Yuletide! and the Hobbit, briefly

Happy New Year! You can check out my annual stuff I read last year post if you want.

In other news, Yuletide is upon us once again! I had a really really fabulous time doing Yuletide this year actually, including a couple of desperation writing parties with the Yulecops of Twitter that were both delightful social occasions and also really good at cudgeling me into action. I ended up being really proud of the thing that I wrote, not that it's necessarily all that great shakes but it was something new for me - new fandom, new pairing I'd never really thought about before, and new sensation of ... feeling like I could really see the development in my writing from my older Yuletide fic?

Dispatches (4644 words) by labellementeuse
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Dorothea Callum/Nancy Blackett
Characters: Dorothea Callum, Nancy Blackett, Peggy Blackett, Titty Walker
Summary:

Do come up and visit me next time you get a bit of leave. Love, Nancy.

I received two fics that I really loved in Gentleman Bastards, an incredibly tough fandom that I'm truly awed anyone could offer. The two pieces are very different, which reflects the breadth in tone of the canon and also obviously makes for a couple of awesome gifts.

a glass poured to air (1717 words) by Raven
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Gentleman Bastard Sequence - Scott Lynch
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sabetha Belacoros/Locke Lamora, Locke Lamora/Jean Tannen
Characters: Locke Lamora, Sabetha Belacoros, Jean Tannen,
Additional Tags: Spoilers, The Republic of Thieves
Summary: Redacted for spoilers

This is very spoilery for Republic of Thieves and I don't want to cut this so I'm not going to say much more but a great follow-up to that book if you needed a breather after it. It incorporates a number of things about the Jean-Locke and Locke-Sabetha relationships that I really love and has a brief passage about one of the things I find most intriguing about Locke, his relationship with religion.

The Goddess of Suffering Scam (4266 words) by Edonohana
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Gentleman Bastard Sequence - Scott Lynch
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Jean Tannen, Father Chains, Locke Lamora, Calo Sanza, Galdo Sanza
Additional Tags: Don't Have to Know Canon, No Spoilers, Con Artists
Summary:

In the early days of the Gentleman Bastards, Locke impersonates a self-flagellating acolyte of the Goddess of Suffering, and Jean stands by as the muscle in case the mark catches on. You know what they say about the best-laid plans.

Completely different in tone to the other fic and yet, like the other fic, also totally like canon! This is a fun little caper fic, not at all spoilery, set during the gang's childhood/teenage years in Camorr. It's vicious, violent and fun in just the way canon can be - I particularly loved the flagellating apparatus, which fits SO seamlessly into Camorr.



For other recs, I'm still barely anywhere with my reading (I have about fifty open tabs in a special Yuletide window) but my recs I'm bookmarking on the AO3 here. I particularly commend the Rivers of London fic, which is excellent, and the Merlin Conspiracy fic, which had one thing I really disliked but was a very interesting and thoughtful fic that you definitely need to know canon for but is very rewarding if you do. I'm really impressed by people's ability to add to that canon which I think is awfully tricky.

Finally, I saw Desolation of Smaug the other day. ( spoilers: some positive, some negative, a fairly incoherent set of commentary bashed out the day afgter I went )