A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

Normally I like to make Yuletide recs throughout the week. This year I woke up on Christmas/Hanukkah to a black screen on my phone, which of course I couldn't get fixed for a while as it was Christmas Day and nothing was open. And then my bookshop opened the next day, and it's open Thursday - Sunday, so I was busy when I wasn't frantically driving around trying to get my phone fixed. But I did encounter many excellent stories despite the unusually limited time I had to read, let alone rec. I hope you enjoy them too.


Austin & Murry-O'Keefe Families - Madeleine L'Engle

known now in part, to be known in full

Meg realized that the woman seemed very familiar. She had glasses and shorter hair, but otherwise looked very much like Meg herself; indeed, almost identical.

After Polly's adventure back in time where she's almost human sacrificed, Meg meets her double from an alternate timeline. A lovely and thoughtful exploration of the choices Meg made and the choices she didn't (or did, in wnother world).


"Barrett's Privateers" - Stan Rogers

"God Damned Them All"? Documenting the Loss of the Privateer Antelope

A grim narrative of fraud, deception, false advertising, murders, robberies, puttings in fear and operating without a Board of Trade Certificate.

Hilarious, plus rather impressive pastiche.


Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper

through fog in grey horizons

There's a special magic in bodies of water, and it always seems to make its presence felt when Jane Drew is around.

Utterly gorgeous story of Jane's lingering connection to water and magic, with an absolutely perfect ending. Also a possible nod to Seaward.


The Fall of the House of Usher - TV

Raven Wings as Dark as Below

If souls existed you'd sell them with your first choice. With the blood of those you kill.

But the second choice, when you decide to make a Deal, that is when your fate is sealed.

A strange, fascinating, beautifully written take on what it is to be Verna.



"FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense" - Luke Burns

Honestly all of these are hilarious so I'll just link you to them all.

Snakes on the Yuletide Main Collection

And one from Madness


Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey

floating upon dark waters - Phèdre nó Delaunay/Melisande Shahrizai, Phèdre nó Delaunay/Original Male Character

Some New Pleasures Prove - Phèdre nó Delaunay/Joscelin Verreuil

Both those stories are very in-character and hot as fuck.


Southern Reach - Jeff Vandermeer/Annihilation (Movie)

Explosions Inside of My Head

Experiments sending rabbits into the Shimmer. Haunting, beautiful, horrific.


The Stand - Stephen King

She Knows That It Kills Me. My gift!

Frannie Goldsmith gets a chance to face down Randall Flagg. Extremely satisfying eucatastrophe.


Watership Down - Richard Adams

A Chief Rabbit. My gift!

A Hyzenthlay story from her days within Efrafa.

A very sweet story in which Hyzenthlay gets some well-earned peace and recognition.

Silverweed's Lament. My gift!

A gorgeous, chilling poem.

DON'T NEED TO KNOW CANON

Pseudo-Edo SciFi Art - Yamaguchi Akira

This is a set of very cool paintings of futuristic/steampunk Edo-period Japan.

Prime Time. 1613 words.

A deeply cool, extremely clever science fiction story with a take on time travel I've never seen before, complete with trippy tenses and some unexpected emotional punch. Like its inspiration, it melds some old-fashioned aspects (the story's format) with futuristic ones, and creates something cool and new that you can keep looking at and discovering new things. It wouldn't be out of place in Clarkesworld. One of the comments thinks it should be nominated for a Hugo and I agree.

"Hey Diddle Diddle"

Hey, diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

The Other Side. 1200 words.

A strange and unexpectedly beautiful story, with the quirky playfulness of the original rhyme, lovely prose, and a kind of existential eeriness. This is another one that I could easily see in a magazine, and is the sort of thing Yuletide is all about, for me.

Goncharov

This is a movie that doesn't exist directed by Martin Scorsese. That's all you need to know to read the hilarious and all too believable story about the 2023 remake. And if you haven't heard of Goncharov, do read the article I linked - it's weird, funny, and kind of heartwarming in a very fannish way.

Goncharov (2023).


NEED TO KNOW CANON

Arcadia - Tom Stoppard

Anything's Possible. 3134 words.

