(no subject)

[cahn]

Merry Christmas and happy Yuletide!

At some point I'll post more about the Christmas part of it (summary: very long day, ended up being fine but was not so sure it would be earlier in the day), but bc of RL holiday commitments I may not get around to yuletide recs (I will try my best, though!) and I wanted to make sure I mentioned my amazing Yuletide presents, especially since the fandoms weren't wrangled for, uh, well, all three of them, but two of them didn't even have Unspecified Fandom and so didn't show up in the fandoms list for a while. Although they're there now, all hail the Yuletide mods and fandom wranglers!!

In the order in which they were received:

Courting the Chamberlain (3740 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sieben Jahre - Tanja Kinkel, 18th Century CE RPF, Unspecified Fandom
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Caroline Marie Elisabeth Daum/Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf/Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Characters: Caroline Marie Elisabeth Daum, Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, Ludolf von Katte, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Additional Tags: Complicated Relationships, Character Study, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Male-Female Friendship, Yuletide Treat, Backstory, Unspecified Fandom - Freeform
Summary:

How Caroline Daum ended up marrying Frederick the Great's lover: or, how to find yourself a suitable match in Frederician Prussia.

So instead of requesting 18th CE RPF this year, I requested fic for the 18th CE RPF German novel Sieben Jahre which is all about, well, Frederick the Great and his brother Henry/Heinrich (my problematic fave!) and their entire super dysfunctional family, and all the fascinating people around them!! Caroline Fredersdorf shows up very briefly but is awesome and memorable, and one of my prompts was for her backstory -- and I got this great story, both tender and hilarious, about how she ended up getting married to the King's chamberlain and lover Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf! It doesn't require any book knowledge, although knowing enough of the 18th CE history to know that Fredersdorf was, in fact, Fritz's chamberlain and lover is probably useful :)

I also got two (!!) Tiptree stories! (!!) James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon) is one of those writers who had a fundamental effect on me as a young SF-reading adolescent. Yuletide rules allowed nominating anthologies this year, so I jumped on that because I love all these stories so much. And I adore how both of these stories interrogate the original stories' assumptions and open up new ways of looking at them!

That the Deity Who Kills for Pleasure Will Also Heal (6260 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (anthology) - James Tiptree Jr., On The Last Afternoon - James Tiptree Jr.
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Characters: Original Characters
Additional Tags: Rape, Explicit Sexual Content, Ecocide, Agoraphobia, Background Human Sacrifice, Background Harm to Mice, Penis Fencing, Perhaps Something Will Be Saved From the Wreckage, Post-Canon
Summary:

Mysas says you’re gods from the sky, like the elders warned us. I think you’re just people. Gods wouldn’t look so frightened all the time, or sweat so much...

Ten thousand afternoons later, space travelers make contact again.

Post-canon for "On the Last Afternoon," dealing with what it means to be human; and the battle between humans and the ecosystem, and where does one draw the line? This can be read without knowing canon (it takes place generations after canon, in fact), although it's definitely very much in dialogue with the very different mindset of that story. (Sorry, I can't find an online version of the canon story.)

Remembering the Director of the Seventh Recitation: Oral Histories from the Imperial Archive (3597 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (anthology) - James Tiptree Jr., The Women Men Don't See - James Tiptree Jr., The Last Flight of Dr. Ain - James Tiptree Jr.
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Characters: Ruth Parsons
Additional Tags: Oral History, Post-Canon, "Main Character Death" Just In the Sense That Everyone Dies Eventually, Background Ruth Parsons & Althea Parsons, Vietnam War, Lunar Forestry
Summary:

Five memories of Ruth Parsons, afterwards.

Post-canon for "The Women Men Don't See," with some worldbuilding taken from "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain." Just a really interesting set of interviews with a diverse set of aliens and humans and fascinating worldbuilding, about a potential future for Ruth Parsons and her life, that has a lot of thoughts about axes other than the women/men axis. Just really great. This can definitely be read without knowing "Flight," and while helpful to know "Women," it's not necessary, I think, to enjoy it. (The canon story is archived here, although the formatting is a little weird.)