring or finding an unexpected letter from someone you adore.”

No canon knowledge required

the ultimate test of cerebral fitness. As I lay broken and bleeding on the battlefield, I began to wonder about the meaning of it all. I mean, what are we actually fighting for? Are we always destined to lose in some cosmic game? Why do the sides have to be different colors? Why can't the Biskups just be able to hook up for once without the world ending?

Chess from the point of view of a pawn, but it goes way, way beyond what you'd imagine a story with that premise to be. No knowledge of chess required beyond the absolute basics, though I'm sure it is even better if you do have some knowledge. It's bizarre and hilarious and weirdly moving.

Every year someone writes a story that makes me think, "This is the reason Yuletide exists." By that I don't mean that they're the best stories in the archive, but that they're great stories that no one would have ever written if not for Yuletide - they're unique and wonderful and only exist because someone made an unusual prompt. So far and for me, this story and the Prohibition Highwayman are those stories.

Canon knowledge required

A Normal First Date. A satisfying, touching, realistic coda to Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar series, about what happens to the characters when they return to Earth.

A Song For Ruatha. A very satisfying novelette about Menolly post-Dragonsinger, reading just like McCaffrey of that period. Excellent use of original and canon characters, good worldbuilding, and a moving theme - people and places coming into their own after hardship or insecurity or tragedy - that's beautifully integrated into the story.

a brittle straw. I have met very few people who have read a book called Duncton Wood, by William Horwood, It is somewhat like Watership Down in that it is a genuine epic about big themes like war, love, death, and faith, all carried out by small furry creatures. In this case, moles. I think it was a bestseller in England that didn't make its way to America, or possibly anywhere else. It's not as good as Watership Down (and is a lot more overtly religious/mystical) but I do like it a lot. This story beautifully captures the atmosphere and and a key moment in the life of one of the main characters, and additionally engages with one of the book's more interesting themes, which is the unknowability of the past and its transformation into legend.

Every story this Yuletide from The Last Unicorn is great and captures the tone of the book, and I recommend them all whether I've specifically pulled them out for rec lists or not. It was obviously very inspirational for the writers this year. Here's two more beautiful stories from it:

and all ye need to know. An absolutely gorgeous The Last Unicorn story, heartbreaking and funny and wise. It pulls together many themes and characters from the book, but is primarily about the unicorn/Lady Amalthea and Molly Grue.

Cleis. A short, lovely story from The Last Unicorn also about Molly Grue and Lady Amalthea but with a different take on their relationship, one I wouldn't have thought of before.

This has also been a very good Yuletide for stories inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin.

The First Train to Brotherhood, from Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed. A look at the early days of Anarres, with all its struggles of real human beings trying to create an ideal society. I think all you need to know is that a society of anarchists are terraforming a planet. Very realistic politics (in the stage where everything's exciting and nothing's yet gone sour), fascinating ideas, and lovely language. Here's the opening paragraph:

The first train to Brotherhood arrived in the middle of the night, with the moon high and mottled overhead. Brotherhood did not, technically, exist yet, except as the terminus of the line, but the light mobile structures of the work-camp already suggested where the town would one day spring up. This platform would one day be a depot. That pavilion would one day be a dormitory.

I just love that. The rhythm is so elegant, the images so beautiful, and the entire theme of the story is encapsulated in that first paragraph: the fragile beginning of something both down to earth and astonishing.

The Dark Places of Gont. Another Ursula K. Le Guin story, this one from Earthsea. It's a missing piece of the story, of what happens right after The Tombs of Atuan, when Ged takes Tenar to Ogion. Absolutely beautiful, a pitch-perfect echo of Le Guin's prose and themes and details. Perfect beginning, perfect conclusion, great characterization that feels true to both the early and later books in the series, which is quite a feat. It made me cry, but not because it was sad, but because it was moving, and because it felt so absolutely right and true to a book that is very dear to my heart. If the chess story is, in one sense, what Yuletide is for, then this story is what fanfic is for.

These are all stories where you either don't need to know the canon, or you can pick up the canon in a few minutes because it's images.