NOTE: Major character death. But the same sort that's in the play, where the dead co-exist with the living. The present characters from the play reunite at the funeral of one of their own, which is also attended by his ghost. It's in the format of a play, and it really feels like a short sequel to it. The dialogue is fantastic, and it's smart and emotional and involves card games and statistics - so, very Stoppard.

Equus - Peter Shaffer

The Sacrifice. 2179 words.

Martin Dysart returns to Greece. Incredibly well-written, with an intense atmosphere of building dread. It really captures and evokes the themes and atmosphere of the play.

The Expanse - TV

Pyriscence. 2862 words. Amos Burton & Praxidike Meng.

Amos comes to visit Prax and Mei after the end of the series. A heartwarming look at all three of them living and growing and changing and enjoying each other's company, exactly what I would have loved to see on the show itself. Excellent Prax voice.

Sunshine - Robin McKinley

under our skins. 1190 words. Mel, Original Characters.

Mel during the Wars, told through the eyes of a tattoo artist. Great structure, very clever, excellent worldbuilding, and it tells a story too.

Watership Down - Richard Adams

El-ahrairah and the River of Stone. 4360 words.

One story, told by four rabbits over multiple generations. A very cleverly structured story, absorbing and rewarding. It feels exactly like canon. I loved it.


I have four stories in the main collection. Can you guess what they are?

This is a great Yuletide year. I'm having such a good time reading stories and watching rain fall. I am behind in commenting; if I recced your story without doing so, that's why.

The Biggles and Worrals fic is GREAT. I'm going to attempt a dedicated Biggles & Worrals post later.

Don't Need to Know Canon

Chalice - Robin McKinley

There are two stories in the collection for this, both excellent and readable as original fantasy. What you need to know: In this land, a pair of magic users are bound to the land and keep it whole and healthy. One is the Master, a wizard. The other is a Chalice, a woman who makes potions with some drinkable liquid, usually water.

triptych. 8058 words.

Three Chalices. Three portraits in brine, milk, and blood.

Fascinating fantasy with three very different settings and problems the Chalices are trying to deal with.

Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin

Some Fragments Concerning the Island of Bereswek. 1177 words.

There's a saying: “Rules change in the Reaches.” That certainly seems to be true on this island.

Intriguing worldbuilding about an island of Earthsea, in a style reminiscent of A Wizard of Earthsea but with some concerns typical of the later books.

Into the Woods - Sondheim & Lapine

The Tale You Tell. 2991 words.

She never pretended to be the hero of this particular story.

The backstory of the Baker's Wife - touching, clever, and excellent dialogue that really catches the tone of the musical. All you need to know is that Into the Woods is a metafictional fairy tale mashup, but the story does have spoilers for the outcome of the Baker's Wife's story.


Need to Know Canon

Andor (TV)

There Is A World Beyond This Place. 1081 words.

Twelve things Cassian Andor misses most in prison.

What it says on the tin; insightful and heartbreaking.

The Long Walk - Stephen King

Impossible Objects. 3716 words.

"Some people got up the nerve to go inside, but I don’t know if anyone ever lasted the night. There were murmurs that you could make certain trades there, in contact with the dead. Take your supplication to the ghosts, and whisper to them your secrets."

Heartbreaking post-canon story with some fascinating worldbuilding and folklore.

The Perfection (Movie)

What's Expected of Us. 1789 words.

Outside, a northern chill sliced a path down from Canada carrying flurries of snow. Inside was the sanctum, the center of Charlotte’s universe, clothed in polished wooden walls and warm indirect light. And elsewhere, in the place beyond the binary confines of here and there: in that place, They waited.

A cosmic horror take on The Perfection, hot and horrifying and very well-written. Mind the tags. No, seriously, MIND THE TAGS.

Canon knowledge preferable but not strictly necessary:

17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future - Jon Bois
Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion... - Sandia Labs

Long-Term Projects. 2128 words.

Even after radiation stops being able to kill, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant doesn't offer a lot of entertainment. What keeps drawing people back? A sense of duty to a lost future? Reenacting old mistakes? Boredom?

It's probably mostly boredom.

I think all you need to know is that it crosses over a future in which everyone is immortal with the real-life monument trying to warn future people away from nuclear waste. Like most of the "Football in the Future" stories I've read, it's very moving in a way that sneaks up on you.

