Yuletide fics have been revealed a couple of days ago, and I got this delightful story in one of my teeny tiny fandoms, Gail Carriger's Finishing School series. Which series, by the way, I much recommend for anyone who might enjoy reading about young ladies in the 19th century at a boarding school where, under the guise of becoming fine society ladies, they actually become fine highly-trained intelligencers and spies for Her Majesty. And in between, drink lots of tea, and mess around with entertaining steampunk gadgets. But anyway, I got an incredibly fun story about Sophronia and her friends having to help out Sophronia's nemesis, Monique. The characters are their delightful selves, and the story most definitely doesn't lack in entertaining steampunk gadgets or references to tea.

The Christmas Pudding Caper (2926 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Finishing School - Gail Carriger
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Sophronia Temminnick, Monique de Pelouse, Genevieve Lefoux, Agatha Woosmoss, Mademoiselle Geraldine, Lady Linette, Dimity Plumleigh-Teignmott
Additional Tags: Boarding School, Holidays, christmas pudding, experiments gone wrong, Enemies to Friends
Summary:

Monique has her last chance to Finish at the Headmistress' Christmas tea. If she doesn't, the school itself might be Finished. But she needs a little help from an unexpected source.

There are many other fine stories in the Yuletide 2017 collection, though I haven't yet got around to reading nearly all that I wish to read.

Sorry for the delay in posting the letter, but here it is. I may still do little tweaks and edits during the weekend if I realize something could be worded better etc. but you're safe going on based on what I've got here.

Fic likes: I love gen, femslash, slash, het; I love hurt/comfort, adventures, daily life moments and domesticity, angst (but hopefully with a happy/comforting ending), fluff, porn (though preferably so that the sex tells something about the characters), first times, established relationships, kisses, space, history, worldbuilding, character-centric fic, intelligent/geeky women, relationships between women, loyalty, friendship, found family, teamfic where applicable, characters coming to accept some previously neglected/repressed part of themselves, canon divergence AUs (various ”what if”s changing some event or element of the canon but still keeping the world basically the same), epistolary fics, crossovers with fandoms you know I like, etc. etc. Really a lot of things, so feel free to let your imagination roam as long as you respect my Do Not Wants / dislikes.

If you write a romantic/sexual relationship, there can be no sex or a little sex or lots of sex, however you like. Anything from handholding or sweet words to hot steamy sex is find by me, though I prefer no complete PWP.




Do Not Wants/Dislikes: graphic violence, gore and torture, rape/non-con, sexual abuse, incest, underage sex (by this I mean under 16, which is the age of consent in my country), character bashing, mpreg, wildly different AUs of the coffee shop / high school / werewolf etc. variety. It depends a bit on the canon how much violence/torture/abuse I can deal with, but generally, please not higher level than the canon. Please stay away from sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and other such things. Please no 2nd person POV, it hardly ever works for me. In fic 1st person rarely works for me unless it’s in diary/epistolary format; the exception here would be Skuggserien, where the original canon is written in first person, so if you want to write the fic that way as well, it’s fine.




( Le Comte de Monte Cristo | Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas )

(  Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers )


( Skuggserien (Shadow Series) — Maria Gripe )

( Finishing School - Gail Carriger )

What with the nasty cold starting to hit me from Boxing Day onwards, I never got around to squeeing here about my Yuletide Madness gift! That must be corrected, because it was wonderful - even though the chances of any of my followers knowing the fandom are probably tiny.

Here it is:
Totentanz
Fandom: Skuggserien | The Shadow Series - Maria Gripe
Characters: Rosilda Falck af Stenstierna, Arild Falck af Stenstierna
Words: 315
Rating: General Audiences
Summary: Living in Rosengåva is almost not like living at all.

The story is lovely, but before I say more about it, let me write about this book series. It's one of the beloved books/series of my heart, one that I've been reading and rereading since I was about 11, and has shaped my literary tastes and fascinations and thoughts more than I can even understand. I don't know what languages it's been translated into - the original is in Swedish, and I've mostly been reading it in Finnish translation. It consists of four books by the Swedish author Maria Gripe, telling a story of families and secrets, growing up and much more, set in early 1900s Sweden. They're historical novels that don't read like typical historical novels but focus on the hearts and minds and interactions of the characters, while the age and place they live in influence them greatly. The series is known as Skuggserien - the Shadow Series - because each of the book titles includes the word shadow, and shadows are a constant theme of the books - in the form of secrets and hidden things, dreams and fancies, dark places, long shadows cast by the past, and more than I can explain here.

