Christmas Morn

Oh my God, I'm so in love with my yuletide story, guys. It's Duet, The Secret Garden musicalverse, and it has Mary and Neville--and it's them, Mary and Neville from the musical picked up and placed into my fic, every thought and behavior perfect--learning not to hate each other with every single step of the process spelled out in the most luscious prose. It nicely captures the plunge into despair so the ascent out of it will be that much more powerful, and the tears were definitely freely flowing as I read the story, because in the end it demonstrates the sort of powerful, unresistable (but not saccharine or over-the-top) optimism and hope that behooves a fic written for this fandom, based on this musical and the book it is based upon.

(If you haven't seen the musical but are familiar with the book and would like to read the fic, all you need to know is that Neville is Archie's brother who is Colin's doctor and was also in love with Archie's wife Lily. He plays a much larger role in the musical than Dr. Craven does in the book, taking on the role of Mary's chief antagonist. If you haven't read the book, then somebody stole your childhood.)

And I also have a Yuletide Treat, The Life of a Flower, which attacks the problem almost from the other side. More explicitly Mary/Neville rather than Mary&Neville, the proses is sparse and a lot of the work is left to the imagine, but it details the progression of Mary and Neville's relationship as Mary progressively gets one year older, then skipping several years to a widowed Mary at Misselthwaite but still ending with hope.

. . .

I've uploaded a total of four fics to the Yuletide Archive this year. Guess which ones they are in the comments to this post and I'll write you a ficlet for each one you guess correctly.

*goes off to read Yuletide stories and wait until the absolute last minute to write Pretty Lights and 3_Ships fics*

ETA: Screening is now on. Comments which aren't guesses will be made visible (unless you tell me not to for some reason).

Yuletide Recs

Consider a Box, T, intersecting a Circle, O Heinlein's World-as-Myth multiverse. I don't want to spoil the crossover if you can't figure it out from the title--although I will say I positively squeed when I realized who Lib was talking to--but even before the crossover happens this is a wonderful piece, with a great use of the canonical voices and characters, the fun self-indulgence of Heinlein's later work, biting satire, and delicious meta. It helps that the author grounds it in the Cambridge, Mass. of our world or a close analogue--it's the little details that really make the story.

Cartograpy, A Little Princess. A missing scene from Ram Dass's POV which does many things--fills in backstory, provides insight into the perspective of a minor character (and a character of color) from the story, and evokes a wonderfully appropriate mood--but does everything naturally and organically.

Silver Bells and Cockle Shells, The Secret Garden. Mary/Dickon. Some beautiful imagery: Her Garden. Dickon. They are linked for Mary, just like the secret room and Colin, the nursery and Martha, long strands of pearls and her mother's fading face. Mary is associative by nature; she remembers in pairs, in groups, and Dickon cannot be separated by her dotted landscapes, cannot be removed from crocus bulbs and the smell of freshly turned earth.

If Only for Today, Ultimate Spider-Man. Jessica and Peter spend Christmas together. Remember how I've been wanting a fic like this ever since I read Ultimate Clone Saga? Nice supporting roles from May, MJ, and clone!Gwen too.

I'll take it, it'll do, Arcadia. Preserving the Thomasina/Septimus OTP is really all that's needed for me to fall in love with an Arcadia fic, but this has a premise I haven't seen before which lets the author go to new places with the characters. And now I'm envisioning a Thomasina played by Amanda Seyfried, and there's no bad there.

Warmth out of the Cold, Matilda, Matilda/Miss Honey. Brief but sweet.

just one look and now you'll be seeing double, High School Musical RPF. Zac E./Vanessa H./Ashley T. I've never seen HSM, and I only have the vaguest notion of who these people are (I gave last initials because I'm not positive what their last names are); if you gave a photo of all three of them I think I could tell you which is which, because if I'm not mistaken one is a blonde, one is a brunette, and one is a boy. But young love and a m/f/f threesome is never bad.

Sapphism is Catching, The Importance of Being Earnest. A very brief treat, but the prose is perfect for the fandom.