prezzies!

[kindkit]

Merry Christmas to all who are celebrating.

I am the luckiest boy in fandom this Christmas, because I got THE BEST PRESENTS OMG!

vilakins sent me two wonderful Tintin figurines (Tintin and Haddock), and they flew all the way around the world, thus becoming almost as well-travelled as the real things, and arrived in my letter box on Christmas Eve. I made squeaky noises of glee as I unwrapped the parcel, and more as I immediately discovered that yes, they can be positioned in a hug, although slightly awkwardly. Thank you, vilakins, you are awesome!

And for Yuletide I got two absolutely gorgeous, perfect perfect perfect stories. The Wine Dark Sea is Tintin fic, a moving and complex look at Haddock's pre-Tintin life. It weaves together three important strands--Haddock's relationships to the sea, to alcohol, and to other men/his own sexuality--into an amazing whole. It's the Haddock backstory I was craving but could never have written myself.

With the Wild Geese is Colditz fic (!!!), 21,000+ words of rich, thought-provoking, beautifully-structured, emotionally-absorbing Colditz fic that somehow incorporates everything I have ever wanted to see explored, from issues of nationalism to the difficulty of being a gay man in an atmosphere (a POW camp) of situational homosexuality. Colditz is a teeny tiny fandom, but I think you can read this story without knowing the fandom, or at least without knowing more than you could glean from Wikipedia; it fully explores the characters and the situation. Please, please read it. It is just that good, and its totally anonymous author whose identity I do not in any way suspect deserves more readers than just me. If you need a further incentive, it crosses deliciously over with John Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (but will still work fine if you don't know that novel).

Happy Kit is happy, oh yes.

Comments

[lemposoi]

Did the Tintin figures come from Belgium? They're all over the place in Belgium, though I guess they're more available in other countries too now that the movie's come out. I used to always bring a couple as souvenirs to some friends of mine who were big into Tintin.

"Wine-Dark Sea", eh? I wonder if that's a reference to the Aubreyad or the Iliad?

I almost said "I can't even imagine finding an excellent 21K fic in a tiny fandom of mine", but then I remembered Plogviehze, Baby.

Congratulations!

[vilakins]

They're from NZ where Weta Workshop (the SFX people) are. Those particular figures were only being sold here. They sell products for all the films they've been involved in (notably LOTR and the Hobbit). :-)

[lemposoi]

Ah, then it makes sense to send them across continents. I was wondering.

Oh man, Weta. <33