They've got many elements of Gothic fiction, while going my deeper and psychologically truer than any Gothic fiction I've read; I only understood in adulthood that this is where my love for mysterious houses, family secrets, hidden identities, secret sisters, mysterious pasts, dreamy gardens, burning houses, written secrets, dark corridors and all that originates from - and why I always yearn for much more depth than just the outer trappings, because these books already gave it to me when I was very young. They're beautifully written, deep and complex, and though they were accessible to 11-year-old me (I was precocious; I think the intended target group is a bit older), they've got at least as much to offer over 20 years later. The books fascinatingly walk along the border between realism and fantasy, and though the events never cross over to overtly supernatural, you have the sense of reading something between Gothic fantasy and psychological, complex historical story.

( Cutting this a bit, because it got LONG. )So, I did get this story in Yuletide Madness! Though just a few hundred words long, it's complete in itself, a kind of a dreamy reflection that fits the atmosphere of the books perfectly. It has the heartaching wistfulness associated with the books and with the Rosengåva siblings in particular, it's incredibly beautiful just in the way the books are, and Rosilda and her longings feel just right, as does the sense of together-yet-separate she has with Arild, and it succeeds in giving me new insights about these characters I've been fascinated with for over 20 years. And it's simply enchanting to know there are other people who love this story and these characters enough to write this, or read this.

That's exactly what Yuletide is for, isn't it?

Merry Christmas / holiday of choice to everyone! I am bravely holding on despite our abysmal weather and the onslaught of depressing Finnish Christmas carols on the radio (seriously, WTF, I just don't get it, what's wrong with our people? why do carols have to be super-depressing?). The Christmas tree is pretty, there are lights, I've already had the traditional rice porridge and am now waiting for the Christmas dinner. I expect to get quite stuffed.

Today's writing

I finished all my Yuletide edits! Unless it occurs to me to improve the summary or the tags, I don't plan to touch it anymore before the reveals. About time! I also wrote a little more on the fic I began two nights ago, but I don't currently believe I'll manage to finish it as a treat. No matter, I'll finish it later and post it whenever it's done.

Tally
( Days #1-#18 )
Day #19: auroracloud, avon, cornerofmadness, doctor_jehane, esteliel, miss_morland trobadora, ysilme
Day #20: auroracloud, avon,cornerofmadness, doctor_jehane, esteliel, miss_morland trobadora, ysilme
Day #21: auroracloud, cornerofmadness, esteliel, miss_morland, trobadora, ysilme
Day #22: auroracloud, cornerofmadness, esteliel, miss_morland, trobadora, ysilme
Day #23: auroracloud, esteliel, cornerofmadness, miss_morland, trobadora, ysilme

Just a quick post, about to rush out soon! A somewhat busy day, but nearly everything done that I meant to. I ran out of gift wrapping paper, though. Need to try to remember to buy it when I come back this evening.

Today's writing

Edit edit edit. But I think I might be pretty much done with the Yuletide edits now! There are a couple of bits I'd like to fix yet, but I ran out of time and brains for that. At least I no longer feel like it's a failure, it just would be better if I fixed those bits.

Tally
( Days #1-#18 )
Day #19: auroracloud, avon, cornerofmadness, doctor_jehane, esteliel, miss_morland trobadora, ysilme
Day #20: auroracloud, avon,cornerofmadness, doctor_jehane, esteliel, miss_morland trobadora, ysilme
Day #21: auroracloud, esteliel, miss_morland, trobadora, ysilme



Let me know if I missed anyone! You can join in or drop out any time.

A good night's sleep this time, and I've been more functional and in a better mood today. Still a bit slow at getting myself active, but going better. Which is fortunate, what with deadlines looming!

Today's writing

Took me until evening, but I finally got started on editing my Yuletide story! Even if I got that thing where I spontaneously vacuum-cleaned my entire apartment rather than work on the editing. I actually don't get that so often. Anyway. At the moment I'm on the third page out of 15. Taking useless things out, putting better ones in, making comments where bigger changes are needed and I still need to work them out. I've got a bribing going on: if I do at least 5 pages tonight, I get to watch another episode of Brian Cox's Wonders of the Solar System. It's so pretty and spacey! He's so excited by everything! So I'll try to continue a while longer, but since my mind temporarily stalled, figured I'd get the post up now.

