yuletide | 2022 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!

NEW: We've made a register! There is now a searchable Google spreadsheet index of the canons promoted on this post. Go ahead and add yours or any you see that are missing! We hope this helps connect people up with canons of interest to them.

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Title:
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What is it, in summary?:

What do you love about it?:

What sort of things are you likely to request for it?:

Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests, or that showcase particular characters and relationships?:

Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence):
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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Title: The Flight of the Heron - D. K. Broster

Media: Book

Approx length: About 350 pages, or 127,000 words

Where to find it: It’s in the public domain in most countries, and is available as a free ebook and a free audiobook. Paper copies are fairly widely obtainable in libraries and second-hand bookshops, including online.

What is it, in summary?: Published in 1925, The Flight of the Heron is a historical novel set in Scotland during the Jacobite Rising of 1745. Its two main characters are on opposite sides of the conflict: Keith Windham is an English army officer annoyed at being sent to such a barbaric, out-of-the-way place as the Scottish Highlands, while Ewen Cameron is a young Highland chieftain and ardent Jacobite, eager to do his part for the cause of Bonnie Prince Charlie. At their first meeting, in the early days of the Rising, Ewen beats Keith in a sword fight, Keith collapses into his arms and Ewen then takes him prisoner. Keith gives his parole of honour (we're all eighteenth-century gentlemen here, after all), and as a parole prisoner he accompanies and observes Ewen in his preparations to join Prince Charles's army. Later they meet again, and history, plot and emotions all get a bit more dramatic.

What do you love about it?: To summarise—history, drama, slashy subtext, enemies to friends (to lovers?) and hurt/comfort!

In more detail—I could go on about the gorgeous descriptive prose, the wide-ranging and meticulous historical detail (Broster apparently consulted eighty reference books while writing it, and it shows), the intriguing and beautiful hints of the supernatural in a mostly-mundane story and other things the book does well, but the heart of it is in the relationship between Ewen and Keith. Keith has a bit of a tragic backstory, as a result of which he has become cynical and embittered about other people and life in general; the hospitable and honourable generosity with which Ewen, his enemy and a Highlander, treats him as his prisoner comes as a shock to him, and between this and Ewen's good looks (described at some admiring length from Keith's POV) he more or less falls in love at first sight. Ewen, for his part, isn't sure what to make of Keith at first, but later gets plenty of opportunity to appreciate the many good qualities hidden beneath his cynical exterior. Their subsequent meetings involve steadily escalating emotional stakes, more dramatic sword fights and swooning in each other's arms, a truly amazing amount of hurt/comfort, tests of divided loyalty and complicated tangles of gentlemanly honour and duty. By the end, despite everything standing between them, they have more than gone from enemies to friends.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it?: Ewen/Keith slash (hurt/comfort, conflicting loyalties, fluffy future fic…) and/or worldbuilding exploring the supernatural aspects of the story.

Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests, or that showcase particular characters and relationships?: No, it’s a single novel. However, I should mention that the author later wrote two more books featuring some of the same characters, and the three books together are sometimes (including in the canonical AO3 tag) treated as a series called 'the Jacobite trilogy'; but The Flight of the Heron stands alone as a complete story, and I intend to nominate it alone.

Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence): Major character death; fairly non-graphic depiction of the historical atrocities committed by the British Army during the '45, and mentions/threats of torture.

Just wanted you to know that I devoured this and then devoured much of the fanfic, and when I showed your rec to my friend they said “I diagnose this with ‘The Eagle of the Ninth.’”
Which made me CACKLE UNCONTROLLABLY, because it’s true. In case you’ve never read The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff, please do, and Frontier Wolf as well. (The book differs quite a bit from the 2011 movie adaptation The Eagle btw).

:D I have indeed read The Eagle of the Ninth and Frontier Wolf and like them both very much—Broster and Sutcliff certainly have some shared talents and priorities as writers. And yay, I'm delighted to hear you enjoyed Flight of the Heron (and the fic!).

2022 Yuletide Promo Post

The Flight of the Heron - D. K. Broster

Re: The Flight of the Heron - D. K. Broster

Re: The Flight of the Heron - D. K. Broster