Yuletide Magic -- Post-Reveal post
This was my first year doing Yuletide and I really, really enjoyed the experience, especially the thriving and enthusiastic community around the exchange. This sort of atmosphere is often missing from other exchanges. I wrote quite a few fics for Yuletide - my main fic, my pinch hit, and three treats - that I would like to showcase here.
Title: My Better Half
Fandom: Eugene Onegin
Rating: R
Paring: Onegin/Lensky
Word Count: 4, 699
Warnings: Slash
Summary: Eugene thought he'd seen and felt it all in Petersburg. Vladimir believed in his own purity. They were both wrong…
Comments: This was really, really fun to write and I actually think this might be my best EO fic. It’s a very, very small fandom and I wasn’t expecting very many reviews but the two I got are wonderful (thank you, guys!). It was really funny to see that the person for whom I wrote was also the author of my gift-fic. Fondom of two much? Lol. Well, three, actually.
I have a confession - I managed to sneak a bit of a War and Peace crossover in there with the letters. Not that anyone could have guessed it, I don’t think.
Interesting enough, a couple of my inspiration were from things we learned in Frech Lit this term. First of all, Fragonard’s “Ages of Love” presented the initial structure of the fic - the four scenes as well as their content. (Pursuit of Love, The Meeting, The Lover Crowned, The Letters) Secondly, I recently reach Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons so I have been tempted quite a bit to write things in the epistolary style. Which also explains the letters, aside from the desire to sneak in War and Peace. I also have to admit to not being much for writing all out explicit sex, however I pushed my limits a little here thanks to the prompt of my recipient, who expressed, I believe, a preference for high ratings and the passionate romance ;) Also, the TaTu song “Stars” served as a really nice soundtrack to write to and the song just seemed very in harmony with the fic on several levels.
I am very proud to say that this fic has been reced a couple of times in the Yuletide comm!
Title: From An Exiled Perspective
Fandom: Viva La Vida (Coldplay song)
Rating: G
Characters: King (Henri), Louie (OC)
Word Count: 1,035
Summary: A king in exile remembers his happier ruling days as his cousin tries to convince him that all is not yet lost. Based on the song by Coldplay, "Viva La Vida."
Comments: I took this on rather late in the game as a pinch hit and it was admittedly really hard to come up with a plot or something, given that I didn’t have a lot of time for research. So…I decided to go pseudo-fantasy. Make up my own king and country and such. It was really fun to work around the Coldplay lyrics for this song. With 106 hits, a rec and a bookmark on AO3 but no reviews, not even from the recipient, I’m not quite sure what’s going on here. BUT it was fun, and deff one of my many Yuletide firsts since I’ve never written for this sort of “fandom” before. Lol, I didn’t even think songs had fandoms.
Title: Seducing A Princess
Fandom: The Little Mermaid (Disney)
Rating: PG/PG-13 (borderline)
Paring: Ursula/Ariel
Word Count: 496
Warnings: Femslash, Dub-con
Summary: Ursula likes to win big.
Comments: This. Wow. This is definitely one of those big Yuletide firsts. I never thought I’d be writing for a Disney/cartoon/little kid film fandom. BUT even more so, femslash. I really never imagined myself writing it. Maybe as a side paring, maybe reading a fic there and here but never really making it the focus. Given that this is not very explicit it’s still a breakthrough for me and certainly something new. PS: the AO3 warning says “underage.” That’s there because of the AO3 under-18 policy and Ariel is 16 in the movie, so yea, technically she is underage.
Title: Withered Is The Triumphal Wreath
Fandom: 19th c. Arts and Sciences RPF
Rating: PG
Paring: Alexander Pushkin/Mikhail Lermontov
Word Count: 886
Warnings: Slash, character death
Summary: Alexander Pushkin's final duel and the night before it from Mikhail Lermontov's POV. Inspired by the poem "On the Death of a Poet" by Lermontov.
Comment: Another little coincidence here. The person I wrote this for also wrote a Madness fic for me. A very, very sweet and cute Brideshead Revisited h/c fic. Anyways, I need to stalk her. Anyone who likes duels, slash, and Russian boys is stalk-worthy in my book :p This is definitely another one of my ‘firsts.” I was always a little squeamish about writing RPF but I couldn’t walk past this prompt when I saw it on the Madness list. OMG, I never thought, honestly, that ANYONE would think of requesting this paring. Really. But ever since my mom gave me Lermontov’s poem “On The Death Of A Poet” to read, I realized that these two just needed to be slashed. I didn’t think I’d be the one writing it. Yuletide works miracles, I tell ya!
Title: Finding Closure
Fandom: Animorphs
Rating: PG
Paring: Jake/Tobias
Word Count: 717
Warnings: Slash
Summary: Post-war. Tobias needs a way to heal. Jake thinks he has the answer.
Comments: This was always THE Animorphs paring for me. I use to really love the books back when I was younger. It was a nice throwback for me and I was glad to make someone else a little treat for the Holidays. Maybe this is a bit of a fix-it fic, but those aren’t always bad, right? It’s also a way for me to make up for the failure of an attempt at an Animorphs fic that I made back when I was a lot younger.