This canon is a few (pretty amazing) paintings by Swedish artist Simon Stalenhag, whom I discovered last Yuletide. They show a slightly old-timey, pastoral Sweden - the closest American equivalent I can think of is Norman Rockwell, but minus the cuteness - with added GIANT CREEPY ROBOTS and SPOOKY FUTURISTIC MACHINES. This story is based on a specific series of those images called We Need To Talk About Annika. They tell a haunting story of a boy and a girl exploring some creepy, possibly abandoned machines… but what story? (Note: one image is gory but not super-graphic.)

Stalenhag captioned the series,
“The world was on fire and no one could save me but you.
It’s strange what desire will make foolish people do.“

A Letter to the Wind matches the art to perfection. It's short (440 words) but makes every word count. It's everything you could want in a slow-motion end of the world tale, resignation and loss and creepiness, and people staying themselves and doing the things that people do, right up to the end.

Here's another story based on art. You should check out the art first, a series of beautiful, mysterious photographs of two woman on a beach, walking fully dressed into the water. They don't look like they intend to harm themselves; they seem to be going home. Return to Waves is a lovely, delicate tale of a pair of mermaid lovers exploring a strange new world.

This American Life episode 141: A Whole New World. (Transcript) is exactly what it says on the tin: a transcript of an episode of the radio show "This American Life," in which a pitch-perfect Ira Glass interviews three people who leave the life they knew to find a new one. They are Steve Rogers, Hermione Granger, and Susan Pevensie.

Fells prompted a story about the Harpy Celaeno from Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn. She is a force of myth and terror, temporarily imprisoned by a witch who knows that trapping the harpy will eventually doom herself. In a book full of haunting passages, that one has always haunted me the most. Four people wrote stories based on that excellent prompt (three in the main collection, one in Madness), and all of them are good and worth reading. But Where Sleeps the Wind edges in as the one that best captures the terror and beauty of Beagle's harpy. It's also the one that I think stands best without canon knowledge. (Though if you have never read the book, go treat yourself to it immediately. It is genuinely extraordinary. I have never read anything quite like it.)

Once again, please do comment if you enjoy a story. Recs are lovely too. You can post links to your rec post at the yuletide comm.

Only the most general knowledge of source needed.

Agave in Illyria, from Euripedes' The Bacchae. I think all you need to know is the general story of The Bacchae; other context is provided in the note at the beginning. A stunning, unsettling piece, poem and prose that begs to be performed as spoken word. I could hear a lot of it in my mind's... er... ear as I read. Fanfic by way of Anne Sexton and Christopher Logue.

The burning girl comes to me in the afternoon.

I am sitting before my mirror in my bedroom waiting for my second wedding.

I see her come up close behind me in the mirror, smiling, burning.



I turn around and she is still there, holding a comb, smiling.

Around her the room is quiet, the high painted walls, the great carved bed, the shady doorways leading deeper into the palace, the place on the floor where they threw the sand. Something moves in the corner of my mind, a vine, growing.

Did I say there was something strange about this girl? I cannot bring it to mouth. She is a fine girl, bringing the comb crackling down through my hair.

And All Things Nice. Peter Pan is a weird, weird story, twee on the surface and creepy underneath. This genderbent version, in which Peter Pan is a perpetual girl and Captain Hook is a woman, addresses the obvious issues but goes much deeper than I had expected. It's not just about concepts of femininity, but about how both childhood and adulthood can be free or stifling, and, ticking away in the background, the relentless passage of time. Very well-written, a bit reminiscent of Kelly Link.

Hook was listening, with the part of herself that was always listening, for the tick of the crocodile: girlhood ticking towards adulthood, adulthood towards death. When the clock runs down, you are eaten.

Need to Know Source

No One May Point a Pistol at You But Me. From the ballad "Sovay," a charming drabble.

I Am Groot (Groot's Story, from Guardians of the Galaxy. Absolutely lovely, clever story. Set your cursor over the sentences to see the hover-text.

Lifelines. From Sarah Waters' Night Watch. A well-written, nicely structured, hopeful coda to a rather depressing novel. Not quite a fix-it in the sense that it doesn't change any of the book's events, but it does imagine that the characters go on to better things afterward.

If this were a book, Kay thought to herself, that ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds right now would be symbolic, and I'd be filled with hope.

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.

