yuletide recs - magic & britain & the dark is rising

[cimorene]

This year saw a larger-than-usual batch of Will/Bran and Will-Bran stories from Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising. It's by no means unwelcome, but a little funny, to me, that this series has such a constant level of Yuletide participation. It is from the 70s! But then again, given that the gayness of Will/Bran is kind of like, idk, Aubrey/Maturin meets Kirk/Spock but without any wives whatsoever - or actually it's rather more like Akira/Hikaru, if you speak Manga, and really, SC was almost prescient in terms of shounen homo-romanticism - anyway, it's obvious why fandom is into it still, and after all, it does have some seriously kick-ass magic, even if some of that magic is in the totally ridiculous form of Cosmic Quiz-Bowl inside a magical mountain.

Someday maybe I'll get my wife to finish the novel she started writing in 2004 where Bran is a glam rocker. Yes, your thanks in advance are accepted.

• Reservoirs. Will & Bran smarm/friendship or UST, 30-years-in-the-future-fic. Friendships, like reservoirs, are often shaped by what lies well below the surface. But even after thirty years of friendship, Will Stanton is not entirely prepared to find some unexpected depths. This one has Bran being a brilliant Welsh Plaid Cymru politician and government minister, which is perhaps the rightest future!Bran I've ever encountered (and I think I've read probably at least 90% of Will-/Bran out there). It's also dramatic, exquisitely tense, and very well executed. Plus, the politics are a very nice touch - gives the story a bit more scope and weight.



• Auld Lang Syne. The popular theme of Bran meeting Will's family when they're a bit older, this one set at age 15, given a happy, slashy twist. They're more happy to see each other than they expected, which leads Will's family to assume they're dating, and in the meanwhile, Will struggles with whether to tell Bran the truth.



• thou fond deceiver. College-aged Bran begins to remember the past over Christmas with Will's family. Friendship. Contains a New Year's party and Will's sister staring because Bran is pretty, plus a touristy visit to Windsor castle.

Okay, so, here's two more recs that combine shipping and magical children's literature.

• Sweets for the Sweet. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Charlie/Wonka futurefic. THIS was my other Yuletide fic. Actually I probably should have listed it first, except I wanted to start with TDiR since I had three of it. This was just the sort of thing I wanted in my Charlie/Wonka futurefic - Charlie having grown into adulthood, and learned candy magic in his own right, and being Wonka's partner now, and not just his protegé. Plus there is candy, and magic, and oodles of sweetness in a Christmas vignette involving, of course, the glass elevator! The little details - the off-the-wall dialogue, hints of visual description, the references to taste - are all exactly right! ♥



• The Wisdom to Know the Difference. Coraline (movie), Coraline/Wybie UST or pre-relationship. Two years after the movie, Wybie wishes for more adventures. Coraline, meanwhile, has learned that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Awesome use of Coraline-esque magic, here. I really liked this piece.