A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

Multifandom Horror is open, and it's full of great stuff! It's been especially fun for me to go through the collection as I haven't had much fic-reading and art-viewing time for the last few months. Here's some recs.

Carrie - Stephen King .

Reunion. Sue hears stories about Carrie White. Amazingly versatile pastiche of many styles.

1982 was the first year any company made Carrie White masks for Halloween: rubbery pale flesh streaked with fake blood, long dishwater blonde wigs, and sparkly tiaras. Gore-spattered prom dresses sold separately.

The company rode out the outrage and—any publicity is good publicity—raked in the cash. By 1985, every major costume vendor had an equivalent, with some generic fig-leaf of a name like BLOODY PROM QUEEN or BAD PROM DATE.

Dark Tower - Stephen King

Green Glass. The ka-tet tries traveling by boat. They shouldn't. One of my wonderful gifts! Beautifully written and extremely eerie.

The river lay low in its bed. Its current was lazy and gentle, like since there was only a little of it and it was sure where it was going, it didn’t really care how fast it got there.

Sometimes it would look so still that, out of the corner of their eyes, they’d almost think they saw their reflections in it. Always a little misshapen and discolored, warped and greened by the water, like they were seeing themselves on the curve of a glass Coke bottle.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

If You Get Lost. Sam, Bucky, and Zemo explore a forest that suddenly appeared overnight. They get considerably more than they bargained for. Great character development, great creeping horror, great dialogue. Bucky punches a tree.

“I’ve got wings that won’t have room to operate, and Bucky’s going to, what, stab a tree?"

Night Fishing. There's something killing people in the swamps behind Sam's childhood home. And he and Bucky are going on a hunting expedition. You can practically breathe the Gothic swamp atmosphere; unusual angle on Bucky and Sam as city boy/country boy. Bucky punches a swamp monster.

"Your neighbor has a harpoon gun just lying around?"

"Welcome to Louisiana."

Sharks! “Sharks?! There are sharks now??” What it says on the tin. Bucky punches a shark.

Bucky looked where Sam was looking and spotted a fin in the distance. It didn’t look that big to him, but he had to admit that he didn’t actually know anything about sharks and, specifically, their fin to body (or really, mouth) ratio.

Snap. Sam gets lost in a hall of mirrors. Unsettling, eerie, ambiguous. I think Bucky punches a mirror.

He struggled to reconcile the video, his own face spouting such hate filled garbage. “It’s gotta be fake. A deep fake? Or something.”

“Sure,” his therapist said, boots clacking as she walked around him in the filming studio and turned off the bright ring light. “But if it was you, and I’m just saying those dimples don’t lie, you probably had a good reason.”

Jurassic Park -

ART. The Queen's Crown. Clever girls always take trophies from their victories! Could not be more delightful.

Us (Movie)

stretch out your hand and take it The borders between who is who is always most porous at night. In the dark, they’re both shadows. One of my wonderful gifts! Beautifully written, intense, and epic-feeling in a short space.

Everything breakable in the tunnels was broken long ago. What remains is sturdy barrack furniture built for bomb raids and wire cages and scissors. The others down here have no idea how breakable the world up above is.

WandaVision

Syndication. In this week's episode, Wanda and Vision help the boys with their history homework, and Wanda worries about the quality of education they're getting. [Rerun.] Pitch-perfect sitcom dialogue, and grief and terror underneath. If you've seen the show, this is a must-read.

“You’re sure there’s no science fair project this year?” Vision said. He sounded disappointed. “Maybe a working model of the solar system? A clean energy source?” He added to Wanda, “I miss the days of dioramas. Small-scale matter manipulation… the smell of Play-Doh…”

The Wilds (TV)

ART. Haunted Even in the spa Gretchen keeps seeing Linh. It's getting harder and harder to remember that it's all just in her head. Haunted and haunting.

perilous in the wrong conditions Nora’s fight-or-flight response is triggered as Rachel’s life is endangered. Intense, well-characterized, beautiful imagery.

The pool had looked so big, and her sister so small all the way up there. The water below lying in wait for Rachel’s sacrifice.

And that's only from what I've had a chance to read! I haven't even started on Original Works, for instance.

What have you enjoyed in the collection so far?

I wrote four stories for Eat, Drink, and Make Merry:

A Hole in the World. Dark Tower - Stephen King. The ka-tet finds another portal. Or rather, a portal finds them. AKA: Roland vs. a Red Delicious apple.

The Butterfly and the Moth. Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin. Penthe and Arha share a stolen moment, along with some stolen food.

Courting Gifts. Narnia. Edmund and Aravis make each other courting gifts.

