dolorosa_12's Tree

[partridgemod]

This is the Tree for dolorosa_12! Below are the requested Pears it can be decorated with (beginning 24 December).



Username: dolorosa_12
AO3 Username: Dolorosa

Request 1: Fic about fairy tale, folktale, or mythological women. I love and would be equally happy with femslash, gen, or het. I read and enjoy fic of all ratings, and would be happy with anything ranging from very sweet and fluffy to something very dark. Please no Disney versions of any fairytales.

Request 2: Dreamwidth icons with pictures/photos of coffee or tea (in mugs, cups, glasses, teapots or other pouring vessels is fine). No fannish images (i.e. just non-specific photos/pictures of coffee or tea, not screencaps of characters from shows, books, films etc drinking tea or coffee).

Request 3: Recs for books retelling myths, legends, folktales or religious stories from the perspective of female characters, in the vein of The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, or The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. I'm happy for the books recommended to have tragic or unhappy endings. My preference is for retellings set in the same time and context as the source material, rather than transplanted to a modern setting. Please do not recommend books by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Madeline Miller, or books written by and aimed at an evangelical Christian readership.

Request 4: Recipes for dishes typically consumed in your country/your culture at whatever winter festival you celebrate. If you do not have a winter festival (for example if you live in a region that doesn't have a distinct winter), but you have a festival that features a celebration of light/lights in some way, recipes typically consumed then would also be very welcome.

Request 5: Dreamwidth icons featuring stars, nebulae, planets, or other celestial bodies.

Additional Information:

My Ao3 account bookmarks, gifts, and the fics I've written should hopefully give a rough idea of the sorts of things I like to read. I'm also happy to answer any questions you may have, or clarify my requests.

Comments

Space Icons

[kingstoken]

Re: Space Icons

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you so much! These are gorgeous!

Celestial icons! :)

[flowerdeluce]

Hi dolorosa_12,

Happy holidays to you!

I’ve made you some space icons. There are three galaxy icons (sombrero, whirlpool, and tadpole galaxies) and the rest are nebulae (butterly, heart and soul, the heart, bubble, helix, and witch head nebulas.) I chose my favourite nebula images from this amazing NASA archive site. My choice of galaxies were inspired by this list of Hubble's largest images. I hope you like them :)


1. 2. 3.
4. 5. 6.
7. 8. 9.

Re: Celestial icons! :)

[dolorosa_12]

Happy holidays to you, and thank you so very much — these are beautiful! And what a great resources the NASA archive — such incredible images.

3 Coffee Icons

[sumilong]

1.

2.

3.

Re: 3 Coffee Icons

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you, these are beautiful!

Northeuropeish Christmas fest

[bruttimabuoni]

This is not so much a recipe as an assemblage – a Christmas Eve dinner for my Swedo-Germanic family. Some of it is probably directly from one or the other; some of it is probably just my family’s tradition. I’ve never worked out the combination. (Christmas Eve is, of course, properly Christmas. 25th December is for latecomers.)

Anyway, start with ham. Cold or hot, whatever. It’s just the excuse for the sides.
Creamy mashed potato with plenty of nutmeg.
Carrots braised slowly and finished with butter, sugar and dill.
Chestnuts and mushrooms, braised in the same dish, finished with a tiny bit of cream.
Red cabbage – we don’t have a family recipe for this, so any of your slow-cooked stovetop ones will do, bit of apple, maybe some raisins, plenty of spice, a little vinegar.
Small pearl onions, peeled whole, and cooked in butter and a bit of water till they are soft. If feeling adventurous, add a spoonful of sugar to caramelise, but don’t let them burn.
Celeriac au gratin, in a simple cheesy bechamel. With extra cheese. No, more than that.
Optionally, as it has snuck in over the years, some homemade chutney or cranberry sauce may be added to the table. But nothing green. (Apart from the dill, that's northern enough.)

You will need five stovetop burners to make this. You do not have five stovetop burners. The ham, if hot, needs a fairly low oven, while the celeriac needs a very high. You require more serving dishes than any one human can stand.

You will, nonetheless, overcome. Then put it alllll on the table. Assemble many hungry people. Sigh heavily at how impossible it is that this enormous spread will ever be finished. You will be eating leftovers at New Year.

After twenty minutes, you will have half a spoonful of spare celeriac and a wee bit of mash left. And red cabbage. There is always more red cabbage. (You will still be eating that at New Year.)

Merry Christmas!

Re: Northeuropeish Christmas fest

[dolorosa_12]

Oh, this is glorious! I love the sound of every single dish, and I can really see how well this would all work together. I also really enjoyed your description of the preparation and consumption of this beautiful spread of food — it really evoked that chaotic, warm, ravenous Christmas gathering feeling well, and I almost felt as if I were there in the room.

I will definitely be trying out some, or all, of these dishes in the future. Thank you so much, and Merry Christmas to you too!