The Marriage Masquerade. From Georgette Heyer’s The Talisman Ring. One of Heyer’s funniest novels gets a hilarious coda, complete with pratfalls, cross-dressing, and a very expensive flaming carpet. I'm not sure how much context you need for this one, to be honest; if you like Regency romantic comedy, give it a try and see.

the mother of beauty. A character study of Julian, the professor from Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, that beautifully captures his dangerous allure.

There were a clutch of Aliens stories; I haven’t read them all. Vasquez, the female space Marine, is the focus of the first two I rec. You may recall her from the exchange in which she’s doing pull-ups.

Male Marine: “Hey, Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?”

Vasquez, not missing a beat: “No. Have you?”

Into the Woods. An early mission for the space Marines, pre-Aliens, told in a convincing staccato narrative by Vasquez. If you want to read a nice long action adventure about space Marines fighting aliens on another planet—and who doesn’t?— this is the story for you. You don’t need to know canon for this one.

Can You Hear Me Now?. A little vignette of camaraderie and badassery from the Madness collection.

Waiting for the Conquered. This retells Aliens from the POV of the alien queen! Very well-done alien POV; creepy.

Nimue. Clever, evocative Madness drabble for The Dark Is Rising.

“Elizabeth,” your mother used to tell you, “there’s nothing in this world that can’t be cured by saltwater-- sweat, tears, or the sea.”

Completely justified second person POV, as this is based on the text-based game “Choice of Broadsides,” a Napoleonic adventure which can be played to create a world in which only women go to sea. The story has several clever devices which riff on the nature of the source. It’s the story of you and Villeneuve, the Gaulish captain you fought and loved, and is befittingly action-packed and sexy. Probably you don’t need to have played the game to enjoy this.

The story, Salt Stained.

The game, Choice of Broadsides.

If you enjoy these or other stories, please consider leaving a comment.

I got AMAZING stories this year - TWO nice, long, juicy ones. Both are gen adventures, and you can read either with pleasure without knowing the canon. I suggest you do so.

My gift story was Echoes, from Patricia Wrede's little-known but charming fantasy, Caught In Crystal. The novel is about a retired warrior and mom who gets pulled back into adventuring; I asked for a prequel in which she is still a member of her four-girl badass group.

Here the four girls are telling ghost stories:

"Like the one about the Elder Sister in the cursed lichyard, who riddled the bones for a whole night until sunlight could kill the lich-king. Or the sklathran'sy who escaped from Varna on a raft, only to find that their helmsman had died before they ever set out and kept them guided through sheer force of will." Barthelmy's eyes gleamed. "Or the one with the travelers who discover their innkeeper is really a Varnan wizard cannibal!"

[...]

"Lich-kings have been disproven," Varevice added.

An absolutely perfect and unexpectedly clever adventure starring four young, badass girls, full of banter and female friendship and understated but excellent worldbuilding.

I think all you really need to know is that the Sisterhood of Stars is a sort of adventuring academy consisting of 4-girl cells: a sorceress, a warrior, a healer, and a demon-friend. The latter work with "demons," known to themselves as "sklathrans'y," to help them break the spells that enslave them.)

Ithaka, or the Moons of Jupiter.

They were a fearsome sight, the miners: seven or eight feet tall and muscular, with thick, hard skin that would make even a Martian drylander’s seem soft, their long hair and their beards a profusion of wiry curls the colour of cooling lava, the heavy tramp of their feet as they marched in line like muted thunder.

You guys, I got a 12,746-word Yuletide Treat in C. L. Moore's Northwest Smith! (The other Smith requester got a shorter story, which I shall read shortly. Truly an embarrassment of riches-- that brings the world's total amount of C. L. Moore fic up to three stories, so far as I'm aware, counting the Jirel story I wrote for last year's Yuletide.) Smith and Yarol the Venusian are sent all over the moons of Jupiter in this incredibly atmospheric riff on Gilgamesh and the Odyssey. The worldbuilding is stunning. If you like pulp sf and sense of wonder, this is the story for you.

More recs forthcoming. I have not yet had a chance to read anything else yet, and I only read these because I stayed up in the hope that the archive would open at midnight. (The witching hour, when animals speak and Yuletide begins.)

I have three stories in the archive. Enjoy trying to figure out which they are, and if you have a guess, let me know! ;)

These are all stories (plus two poems!) that I enjoyed, but which I have not seen recced all over. (And no, I don't mean "stories based on poems," I mean actual poems.)

( Click for recs. )