nor so wide as a church door

Trying to get back in the habit of posting something other than exchange letters here, and ... exchange round-up posts constitute a decent baby step, right? /o\ :D

SO. For Yuletide this year, I received the loveliest Nuala gift from none other than alamorn:

The Touch of a Vanish'd Hand (1976 words)
Fandom: Hellboy (Movies 2004-2008)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Nuada/Nuala (Hellboy)
Characters: Nuala (Hellboy), Nuada (Hellboy)
Additional Tags: Nuala-centric, Missing Scene
Summary: Nuala knew how it would end before it began.

Wonderful, wonderful Nuala POV, all the complicated difficult entanglement (plus bonus incestuous vibes) I could have hoped for in her relationship with Nuada, and the pitch-perfect bittersweet inevitability of it ending the only way it can. ♥ SO SO GOOD, and I'm so glad to have gotten it!

As for me, I was ASTOUNDINGLY lucky yet again, and matched melmillo on a fantastically inspiring request for A Yank at Oxford! And by "fantastically inspiring", I mean "I couldn't pick which prompt to write", so I couldn't help but write ( both a main gift and a treat for it, plus treats in Gunmen (1994), Jeremiah, and Streets of Fire (1984). )

I left my usual hasty flurry of comments before author reveals, on my "first pass" list of fics, but there's still plenty of things I haven't read yet! And there's no better way to spend the first couple weeks of a new year than going through the Yuletide collection properly. ♥

(Also, while I've obviously YET AGAIN flubbed my chance to actually ... update ... Imagine the Ocean at any point during the entire year /o\ I have both finished going through all my previous notes to get myself back up to speed, reworked some outlines in a desperately necessary fashion, drafted a bunch of the next chapter—!!!—AND had a brain-wave during editing that's going to make the conclusion of said chapter MUCH better. Which is why it's not finished, I now have to rewrite a fair chunk of it, but I'm freshly excited about it and that's such a good feeling, I can't even. ;-; \o/!)

SO YEAH. BRING IT ON, 2020. *rolls up sleeves*

So I thought I was going to have a totally spectacular Yuletide because FOUR GIFTS, WOO ... and then I got five. :D! For reasons that do not need exploring at this juncture, it means a lot to me this year in particular to have been the recipient of such amazing generosity, and I'm so grateful. ♥

Anyway: FICS. In alphabetical order by fandom, because seriously, embarrassment of riches:

Wide as the Sky, Big as the Sea (9019 words)
Fandom: The Big Country (1958)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Steve Leech/James McKay
Characters: Steve Leech, James McKay, Patricia Terrill
Additional Tags: Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Canon, Flashbacks, Dreams, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, Repression, American Civil War, Yuletide Treat
Summary: After the shootout at Blanco Canyon, Jim takes Steve to Big Muddy to heal up. Yet as Steve's fever rises, he drifts back over his life, and recalls exactly why he doesn't like Jim McKay.

Aka: the tremendous and glorious Big Country treat I was not at all expecting! Wonderful, wonderful post-canon look at Steve's recovery, interwoven with flashbacks/dreams; lovely exploration of his character and how he might have come to be who he is, with bonus scorching hot dream sex. :D

too good to be true (3285 words)
Fandom: Dark Matter (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Six | Griffin Jones/Three | Marcus Boone
Characters: Three | Marcus Boone, Six | Griffin Jones
Additional Tags: Season/Series 03, Hallucinations, Extra Treat
Summary: Three grins. "I never regret anything, man." It's the first thing he's said today that sounds like him.

The show's UTTERLY TRAGIC cancellation made it all the more awesome to receive this delightful Three/Six story, where that set of simulations Six gets run through in S3 takes a bit of a turn on him. :D Great banter, great feelings, great kissing!

Set Alight (3114 words)
Fandom: The Huntsman (Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Ravenna/Snow White (The Huntsman)
Characters: Ravenna (The Huntsman), Snow White (The Huntsman)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Resurrection
Summary: A beast is abroad in Snow White's kingdom, heralding worse to come.