[immolate_the_silence]

I hope you like these :D

[dolorosa_12]

Oh, these are lovely! Thank you so much!

[immolate_the_silence]

You're very welcome. I so love your icon of Mitchell and Annie sharing tea :)

Happy Holidays!

[alexseanchai]

Do you mind self-recs? Not all of what I have on AO3 under Ancient Greek Religion & Lore and Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms will suit you, but I think some will?

This recipe is straight out of a New Jersey parish cookbook from at least twenty-three years ago. (I know it's that old because my grandmother's who submitted it and that's how long ago she died.) The recipe title as the cookbook has it is "Crumb Cake", but my family knows it better as "Baby Jesus Birthday Cake". I can't honestly say I care for the cake part as is—my mother always makes two recipes of the crumb part to go on one recipe of the cake part, and even so, there are reasons she only makes it once a year—but I'm thinking of adding cocoa powder, vanilla extract, and some more sugar to the cake part when I make it tomorrow to see whether slash how much that improves it.

cake:
1/2 c butter or margarine
3/4 c sugar
1 egg
2 c flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 c milk

crumbs:
1 c flour
1/4 c granulated sugar
1/4 c confectioners sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 c mazola corn oil

Soften butter; add sugar. Then stir in eggs. Sift flour, salt, and baking powder and alternately with milk. Fold batter into greased 9 1/2" x 13" x 2" pan. Mix crumbs together with fingers and drop onto batter. Bake at 350°F for 40 minutes.

And my icon is stealable if you are so inclined! (The person I stole it from didn't know who made it either 🙁)

[dolorosa_12]

Self recs are fine — thank you very much for sharing, and I look forward to checking out your fic.

Thank you also for the recipe, which looks delicious!

[ningloreth]

Some coffee icons and some Orion-related icons -- I hope you like them :-)

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5

6 7 8 9 10

[dolorosa_12]

These are all so lovely — thank you very much!

[delacourtings]

some coffee/tea icons for you! :)

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you so much, these are fantastic!

[hebethen]

Books you might be interested in for #3:

- Hild (Nicola Griffith): a brick of a book exploring and (re)imagining the youth of St. Hilda of Whitby. It's lush with detail, with a deep sense of time and place; contemplative, queer, and full of intrigue.

- Lavinia (Ursula K. Le Guin): a lyrical, numinous tale of the titular Lavinia from the Aeneid; less a retelling of the Aeneid itself as a resituation of Lavinia into her own story. "Historiography and poetry and domesticity and mysticism", as I've put it before.

- All the Ever Afters (Danielle Teller): a Cinderella retelling from the stepmother's perspective.

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you so much for these lovely recommendations!

I've already read both Hild and Lavinia, and thoroughly enjoyed them both (my review of Hild is here). Given how much I enjoyed both of those two books, I suspect I will definitely like the third one you've recced, which I have not read. I'll definitely track it down!

Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid Ficlet, Post-Canon, Gen

[schlitzie_ramone]

Floating above the world with her new sisters, searching for good deeds to perform and pure-hearted children, the daughter of the air heard disconsolate sobbing from the rocky shoreline of a quiet bay.

She glided, unseen, towards a large smooth rock where a little mermaid sat, her green and gold tail curled beneath her as her large blue eyes, wet with tears, gazed longingly towards a distant city and its bright palace of white marble. The daughter of the air felt a stab of pain at the memories rising within her, seeing herself as she had once been in this young maiden of fifteen.

Her lovely voice whispered in the little mermaid’s ear, soft and melodious, more like the calling of faraway birds than human sounds.

“Enjoy being young,” the daughter of the air whispered to this little mermaid. “Return to your loved ones beneath the waves, and if you seek an immortal soul, earn one by doing good and find a place in your old age with me and my kind.”

And with a kiss on the mermaid’s forehead, the daughter of the air flew away with her companions.

Re: Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid Ficlet, Post-Canon, Gen

[dolorosa_12]

Oh, this is beautiful — melancholy, poignant, and hopeful all at once. It has a gloriously fairytale tone as well.

Thank you very much for this lovely ficlet.

Re: Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid Ficlet, Post-Canon, Gen

[schlitzie_ramone]

You're welcome - I'm glad you like this! <3

[ambyr]

For 3, the early books in Jo Grant's Numinous World series might be relevant to your interests? Black Ships covers the Aeneid (from the perspective of the priestess/oracle who guides Aeneas) and Hand of Isis is Cleopatra's story from the perspective of her handmaiden. (The second book in the series has a male main character, and later books in the series are set in Napoleonic France, but there's no reason the series needs to be read in order; until you get to the Napoleonic sub-sequence the books each stand alone.)

[dolorosa_12]

Ooh, these sound fantastic, and definitely the sort of thing I'm looking for. I will definitely track those down, and I'm adding them to my Goodreads 'want to read' list now!