I Will Arise and Go Now . . .

Yuletide reveal~

A Glacial Sign
Fandom: Fallen London|Echo Bazaar
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence
Relationships: Acclaimed Beauty/Scathewick (Echo Bazaar)
Characters: Madame Shoshana, The Acclaimed Beauty, Scathewick
Tags: Carnivals and Masks, Fortunes and Unfortunates, Remission of Debts, Prisoner's Honey, Fallen London Spoilers, Games of Chance and Skill
Summary: Scathewick has debts, both material and abstract.

Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua
Fandom: Regeneration - Pat Barker
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death
Characters: Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen
Tags: Canonical Character Death, Spiritualism, Talking Cures, Classicism, Orphic Longings, Porcine Fantasies, Quotation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery, Unresolved Poetical Tension
Summary: After the war's end, Siegfried Sassoon seeks fellowship with the dead.

Dice for Decimals
Fandom: The Wire
Rating: Mature
Warning: Canon-Typical Profanity, Canon-Typical Sexism, Canon-Typical Racism
Relationships: Stringer Bell/Jimmy McNulty
Additional Characters: Kima Greggs, Cedric Daniels, Rhonda Pearlman, William "Bunk" Moreland, Lester Freamon, Thomas "Herc" Hauk
Tags: Alternate Universe, Economics 101, Significant Dry-Erase Boards, Detectives and String
Summary: Dr. Russell Bell is a week unshaven, with gold-rimmed glasses and leather-reinforced elbows on his court coat. He's professorial in a broad-shouldered Indiana Jones kind of way; if it weren't for the metal detectors at the entrance to the courthouse, McNulty would swear blind he was packing.

The Rising of the Horns
Fandom: Iron - Woodkid (music video)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence
Characters: The Owl-Tamer, The Houndmaster, The Man with the Morningstar, The Man with the Book, The Horseman, The Masked Man
Tags: Apocalyptic Fairy Tales, War Stories, Keys and Locks, Transformation, Existential Yearnings, Birds Ominous and Benign
Summary: At the end of the only world they know, three warriors wait for the call to arms.

What Can't Be Helped
Fandom: Erekos - A.M. Tuomala
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: None
Characters: Achane, Shabane
Tags: Sisterhood, Solipsism, Chronic Illness, Unglamorous Diseases, Tree-Climbing Misfortunes, Kittens in Distress, Pre-Canon
Summary: When the flood season comes, Achane and Shabane try to put the world to rights in their own ways.

-- Gil

Side note: Love to the wonderful people who requested these stories--you inspired me and challenged me, and I can't thank you enough for that.

For Yuletide this year, I was so terrifically spoiled.

I got three brilliant fics about Kyllikki in the Kalevala/Finnish Mythology fandom, each one excellent in its own way:

Roots and Branches (Gen, General Audiences) -- Kyllikki teaches herself to dance again. A brief, lyrical meditation on the metaphors of maidenhood and a dancer's strength.

All the Old Knives (F/F, Teen and Up) -- Kyllikki finds a name for herself in the water. A Kyllikki/Aino fic in which the sexy parts--which, don't mistake me, are delicious--are mostly about choosing life over death and being strong enough to bear the choice. As the fic progresses, it breaks into gorgeous imitative verse that doesn't feel the least bit strained.

Reindeer women (Gen, Not Rated) -- Lemminkäinnen stole Kyllikki from her home in Pohjola — in the north, among the Saami, the reindeer herders. How does she save herself — and who helps her? A prose narrative of how Kyllikki runs away to rejoin her people, and finds herself taken in by a different people altogether. The imagery here is just gorgeous; the writer knows how to write snow and pine and stone to make the landscape a living thing. Kyllikki, too, is beautiful in her strength and her determination to make it home--and her grace when the time comes to confront her so-called husband is incredible to read.

I also received two more, brilliant fics, one for Sengoku Basara and one for The Addams Family:

Engaged In His Employment (M/M, Teen and Up) -- Toyotomi Hideyoshi has burned all affection, all attachment, all weakness from his life. He has no friends, only allies and subordinates. He has no family. He takes no women or boys to bed. He killed his wife to prove his strength.

He has not killed Hanbei. This was honestly everything I asked for; Hanbei is despicable and loyal and longs but doesn't want, and he and Hideyoshi are obsessed with strength together and unsure of what it means where it connects with service.

Small Grey Hours (F/M, Teen and Up) -- Gomez and Morticia play Santa for their children, treasuring how lucky they are, and steal a moment for themselves on Christmas morning. This is everything I love about Gomez and Morticia: they adore each other and their children, and while their precious darlings are nearly killed by Amazonian poison-arrow frogs, they roleplay exorcisms and vampirism and hurt each other deliciously.

I wrote five fics for Yuletide this year; there are no prizes for guessing, but I'd be curious to see which ones you think I wrote! Three of them are in fandoms I've never written before, so that might make the guessing harder.

-- Gil

Side note: Love to everyone who wrote for me--I can't remember the last time I've had such a wonderful holiday, and past Yuletide seasons have been excellent.

IMPORTANT YULETIDE NOTE: I'll be away from my computer on the morning of the twenty-fifth; my family will be celebrating on Christmas Eve, and then I'll spend the morning and early afternoon driving six hours to get back home in time to feed my cats. I may or may not have a chance to get to your story before I leave, depending on when the archive opens--and if I don't, then I promise it's not a negative reflection on your writing prowess! It's much more a matter of how hungry I anticipate my kitties are.