Content Note: Contains brief, non-graphic, but conceptually disturbing mention of radiation sickness.

Need to know canon:

Dark Tower - Stephen King

You Sound Like the Fuckin' Terminator. 1750 words.

“Do you hear yourself, Roland?” Eddie asks, lowering his voice and putting on his best Schwarzenegger impression. “Your clothes… give them to me now. You sound like the fuckin’ terminator.”

“Or stand here blathering like a fool till the world’s moved on,” Roland offers dryly.

Eddie/Roland PWP bondage, hot and funny and perfectly in-character, which is not something one often finds in PWP smut. Great dialogue.

Dread and Faith.

The laughing boy couldn’t even keep the son of Steven safe.

Painful, sweet, touching Cuthbert/Alain fic, on the road back from Mejis.

The Green Knight (Movie)

he shall have of me the same. 1424 words.

Five answers Gawain might have made to the knight's challenge, and one he did.

Beautifully written, elegantly designed, strange and atmospheric.

The Red Tree - Caitlin Kiernan

Not Bound to be Kind. 2531 words.

Rereading some of these onionskin pages, it’s all there, sprinkled like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs, like arsenic on rock cake. I’m going to list all the clues I’ve finally gathered up, the better to poison myself with my dear, and yes, I am mixing up my fairytale metaphors, fuck off and leave me alone:

Both Constance and Amanda are (were. are) roughly the same height and build and have (had. have. had. do-si-fucking-do) pale skin and black hair, on their heads and on their sex.

Pitch-perfect Sarah voice, intense, explicit, clever, terrifying.

Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena

She Wore a Crimson Flower. 1021 words.

The gunslinger rides up at dawn, a lone figure on a high-stepping white mount.

Gorgeously written, very in-character Western AU.

If you enjoy something, please comment and let the author know!

What have you enjoyed so far this Yuletide?

The collection is full of wonderful things. Note that "Undisclosed Fandom" is a catch-all tag for fandoms that are appearing for the first time this Yuletide and have not yet been given their own categories. It's definitely worth a browse there.

Here are the stories I've loved so far:

Don't need to know canon:

Le città invisibili | Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino.

Masked Cities. Interactive text game.

You take a trip to the city of Agilulfa.

This intricate, clever, atmospheric text game is set in a city where everyone goes masked in public. (The masks are carnival-style masks, not medical masks.) I'm not even into games, and I played it through twice and plan to play it again.

Shadows of the Apt - Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Dreaming in Silver and Void.

She was found in the Lowlands, but she was from so much further away.

My wonderful gift! All you need to know is that kinden are people who have bug-related abilities and characteristics, so Wasps can fly and shoot electric shock "stings" from their hands, and so forth.

This story is a gorgeous, moving, sense-of-wonder take on the meeting of two people from extremely different worlds, who nonetheless have a meeting of minds. It's technically fantasy but it reads more like original science fiction. And if you like it, you will probably like the books.

"Top 5 Rat Movies I Made Up" - JP Brammer: Legends of the Great Below

Devotion and Adoration: a Queen/Knight Ship Manifesto

A manifesto for the Fiona Highrafter/Queen Elisaveta pairing from JP Brammer's Great Below.

A quintessential "only in Yuletide" story, this is a ship manifesto for two rats in a non-existent canon from an article about non-existent rat movies. It's charming and funny and now I ship them too.

Canon knowledge preferable but not necessary:

The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison.

from laden boughs, from hands. 3100 words.

A day in the life of the Untheileneise kitchens.

Exactly what it says on the tin: a day in the life in a fantasy world, cleverly structured and sweet in more ways than one.

Psmith - P. G. Wodehouse.

isle of joy. 3000 words.

Finding out that Psmith almost died in his New York adventure wakes Mike up to his real feelings.

A delightful Psmith/Mike story with a great Wodehousian voice and turns of phrase, like It was a thoroughly foreign state of being for Mike, who usually slept like a well-polished cricket bat.

St. Clare's - Enid Blyton.

Sixth Form at St. Clare's. 7088 words.

It's everyone's final year at St. Clare's, and two (foreign and somewhat mysterious) new girls have joined the form. Mysteries will be unraveled and secrets revealed -- hopefully in time for a midnight feast.

