Yuletide!

[cyphomandra]

(and happy new year!)

For Yuletide I got two fantastic gifts, one in the main collection and one in Madness.

the trees were almost budding, the sun was almost bright (1575 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Leah (Stardew Valley), Penny (Stardew Valley), Maru (Stardew Valley), Abigail (Stardew Valley), Haley (Stardew Valley), Emily (Stardew Valley)
Additional Tags: Slice of Life, Bittersweet, Flower Dance, Platonic Relationships, POV Leah, Yuletide 2019
Summary:

Leah invites the bachelorettes of Stardew Valley to get ready for the Flower Dance at her cabin, and wonders if they're as happy in the valley as she is.

I spent most of July happily playing Stardew Valley, which has an impressive amount of depth for what looks to be on the surface a simple farming game. Disappointed with your life and work at a souless megacorporation, you (a 32 bit art character) inherit a small farm, but in addition to clearing ground, tending crops, and attempting to fish via a ludicrously difficult gaming mechanic, you meet and get to know the villagers, who all have their own stories, and over time you can develop relationships. Each season of the game there’s a town event, and the summer one - where migrating, luminescent jellyfish come up to the surface of the sea before departing - made me cry the first time I played it.

My gift is about the Flower Dance, the Spring event, and shows the game’s female single characters getting ready, from the point of view of Leah, who is also an outsider to the village. It’s sweet and touching, and again there’s a lot more under the surface.

Not a gift, but also great, is this epistolary/found documents story that attempts to explain some of the characters’ backstories and get (at least) two of them together:

Roman à Clef (7138 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Elliott/Harvey (Stardew Valley)
Characters: Harvey (Stardew Valley), Elliott (Stardew Valley), Leah (Stardew Valley), Abigail (Stardew Valley), Wizard | M. Rasmodius, Female Player (Stardew Valley)
Additional Tags: epistolatory, Fictional Media, Sculpture, Pining, Worldbuilding, Oral History
Summary:

Elliott takes a sculpting class and writes a novel.

and how she gave me life (645 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Some Velvet Morning- Lee Hazelwood & Nancy Sinatra
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Phaedra, Nameless narrator
Additional Tags: Snakes, Western, Embeing somewhat traumatise bedded Images


My second gift is for the determinedly weird song by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood, and gives an explanation for it that is suitably strange and atmospheric - and it comes with a haunting selection of photographs!



The Facebook of Margery Kempe (4505 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Book of Margery Kempe - Margery Kempe, 14th Century CE RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Margery Kempe
Additional Tags: Modern AU, Margery has Facebook, Margery has Twitter, Margery has concerned family members
Summary:

IF YOU ARE UNASHAMED OF BELIEVING IN THE LORD JESUS OR HIS UNWORTHY SERVANT WHO WEEPS WHENEVER SHE t WTHINKS OF HIM THEN SHARE THIS POST.

Just as fabulous as everyone says. It’s Margery’s put-upon family who really make this; I’ve been trying to remember in which book it is that there’s a comment about describing someone as a saint that then turns into a discussion about exactly how difficult it would be to live with someone who actually was.

As Brothers (5385 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar - Roald Dahl
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Max Engelman/Henry Sugar
Characters: Henry Sugar, Max Engelman, John Winston
Additional Tags: Hijinks, mafia, First Kiss, The Mafia Made Them Do It, Implied/Referenced Homophobia
Summary:

“Your brother?” asked one of the poker players.

Henry’s mouth turned up at the corners. “Well,” he said, sliding his hand from my back up to my shoulder, letting his fingertips brush my neck, and her eyes widened.

I made the classic young obsessive reader mistake of jumping from Dahl’s children’s books to his adult short stories when I was about ten, and getting somewhat traumatised. The Swan is also in this collection; it’s a remorselessly depressing piece about bullying, and I can still clearly remember reading it for the first time and feeling it sink in. Henry Sugar, on the other hand, I loved, and I used to read just that story and deliberately ignore the rest of the collection. This is a fabulous fill-in for the gap in the story between Henry’s decision to do good and his death, and it’s also a great m/m romance.

All the Bruno & Boots/Macdonald Hall fics are good, but I particularly liked this one, in which (post-school) Bruno embarks on a political career with all of his usual enthusiasm, and wins Boots along the way:

Dawning Political Careers (and Other Public Disasters) (11196 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Macdonald Hall - Gordon Korman
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Boots O'Neal/Bruno Walton
Characters: Boots O'Neal, Bruno Walton, Cathy Burton, Diane Grant
Additional Tags: Future Fic, they are in college, and Bruno has an Idea
Summary:

“Hey, Boots,” said Bruno.

There was a muffled thumping noise. “No.”

“You haven’t even asked what this is about yet!”

“I don’t need to. It is—” There was a pause while, presumably, Boots checked his clock. “Four forty-five A.M., as in in the morning, and I have never, in all our many years of acquaintance, known you to come up with a good idea between midnight and five A.M.”

“You’re correct. This isn’t a good idea. This is a great idea.”

and this one, where an older Boots time-travels back to confront his younger self (and offer some advice)

the future freaks me out (4371 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bruno and Boots (Movies)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Boots O'Neal/Bruno Walton
Characters: Boots O'Neal, Bruno Walton
Additional Tags: Time Travel
Summary:

These Boots are made for time travel

Infinite Variety (13044 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 5/5
Fandom: Cabaret - Kander/Ebb
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Emcee/Cliff Bradshaw, Emcee/Cliff Bradshaw/Sally Bowles
Characters: Emcee (Cabaret), Cliff Bradshaw, Sally Bowles
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Holocaust, Dark Comedy, Nihilism, Suicidal Thoughts, Family, Found Family
Summary:

London, 1950. Clifford has coming looking for Sally. Instead he finds a girl who may or may not be her – or their – daughter, the reclusive former Master of Ceremonies, and an annoying parrot.

He becomes part of their strange household, full of love and bickering; sorrow, pain and music. No-one will tell him where Sally is, or even whether she’s alive. No-one will tell him anything. Except the parrot, who tells him that life is a Cabaret.

Everyone is brittle, layered, and believable; and heart-breaking. It does end more happily than canon, though.

I have been reading bits from both ends and still have to tackle the middle, so will attempt to do more later.

Comments

[nnozomi]

I’ve been trying to remember in which book it is that there’s a comment about describing someone as a saint that then turns into a discussion about exactly how difficult it would be to live with someone who actually was.

Are you thinking of Lawrie Marlow debating sainthood with her grandmother?

(Happy Yuletide! I think we inadvertently commented on one another's fics, which is always a nice thing to happen.)

[cyphomandra]

Are you thinking of Lawrie Marlow debating sainthood with her grandmother?

Yes!! That’s it! Thank you, that was bothering me.

Are you a Marlows fan as well? Obviously we have overlapping fandoms!! :D

[nnozomi]

I am and we do! :)