Luzula

I received this lovely gift full of UST, which I think is the first ever with this pairing! I mean, unless Broster wrote some drawer fic or something. *g* I was pretty sure it was not written by anyone I knew, though I think I recognize the name from sanguinity's Tumblr links?

the miraculous nectarine. (1088 words) by mage-pie
Fandom: "Mr Rowl" - D. K. Broster
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Raoul des Sablières/Hervey Barrington
Characters: Raoul des Sablières, Hervey Barrington, John Jeremy ("Mr Rowl" - D. K. Broster)
Additional Tags: Fluff, Unresolved Sexual Tension, John Jeremy is so so tired of these people, canon-typical gratuitous use of French
Summary: In the back garden of Fairhaven, in the shade of the wall, Hervey Barrington found himself in a peculiar position: sitting on a bench with Raoul des Sablières’ head very nearly in his lap. It was, in fact, on the bench, but the top of his head was pressed against Hervey’s thigh. Hervey was not sure how he had ended up like this—when he had sat down, Raoul had been several inches away with his head on a cushion, and the cushion was now on the grass. (Or, Hervey and Raoul, sitting in a tree garden, not doing anything because someone might see them. It’s all extremely proper and normal and English.)

I wrote this for muccamukk, which is only my second Kidnapped fic. I'd been wanting to write something from Alan's POV, and it took some work, though I'm pretty pleased with the result! My recipient has a very helpful Yuletide letter, and I latched on to this bit: I absolutely adore found documents/letters/anything that annotates/layers text. I especially love it if there are conflicting accounts from more than one source, or in more than one style, or the levels build on each other. I am grateful to sanguinity and garonne for beta reading, and to verecunda for checking the Scots for me!

Take the Bit and the Buffet (1273 words) by Luzula
Fandom: Kidnapped | David Balfour Series - Robert Louis Stevenson
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: David Balfour/Alan Breck Stewart
Characters: David Balfour, Alan Breck Stewart
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Epistolary
Summary: Alan's beta reading comments on Davie's manuscript of Kidnapped.

As she correctly guessed, I wrote the following fic for sanguinity! I was pretty much expecting her to guess it--the pool of writers is small, and I think it's pretty typical of my style. It's one of those times when an assignment and a deadline makes you produce something you didn't think you had in you. I had of course seen her prompt for Keith & Lachlan fic before, but it didn't spark inspiration for me until I actually was assigned to write it! I'm quite pleased with the result and feel that I now have a better appreciation of Lachlan as a character. It would be interesting with an epilogue where they meet again; perhaps I'll write that at some point. As usual, thanks to regshoe and garonne for beta-reading!

The Marrow of His Heart (12491 words) by Luzula
Fandom: The Jacobite Trilogy | The Flight of the Heron Series - D. K. Broster
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Lachlan MacMartin, Keith Windham, Ewen Cameron
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Murder, Revenge, Siblings, Enemies to reluctant allies, War, Minor Character Death
Summary: When Lachlan comes back to the shieling at Beinn Laoigh to find Ewen gone, he must do everything he possibly can to track him down and help him to escape—with the help of an unlikely ally along the way.

I think my second Yuletide fic would be difficult to guess unless you had seen and remembered this comment of mine. I'm glad I managed to finish this old WIP of mine, and it was fun to work in lots of food description, which I know the recipient enjoys and which felt very natural for Penthe. Thanks to cahn for beta-reading!

The White Ladies of the Ring (7901 words) by Luzula
Fandom: Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Penthe/Tenar (Earthsea)
Characters: Penthe (Earthsea), Tenar (Earthsea), Ged (Earthsea), Ogion (Earthsea)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Canon
Summary: There was a sorcerer imprisoned in the Labyrinth, and Arha had told Kossil that she would kill him—but she did not want to. Perhaps she needed to ask someone for help...

As for my gifts, here's who wrote them:
- As I correctly guessed, sanguinity wrote A Precarious Position.
- As I correctly guessed, regshoe wrote A Happy Disguise.
- As I correctly guessed, garonne wrote A Dark and Draughty Scottish Castle.
- As I sort of guessed but did not dare to commit to (would she really give me TWO gifts? yes, apparently she would!) sanguinity wrote Talebearers.
- As a fan of Sutcliff and Jacobite fandoms, I thought verecunda might possibly have written Joy Enough for the Both of Us? But no, it was tryfanstone, whom I don't know, but whose fic I have enjoyed before!
- I refrained from guessing on the last one, but PerfectlySteadfast, whom I don't know, wrote Our Set.

This was SUCH a good Yuletide for me, possibly my best haul ever, though honestly the last couple of years have all been great! Thank you! <3 <3 *clutches stories to chest* (Also, is there any way I can see who was my assigned writer?)

[Sorry I didn't manage to quite finish this letter in time, and then left it to languish a few days! It should be finished now, but please ask questions via the mods if anything is unclear.]

Welcome, and I am so happy that we share this rare fandom! I hope you have fun writing. : )

General likes: I enjoy the whole range from gen to porn, and like both happy and angsty stories. I like historical specificity, landscape description and attention paid to the setting in general, old-fashioned omniscient POV, canon-like writing style, loyalty, characters having conflicting loyalties.

General dislikes: Change-of-setting AU in historical canons (but I love canon divergence, and I also enjoy adding supernatural/fantasy elements to the canon setting), non-con/dubcon, infidelity, body horror. If you go with something angsty, I prefer for there to still be a meaning to the character's lives and not be unrelentingly dark.

( Bonnie Dundee, England Series, The Flight of the Heron, Mr Rowl, The Wounded Name )

My Wounded Name gift fic Seaweed and Apple Blossoms turns out to be written by sanguinity! OMG, you were so sneaky!! I had NO IDEA this was written by you, but I am delighted to find that it was! : D Hmm, I really don't know what I could have used as a tell...but in hindsight, it makes total sense. And I suppose you now see that you were correct in your guess as to what I wrote (wait, what were my suggestive WED comments?). *g*

I am equally delighted to find that my Flight of the Heron gift fic Hereafter was also written by someone I know: feroxargentea! : D This is another one where I suspected nothing during the anon time, but it makes perfect sense after reveals! In my defense, you haven't written in this fandom before, but the hiking and the lovely landscape and nature description definitely make sense now. Have you in fact ascended Ben Nevis?

And, in my THIRD failure to guess a gift fic written by a friend, garonne wrote me the lovely little Flemington ficlet Sentimental for Madness! This one I really should have been able to guess, given that I know she likes the epilogue of the book...and it's a TINY fandom. *facepalm*

I guess we can conclude both that I am slightly dense, and have excellent friends. : ) Hmm, which of you did I actually match with?

As for what I wrote: I matched with edwardianspinsteraunt on Jill by E A Dillwyn, a fun and femslashy book from 1884. I had actually been hoping to match on that fandom! I wrote the post-canon fic To Meet Again as Equals (8,500 words) for her, and then got a second idea and wrote the treat To Stay in Service (4,200 words) for regshoe.

Canon does a great set-up for f/f and the main character has a concealed identity, but then it doesn't really realize the potential of it! So there's a lot of scope for canon divergence AU:s and identity reveals. I do think you could read these fics without having read canon, if you are in the mood for historical f/f! There are notes in the beginning with what you need to know. I did not do a ton of research about the 1880's, so there isn't much specific setting detail (except for the underwear, ha ha), but hopefully I made up for it by working hard to capture the fun first-person narrative voice and style of canon. To be honest, canon also doesn't have much specific setting while it's in England. Thanks to garonne for beta reading both of these, and regshoe for beta reading the first!

And after I'd finished those, I pondered whether to go back to my longfic, or whether to start on another Yuletide treat. I decided to write a Wounded Name fic, which I'd been itching to do. The only problem was that I was the only one who had requested that fandom. But I didn't let that stop me! So I wrote Whose Hand Was Thine in Earnest (9,000 words) and gave it to garonne as a Madness treat, because I was pretty sure that she would like it. This was also a lot of fun to write, trying to capture the over-the-top nature of canon. regshoe did some great beta work on it--I'd decided to do a lot of retelling from Aymar’s POV, and she really pinpointed how to fix the parts of the retelling which didn't feel new enough.

Altogether, a pretty great Yuletide. : D I've never written so many words for Yuletide before--I think it's a side effect of now mostly writing novel length fic. Also, I've had time to read a fair amount, but my gifts are really my favorites. *clutches them to chest*

Welcome, and I am so happy that we share this rare fandom! And I hope you have fun writing. : )

( Flemington, The Wounded Name, Bonnie Dundee, The Flight of the Heron, Kidnapped )

I have written one story in the main Yuletide collection, and one in Madness. Neither of them are particularly surprising for me, and if you stumble on them they would not be hard to guess, I think.

I have received three lovely gifts, and all of them long stories, too!

There is Thy Kingdom's Pearl, an 8,000-word Flight of the Heron story; it's a sympathetic exploration of Margaret Cameron coming back to Ardroy soon after Ewen's birth to take up the management of the estate, and is full of vivid details of everyday life. I am very sure that it was written by regshoe!

Next is the 14,500-word Flight of the Heron story That Restless Sleep, which was definitely not written by regshoe! In fact I have no idea who wrote it and am very curious to see. It is an angsty and heart-breaking story where Keith is a ghost, and tied to the first chapter of GitN in an intriguing way.

And third is the very first Archie Flemington/James Logie fic on AO3, Feathers Anew! Also, I strongly suspect, by regshoe, and I am so happy to see an exploration of this road not taken.

Thank you so much; I don't know what I did to deserve such riches! ♥

Welcome, and I am so happy that we share this rare fandom! And I hope you have fun writing. : )

( Flemington, The Jacobite Trilogy, The Left Hand of Darkness )

Ugh, we just had a scare. My mom had some symptoms that could reasonably have been stroke (dizzyness, weird blood pressure, tingly shooting sensations in her arms). We got an ambulance, but no stroke, WHEW! Now she's feeling better but also a bit nauseous, though, and they said it could be onset of an infection, so I really hope it's not covid, augh. /o\ Was surprised the paramedics took their time so much, though, there was even dog-cuddling. Maybe they had no other calls at the moment.

Anyway!

So, it turns out great_whatsit wrote my Talk of the Town gift fic Engraved on Our Hearts, and, as I had guessed, regshoe wrote my Flight of the Heron treat On That One Spot of Earth! Thank you both, so much. <3

I wrote a main fic and a treat, both for regshoe. I can really recommend writing gifts for regshoe, because she is a goddess of feedback. : D

Both were for the Naomi Mitchison book Travel Light, and one of them is also a crossover with Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes. Neither is a fandom I've written before, and I had fun doing so, though I couldn't manage anything long. I do wish I'd been able to figure out what was going on with the dragons in the first one, but I ended up leaving it a mystery. Both fics probably require fandom knowledge.

To Fólkvangr (1784 words) by Luzula
Fandom: Travel Light - Naomi Mitchison
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Halla, Steinvor
Additional Tags: Post-Canon
Summary: Halla drops her cloak and goes with the Valkyries, but what next?

Different Kinds of Freedom (647 words) by Luzula
Fandom: Travel Light - Naomi Mitchison, Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Laura Willowes, Halla
Additional Tags: Crossover, Post-Canon
Summary: Laura has a visitor at Great Mop.

Welcome, and I am so happy that we share this rare fandom! There are some story ideas below, but if you have some idea already that you want to write, go for it--I hope I've given you some sense of what I would enjoy. And I hope you have fun writing!

Flemington by Violet Jacob (Archie Flemington, James Logie, Captain Callandar)
I ship Archie Flemington/James Logie and Archie Flemington/Captain Callandar about equally, and would be very happy to receive fic about either pair of characters. Don't feel like you have to include all three of them. Some ideas: What if Flemington and Logie met on the Muir of Pert, or before that, at some point during the war? What if they didn't meet on Inchbrayock, so that Logie doesn't know that Flemington is a spy, and still trusts him? What if Logie tries to save Flemington? Basically, I want all the fork-in-the-road AU:s. As for Flemington and Callandar, you could write a missing scene between them, or try to figure out if there's some way out of that ending. Or some other idea I'm not thinking of. Things I like: conflicts between honour and duty and love, hurt/comfort, geeky historical detail, and landscape description. Tragedy is fine; I actually like the ending.

The Flight of the Heron by D K Broster (Ewen Cameron, Keith Windham)
It feels weird that my main fandom now is actually a Yuletide fandom! Basically I just love Ewen and Keith and want them to be together, but the obstacles in their way are half the fun of it. As for the previous fandom, I love conflicts between honour and duty and love, hurt/comfort, geeky historical detail, and landscape description. You could write some missing scene from canon, some fork-in-the-road AU, or avoid the ending and have them meet again later on, or write about them growing old together, for example.

The Talk of the Town (1942) (Leopold Dilg, Michael Lightcap, Nora Shelley)
Would love fic about all three of them in a relationship together--they make a lovely OT3! Their bickering and teasing and flirting is delightful, and so are their debates about politics and law. I am active in a labor union myself, and would love something that touched on that aspect of it, if you are so inclined.

For all three of the requests, I would prefer not to get a complete change of setting (e g modern-day AU) because the historical setting is part of what I like about it.

1) I have received a wonderful Yuletide story: What Happened At The Wine, a gen story for Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin. Life as a would-be mathematician in the Valley of the Kesh is not so easy...

2) I am spending Christmas with family and other loved ones. No family quarrels yet! *crosses fingers* My four-and-a-half-year-old niece is adorable. Yesterday she told me that she loved me four times. Awwww. ♥

3) I did my traditional night out camping on the winter solstice. It was above freezing and a completely windless night, so very quiet that the loudest thing I could hear were the noises my stomach occasionally made. I got up before dawn (that is, at eight) and watched the light gradually come.

4) Tonight I am going to watch Star Wars, with my brother-in-law who is the only other person in my family who is interested. I am (almost) unspoiled, but I don't really have any high expectations. I figure that is the best way to handle it.

5) And with all this going on, my fannish obsession with Flight of the Heron continues unabated. ♥ I sneak away to write fic when I can, and fantasize scenes for the more ambitious sequel that will probably need a fair amount of research to write. I usually mainline the Yuletide archive when it opens (or the parts of it that I am interested in, anyway), but I don't have the emotional/fannish bandwidth for that this year. Will come back to it later.