Unsettling and creepy and antagonistic in all the right ways for a Huntsman fic from Ravenna's POV! Snow White's reign is troubled, thanks to a soulbond linking her to Ravenna—but she's not the only one affected by it. Striking fairytale imagery and wonderfully terrible Ravenna. :D

and coming events cast their shadows before (1635 words)
Fandom: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Arthur & The Mage
Characters: The Mage | Guinevere, Merlin (King Arthur: Legend of the Sword), Arthur (King Arthur: Legend of the Sword)
Additional Tags: Angst, Inheritance, magic deals, Bittersweet Ending, Yuletide Treat
Summary: Merlin runs out of time, so Mage pays the price for more.

Such a clever premise, and really well-executed! Great characterization for both Arthur and the mage, and "bittersweet" is absolutely the correct word for the ending, made my heart pang but was so right.

gave fins to fish, and speckled wings to birds (11600 words)
Fandom: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: The Mage | Guinevere, Arthur (King Arthur: Legend of the Sword), Princess Catia
Additional Tags: Fix-It, Post-Canon, gratuitous making stuff up
Summary: Camelot stifled the mage like smoke.

The mage-brings-Catia-back-from-the-dead story that EVERYONE needs, in my humble opinion! Perfectly paced, A+ characterization of everyone, and a fix-it on so many different levels with a conclusion that both delighted me and made SO MUCH SENSE. Seriously excellent!

I'm hoping to at least try to take a stab at the rest of the archive this weekend, so we'll see how far I get. :D In the meantime, happy Yuletide to everybody, and happy almost-not-2017 anymore more generally! ♥

I was so busy last weekend that a story reveals post, let alone a pre-reveals gift-shaking squee post, totally slipped my mind! I went out as a pinch hit not once but twice, and am thus twice as grateful to whichever amazing pinch-hitter managed to write me my lovely, lovely gift:

Everything Comes Back to You (6008 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jyn Erso/Leia Organa, Jyn Erso & Leia Organa
Characters: Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Nanta, Poe Dameron
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fix-It, POV Alternating, POV Leia Organa, POV Jyn Erso, First Meetings, Time Skips, Reunions, Friendship/Love, Happy Ending, Minor Character Death
Summary: From the Battle of Scarif to Han's death, Jyn and Leia are never far apart.

Also known as "everything I couldn't possibly have hoped for when I decided to request Jyn/Leia and Jyn & Leia". :D Starts with AUing away the ending of Rogue One (YAY WOO :D) to allow Jyn and Leia to sort-of meet, and then progresses through missing scenes all the way up to, as the tags indicate, TFA-era. I can't even describe how satisfying I found the idea of Jyn and Leia supporting each other through everything; obviously there's a LOT of bittersweetness, given canon, but it was so lovely and sweet and, like, profoundly soothing to me to think of the two of them being able to be friends and a little bit in love and there for each other. ♥ SO YES. Wonderful gift, fun exchange, A++ would temporarily punt aside other responsibilities to participate again. :D

I have by no means made it through the collection; I've been reading here and there when I have time and am hoping to actually sit down and leave some comments tonight and tomorrow. BUT there's a great spread of fandoms (Babylon 5! Pride & Prejudice! Eureka! Miss Fisher! Wynonna Earp!) and also some awesome original works (tennis players in love! A trickster god and the god of death!), and I'm so delighted. :D

November was all NANO NANO NANO, and now we've flopped into December and I've swapped to YULETIDE YULETIDE YULETIDE. :D :D :D

I'm THISCLOSE to completing my totally amazing assignment, woooooo, which will hopefully make me feel less guilty about somehow already having TWO GIFTS??? One Madness, one main collection, and tentative present-shaking indicates I am YET AGAIN going to have an amazing Yuletide.

