A first crop of Yuletide stories I loved:

Historical Fiction:

And flies with Swallow's Wings: Scenes from a London cookshop. This is a great take on one of the more intriguing anecdotes re: Anne Neville and Richard III, and to say more would spoil the story.

Periapsides: Five things Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn could have been to each other.

An action for reclaiming an inheritance: in which Terentia hires a lawyer, young Cicero, to represent her in a lawsuit, and I absolutely adore this take on her - and everyone else who shows up in this tale set in the last years of Sulla's reign.

Andor:

All Blue and Gold and Glittering:
In search of a present for Mon Mothma, Tay Kolma pays a visit to an antiques shop he’s been told she’s fond of.

There is a World beyond this Place: Twelve things Cassian Andor misses most in prison.

The Body/Stand By Me:

Summer in the City In the summer of 1964, Chris gets Gordie to come with him on a different kind of adventure.

A Christmas Carol:

The Price of Salvation: The fate of his old partner who after all saved Scrooge is not something Scrooge just accepts. Especially since the ghost of Jacob Marley keeps coming back...


The Expanse:

A Fresh Start: in which Drummer and Avasarala learn to deal with each other.

Ten Lullabies: great ensemble portrait through the theme of lullabies.

Inspired by my recent rewatch, I checked out the Stand By Me fanfiction over at FFN. (AO3 has only one story, which is lovely, but still, singular.) Going by the summaries, there is: Female Original Character/ the boys, either singular or together (expected), Gordie/Chris (expected), Ace/ OC and Ace redemption (I guess the main villain factor, plus the Kiefer Sutherland factor)... and Eyeball/OC. Colour me stunned. Eyeball? Not even the villain, but the villain's gormless sidekick whose one distinguishable scene features him smirking while his friend tortures his younger brother? Is there something about the actor I missed that could explain this? Fandom: still surprising just when one buys into predictability.

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In other news, our very own Heinrich Heine finally got a bust in the Valhalla, which happens to be a building full of various German luminaries of the past he ridiculed in satiric verse when he was alive, so I think he’d mostly be amused (and perhaps secretly a bit gratified) at this. Being a Rhinelander, he wasn’t that keen on Bavaria anyway, and he loved poking fun at Ludwig I. who built the Valhalla and also was an amateur poet, emphasis on amateur. Non-Germans, don't confuse this Ludwig with his grandson Ludwig II (aka the one into Wagner and fairy tale castles). The first Ludwig's most famous act was abdicating in favour of his son after a major crisis involving his mistress, Lola Montez. Which tells you something about the changing climate in the 19th century; this would not have been a problem in earlier times. Anyway, Heine. If he were a fandom, there would be: a) Heine/Mathilde versus Heine/Mouche shipping wars, which would be b) dwarfed by the Heine/Karl Marx slash, though that would have its own shipping wars, because the Marx/Engels 'shippers insist Harry was just a fling to Karl, never more. There'd also be Heine/Börne enemies slash. As for the inevitable incest corner of fandom, it would hone on Uncle Salomon, because he has the advantage of getting called by biographers the emotionally most intense relationship in Heine's life, other than Mathilde. The most popular feud would be with the August von Platen crowd, on the theme of "Platen's antisemitism versus Heine's homophobia - whose printed insults make you cringe more on their behalf?" Meanwhile, a fannish minority would go for the "best publisher of all" accolade and declare clearly Campe was the true love of Heine's life. Am I right or am I right?