Thankfully, I'm finding the writing mostly decent so far, but storywise I need to change some things. Add a scene with dialogue instead of long expository thoughts, things like that. The word count's gone down a couple of hundred words so far, which is good. I know there's superfluous stuff here that just detracts from quality, there always is in my first drafts. I do add things in editing, too, but usually the story improves if the word count goes down at least a bit.

How is everyone else's writing going?

Tally

Day #1: auroracloud, avon, cornerofmadness, esteliel, miss_morland, trobadora, ysilme
Day #2: auroracloud, avon, cornerofmadness, doctor_jehane, esteliel, miss_morland, trobadora, ysilme
Day #3: auroracloud, avon, cornerofmadness, doctor_jehane, esteliel, miss_morland, trobadora, ysilme
Day #4: auroracloud,avon, cornerofmadness, doctor_jehane, trobadora, ysilme
Day #5: auroracloud,avon, cornerofmadness, doctor_jehane, trobadora, ysilme
Day #6: auroracloud,avon, cornerofmadness, trobadora, ysilme
Day #7: auroracloud,avon, cornerofmadness, doctor_jehane, esteliel, miss_morland, trobadora, ysilme
Day #8: auroracloud,avon, cornerofmadness, esteliel, miss_morland, trobadora, ysilme
Day #9: auroracloud,avon, cornerofmadness, esteliel, miss_morland, trobadora, ysilme
Day #10: auroracloud,avon, cornerofmadness, doctor_jehane, esteliel, miss_morland, trobadora, ysilme
Day #11: auroracloud,avon, cornerofmadness, doctor_jehane, esteliel, miss_morland, trobadora, ysilme
Day #12: auroracloud,avon, cornerofmadness, doctor_jehane, esteliel, miss_morland, trobadora, ysilme
Day #13: auroracloud,avon, cornerofmadness, doctor_jehane, esteliel, miss_morland, trobadora, ysilme
Day #14: auroracloud,cornerofmadness, doctor_jehane, esteliel, miss_morland, trobadora, ysilme

Let me know if I missed anyone! You can join in or drop out any time.

Dear Yuletide Writer,

First, thanks for offering any of my tiny fandoms! I'll be delighted with a story from any of these. The letters may say more about some than others, but it's not a measure of what I care most about. I made sure I picked fandoms where I'd be equally happy to receive a story. Beyond the Do Not Wants, you can ignore any part of prompt or letter if it gets in your way.

Generally, things I Do Not Want: Incest, rape or non-con, graphic violence and goriness, major non-canonical character death, character bashing. Also no child abuse or animal abuse. And no drastic AU of the high school / college / werewolf / vampire sort, or changing historical to modern or fantasy/scifi to mundane world. Basically, I prefer playing in the world of the canon we know. Generally, I can enjoy the sort of AU where you change a canon event and see what comes out of it, but I have no particular interest in that in these fandoms right now. Also, I don't want the story to promote sexism, homophobia or racism, though in the world of some of the canons it makes sense some characters would have such attitudes.

I'd prefer matching the tone and darkness/lightness level of the canon, though in the case of Custard Protocol I would enjoy a more serious story as well, if that's what flows better for you.

I throw in some ideas both in the prompts and in the letter, but don't feel obliged to fulfill any of them. As long as you write about these characters in these worlds and avoid my Do Not Wants, I'll be glad.

A few things I particularly like:
- female characters who are strong, smart and capable in a variety of ways, not just the traditional-male-hero strong
- strong bonds between female characters
- strong bonds between family members, members of the same crew/team, or friends
- same-sex romance
- expressing feelings through sex
- in pairing stories, I'm equally happy with stories with or without sex. If there's sex, I prefer it not to be the entire story; I'd like to see at least some development of characters/relationship.
- wonder and amazement about the world
- in the worlds where it's appropriate, technobabble / science babble is fun if you can do it, but not required; I don't know much about technology, so you'll be able to fool me easily, though *g*

And, well, anything I listed in the specific prompts and specific parts of the letter.
On to the requests! And because my layout doesn't show LJ cut texts (need to change it as soon as I have the time), the requests are in the following fandoms: Custard Protocol - Gail Carriger, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage - Sydney Padua, Skuggserien - Maria Gripe, The Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers. The letter lists them in that order.

( Custard Protocol - Gail Carriger. Primrose Tunstell, Tasherit. )

( The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage - Sydney Padua )

( Skuggserien / The Shadow Series - Maria Gripe )

( Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers )