Yuletide Reveals: My Stories

This year I wrote six stories for Yuletide.

The Darkangel - Meredith Ann Pierce

The Gift of Terrain, for edenfalling .

Eoduin should be certain that she’d be chosen as Harvest Maiden. Who but the syndic’s daughter should be the one to mount the stone step with her new kirtle swirling around her ankles and hold her giftfruit high for all to see?

But the syndic didn’t choose the Harvest Maiden. Terrain did.

I think all you need to know to read this is that Terrain is a land on a terraformed, magical Moon.

This was a pinch hit I was hoping to treat anyway. I specifically wanted to write about Eoduin - she comes across very vividly in a very few pages - and her complicated relationship with Aeriel, her slave who is also (sort of) her friend. edenfalling specifically wanted her relationship with Terrain, and a harvest festival came to mind. A magical one, because it's a magical world; a fairytale-type story, since that's such an element of the first book in particular, which is the one where Eoduin appears.

Chains of Iron, Chains of Pearl, for idleflower .

Erin and Aeriel set out to save the Sea-of-Dust, but that isn't all they save.

This is a post-canon story and I'm not sure how much sense it will make if you don't know canon. But if you want to read, here's some canon spoilers. ( Read more... )

idleflower specifically wanted to see how they actually do the healing of the world. I wanted to do a fix-it for the aspect of the ending that I found depressing. And I wondered what would happen to the parts of the land that had evolved a fully-functioning ecosystem that needed the drought.

The New Mutants

Demons, Doom, and Pink Jelly Shoes, for genarti .

I can always tell when a story about summoning demons is written by someone who’s never summoned a demon.

This story will make a lot more sense with canon knowledge, but just in case, Illyana is a traumatized teenage mutant sorceress who knew a version of Ororo in a horrifying alternate universe; the version of Ororo she's interacting with in the story doesn't know about the AU.

Last Yuletide I wrote Ororo giving Illyana a houseplant for genarti . This year I wrote her Ororo taking Illyana shopping at the mall. One of my favorite aspects of the comics is how ordinary teenage concerns co-exist with horrific trauma and also magic and mutant powers. The comics have a bunch of stories along the lines of "Rachel and Amara spend a night in New York," and I always loved those.

I will never get tired of writing about demons trying to "help" Illyana, but I may never surpass the party dress made out of the fabric used to make the tags on the backs of shirts.

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

The Woman Who Watches the King, for eglantiere .

For some, the House is a prison. For some, it's a place of healing.

I don't think you need to know canon to read this story, and it doesn't spoil anything. All the characters are original.

I wrote this eglantiere and I am pleased and surprised that anyone else liked it, because it was tailored very specifically for her. Her prompt mentioned the House being deliberately used for religious or spiritual or ritual purposes, and I thought, "What if it was used as therapy?"

This is one of those stories that has a lot of thoughts that are better expressed in the form of the story than in any other way.

The image of the king carrying a corpse comes from Indian mythology - it's King Vikramaditya. In the story, it has another meaning.

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke & Grand Designs (TV)

Dorset: Portal to the House, for hangingfire

Maggie and Olabisi plan to transform a ruin containing a portal to the House into a cozy home with an artist's studio. But the ruin's status as a scheduled monument and the unique challenges of its proximity to the House endanger their project.

I don't think you need to know either canon to read this story. The House is a magical house. Grand Designs is a delightful British reality TV series which follows people building unusual homes.

I had never seen Grand Designs before I spotted hangingfire 's Yuletide promo post for it. I checked out the show and was immediately addicted, having recently bought a house and nearly gone mad trying to do some renovations. I really identified with the hapless home-builders and the way everything inevitably took twice as much time and cost twice as much as they had planned for.

hangingfire wanted Grand Designs with a fantasy twist. I immediately thought of the House, but wasn't sure if they knew Piranesi, and it was too late to ask via the mods. Then I checked their AO3 history and discovered that they had requested it last Yuletide.

I had enormous fun writing this story, which packs in as many Grand Designs tropes as I could manage.

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke & The Magician's Nephew - C. S. Lewis

Flotsam, for gammarad .

Sarah Raphael finds an unusual object while exploring the labyrinth.

This story will make a lot more sense if you know both canons.

I matched with gammarad on two canons, Piranesi and a movie, The Endless. I originally planned to do the latter, and sent a mod query about that. I also provided a bait question asking if they'd be interested in a Narnia crossover with Piranesi. They said yes.

However, gammarad had also requested The Endless for another exchange, and got a story very similar to the one I have planned to write, only better. So I then reconsidered Piranesi, for which their request was a story about Sarah Raphael, with worldbuilding.

Piranesi has several Narnia references, and there's a suggestion that one of the main characters might be a descendant of a certain Narnia character. I was originally going to send Sarah Raphael to Charn, but the Wood Between the Worlds itself felt like a better parallel with the House.

We only ever see one guinea pig in the wood in The Magician's Nephew, and it does get left there as it seems happy there. But we do know that Andrew Ketterley did multiple guinea pig experiments, so it seemed completely possible that Polly and Digory only saw one guinea pig but the Wood contained at least two.

Thanks to scioscribe and sholio for helping me brainstorm some of these stories.

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