Ice. Torchwood. Owen takes care of Tosh after [spoilers].

I really enjoyed reading through the collection. There were a ton of excellent stories, and I haven't even finished the collection yet. In addition to my own gifts which I recced earlier, I particularly enjoyed...

Star Trek: The Next Generation. A Serious Thing by flowerdeluce. Will Riker and Deanna Troi's relationship, viewed as a sequence of encounters with chocolate or things vaguely resembling chocolate. Delightful and very Star Trek.

Star Trek: The Original Series. Fruits of Victory by cyphomandra. Nyota Uhura and Christine Chapel steal away for some experiments with alien fruit, and very non-experimental kissing. Delicious and sensual, also very Star Trek in feeling.

Torchwood. All the stories. sholio and scioscribe outdid themselves. Seriously, all of them are glorious. There's a dark, spooky, sensual Suzie/Gwen story. There's a truly epic "forced to gladiate by aliens" story with bonus emotion-and-senses link. There's an intimate and emotional "Owen the saves the team from their own worst nightmares" story. If you like the fandom, go forth and enjoy.

Twin Peaks. Summer at the End of Time by scioscribe. Utterly gorgeous, painterly Audrey/Cooper story set between seasons 2 and 3.

Umbrella Academy. Alone and A Lone by listlessness. The apocalypse was averted, and Grace and Luther remain in the mansion. A lovely, touching story about two people alienated from their bodies who slowly come together over the rituals of home and food.

The Femslash Ex Collection is open, with tons of excellent stories. If you ever wanted to read Jane Eyre/Mrs. Rochester or original fiction about Cryptozoologist who keeps finding injured animals/Female vet she brings them to, this is your chance.

Here are some of my favorite stories I've read so far:

Annihilation - movie.

Garden of Unearthly Fruit. Eerie, unsettling, weirdly moving post-movie Lena/Ventress.

Bound - 1996 Wachowski Sisters. A pair of sizzling hot, beautifully written, perfectly characterized stories of Corky and Violet after the movie.

Devil Never Saw the Likes of Us. Corky and Violet didn't go looking for more trouble, but they're not exactly going to turn it down.

Good at Something. Corky and Violet and a brand new truck.

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte.

spreading wide my narrow hands. Reader, I buried him.

Absolutely stunning Gothic Jane Eyre/Bertha Mason in a pitch-perfect style.

Original Fiction I have barely started reading in this category, but Femslash Ex is reliably excellent for it.

Flourishing, and How It Is Done. Hard-bitten Post-apocalyptic Wanderer/Lost Dimensional Traveler from a Better Timeline. My wonderful gift story, with evocative worldbuilding of two very different worlds in this tale of two women who find and lose and find each other again.

Formal Beauty. Art Thief/Woman in a Painting. Gorgeously written and eerie.

I wrote two stories in the collection. Can you find them?

The Trick or Treat fanfic, original fiction, and art collection is open!

I have four stories in the collection - can you spot them?

I got three absolutely fantastic gifts.

Blood in the Ambient. A Punisher/Finisterre fusion, which is so much its own thing that I think you could read it without knowing either canon. In a terraformed world where all animals are telepathic, the riders of nighthorses protect their towns from other predators. A gorgeous, heartbreaking and heartwarming story about a small town huddled against the cold, a small family huddled together, and a stranger who tests the limits of their sense of community. Incredibly atmospheric, fantastic worldbuilding, and all-over wonderful.

I also got two wonderful stories for the IT movies. With very different premises and narrative voices, they both capture the love and trust of the Losers, and their hard-won hope despite horror and grief. They were both everything I love about the canon, beautifully written and characterized.

Familiar Hand. Post-canon, Mike and Bill move in together. The librarian and the writer merge collections, bringing up their diverging paths behind them and their new way forward. Sexy and bittersweet and thematically unified.

Foundations. The adult Losers have an orgy to cement their bond and make sure they'll never forget. Dead-on Richie voice, with all the grief and humor and sweetness that entails. Hot and funny and full of love.

I also enjoyed...

Art

Favorite Haunt. A ghost cat takes a ghost cat nap.

Graveyard Tree. The souls of those buried under the cherry tree wait in the branches as dawn rises. (Mixed media)

A formal portrait of Aral Vorkosigan

Original Fiction

The Lessons of the Tree A classic-feeling spooky story, like a murder ballad in prose.

Water Remembers Lovely flashfic about the ghost of a long-gone ocean.

Jukebox is an exchange for writing stories based on or inspired by songs, so it's halfway between fanfic and original fiction.

Here's the archive.

Here's a table with links to all the songs.

