We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

So in multiple Yuletides past I have asked for someone to write me a queer consideration of Mercedes Lackey's Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms. I wouldn't recommend that series to anyone (I cannot even tell you how desperately it needs an editor) but it is excellent comfort reading for me ... except for things like One Good Knight, which I read around the same time as a couple other fantasy books that were also OBVIOUSLY setting up a lesbian relationship and then randomly threw in a het ending at the last minute and therefore have a probably disproportionate grudge against. Where was I?

Right. So. This year I requested it again but then also got assigned Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, and there was nothing in my recipient's requests against it, so I decided I'd write it myself, and at least get some enjoyment out of it. ...And then I received exactly the kind of queer reimagining that I wanted! And my recipient liked my fic! So clearly I won Yuletide both ways.

Because they are basically just about queer fairy tales I would not say that you need to know anything about the Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms to understand these fics. My gift has more canon characters than my assignment does, but all you really need to know is that The Tradition is a magical force that makes fairy tales and folktales and songs play out in the real world (whether the people involved want to be in a fairy tale or not), and Godmothers are overworked magicians who try and mitigate the damage, usually by creating happy endings.

My gift was Writing Our Own Happily-Ever-Afters by StableState, which has poly and a GREAT take on the woman-disguised-as-a-man story and also an excellent pun.

I wrote

Title: Blossoms in Ashes
Wordcount: 6155 words
Fandom: Cinderella (Perrault), Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms (Lackey)
Rating: G
Relationships: Various
Characters: Cinderella, Prince Charming, Fairy Godmother, Stepsisters, Stepmother, Godmother Elena (Five Hundred Kingdoms)
Warnings/Enticements: Abuse, Queer themes, Regendering
Summary: “All over the Five Hundred Kingdoms, down through time, there have been countless girls like you for whom the circumstances were not right. Their destined princes were greybeards, infants, married or terrible rakes, or not even Princes at all, but Princesses! … And there are dozens and dozens of other tales that The Tradition is trying to recreate, all the time, and perhaps one in a hundred actually becomes a tale.”
A variety of events documented in the chronicles of the Godmothers of the Five Hundred Kingdoms.

And I managed to fit in a Madness treat before getting covid right before Christmas (booooo).

Title: Nevertheless
Wordcount: 350 words
Fandom: The Waste Land (T. S. Eliot)
Rating: G
Relationships: None
Characters: Madame Sosostris
Warnings/Enticements: Poetry, Clairvoyance, Telepathy, Common Cold, London, Post-World War I
Summary: She brings the horoscope herself.