I CAN ONLY HOPE MY RECIP WILL FEEL THE SAME WAY /o\

But as my brain's being eaten by bears, I haven't had much left for actual canon consumption lately. I've been hugely enjoying Lucifer and Elementary; tentatively still watching Blindspot, though it's starting to feel a little bit like the wheels are coming off; and mostly just mocking Timeless, which is trying a lot of things but IMO isn't really succeeding at them. (I wouldn't really care how bad the episode plots were if I loved the characters, but that show is seriously not managing to convince me that its main characters are a team or even friends. I WANT TO BELIEVE. THIS IS NOT A HARD SELL. And yet.)

However! I did end up going to see Moana, twice, and ( LOVED IT. (Spoilers, ofc.) )

My media experiences are piling up again, and if I don't post about them, I'd never post about anything! SO.

I realized that despite having had a long post-mortem with idriya IRL, I never actually said anything about ( the end of Sleepy Hollow's second season. Spoilers and ambivalence below the cut, if anyone still cares. )

All caught up on Forever, and ( now that it's probably canceled, why not post about it? )

I'm much less at peace with the probable cancellation of ( Battle Creek. )

I think that's just about everything we're watching on TV right now (except The Flash, but I never have much to say about The Flash. Or Elementary, but for the opposite reason). Which means I can move on to the reason I was actually prompted to make this post: ( we went to see Mad Max yesterday evening. Spoilers, obvs. )

And now I should actually do some work! (Oh, and I suppose I should say: outlines for Book Three of ItO now perhaps three-quarters wrangled, and I'm about 5k into Chapter 1. God knows how long it'll be, but I'm working on it.)

Happy 2015, to everybody celebrating a new year today! I don't know that I even can characterize my 2014 meaningfully, but it held multiple milestones for me personally, good and bad, and I hope I never forget to acknowledge and remember and recognize them—I hope I learned enough from them to make 2015 awesome.

My year in review in fannish terms mostly consists of KATARA KORRA KATARA KORRA KATARA KORRA YULETIDE. \o? Finishing LttE (AT LAST) was a tremendous feeling; the ending of Korra was everything I could reasonably have hoped for. And of course Yuletide reveals were last night!

I wrote four stories this year, in all. My assignment was not in any way what I was expecting to write:

one giant leap (3862 words) by Damkianna
Fandom: The Dig (Video Game)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Maggie Robbins/Boston Low
Characters: Maggie Robbins, Ludger Brink, Boston Low
Additional Tags: Post-Canon
Summary: Two of the Cocytans come with them back to Earth. Post-game tag: after the adventure, they still have to get home. (Gen, with hints of Maggie/Boston.)

I didn't actually offer The Dig this year, but Three_Headed_Monkey asked for it; it was listed ahead of the fandom we actually matched on in my assignment email, and I saw it and HAD TO. There was zero Dig fic on the AO3 until I posted this (and as of this writing, there's two and Three_Headed_Monkey wrote the other), which makes it a Yuletide fandom if ever there was one. It was hilarious and strange and fascinating to watch an LP of The Dig after all this time (it came out in like 1995, that's TWENTY YEARS AGO)—the request was very open-ended but an idea came to me pretty quickly, and the actual writing went very well, so this was a real delight of an assignment overall. \o/ YAY YULETIDE.

( And three treats under the cut, in Babylon 5: Legend of the Rangers, Constantine (2005), and H2O: Just Add Water. )

And! damask_and_dark was the author of the transcendent and beautiful the moon a black hole in the blaze of night, which was my absolutely incredible main gift and everything I could not have known to hope for when I prompted for armored Snow White at the head of an army, breaking Ravenna out of her box. Gloriously in-character and yet so very kind to both Ravenna and Snow White, with the happy ending the movie couldn't have given Ravenna. ♥

As if that weren't enough to make my Yuletide all by itself, I also received the delightful post-B13:U Blood on the Dance Floor from gamerfic, who took my admittedly off-the-wall request for Lola/Tao (they don't even meet in canon!) and went MARVELOUS places with it! HOW AM I SO LUCKY. \o/

UGH SO AMAZING. :D


Home (1465 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 4/4
Fandom: Banlieue 13 (Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Leïto/Damien Tomaso
Characters: Lola (Banlieue 13), Leïto (Banlieue 13), Damien Tomaso
Additional Tags: Post-Movie(s), Addiction, Friendship, Family
Summary: Lola has never been a victim, she has always been a survivor.