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Hello, everyone! It is now the Ides of March, which means that you have nine and a half hours to sign up for this year's ides_of_april, the annual ficathon for Shakespeare's Greek and Roman plays. For more information on what the Ides of April is and how to sign up, please see our welcome post. Between 8:00 tonight and tomorrow morning, your mods will e-mail you your prompts.

HOWEVER!

Thus far, we've only had one sign-up; if we don't get at least two more sign-ups by the end of the evening, then we won't have a viable exchange this year. If that happens, would you feel comfortable with a non-exchange-based format? A kind of ongoing Madness round, where all prompts are available for all comers, there are no limitations on wordcount, and all fics can be posted to the community between now and the Ides of April? All feedback is encouraged! Please comment here if you have suggestions or questions.

-- Gil

Side note: Love to lareinenoire and speak_me_fair, without whom I couldn't do this.

Yuletide reveal!

I wrote the following stories:

The Owl and the Cuckoo -- Love's Labour's Lost gen, ensemble. 'You do the king my father too much wrong / And wrong the reputation of your name, / In so unseeming to confess receipt / Of that which hath so faithfully been paid.' From the shelter of a hermitage, the Queen of France sends her most trusted ladies to investigate an unpaid debt.

Victory at Sea -- Oglaf, Sandoval/Viking Raider; situation-based consent. The short, storied naval career of Sandoval of Xoan.

Giver of Wine -- Greek and Roman Mythology, Dionysos/Pentheus. The gods care little for temperance laws.

Recurring Dreams: Whispers of Immortality -- Echo Bazaar, gen, vivisection. You dream you're sitting on the edge of a long wooden table. Although a bright light shines from directly above you, the room is dimly lit. All around you, tiers rise up in a half-ellipse, their rails polished smooth by the press of many hands. They vanish into the darkness beyond your circle of light – you can't make out the ceiling or the walls.

Bestirred in Sleep -- 1 Henry IV, gen, Hotspur, Douglas, and Mortimer. The three of them have draped a tarpaulin over their bit of the trench--or what Archie calls a tarpaulin, although it's scarcely better than a thin cotton sheet worn translucent with cold sweat and the steady friction of night-tremors.

Wrapt in a Woman's Hide -- 3 Henry VI and Richard III, girl!Richard III/Edward of Lancaster and ensemble; canonical child brides. The youngest child of Richard of York is a daughter--and the women of York make good use of their marriages.

How Luther Laughed at the Devil -- Hamlet and Doctor Faustus, gen, ensemble. When a Wittenberg mathematics professor is possessed by a demon, there's only one man to whom Prince Hamlet can turn: the demonologist Doktor Faustus.

Bellflower and Hellebore -- Fairy tales, gen, the wolf, the witch; humans as prey. The year is 1829, and the world has little room in it for wolves.

The Complexion of the Sky -- Richard II, gen, Richard II. Richard II reads the new king's future in the stars.

North-Northwest -- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Echo Bazaar, gen, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The Melancholy Prince is mad north-northwest, but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern would take any direction out of Bugsby's Marshes.

What Normal People Do -- Community, Troy/Abed/Annie. Annie has put a lot of time and effort into being a normal person. Troy and Abed, not so much.

-- Gil

Side note: Love to acrossthefloors, speak_me_fair, measured_words, chaos_harmony, and snowynight/sinngrace for the fics I received!

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-- Gil

There is no way to describe my Yuletide gifts this year but 'a haul.' These are the contents of my haul:

Something is rotten in Denmark

Houses of the Holy

A Document in Madness

Chiaroscuro

All of these fics followed my 'Hamlet with Lovecraftian horror in' prompt, and all of them do something particularly interesting with the idea--all four were attentive to my interest in familial duties and legacies of horror. One pastiches Lovecraft beautifully, one caters to all of my kinks perfectly, one is brutal as I like and full of moments that make me outright shudder, and one is full of fire and trembling. Very much worth a read.

Catog is a fabulous piece of Coriolanus fic with dragon riders at war and hope snatched from the jaws of hopelessness; it's full of so many beautiful, tiny details, ladders in stockings and the texture of a baby dragon's scales and the way a laugh sounds when it rings out of a place washed with misery.

This year, I wrote eleven fics--eight in Yuletide proper, three in Madness. Whoever guesses gets bragging rights~

-- Gil

Side note: LOVE to my writers. I cannot believe how brilliant these fics were.

I believe firmly in everyone's right to crack!AUs. I think that crack!AUs are one of fandom's greatest strengths--our endless capacity to reinvent the works that we love, and to stretch the boundaries of our readers' recognition, gives me hope for the possibility of creation and communion.

So I won't say that Orson Scott Card shouldn't have written his egregiously offensive retelling of Hamlet. I will say, however, that I think it's painful, upsetting, and not at all in the spirit of the play that I love.

I'll say this, as well: If you don't like Card's Hamlet, you can write another. This thread is for that.

Welcome to the Big Gay Hamlet Ficathon!

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I know that, with all of us working together, we can create more inclusive, creative, and inspiring crack!AUs than Orson Scott Card ever did.

If you're out there, Rio--if you're reading this--know that whatever I did, I'm sorry. I want to make things right between us. Please let me make things right, even if you don't forgive me.

-- Gil

Love to Rio, the dearest and truest of friends. Perhaps the friend I've been least good to, this summer. I'm so sorry.

NEW YORKERS.

MARRIAGE IS A GO.