wanderings

These are all stories from the 2009 Yuletide Collection. They're all about endings, post-story explorations that are firmly grounded in reality, and so all a little bittersweet.

Before It Breaks by michellek
Enchanted
Rating: PG; 1,534 words; Giselle/Robert
"I think we need some time apart," she says.
Enchanted is about the intersection of two worlds, the fairytale and reality, and it's fun and silly and everyone gets their happy ending. The real world doesn't work quite like that, though, and this story is a wonderful exploration of what happens after. It's about the messiness of a relationship and negotiating that. Giselle is fantastic in this; she has all kinds of agency and is very much the person she has always been, but with a bit of a wider lens. She's romantic and kind of steadfast and generally awesome.

nor no man ever loved by sophieisgod
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Rating: PG-13; 1,132 words; Matthew/OMC, Fiona
He's the same age now that Gareth was when he died.
I love this story for it's fix-it properties; it takes all of these bits that rankle me in the film and it smoothes things over, slots them together, and makes things alright. It's a story about a wedding (another wedding) and a little bit about that funeral. It's about moving forward and being happy and acknowledging and learning from the past. I love this story for making Matthew's and Fiona's endings from the credits real; it fleshes things out and makes them right. It's also gorgeous.

Happy as can be by k4writer02
Juno
Rating: PG-13; 3,252 words; Juno, Mark
When she's telling the story of her junior year of high school, she begins and ends it with a chair—the living room set on the lawn and Vanessa's rocking chair, and the little baby snuggled in the mama's arms, that picture that goes out to the world every single Christmas.
This is a story about symmetry and reconciliation. It's about expectations and disappointment and anger and choices. It comes off as very real and is a very convincing futurefic. I love it for not being easy, for the choices the characters make sometimes being hard and Juno and Mark for being uncompromising in their own ways. Juno is a film that does the reality thing fairly well, and this fic continues it, sets it forward and takes another look at the relationships that the characters in the film have with each other. It's excellent.

(This post is for china_shop's Fandom Appreciation Challenge, which "is about giving feedback, reccing and interacting with other fen." - details here.)