A wonderful treat for me! The story itself is set just before WWII, but includes excerpts from a memoir written by Anne-Marie after the war. The story is a more serious/realistic version of canon, with two immigrant girls joining the school, that still has all the delightful and funny canon elements like pranks, midnight feasts, etc. The excerpts are in a completely different style, a pitch-perfect postwar British memoir, and are also great. It works really well as a whole and has marvelous character bits - I particularly loved what Claudine does in the war.

Content note: Nobody meets a bad fate, but it is a pre-war/post-war story. There is a note mentioning that a character lived a long life and something happened after her death.

Need to know canon:

Amadeus - Movie.

What started as an attempt to welcome young Mozart to Vienna became something much, much more.

V'amo di core teneramente (I love you from the heart tenderly). 1985 words.

This story about a threesome between Mozart, Constanze, and Salieri is written in a pitch-perfect Salieri monologue, literate and sly and very hot despite not being at all explicit. It beautifully captures his sensuality and dubious reliability.

The Princess Bride - William Goldman. 3244 words.

vehigadta (and you shall tell)

Assorted items from the writings and correspondences of S. Morgenstern, and how I came to find them.

A very funny, very meta, very Jewish story about the Yuletide writer falling into a rabbit hole of S. Morgenstern research.

Content note: The story takes place in the present day, and mentions travel difficulties caused by the pandemic. That's it for pandemic references, and nobody gets covid.

If you enjoy something, please comment and let the author know!

What have you enjoyed so far this Yuletide?

Don't Need to Know Canon

17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future - Jon Bois. Afterlife.

I actually don't know anything about this canon other than that it's set in a future where everyone is immortal. The story is all original characters in that setting, following a group of people saved by the organ donation of a young man who died right before everyone became immortal. It's a lovely look at mortality and immortality, full of hope and human feeling and cats.

Katmai National Park Bear Cams. A Day at the River

Interactive fiction in which you get to spend a day as a bear, with little bear videos of you-the-bear playing and catching salmon and so forth. Very very soothing.

The Sea Witch - Adrien Amilhat. Invocation to the Weaver of Waters

Make webs of water, O wave woman
Knot nets of nacre that gnaw like knives

Absolutely gorgeous 100-word alliterative poem based on a painting which is shown at the top of the link.

Just Osmosis Knowledge Might Be Okay?

His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman. Of No Mean Endeavour, and Not a Little Altered

Mary Malone, scientist and former nun, gets to know her daemon, remembers her time in the world of the mulefa, and carries on with life on Earth; Atal, the being she loved in the world of the mulefa, remembers her time with Mary Malone and carries on with life on her own world.

This story is SO GOOD. It's excellent HDM post-series fanfic catching up with the characters that's also very solid anthropological science fiction about two intelligent beings who fall in love and make it work, and then have to continue to make their lives work after they're separated. It's very humane and touching, with a terrific structure.

I think you could read this just based on a vague knowledge of who the characters are and what happens in the books; I actually dipped into a wiki before reading it because I didn't recall the last book very well. It has some explicit xeno sex that's essential to the plot and themes, and some discussion of religion. (Mary is an atheist but isn't preachy about it).

Should Know Canon

Earth's Children - Jean Auel. The Woods of Change.

DURC AND AYLA REUNION.

Finisterre: The Nighthorses - C. J. Cherryh. Raindrops on Roses.

A lovely look at Jennie and Rain, doing their job in the ambient.

Hell House - Richard Matheson. Until we Meet Again.

Undoing the happy ending. HEED THE TAGS. Extremely well-written and horrifying in all sorts of ways.

Lord Peter Wimsey. Village Perspective. A charming drabble featuring Miss Climpson.

The Princess Bride. Fit as a Fiddle and Ready for Love. A delightful Valerie/Miracle Max drabble.

The Shawshank Redemption. Out on the Water. A post-movie drabble, peaceful and lovely.

The Stand - Stephen King. Christening.

Flagg/Lloyd, right after Flagg takes him from his cell. HEED THE TAGS. Extremely well-written, with a great King voice and everyone very much in-character.

Need to Know Canon

4.66920[...]. Arcadia - Tom Stoppard. An alternate ending in script format, full of sparkling wordplay, absurdity, profundity, mathematics, and love.