My main gift, and I ADORE it - somehow it manages to span the space between the movies, B13:U, and then after B13:U in 1400 words, and it is LOLA and LEÏTO and DAMIEN and HELP I LOVE THEM ALL SO MUCH. Lola and Leïto struggle with Lola's addiction and get a little help from Damien, and then B13:U happens. And the fourth chapter is only three sentences long but it's ONE OF THE BEST THINGS I'VE EVER SEEN. ♥ Anon, whoever you are, this is everything I asked for and you should feel AMAZING.


One Spark (430 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Banlieue 13 (Movies)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Lola (Banlieue 13), Leïto (Banlieue 13)
Summary: Lola on the roof.

One of the two marvelous treats that people chose to write for me even though they didn't have to because Yuletide is just beautiful that way. :D Short but totally perfect, a fantastic achy look at Lola on that roof with a gas can and a match. LOLA. HEARTS IN MY EYES.


Mirrored (753 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Snow White (Snow White and the Huntsman), Ravenna (Snow White and the Huntsman)
Additional Tags: Introspection
Summary: Snow White used to imagine conversions she might have with the Queen.

I love the structure of this one, how the narrative is essentially mirrored and the ways in which Snow White's and Ravenna's thoughts mirror and don't mirror each other; I lovelovelove Snow White's, how a child's hope turns into resentment and then - because Snow White - into curiosity and even the desire to understand, and I love Ravenna's detachedness, strength and self-deception at the same time. UGH SO AWESOME.


In conclusion: SO STORY. MUCH HAPPY. VERY YULETIDE.

Today has been a whirlwind of awesome and I've spent half of it asleep - I haven't had a chance to delve properly into the Yuletide archive, but I have had the chance to read my gift:


Empress of Sand and Water (24166 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dune Series - Frank Herbert
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Paul Atreides/Chani/Irulan Corrino
Characters: Irulan Corrino, Paul Atreides, Chani
Summary: After the Harkonnen attack on the Atreides, Irulan is sent to Arrakis to represent the emperor's interests. She hears about this mysterious figure, this Fremen messiah, this Mahdi - and she wonders if this might be the turning point of everything. Canon-divergent AU of Dune.


IT IS THE MOST AMAZING FIC IN THE WORLD AND I LOVE IT. For the first Yuletide gift I will ever receive, this is the most tremendous and beautiful and fantastic story in the world; it is exactly what I wanted and someone wrote it for me and it's just. I CAN'T. ♥ If you are at all a Dune fan I urge you to give it a look (a long look, IT IS 24K WORDS), it is Irulan and Chani and Paul and things are the same but different and Chani is the Mahdi and it's PERFECT.

Yay birthday yay! Thank you again to ilthit, and idriya gave me a present that is a present to the whole internets! I present: A:tLA icons liek whoa! HEARTS FOREVER. (Of course I immediately uploaded them all. :D)

And the TV is fixed! \o/ So I caught The Closer and Rizzoli & Isles, about which I have no deep thoughts except UGH I LOVE CAPTAIN RAYDOR SO MUCH and R&I made me cry a little even though the pacing was kind of weird for me. (I think I'm a little too used to L&O.) My dad got me five Errol Flynn movies (five!), and my mother got me a new skirt, and idriya got me AWESOME and ugh. What a fabulous birthday! My heart.

Now I'm going to go eat some more cake. :D

I forget to mention that UVM's adorable awesomeness extends to its official ResLife surveys. There was one sent around just the other week that had, as options to choose when selecting a gender identification (verbatim): "male", "female", "transsexual (male to female)", "transsexual (female to male)", "genderqueer", and "self-identify as:", with a blank to fill in. The instructions? "Check all that apply." ♥.

Also, for my own future reference when attempting to explain asexuality: my personal experience can't be described much better than this.