yuletide fic

[kimaracretak]

I did yuletide this year for the first time, though it was far from my first exchange, and it ... was fun? In the way all exchanges are fun? The Yuletide Hype(tm) put me off it for years - twinned with the fact that I tend to request pretty rare fandoms/ships anyway - but I'd do it again. I wrote one thing and got three gifts, and added a lot of people to my 'to treat if they request this again' list. I wrote:

a sycamore tree, as sick as can be. the haunting of hill house - shirley jackson, theo/nell, theo/ofc. teen. for luna.

There's no risk of a picnic here, nothing it needs to keep me safe from. I go out into our building's tiny back garden and tilt my head back to see the green-feathered branches of the single tree brush the sky. Dear Nell is in a tree now, I think, and then I laugh at the absurdity, because Nell is a house, of course.

When I read The Haunting of Hill House I think I took the ghosts for granted — or perhaps I took the sentience/malevolence of Hill House itself for granted. It was really interesting to read both critical analyses and fic that approached the story from the point of — well, Nell was mad, wasn't she? And Theo is now going to recover from both the house, and from Nell. But for me, while Theo never quite became Hill House the same way Nell did, something about the grounds must have still had its claws in her. Nothing was made better by the ending of the book for anyone but — arguably — Nell; I wanted to explore how Theo might carry ghosts forward and back and make things, well, perhaps not better, but right. I do not think, in ghost stories, that the two have to be the same. I do not think they have to be for a hopeful ending.

The first draft of this was very hard, even though I knew I wanted to write about how Theo's relationship with the picnic (why did she scream?) related to Eleanor's relationship with the house: I wanted Theo to have her ghosts, I wanted them to matter. I realised the day before the deadline that the reason it felt Off was that I was writing in third person: in order for the narration to be the specific sort of unreliable I was aiming for, I needed Theo's voice directly. And so I pushed through to the end, posted it, and then promptly rewrote the entire thing in first person. An audience-limiter in fic, but I was infinitely happier with it. It's probably the most I've ever changed an exchange fic between editing and reveals, but I knew if I stopped midway through to change the POV I'd never get it done.

I am not sure I nailed the ending here. Ambiguous endings have been something I've struggled with all year as I've slowly started to commit to writing horror — how to leave the reader feel unsettled and unsure, but have that unsettledness be purposeful, how to build up to a question and have that question be part of the point of the fic, not an abruptly cut-off 'here is where it feels the story should actually begin'. In a (truly very nice) review left during the anon period, snickfic said, I think recovering from this is going to be a long road [for Theo]. It wasn't until I read that that I realised: Oh. In my heart I think I actually believe Theo died at the end of this fic. Ambiguity is part of the book, for sure, and there was definitely an element of trying to recapture 'Whatever walked there walked alone', but ... I'm interested in how death didn't seem to be an interpretation my reviewers considered (or perhaps they did think of it, and disagreed/didn't like it, which: fair). The one person who was like 'yeah, Theo's super dead' was acequeenking, who doesn't count because she Knows My Writing.

Part of me wonders if that's because we're meant to warn for character death in fics (a sycamore tree was tagged 'Choose Not to Warn', with additional tags of 'Past Canonical Character Sorta-Death' to cover Nell's Entire Thing as well as 'Ambiguous/Open Ending'). I think I'm maybe dissatisfied with the ending because I'm not sure what question I ended up posing. 'Is Theo alive or dead' was meant to be one, but there was something else that I never quite managed to articulate. My recip was delighted, and I'm happy I made them happy, and certainly I don't feel like I gave them something bad, but I'm curious about this fic in a way I'm not really curious about others I've written. 

And I got three wonderful gifts, two in the main collection and one in Madness.

Five Life Goals for the Working Country Girl. goblin market - christina rossetti, jeanie & lizzie & laura. teen. by LittleRaven.

Five fates they never got to choose.

Not content with absolutely murdering me with Goblin Market fic in Darkest Night, LittleRaven has written me the girls as vampires AND werewolves AND ghosts AND fey flowers AND space travellers and I am spoilt beyond measure, truly.

Where The Wild Roses Grow. goblin market - christina rossetti, jeanie/lizzie. teen. by sweetcarolanne.

The flowers on Jeanie's grave did not die - they lived, and grew ravenous. They will bring Jeanie the vengeance that she seeks, and lead her back to hope and love...

Is this 1.1k of sweetcarolanne indulging my id's desire for Jeanie as an eldritch plant monster who eats goblins and watches over her little sister and plots to steal Lizzie away to somewhere where they can be eldritch plant monster girlfriends together? Yes. Is it perfect? Also yes.

comatose. the source (ayreon album), the counsellor/the biologist. NR. by kalypsobean.

I allllmost didn't request The Source because I had a moment of 'seriously, who is going to write fic for an hour and a half long symphonic metal concept album about aliens and androids during the apocalypse' but I DID and I GOT FIC FOR IT. This is a lovely little 'getting together during wartime with the fate of the world on our shoulders' fic that feels very real and wild and hopeful, and I love it.