Light the Sky (Art). Sunny Came Home - Shawn Colvin

Five Things Me and Julio Did Down by the Schoolyard - Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard - Paul Simon. Really sweet, fun story.

I maintain that we did nothing wrong. We were perfectly normal kids doing normal kid shit down by the schoolyard.

And a set of lovely, folkloric post-apocalypse stories. They're all the mythic/archetypal type of post-apocalypse, not the miserable cannibal type. The first two are very hopeful, the second two aren't unhopeful, but the tone is more haunting.

A Beginning Song. Sons & Daughters - The Decemberists

For the tide always turns, and the day always dawns. That is how the world works.

a thousand miles just to slip this skin. Streets of Philadelphia - Bruce Springsteen

Jude believes that there is nothing in the wasteland, but a chance encounter with a stranger might just prove him wrong.

The Chance. Easy Way Out - Low Roar

We could have saved the world, but I stepped away.

If You Can Hear. Drowning in the Sound - Amanda Palmer

In the beginning was the Sound.

I got four wonderful stories from Fandom Stocking!

The Comfort of Strangers, by Maplemood. Earthsea. Beautifully written, pitch-perfect canon AU where Penthe leaves Atuan with Ged and Tenar. In the dark, in the boat on the sea which flowed for miles uncounted and to worlds without number, Penthe remembered the chaos of the day when the Tombs collapsed in on themselves.

Helping Hands, by Sholio. The Punisher. Lovely sequel to "Lifeline;" definitely read if you enjoyed that. Karen helps Frank with a few things he can't easily do himself.

Missing Elements, by Opalmatrix. The Dispossessed. Sweet and also bittersweet, family and love and ethical dilemmas. On a family outing after his return, Shevek gets reacquainted with the Takver he remembers.

A Dance of Dust, by Anne Marie Darkholme. A delightful and clever fusion. Snippets from an X-Men (comicverse)-His Dark Materials Fusion featuring a young Kitty Pryde and Rachel Summers.

I wrote three shorts (under 1K words):

Like a Wheel. The Stand/Dark Tower. Ka turns like a wheel. Round and round he goes, through the doors and up the stairs and down the road, bootheels clacking on asphalt, leather soles sinking into sand.

Lean on Me. New Mutants. Dani finds comfort when she needs it the most.

Three Sins. The Secret History - Donna Tartt fused with Fullmetal Alchemist. We fled. The homunculi followed.

Hell Sick. Original Works. A failboat demon accidentally locks himself out of Hell. The tone and jokes reminded me a bit of The Good Place.

Chjtolene. "Jolene," a song by Dolly Parton. Tagged "crack taken seriously," this works nicely as a standalone horror story but also has some interesting commentary on both the song and Lovecraft.

Two sweet and funny Black Panther stories with fun uses of Wakanda technology and great character interaction. In The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms!, Shuri seeks inspiration from imported movies to prank her brother; in Slip and Slide, T'Challa and Nakia go ice skating while Shuri takes a seat in the peanut gallery.

Just Around the Corner. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - Stephen King. An adult Trisha once again confronts the God of the Lost in this thoughtful look at fear and courage, trauma and moving on, and what does and doesn't change in us when we grow up.

Art: Animals That Are Not Cats

XVII. Watership Down. A beautiful Rider Waite-esque Tarot card of Hyzenthlay as the Star.

The Finer Points. Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Spectacularly detailed apes.

A Vist. Does anyone remember the adorable "Tea House Foxes" Gmail theme? Here, have the tea house fox visited by ancestral fox spirits.

Fin. The ghost of an extinct whale.

I got so many wonderful gifts for Trick or Treat that I haven't read much else; recs for other stories will come later. (Though I will say that all the Carrie stories I've read are GREAT. This has been a very good Trick or Treat for Stephen King fandoms. I think all the King books that were requested have at least one story in the archive.) Meanwhile, enjoy browsing the archive! I wrote seven stories; maybe you will spot one.

The minimum word count is 300 words, so these are all on the short side; the longest are around 5K and many are under 1K. Please comment if you enjoy any of these, or something else!

Annihilation (movie, but also uses elements from the book).

The Third Expedition. An expedition into the Shimmer that we didn't see finds horror, wonder, and confusion of identities; imaginatively creepy imagery, killer conclusion.

Carrie - Stephen King.

while I drive. An AU where Sue and Carrie drive away together post-prom. Haunting, touching, does a lot in a very short length.

The Monster in the Lake. An AU where Carrie's powers manifest at a Christian Youth Camp. Scary and vivid and sad, this reads exactly like a lost Stephen King short story.

