four calling birds [yuletide gifts!]

the yuletide is upon us! i'm having an amazing year re: gifts, with all my heart desired. behold:

Mei Changsu Plans (2370 words)
琅琊榜 | Nirvana in Fire (TV)
Lin Shu | Mei Changsu | Su Zhe, Lin Chen

A meeting between Lin Chen and Mei Changsu aka Lin Shu explains how the Jiangzuo Alliance came into being.

A wonderful backstory fic about bemused lin chen watching newly created mei changsu taking over jianghu, one gang at a time, purely by being brilliant enough that people flock to him of his own volition. great voices, great attention to detail, and this lovely character moment of transition between lin shu the hotheaded prodigy and mei chansu the cold, calculating genius.

In Sickness and In Health (3601 words) 
バチカン奇跡調査官 | Vatican Kiseki Chousakan | Vatican Miracle Examiner (Anime)
Hiraga Josef Kou, Roberto Nicholas

Hiraga tends to Roberto when he gets a fever.

a beautiful, old-fashioned, brilliantly in character hurt/comfort fic that has all the things i hold dear in this fandom within: devotion, gentle snark, roberto's self-esteem issues, hiraga's determined care combined with his utter domestic chaos, and a whole ocean of love between them.

(as a bonus point, my kind author actually managed to work the stigmata into the dream sequence into fic, which is the level of yuletide generousness i strive to attain).

the path of fire you shall tread (2988 words)
Baahubali (Movies)
Sivagami (Baahubali), Unnamed Female Canon Character

Four ways Sivagami could have come to the decision to care for Amarendra Baahubali as if he were her own—and one world in which there was no need.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhh yes. sivagami and amarendra's mother, before the beginning, in four different variations - enemy, protege, rival, lover - and in each of the branches sivagami is herself, glorious and proud and bowing down out of love and duty but not obligation. it's beautiful, and i love how each scene contains the entirety of her relationship with the other women completely and fully; you could swim in those imagined timelines forever. (and a happy ending for a bonus which i really appreciated, given the whole - tragedy - of her life).

and a delightful yule madness surprise just that morning, too!

Asi (2605 words)
Baahubali (Movies)
Sivagami (Baahubali), Unnamed Female Canon Character

The first words Shakti says to the Queen Mother are, “Leave me be.”

sivagami and her unnamed female bodyguard from the movie, sivagami seen by the devoted eyes of an outsider, the witness to her self-engineered rise and downfall, and there's so much love and tragedy and rightness in this story, i could barely breathe from it. it's beautiful, and it's just right.


i'm hopping on the plane in a couple of hours, so reading the rest of the archive if somewhere ahead of me yet, but that was - AMAZING. i'm pretty pleased by my own writing this year, too - i wrote four things, neatly separated into tv/movie/book/anime. looking forwards to all the recs and excitement and so on in the coming days.