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Coal All The Way

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It’s not that much of a twist if it’s stated in the first line, is it?

Sue’s only real regret in a long and happy life was that Johnsy never did see the Bay of Naples. They had talked about going so many times….

I don't consider this informing the reader that Johnsy's going to bite it, TBH. Maybe Johnsy's old and sick and can't go (not that that's much more cheerful). And anyway, I'd consider the twist to be that Johnsy does go, but as ashes in an urn.

Beyond that, this also hits miscarriage, death in childbirth, and death of the Spanish Flu, along with institutional misogyny. I would not have hit those notes for an author who DNW'd overly dark storylines, personally.

Good Lord. That poor recip.

cyrt Yeah. The actual prose is well done for the canon, but I can't think it's what the recip was hoping for. The closest thing to an indication of the two women having a physical relationship or any romantic or sexual interest in one another is them cuddling in bed for reassurance while they worry about whether they can adopt Sue's dead brother's kid. There's a lot about their respective careers and about the kid's future life, then it ends when they go back to visit the old neighborhood and Johnsy sees the building with the leaf has been demolished and dies within a week for Reasons.

The recip did get a treat, for another O. Henry story, that I strongly suspect is by the same author. (Same formatting and text in the A/N, and similar prose style.) Fortunately that one is fine -- nothing exciting but it's also not stuffed full of war, death, and miscarriage.

I’d say they’re different authors. The Last Leaf fic has a disclaimer and research footnotes, but the Transients in Arcadia one just has what looks like the entire prompt pasted at the top. The prose similarities are probably due to both being O. Henry fic.

They have the exact same formatting for the A/N at the top: bolded "Request(s):" followed by a C&P of the recip's request, followed by "Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and make no profit by them."

When I search for "and make no profit by them" under Search Within Results in the full Yuletide collection, I get exactly one author who's used it in Yuletide before: fawatson. She's used that exact disclaimer statement 29 times, in fact. Nobody else has used it even once.

I think the lack of references on the other one is just because she didn't have any -- it's a much shorter work and doesn't reference any historical events.

sc (agh, sorry about the formatting fail)

*slowly reaches for popcorn*

Recip looks like a Yuletide newbie. 50-50 on the response.

CYRT

Oops, I missed the disclaimer on the Arcadia fic.

cyrt I'm glad you did -- if you hadn't, I wouldn't have gone digging into it further and discovered who it was!

I know the Watsons have been here before. We'll know they still are if the disclaimers suddenly get re-worded. :D

Oh my god, of course it's one of the Watsons. What would Mary Renault think?

That opening made me think it was a deathbed recollection and that Sue was dying, tbh

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Coal All The Way

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