yuletide | 2021 Yuletide Promo Post

Welcome to the Fandom Promo post, everyone!

Here's where you get those eyes on your fandoms for sign ups!

Share what makes your Yuletide fandoms the shiniest and why you love them. A big part of Yuletide is how small our fandoms can be, and this is a good way to make sure other people know what gems there are out there!

Suggested form to use:

FANDOM NAME:
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT:
WHERE CAN I FIND IT (optional):

(Bonus optional: What are you thinking of requesting for this?)

EDIT:

Useful tips (Not required, but helps people if they want to engage with your fandom!):

- Mention what form of media the canon is. Is it a comic miniseries? Is it a twenty season tv show? Is it a book? Is it a twitter feed?
- Is it standalone or part of a series?
- It's best to make each fandom its own entry with its own title in the subject line! That makes it easier for people to find/see what you're promoting! Don't worry about 'spam', that is the entire point of this entry and you're using it exactly as intended.

For reference, last year's promo post!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What It Is

L.J. Smith is best known for her Vampire Diaries books, and to a lesser extent for her Night World series. Night of the Solstice and its sequel, Heart of Valor, are much more straightforward fantasy in that fuzzy middle ground between middle-grade and YA. Our heroes are the four Hodges-Bradley siblings: Alys, Janie, Charles, and Claudia, who are tasked by a sorceress's familiar to investigate a classically mysterious house atop a hill in order to rescue the familiar's mistress and hold off a potential threat from beyond the mortal world.

Why It's Worthy

This is both purely classic (think Nesbit's and Eager's family-driven tales) and thoroughly modern (though it just predates the cell-phone era), the latter to the extent that the house-on-the-hill is very nearly findable via online maps, and I did in fact locate the kids' schools while researching the Yuletide story I wrote for this fandom a number of years back. The protagonists come across as believably sensible and daring in the right proportions, the vixen familiar is distinctively foxlike, and sorceress Morgana Shee proves an engaging ally when we finally meet her late in the first book. Solstice is easily readable as a stand-alone, and the sequel is reasonably self-contained.

Where To Find It

For a minor wonder, these appear to still be in print in both paper and e-text.

The Night of the Solstice
Heart of Valor

Prompts & Possibilities

I’d certainly be interested in looking back – at the origins of Morgana’s and Thia’s obvious rivalry, at either character’s individual history - we know or can guess some of Morgana’s, but Thia Pendriel offers a mostly blank slate - or perhaps at the workings of the Weerul Council. I personally am not at all interested in Morgana/Thia slash, but others may differ - and given what we know, any such would seem necessarily to have occurred long prior to canon.

Alternately, if we’re allowing Heart of Valor in the equation, we might also look forward. I’d love to see Morgana as Janie’s and/or Alys’ tutor, Thia on her own hunting artifacts and plotting revenge, or – for the especially ambitious writer – the next and very likely final confrontation between these rival sorcerei. (Smith's online presence has been at best very intermittent for some time, so we probably ought not count on a prospective third book.)

Extremely Optional Bonus Points

I find myself mostly resisting my usual crossover-junkie impulses where these books are concerned...except that it is, after all, a post-Arthurian story. And that has me thinking: Susan Cooper’s Merriman Lyon is almost certainly not L. J. Smith’s Merlin (from Valor). And yet I can’t help wondering whether and how Cooper’s Merriman (and the Old Ones) might have crossed paths with Smith’s Weeriens and sorcerei in their mutual mythic history. So: if your muse runs that way, feel free to splice Smith and Cooper together and we’ll both see what happens. OTOH, any more general Arthurian-centric back story (green knights, black knights, etc.) for our favorite sorcerei is certainly also welcome.

Ooooh, I should reread these!

2021 Yuletide Promo Post

Night of the Solstice - L. J. Smith

Re: Night of the Solstice - L. J. Smith