skygiants

I've read maybe four fics in the Yuletide archive so far that weren't gifted to me -- my own gifts were so amazing and plentiful (THANKS FOR A PERFECT FIC,

fahye, YOU DELIGHTFUL RIDICULOUS HUMAN) and then things have been so busy since that I have not had the time! I am very much looking forward to working through everything in a slow and leisurely fashion over the next year. :D

As for what I wrote:

The Raptor, Ladyhawke

I hadn't thought about this delightfully ridiculous 80's film in years -- I actually matched with my recipient on Casablanca -- but when I saw she was asking for prequel fic with, like, actual logistics ... and historical context .... I COULD NOT RESIST. How would you cope if one day you're a fairly ordinary medieval lady and the next day you're spending half your time as an angry bird?

Due to the fact that I am in no way a medieval scholar, this is a fic that was even more of a collaborative effort than usual. I am enormously grateful to actual medieval scholars

rymenhild and

izilen for brainstorming historical plausibility with me,

izilen again for going through and catching all my accidental anachronisms, and

genarti and

newredshoes for betaing!

Ecdysis, The Lie Tree

Faith, Paul, and ill-advised adventures in Victorian photography!

I'd sort of forgotten that

gogollescent made almost exactly the same Lie Tree request I did until it went out on the pinch-hit list, after which I was like "well, probably no one else is going to write Lie Tree fic so I may as well give it a go" ... OH, HOW WONDERFULLY WRONG I WAS. In addition to the adorable Lie Tree fic I myself received, you should also read Gogol's other gift, The Transformation, which features a Faith of a pitch-perfect terrifying fierceness that I can only dream of capturing. I am proud of the Victorian photography details, though. This was a very research-heavy Yuletide year!