verushka70

Well, I meant to post this like at least a week ago, but RL. Sucks. Still. Even more.( the many, or rather main, reason why ) But hey, I got a dog and two cats, a FT job, and some pretty awesome friends. That's more than many people - and I am grateful for all of it. My friends are my chosen family. Seriously, I routinely enter "my friends" in my daily gratitude app entries.

But the suckitude of RL was why writing for Yuletide was so important for me. ( this crappy past year etc )

So here are my Yuletide recs. This merely scratches the surface (1700+ fics in Yuletide 2023, yikes!) - but these are really great.
( 22 recs in 19 fandoms - Heat (1995) (x2!), fairy tales/Boots of Buffalo Leather, Dracula - Bram Stoker (x3), The Fugitive, Fandom Exchange anthropomorphic (hysterical!!), Galaxyquest, The Good Place, The Huntsman, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum | Ecclesiastical History of the English People - Bede, It's A Wonderful Life, iZombie, Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte, The Lion in Winter (1968), Monty Python's Flying Circus: Archaeology Today, Much Ado About Nothing (2011) | Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare, True Detective S1, The Usual Suspects, The Waste Land - T. S. Eliot, and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) )

Here endeth the recs portion of this post! Following is standard update post stuff. As if I do that regularly... (I don't...)

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Anyway. Due to my desperate need for escapism, I really enjoyed researching for, and writing, my two fic contributions to this holiday season - my first Yuletide fic evah(!), and a last-minute pinch-hit for due South Seekrit Santa:

The Sentimentalists
Fandoms: Casablanca (1942)
Words: 9,558
(it looks incomplete because it says "Chapter 1/2," but chapter 2 is a draft consisting ONLY of author's notes - the fic is complete!)
Teen And Up Audiences
No Archive Warnings Apply
Victor Laszlo/Ilsa Lund, Rick Blaine/Ilsa Lund, Rick Blaine/Victor Laszlo/Ilsa Lund, Post-Canon
Summary:
Ilsa threw her arms around him. Rick tried awkwardly to simultaneously return the hug, and gently disengage from it – Laszlo was right there – as Laszlo beamed at him, apparently uncaring.

Beamed.

Or: Rick winds up in Lisbon after Brazzaville, and is shocked to find Victor and Ilsa still there (for totally legit historical reasons, my research found).

~ and ~

In Your Philosophy
Fandoms: due South
Words: 9,211
Teen And Up Audiences
No Archive Warnings Apply
Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski, Canon Compliant, Alternate Universe
Summary:
“Drink up. We may need our strength.”

“For mutual auditory hallucinations?” Ray asked.

The rare jewel of a casually confident Kowalski verbal construction delighted Fraser.

“No, for whatever's on the other side of that door.”

Or: from the day they first meet, Ray and Fraser go from disaster to disaster in ways neither could have imagined.

I haven't even gotten around to reading dSSS fics yet, despite my pinch-hit - there is so much I've bookmarked for Yuletide (and I signed up for it first, way before the dSSS pinch hit)! When I get to those, I'll deffo post dSSS recs too.

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Here's hoping 2024 doesn't suck as bad as 2023. Although considering how it's started, that's probably putting the cart before the horse, as my Omi (grandmother) used to say.