This Little Light of Mine. Sue's in a coma post-prom, but Carrie (or Carrie's ghost, or the part of Carrie that lodged in Sue's mind, or maybe something else) is still talking to her. Ambitious, complex, and intense, with great Sue-Carrie dialogues.

Chinatown.

speak low. Short, beautifully written, mythic and eerie response to my prompt of "What if Evelyn returns from the dead to rescue her daughter?"

The Punisher

Eyes Turned Skyward, by Sholio. This was not a Trick or Treat story, but I didn't get a chance to rec it before Trick or Treat and it's great. It's wingfic done in canon style, so dark/serious rather than fluffy/cracky. Great imagery, character relationships, hurt-comfort, and action sequences, just excellent all-round.

Sanctuary. Post-series, a wounded, feverish Frank bangs on the Liebermans' door in the middle of the night. This is everything you want from that premise, with perfectly in-character reactions and dialogue. A lot of it is also really funny, again in a true-to-canon way.

Fear. A drabble about the feelings behind the mask.

Death's Doorstep. Frank turns up injured at the Liebermans' house; no matter how frustrating it gets, they care too much to not take him in.

Rose Madder - Stephen King

Oils. Lovely glimpse into Rosie's life post-book; healing and spookiness and a very unique art gallery.

A Rose Between the Years. How the woman who became Rose Madder might have gotten into the painting.

True Detective

Juxtaposition. A series of haiku (and one tanka), reluctantly written by Rust Cohle as a therapy assignment.

Watership Down - Richard Adams

Rabbit-of-the-Heart. A haunting, shivery story about Silverweed, the rabbit poet in love with death.

The Wheel Turns Ever Onward. A bit of rabbit mythology very much in the tone of the book, life and death and compassion in the realm beyond the world we know.

Marli. Completely adorable story featuring a determined and kind Hyzenthlay, a "what have I gotten myself into" Bigwig, and a litter of kittens. No, not rabbit kittens. Kitten kittens.

X-Men comics

A Phoenix for a Phoenix. I GOT AN ART TREAT. A determined Rachel Summers, an exuberant phoenix, and tons of lovely detailing.

I know it’s Saturday but the collection only opened late last night, and I have two stories that are too good to wait a week to read and likely to be of general interest to many here. You can check out the entire collection by fandom here, or just original works here.

I got two wonderful stories for the same prompt, Military Officer Desperate To Redeem Her Honor/Loyal Subordinate Trying To Keep Her Alive. Both have fascinating worldbuilding, nicely structured plots, great characters, and ALL the military camaraderie and loyalty one could possibly want. I hope you’ll read them both, as they’re both well worth reading and quite different. (Also it’s always fun to read two different takes on the same prompt.)

Loved I not Honor more .

Ten Percent for Luck.

I haven’t had time to read much beyond my own stories, but I did read an absolutely delightful Shuri/Original Female Character story, “Citation Flirtation,” with banter that could have come straight out of Black Panther. T’Challa plays a charming supporting role.

The Alternate Universe Exchange is open with 122 stories in 89 fandoms.

What if the bad guys won/the good guys won? What if Bucky Barnes went to Narnia? What if Kylo Ren was a chicken? What if Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters was haunted by the ghosts of all the dead (or temporarily dead, or dead in a different timeline) X-Men?

Come back and comment if you read and liked something!

I will return with more recs in varied fandoms when I have read more, but for now, I highly recommend my two fantastic gift stories. They're both for Stephen King books, and they're both GREAT and you should read them if you like the books.

Star Shot and Gravity Bound. The Dark Tower. AU: Space Opera setting, Susan Delgado as gunslinger, and several others I'll leave you to discover. This beautifully captures the atmosphere of longing and doom that's one of my favorite things from both the books and a certain type of space opera, and does an amazing job of translating book details into a new setting.

She took her Moira up, singing a little under her breath. An old song, a gunslinger hymn:

Home is the sailor, home from the sea

And the hunter home from the hill,

But the hull needs the hole that the gunslinger gives,

So frost-fire is homeward for thee.

Roland had sung that to her once. Once and once only—for all Susan knew, she’d had the words wrong for years. Had Roland’s people even said thee and thou?

There was no one else left to sing it. That made her version true.

Take the House. The Stand. AU: Canon Divergence. Nadine Cross reaches out to Flagg pre-flu, causing a huge ripple effect of divergences. Beautifully written, with great canon Easter eggs and sharp commentary on what we expect of men and women.

There had been the night in college with the Ouija board

(HOW I LOVE TO LOVE NADINE)

and you could, if you wanted, call that their first date.