Yuletide!

Third post in my "but THIS should be my first post upon returning from vacation!" series: YULETIDE!

So I was lucky enough to two full-length stories AND a treat this Yuletide, for three different fandoms -- so basically I got fic for ALL of the reasonably-accessible fandoms I requested this Yuletide!

My assigned fic was The Redemption of Sam McGee, by Isis, and it totally thrilled me. I'd managed to figure out before the 25th that my fic was going to be for Cremation of Sam McGee, given that when a "mystery work" appeared under my gifts there was exactly one fic each for two of the fandoms I'd requested, and I knew that the day before, there'd been exactly one fic for one of the fandoms I'd requested. But it was still a mystery to me just what would be done with it -- and I can say unequivocally that this was not what I expected, though I really should have expected to be surprised, given how open-ended my request for this fandom was! This fic is a lovely look at Robert Service the author, and the real-life dude from whom Service borrowed the name "Sam McGee", and the ways in which the poem haunted McGee.

It's clear from the fic that the author wrote with a strong knowledge of Service, and that made me happy. Because as much as I love Cremation of Sam McGee (AND I LOVE IT!), I also just plain love Service. Yay!

AND, as a bonus, the fic ended with an extra two stanzas to act as a coda to the original poem, and those stanzas are just PERFECT.

My surprise extra yuletide fic was Wedding Day, by chiana606, for Little Women. And -- Little Women fic! About all sorts of favourite characters of mine from the sequels! Featuring an asexual Nan, who is a competent and awesome doctor! (NAN ILU) And female friendships! And Tommy/Dora! And hints at Bess/Dan (or at least Bess/Dan angst...!) Getting to wallow with joy in spending time with these characters is awesome. *happy sigh*

And then my treat was Long Distance, by AriadnesThread, for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, just a short little look at Arabella and Jonathan's relationship after the novel: HE DOESN'T FORGET HER, despite wandering off to be all magicy and academicy with Norrell! YAY! (the only tragic thing is that it is so short, because now I want to know MORE. But it is a nicely self-contained ficlet, and that is just me being selfish.)

I also wrote a fic this yuletide (obviously), and now I can reveal it! My fic was As The Sea Will Allow, written for echoinautumn, for Fairy Tales, and it's a modern day Canadian femslash adaption of the story of the selkie. (I know -- I said after my last fic that I would never again title a fic after a song. I lied.)

It was SO WONDERFUL to get to spend all this time in a fandom in which I last wrote anything probably at LEAST five years ago, a fandom that was my FIRST EVER FANNISH LOVE (Oh fairy tales how I love you!). It's nice to write for it with a bit of actual, you know, writing skill. I was pleased with how it came out! Though mildly distressed the whole time at how long the thing insisted on being. I started writing it and knew almost immediately that it would end up longer than my then-longest fic (my 5000ish word long Inception fic), and I was a bit worried it would end up being more in the range of 10,000 words. Thankfully the latter didn't happen, but I was right about it becoming my longest fic.

I found this fic really hard and really easy to write in multiple ways. ( cut for minor spoilers for the fic )

It helped that my recipient was really easygoing, and basically wanted ANYTHING about one of the four fairytales they'd requested. That might have been intimidatingly open-ended to me in another fandom, but the idea for this fic just dropped into my mind (because: FAIRY TALES! YAY!) and OFF I WENT.

In conclusion: Yuletide is awesome, both in the giving and the receiving. AS ADVERTISED!