Happy Yuletide, Merry Christmas
Dec. 25th, 2014 03:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn(My dad's) family is having a reunion for Christmas! Everyone is too busy skiing (and, in the California kids' cases, playing in SNOW ahahahaha SNOW I just saw a SNOWFLAKE MOMMY now I'm going to throw a snowball at you!! Here is how you make a snow angel!) to think about anything else, really. It seems a little weird to me to ski on Christmas (I kind of feel bad for the ski employees?) but it's fun to have a white Christmas!
In any case I am not doing skiing this trip, so instead today my mom and I had basically an all-day conversation (which was (mostly) nice and which we haven't gotten to do for years), and also I basked in WINNING YULETIDE. Because that is what happened this year. Becausethree five(!) people (possibly fewer, I guess, but I'm betting they're three five different people) ARE INCREDIBLY AWESOME. Seriously, if I had gotten one of these fics I would have declared myself to have won Yuletide. And I have never even gotten a full-length Yuletide treat before! Anyway! I usually link stories on my other page when I do recs, but these are all so amazing that you should all read them and I don't want to wait to do a rec post because I want everyone to read them Right Now (and kudos and comments because they deserve All the Love) because they are That Brilliant.
You don't need to know canon to read any of them, though they will be especially brilliant if you do know canon.
First, my assigned writer WROTE ME A CORDWAINER SMITH STORY. The Old Ghost of Peaceful Repose is an amazing original SF story in the style of and universe of Cordwainer Smith, who wrote these incredible stories about people and robots and the animal-derived underpeople. It's filled with zany humor and worldbuilding and compassion and craziness and totally random poetry, just like canon. (And allusions! Possibly to another yuletide request I had... see below...)
Then I got two full-length treats as well(!)
And Even the Graves Are Lost is an 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 is a story that 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.
ETA. AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES. ...I should have waited just an hour! As soon as I posted this, Madness went live and I have two fics there which are also completely marvelous! I'm going to have to finish that rec post soon! THANK YOU MYSTERY AUTHORS, YOU ARE THE BEST.
My third yuletide fandom was Philip Larkin's poem "Church Going," which was the one I least expected a fic for, given its understated nature and number of signup offerors... and so I was thrilled to get a drabble for it, This Cross of Ground, which 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.
And then another full-length treat in Madness! Three fillings of Prydwen is 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! Of course you want to read this, right?! It's just lovely -- I didn't even know this is what I wanted, but I so did.
In any case I am not doing skiing this trip, so instead today my mom and I had basically an all-day conversation (which was (mostly) nice and which we haven't gotten to do for years), and also I basked in WINNING YULETIDE. Because that is what happened this year. Because
You don't need to know canon to read any of them, though they will be especially brilliant if you do know canon.
First, my assigned writer WROTE ME A CORDWAINER SMITH STORY. The Old Ghost of Peaceful Repose is an amazing original SF story in the style of and universe of Cordwainer Smith, who wrote these incredible stories about people and robots and the animal-derived underpeople. It's filled with zany humor and worldbuilding and compassion and craziness and totally random poetry, just like canon. (And allusions! Possibly to another yuletide request I had... see below...)
Then I got two full-length treats as well(!)
And Even the Graves Are Lost is an 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 is a story that 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.
ETA. AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES. ...I should have waited just an hour! As soon as I posted this, Madness went live and I have two fics there which are also completely marvelous! I'm going to have to finish that rec post soon! THANK YOU MYSTERY AUTHORS, YOU ARE THE BEST.
My third yuletide fandom was Philip Larkin's poem "Church Going," which was the one I least expected a fic for, given its understated nature and number of signup offerors... and so I was thrilled to get a drabble for it, This Cross of Ground, which 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.
And then another full-length treat in Madness! Three fillings of Prydwen is 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! Of course you want to read this, right?! It's just lovely -- I didn't even know this is what I wanted, but I so did.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-26 04:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-26 09:19 am (UTC)There are another two in Madness (see the ETA to my post) including a Preiddeu Annwn/Y Gododdin crossover! I JUST.
(I will note that I do have a tendency towards being over-enthusiastic about my gifts when reccing because Written For Me and all that, but I do think this year they are really quite good.)
no subject
Date: 2014-12-28 02:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-28 05:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-26 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-27 06:30 pm (UTC)