If We Took a Holiday
First off, you need to know the truth when it comes to superheroes and super-villains: I’m biased. I love superhero stuff. And there’s so damn little of it (especially queer stuff) that finding this was like reaching into the holiday stocking and finding a chocolate orange where you thought there was just going to be a roll of socks. Also, I know I’ve mentioned this story before, but I’m gonna do it again.
In other words? I loved “The Werewolf Before Christmas.” It hit all the right buttons for me, somewhere in the Venn diagram where campy, queer, super-villainy, magic, hilarity, sweetness, and just enough spice intersect.
It’s not a serious story, but there’s verisimilitude, which is hard enough with any spec fic, but we’re talking a magic and a tech based queer super-villains in love, one of whom watches a soap opera about werewolves—and it totally holds together. I bought in, and loved the ride.
So when a magic-wielding super-villain (whose magic isn’t totally reliable) decides the one grand gesture that will make Christmas work involves kidnapping the star of his super-villain lover’s favourite character from his soap opera of choice? It’s gold. And it’s a holiday story, and romantic, and still freaking adorable.
Other holiday shorts I adore? Sassafras Lowrey’s novella A Little Queermas Carol is flipping awesome (a Little/SM chosen family retelling of A Christmas Carol, for reals); Also, “It’s a Life” by M. Christian from Upon a Midnight Queer, which retells It’s a Wonderful Life from a very specific angle and is wonderful—the whole collection is solid, but that story had me; and also Elliot Cooper’s “Hearts Alight,” which is a spec-fic Hannukah romance between a golem and a young man that was freaking lovely.
What about you? Got any short fiction holiday themed stories you love?
'Nathan Burgoine 