YULETIDE!!!

You guys you guys, it is YULETIDE and I got TWO STORIES, both of which are AMAZINGLY AMAZING. Best Yuletide ever!

First, The Surly Bonds of Earth, a Code Name Verity/Ballet Shoes crossover from a TOTALLY MYSTERIOUS PERSON who is a TOTAL MYSTERY to me. Hearts times a thousand! Maddie meets Petrova Fossil when they're both ATA pilots. I love the delicacy of their beginning friendship here.

And also, I got the Ashley/Claudia BSC fic I have yearned for since I was twelve! And it's set in NEW YORK CITY! Escapades Out on the D Train. I love everything about this fic, but especially Ashley: "text-based communication is, after all, the cause of our generation’s emotional disconnect with our peers." Oh Ashley ILU, please never change.

(There's another Ashley/Claudia story, which is technically for someone else, but it's like a story for me: With Gentle Curves and Tender Feelings, which is made of joy and delicious Claudia voice: Temptation, whose name was Ashley Wyeth. And excellent Ashley, as always!)

In short: YULETIDE JOY.

Also, my parents gave me a copy of Blood Feud, and Taylor Swift's Red (someday I will title a fic after one of her songs. This WILL happen!), and enough chocolate to keep me going for, theoretically, the next three months, although given the rate at which I eat chocolate, probably the next two weeks.

And my brother gave me chocolate covered McVities digestive biscuits! And we are having trifle for dessert! Best Christmas ever!

Yuletide recs

Yuletide recs! Yuletide recs! I’ve been going through the archive up from the Zs, because I figure those fics will be slow to get some love.

First, a Yuletide story about – Yuletide! The Bears and the Bees starts out with a delicious description of Yuletide’s imaginary office – of course it has a scuffed wooden floor and a big fireplace and a desk full of cubbyholes! – and continues through the day’s correspondence. The bears wish to register their protest at their continued defamation throughout the Yuletide season. So funny!

Second, You Belong With Her, about Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me,” the song that sounds like Taylor is into the cheerleading captain if you just listen to the chorus. (The music video destroys this interpretation with a vengeance. Oh well.)

HOW DID I MISS THIS WAS A PROMPT? But whatevs, this author did a totally better job than I would have. I love her take on the cheerleading captain: Her eyes communicate quite clearly that she’d happily roast marshmallows on Taylor if she was on fire and yet her mouth is still set into a perfect, practiced smile. She remains absolutely the snotty, stereotypical cheerleading captain from the video, but with anger and fire and attitude.

I love the friendship that grows up between the cheerleading captain and Taylor (the song character, not the singer; the singer would be so meta), and the glimmering hints that it may grow into something more. It makes total sense to me that it will take a while, given the horrible history they have to put behind them.

Another fic about friendship! You Are My Fifth Avenue, a Whip It fic, about Bliss and Pash and best friendship. I love the realness of this fic: the strength of their friendship, and the fact that it isn’t perfect, the way they rag on each other and push each other to be more than they are, the way friendships change when they become long distance.

Fourth, an eerie fic for on Lois Lowry’s The Giver: Lily Remembering, showing the way that Jonas’s community reacts to his disappearance through the lens of his little sister, Lily. In some ways it has a more believable sense of dystopia to it than Lowry’s book, which starts off as an idyll. There’s a sense, here, of Lily straining against the mores of the community: she knows somehow that things are off, but she can’t articulate – she is literally not allowed to articulate – what she’s feeling. The way they simply do not speak of Jonas’s disappearance becomes creepy.

But it’s not a painful fic to read. There’s a sense of fragile hope to it.

And finally, as a lagniappe: a Producers fic, The Retirees: Bialystock and Bloom put on one last show, Brokeback Castro, in their retirement home. It perfectly captures the madcap hilarity of the movie.