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I'm still picking through Yuletide fics and making some bookmarks for recommendations. I had been hoping my Yuletide Reading Bingo attempt this year would help me some there but after I generated it and started filling it out I realised I had two matching squares and two squares that were antithetical to any tag you'd find in the Yuletide collection, so!
I had a fun time deciding my fandoms this year—my own fandoms are those that are verrrry small and specific, so my depth of knowledge or confidence to approach others isn't always that high. That said, this year I lucked into matching for Earthsea!
First, the fic and tags etc:
To be useful, if not free (2343 words) by bzedan
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Serret (Earthsea), Yarrow (Earthsea)
Additional Tags: No Dialogue
Summary:
The child knew that if a queen were to have yet produced but a single daughter, then the creature should be at least pleasant to look at, easy to care for, and useful. Of the three, the most important was that she was to be useful.
Writing commentary
I honestly didn't mean to write another story from the POV of a seagull, I swear. But the prompt had so many delicious ingredients in it—the simple joyfulness of Yarrow, the mystery of Serret's background, the possibility of her escaping.
A secret: I had seen this prompt last year and felt like I just didn't have Earthsea fresh enough in my mind to offer the fandom. Which was a shame as the Earthsea books are a dear favourite. So, I reread the series in 2025 (among other LeGuin works, as my best friend read Lathe of Heaven for the first time and my partner read The Disposessed), and added the fandom with confidence. I was excited about all the fandoms I offered, but over the moon to get matched with one I'd already prepped for.
I love to approach things with form, so the idea of not naming our narrator (Serret) and using ages as periods/delineating times for each vignette set me going. Then I started giggling at the idea of taking "maiden/mother/crone" and making it "maiden/mother/bird" and, well.
Also, in the books, it is sort of intimated that only Ogion could have returned poor Ged to his human form, so I thought Serret might well be stuck as a bird. And that, on further reflection, for a woman who was only ever the tool of others, the simple and straightforward life of a seagull—the selfish joyfulness of it—might be preferable.
Additional Earthsea notes
Now, the fun thing about Earthsea is it had a hand in my partner and I meeting and getting together. Chase's mom is a librarian and they had the Earthsea trilogy (and Tehanu) on the shelf of their dorm. Those specific first edition paperbacks, if you remember, with the bold colours. Distinctive as hell to spot on a shelf.
It was why, when I first saw them on an endcap at my high school library, I picked them up. I don't know if they were part of a display or if they'd just been purchased, or what. But I picked up the first one, read it, returned it, then picked the next from the same display. The problem was, the display was gone by time I was ready for the third book (or the fourth—it has been decades, so the details are fuzzy).
As I had not taken in the author's name, so I had no idea who this series I was in the middle of were by. I did find them eventually because I knew what genre they were and they had those bright colours, so it was just a matter of searching the shelves with a sharp eye.
All that to say, the covers were well-impressed on my mind and spotting them on some guy's dorm room shelf made me go "Oh, I bet you're interesting." Turns out they were and now some 20-odd years later the books are on our shelf.