Yuletide Received and Written

For Yuletide I received Kingsman and Uncle, an Eight Days of Luke (Diana Wynne Jones) fic set in the immediate aftermath of the book, as Astrid and David start to think about what their lives are going to look like. It’s very true to the canon, it ties up the slightly alarming loose end of the Norns lurking inside a suburban cupboard, it has many fantastic details (Mrs Thirsk cooking for an empty house! Sigyn and Astrid bonding over their differently terrible husbands!) and I loved it. It also has an absolutely perfect last line:

“It’s happening now,” Luke said, and grinned at the look on David’s face. “And it’s happening never, and it’s happening at the end of time. Don’t worry about it, it won’t help. I try not to.”

Kinsman and Uncle (2890 words) by basketofnovas
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Eight Days of Luke - Diana Wynne Jones
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: David Allard & Astrid Price, Luke/Sigyn (Eight Days of Luke)
Characters: David Allard, Astrid Price, Luke (Eight Days of Luke), Sigyn (Eight Days of Luke)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon
Summary:

Astrid and David, minus the three unpleasant relations busy fleeing the police, figure out what happens next.

This year various events have meant I haven’t read much in Yuletide yet, and so I want to return later with some recs. All of the Piranesi fics are just lovely (I am also intending to write about reading Piranesi, which is my favourite book this year) and I have about 40 windows open with various other intriguing stories.

In a pleasing display of symmetry I also wrote Diana Wynne Jones fic: Fire and Hexwood, a crossover which aims to be exactly what it says on the tin. My recipient had prompted for both and I couldn’t decide which one to write. I re-read both books, and while Fire and Hemlock is the one I love most it is so close to me that I find it difficult to analyse, and I couldn’t find my way into it at all (“the ending is so perfect” I wailed unhelpfully to my beta). Hexwood, which I like but not with the white-hot burning passion I have for those books of hers published between 1974 and 1984, conversely presented me with lots of ways to write for it but no actual stories. I was pacing thoughtfully on the treadmill one evening and said on a phone call, “I’ve just re-read Fire and Hexwood *again*”, went to correct myself and then thought - well. Why not?

I wrote the scene with Sir Polly first and sent it to beta (who both said “baffling but atmospheric” and then continued to send them more confusing bits (Tom seems to have got himself into Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci, which I meant to do more with - I always think of it when Tom kisses Polly’s eyes at the ending of F&H) before writing the explanatory framing opening rather late in the piece, which my betas were very grateful for. In my usual deadline scramble I then wrote a very ambivalent largely negative ending, before starting on edits and realising that I had apparently forgotten the bit where I purposefully put the looped apple in just to give them a way out. I am, as always, extremely grateful to my betas china_shop and Dashi, who heroically cope with not just my prose but my appalling attitude to deadlines.

Fire and Hexwood (6178 words) by Cyphomandra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Fire and Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones, Hexwood - Diana Wynne Jones
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Polly Whittacker, Thomas Lynn, Nina Carrington, Mordion Agenos, Vierran Guaranty, Yam (Hexwood)
Additional Tags: Crossover, Fix-It of Sorts, Post-Canon, Arthurian, Trains, Trees
Summary:

How many magical beings with the power to warp reality and cloud memory could there be in one small segment of the UK?

I would love to wrote more for F&H if I can work out how to do it, because that ending is such a tempting challenge. I did consider doing Tom’s pov but was not entirely sure I could avoid turning it into Humbert Humbert, and I also wondered about taking things up again when Tom & Polly are much older, which felt like something I would be incapable of doing at a suitable length. Also, every so often I re-read rushthatspeaks’s fabulous explanation of what actually happens in F&H (link is to part 2, but there's a link to part 1 there) and I’d love to use that as a springboard. I am aware that by going into Hexwood I’ve given the story a simpler and more positive ending than the canon would perhaps serve.

Chocolate Box 2021

Dear Chocolatier,

Thanks so much for writing for me!

In general, I like humour, excitement, angst (if justified – not massive amounts of agonising over accidentally returning character X's library book before they finished it), food, moments of peace amongst activity, things that give me new thoughts about canon, and things that bring me back to feeling like I’m experiencing the canon again for the first time.

Artwise, I like a range of styles, from cartoon/chibi to black & white to photorealism. I tend to like art that focuses on the quieter moments in canon and gives characters a breathing space between dramatic events; I’m happy with explicit art as long as it’s tagged!.

DNWs: child/animal death or child/animal sexual abuse. A/B/O or trans headcanons. Non con. I have previously DNW’d earthquakes but am back to being okay with natural disasters; however, like many other people I would prefer to avoid COVID-19 or other epidemics.

( Requests in Gundam Wing, Piranesi, Stardew Valley, and Original Work. )