A Long Way from the Cromwell Road. Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfeild. Petrova visits Pauline in Hollywood after the war ends. This story has beautiful imagery and a lot of heart, and brings the characters up to the postwar era in a way that's realistic without being depressing.

The Desert Dreams of a River. The Darkangel - Meredith Ann Pierce. Gorgeous post-series series story that fits with canon while cleverly coming up with ways to undo the more depressing aspects of the actual ending. It has the lush fairy tale atmosphere and style down to a T.

a burning coal of comfort. The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison. When Maia is kidnapped by a faction hoping to halt the construction of Wisdom Bridge, Beshelar, gravely injured, is by his side. It might just be their undoing. A lovely touching story, full of feeling, about friendship, duty, honor, and love.

What's Real. The Wind in the Door - Madeleine L'Engle. Proginoskes has been lost to Meg. She has to find him. A moving look at love and loss, and what is never lost.

What have you enjoyed this Yuletide?

I read very much on whim, so if I recced one story from a fandom which has two or three or six stories in it, it doesn't mean I didn't like the others, but rather that I haven't read them yet and will come back to them later.

So far, I have been delighted with the following stories:

Don't Need to Know Canon

"The Author of the Acacia Seeds," by Ursula K. Le Guin, is a wonderful story which can be read online. It's a set of academic journal articles on art and literature by animals. Mother Bonesplitter's Children is a Yuletide story about a groundbreaking presentation on Written Hyena. It starts out a bit dense, but gets more conversational quickly and ends up genuinely mind-blowing. It's a wonderful work of original fantasy.

Rest Stop. This story, a gift for me, is actually in Happy Belated Treatmas, which opened on the same day as Yuletide. It's F/F original fiction, an utterly delightful short story about an adrenaline junkie hyperspace test pilot and her beloved AI hyperspace ship. I can't tell you how much I appreciated someone picking up that weird prompt of mine and writing exactly what I wanted but couldn't write myself. The story is archive-locked, so you need to be a member of AO3 to read it.

Knowing canon is nice but not necessary

Dream Shadow. The Sandman - Neil Gaiman. Another gift for me, this delightful story combines dreamlike imagery, wish-fulfillment, and fantasy in the best possible ways. Zillah escaped an abusive marriage but is still emotionally struggling; in the realm of dreams, she has another identity with a mission. I think all you need to know to read this is that Morpheus is the lord and embodiment of dreams: literal dreams, daydreams, and imagination.

Probably Should Know Canon, but Who Knows, You Might Enjoy Anyway.

The Gift of the Healers. Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean Auel. If what you really loved was the first book's characters, cultural worldbuilding, and herb lore, HOO BOY is this story for you. The tone and content is dead-on for the book, it features all my favorite characters, it's full of cool worldbuilding, and the premise is a really clever and unexpected riff on one of my favorite elements in the book. Note: contains some graphic descriptions of injuries and Neanderthal surgery.

Wiseguy

I recently got addicted to this hugely enjoyable 80s show about Vinnie Terranova, an undercover cop with a tendency to get emotionally compromised, and his handlers with whom he has a sometimes prickly but very intense emotional bond, "Lifeguard" (Dan), who is played by an actor who is a real life double amputee, and Frank McPike, played by Jonathan Banks (Mike Ermentrout on Breaking Bad. That's really all you need to know to read these stories, and if you enjoy them, you would probably enjoy the show because the show is just like that. Except for the werewolves in the story that has werewolves.

Champagne Crazy. My wonderful, wonderful gift! Mel drags Vinnie out of the hospital for a fun day of errands, bizarre rants, and increasingly more difficult struggles to not pass out. I think all you need to know is Vinnie got shot while undercover with a manic criminal billionaire played by Kevin Spacey; if you do know the show, wow is the dialogue dead-on. This story is the most delicious blend of dark comedy and hurt-comfort.

Nobody Ever Made You a Monster. This one requires even less canon knowledge, as it's a case that didn't happen in canon. It's also got dead-on and often very funny dialogue, excellent hurt-comfort and angst, and WEREWOLVES.

Paz. So, after season three the network relaunched the show with a new lead. This is an alternate season four with the original characters, angsty and emotional and satisfying.

