Yuletide recs, Part I

[raspberryhunter]

So, a first crack at Yuletide recs! Mostly shorter ones, because I haven't had time to read longer pieces yet. Four from Madness, the rest from the main archive. I'm folding my (five!!) gifts in because I would absolutely rec all of them even if they weren't my gifts! (My gift-squee post is here.) Also, a little heavier on the poetry recs. (I promised elsewhere to read all the poetry-based fics in the archive, and really I thought all of them were good, so even if I don't specifically rec it here, I recommend it!)

not ours to command (746 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1


Fandom: Blue Castle - L. M. Montgomery
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Barney Snaith/Valancy Stirling
Additional Tags: Domestic Fluff
Summary: Valancy was reading when he came in, curled in the shape of a comma next to the fireplace with the book tucked close to the curve of her body.

Pitch-perfect Barney character/voice, thinking about Valancy -- love and bitterness and healing (and John Foster!) all tangled up in the same person.

This Cross Of Ground (100 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Church Going - Philip Larkin
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat, Drabble, Far Future, Buildings
Summary: What were they?

This drabble encapsulates what I love about the poem: what remains when belief is gone? Something of what was, some last remnant, but divorced from meaning, or taking on new meanings.

Thistles and Roses (1838 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: A Few Figs From Thistles - Edna St. Vincent Millay, MILLAY Edna St. Vincent - Works
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: The Singing-Woman From The Wood's Edge, To The Not Impossible Him, The Unexplorer, Sonnet III (A Few Figs From Thistles)
Additional Tags: Poetry, Yuletide, Yuletide 2014, Travel, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Walls Between the Worlds, Home, Unlikely Couples, Misses Clause Challenge
Summary: What should any of them be, but just what they are?

A lyrical, lovely take on the Edna St. Vincent Millay poems, and on love. (I'm almost certain I know who wrote this one, though I don't know the author personally.)

Coffee Break (1074 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Gunnerkrigg Court
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Robot/Shadow (Gunnerkrigg Court)
Characters: Robot (Gunnerkrigg Court), Shadow (Gunnerkrigg Court), Katerina Donlan, Bobby (Gunnerkrigg Court)
Additional Tags: not a coffeeshop AU, Friendship/Love, First Job, I Don't Even Know, Robots
Summary: Being a barista is very important. Shadow's been practicing.

I... had no idea that what I needed out of life was a Not a Coffeeshop AU of Gunnerkrigg Court. I don't actually usually find Robot or Shadow particularly compelling characters! But this was completely adorable, and everyone is so in-character!

The Old Ghost of Peaceful Repose (7916 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Instrumentality of Mankind - Cordwainer Smith
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Original Character(s), Science Fiction, Worldbuilding, Ghosts, Underperson, Robots, Bad Poetry, good poetry
Summary: ...after many adventures, they came at last to Nerguy, where they were fated to meet a dog-youth, sundry demons, and a ghost. Even for those who could survive space-three, there was real peril to be found here for the unknowing and the unwitting. If not for the dog-youth's warning... From Mad Harry's Songs: A Study in the Poetry of Transcendental Adventure

AN INSTRUMENTALITY OF MANKIND ORIGINAL STORY. If you know about Cordwainer Smith's stories, that should be enough to get you to read it. If you don't, well: you don't need to know canon to read this story and be introduced to the zany humor and worldbuilding and compassion and craziness and totally random poetry that canon and this fic share. (And allusions! Possibly to another yuletide request I had... see below...)

The Moonlit Door (6120 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Listeners - Walter de la Mare
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Don't Have to Know Canon, Fairy Tale Elements, Fair Folk, Siblings, Magic
Summary: How a knight came to the house of the Shadow Folk and bargained to save his father’s life, and what then became of him.

Someone took Walter de la Mare's "The Listeners" and made it into a fairy tale, complete with lovely sibling relationship (YAY) and drawing from a wide variety of fairytale/myth/etc. sources. It is totally awesome! (Also, I suspect I know who wrote this one :) )

The Marriage of Anna (1360 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Norse Religion & Lore, Frozen (2013)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Þórr | Thor, Elsa (Frozen), Anna (Frozen), Njörðr | Njord
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Sister-Sister Relationship, treat
Summary: A re-telling of the story of Skaði.

Full disclosure: I betaed this one (although I didn't contribute much). If Frozen were a Norse myth... Great callbacks to the Norse epics.

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This Yuletide, AO3 went from having zero fics for the medieval Welsh poem "Preiddeu Annwn" (The Spoils of Annwn, one of my favorite poems in the world) to three. I am absolutely thrilled about this. And they are all completely different, and all completely brilliant, and I love them all very much.

And Even the Graves are Lost (Interactive Fic) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Preiddeu Annwn | The Spoils of Annwn (Poem), Arthurian Mythology
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Knights (Arthurian), Petroc (Arthurian), Heilyn (Arthurian), Sandde (Arthurian), Glifiau (Arthurian), Cynwyl (Arthurian), Morfran (Arthurian), Manawydan, Galeshin (Arthurian), Garanwyn (Arthurian), Arthur Pendragon
Additional Tags: Interactive Fiction, Yuletide Treat

Interactive fiction expanding on the events of Preiddeu Annwn, a Welsh Arthurian poem, and it is just perfect. It is pitch-perfect in medieval-Welsh voice, elegiac tone, story, everything. If you have any interest in Arthurian literature or medieval Welsh literature or in thinking about how audiences and tellers of stories interact (which is where the IF comes in), go read this. Right now.

Bardd (1473 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Preiddeu Annwn | The Spoils of Annwn (Poem)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Summary: Until Judgement shall last our bardic invocation.

This story explains what is going on in Preiddeu Annwn. I include the reference because, although it's a neat Arthurian story even if you haven't read the poem, it is especially brilliant if you have. (I think I might know the person who wrote this one too? If so -- thank you so much!!)

Three fillings of Prydwen (1488 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Preiddeu Annwn | The Spoils of Annwn (Poem), Y Gododdin
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Characters: Arthur (Arthurian)
Additional Tags: Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Misses Clause Challenge
Summary: She is looking past me, into the flickering fire, and in her eyes I see the island, and the slick black stone at its center, fanged with a spiral of towers, and the oarsmen staggering ashore to be slaughtered. --- A story about a story: retelling the Preiddeu Annwn before another battle.

A crossover of Preiddeu Annwn with Y Gododdin! and female-centric, with the kind of critical deconstruction of both events that you only get from looking at it from that perspective. And even with understated F/F!

Glimpses (437 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: STÅLENHAG Simon - Works
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Young man on flooded clockwork, Rymlingen Mecha, Boy in green (Fjarrhandske), The decoy
Additional Tags: yumadrin
Summary: Four drabbles.

I was not familiar with the work of the artist Simon Stalenhag before it was requested for Yuletide this year, but when I looked it up, I really wanted someone to write for it. And there are several stories for the pictures now, and they are all neat! I'm reccing this one especially because I think it's a great introduction to the various pictures (and it links to them in the text). Then go back and read the other stories in the fandom :)

Mean Grinch and Linnet Bird (How the Worst PumpkinSpice Scones Stole Christmas) (1201 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sweeney Todd - Sondheim/Wheeler
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Nellie Lovett/Sweeney Todd, Tobias Ragg/Johanna Barker
Characters: Tobias Ragg, Sweeney Todd, Nellie Lovett, Johanna Barker
Additional Tags: coffee shop AU
Summary: Tobias recounts his brief tenure at the Charred Butts coffee shop

Ahahaha. I don't know what it is about the coffee shops this year, but this one is fantastically funny in the way it combines canon lines with the coffee shop premise.