These Won't Make Sense Unless You Know Canon

convalescent. Benjamin January - Barbara Hambly. It was going on three in the morning when Benjamin January, heart in his throat, answered the banging on the jalousies at the front of his house on the Rue Esplanade to find a constable of the New Orleans City Guards he vaguely recognized—Boechter, he thought—as one of Shaw's men barely supporting said near-six-and-a-half feet of dripping wet, bleeding, unconscious Kaintuck scarecrow. This is everything you've ever wanted out of "Shaw is forced to recover at Ben and Rose's house," and really funny too.

When is a Train Not a Train? Dark Tower - Stephen King. Really cool, eerie, clever story about Blaine the Mono, interweaving all sorts of canon elements in startling and illuminating ways.

A Tomorrow at the End of the World. The Long Walk - Stephen King. A vivid, beautiful, heartbreaking look at Garraty and McVries and a moment of peace within the storm.

If you enjoyed these stories or other, please comment and let the author know!

I have barely even begun to read the archive, so there's much more that I have bookmarked but unread. A few favorites so far:

Battle Snails and Penis Trees - Medieval Manuscript Illustrations

I haven't read all of these yet but all the ones I have read have been utterly delightful.

The Marvels of Whitby. A pair of monks write each other about the marvels they have seen. Snails and hares cannot do battle like knights. They are too small and know nothing of metallurgy.

A Demand for Butter. Goodly reader, fair patroness in control of her own purse strings, consider then the question of love. Of battles to impress a lady fair.

Of snails.

rosy as a flushed red apple skin (never been as sweet). This is a preview only. To read the rest of this article, you can purchase it for $39.99. Or login via your institution.

Other related articles:

On Symbols, Signs and What You Can Hold in Your Hand: The Semiotics and Realities of the Penis Tree by Heloise Peters.

Other fandoms

This Blank Card. Consider Phlebas. A very moving and well-written look at Perostock Balveda after the book, and also a good look at the Culture at that point in time.

Written In Another Key. Dragonriders of Pern. An adult Menolly, just made Harper, solves a sort of locked-room mystery with Robinton's assistance. A very nicely constructed and sweet look at Menolly growing into her new role, with a cameo by Audiva.

We'll Have to Muddle Through Somehow. Iron Fist. Danny invites Ward over for Christmas. The Rand-Wing-Meachum holiday traditions may need a little fine-tuning. Sweet, funny, and a bit heartbreaking.

Old-Fashioned. The Punisher TV. Frank/Karen. Sweet but with appropriately rough edges, two wounded people cautiously feeling their way toward each other.

deep red bells. The Stand - Stephen King. A really imaginative/unusual, beautifully written canon divergence AU about Nadine Cross and Randall Flagg.

Seven Views of the Tay Bridge Disaster.
The Tay Bridge Disaster - William McGonagall. The original poem is famously bad - this poem on the same subject is very good, and not a joke.

The Yuletide Archive this year is full of wonderful stories, complete with the yearly array of quirky, Yuletide-only fandoms. This year it's The Voynich Manuscript and Medieval Manuscript Illustrations such as knights fighting snails, penis trees, and barnacle geese.

Other fandoms that may be of interest include Crazy Rich Asians, C. J. Cherryh's Morgaine Chronicles, Stephen King's The Stand and The Long Walk, Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern, Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home, Earthsea, and The Left Hand of Darkness, and William McGonnigall's The Tay Bridge Disaster.

I got two absolutely fantastic stories. It was a great Yuletide for me.

Unfit to Be Strangers. The Leftovers. They're all alone together. A haunting and very moving story about grief and new connections in a post-apocalyptic world. It's spoilery for an aspect of the show which I would highly recommend not being spoiled for, so if you haven't seen it and are considering watching it, don't read this. But if you're definitely not going to see the show, this story stands on its own as it's about original characters.

Lifeline. The Punisher TV. A flashbang leaves Frank temporarily blind and deaf while attempting to rescue hostages, including David. If you like the show, you have got to read this story. It's 10K of exciting action and Frank & David interaction, and is very clever and impressive in that it's basically Die Hard only he actually is blind and deaf for most of the story.

I have four stories total between the main collection and Yuletide Madness, if you want to try to find them.