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As it turns out, I wrote quite a bit this winter holiday season, what with yuletide and hlh_shortcuts and the Pacific Rim holiday swap. Eight stories in all, which might be the most I've ever done in one season but maybe not?
I also received some wonderful fics this year but I'll be making a separate post after this one for that, because they deserve their own.
For now, here's my stuff, along with notes on the writing:
Highlander
Title: The Opposite of People
Characters/Pairings: Methos and Duncan, paired by the end
Rating: G
Summary: A new life, a disastrous theatrical run, death but not death and a surprise in the audience.
On LJ * On AO3
Notes: The request I got for this mentioned liminal spaces, either physical or conceptual. I decided to go with both by setting the story in a theater while Methos is in the beginnings of a new life, no longer Adam Pierson, but not quite his new persona yet. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead seemed like the perfect play to set this against, with its focus on identity and purpose and death and the lack of each. I did a lot of theater in high school and college and very much enjoyed getting to use some of my experience to write each theatrical disaster in the story. This story went through a LOT of revision until I realized I had to keep the vast majority of it in the theater.
Title: Mi Casa
Characters/Pairings: Methos/Duncan
Rating: PG
Summary: Methos has a new house and a seriously ugly couch.
On LJ * On AO3
Notes: I wrote this quickly, I admit. But I got to write more for Methos and Duncan and think about what Methos would keep in a storage locker. One would assume he has them. One would assume many Immortals keep things in storage, waiting for the right time to go retrieve them, hoping they don't go to auction (and there's another idea - an Immortal's storage locker goes up for auction after they lose their head). I also got to work in the horribly ugly couch, which I'd had in The Opposite of People and had to cut because it wasn't working there. I have a thing for ugly couches.
Title: Practice
Characters/Pairings: Methos/Gregor, Duncan
Rating: PG13
Summary: Methos and Gregor drop in on Duncan at the same time. It isn't the first time they've met.
On LJ * On AO3
Notes: Gregor Powers has to be one of my very favorite single-episode characters from the entire series. I always ached a little for him, so desperate and depressed and hopeless. It seemed like it might be a common thing for Immortals to deal with as they realized the mortals around them would always die, that they'd always have to move on. Building new lives was a theme for all three of my Highlander stories this year and I rather like that. It also seemed fitting that Methos would have met Gregor, with their common medical background and Methos' longer and more intense "angry adolescence" in his youth made for a good emotional touchstone for them. I really would like to do more with them in the future.
Yuletide: Library anthropomorfic, Galaxy Quest, Black Books, Space Mutiny"
Title: Donation
Fandom: Libraries (anthropomorfic)
Characters: Book, Catalogue, Archive
Rating: G
Summary: When new books are added to the library, sometimes mistakes are made. Sometimes mistakes are fixed.
On AO3
Notes: This was my original assignment. I tossed Libraries into my bucket list on a whim, so of course that was what I was assigned. I promptly freaked out, thinking I had made a horrible mistake, until I got the idea of having a book "lost" in a library. I wanted to explore how multiple copies of the same book would interact, how a catalog would see things, how books see the shelves and carts and staff and students. My recipient is an archivist themselves, but I've got very little personal experience with archives, so I used what I recalled of the archives at my college library and spoke to an archivist in the Yuletide IRC chat. The decision to make the Archive character a collective came from thinking that the archive is made up of a multitude of unique items that represents a whole. I wanted each piece to have a voice, but then the whole thing to speak together. I hope I succeeded.
Title: Galaxy Gals
Fandom: Galaxy Quest
Characters: Gwen DeMarco, Laliari (Jane Doe), Fred Kwan, Jason Nesmith, Guy Fleegman, Alexander Dane, Tommy Webber, OFC
Rating: G
Summary: The ladies of Galaxy Quest talk about the return of the show, romance on set and paving the way for more women on the bridge of the NSEA Protector! Gwen and Laliari get interviewed, and not about their uniforms.
On AO3
Notes: I picked this up as an early pinch hit and was so thrilled when I got confirmation that I'd gotten it. I originally intended to write it as an epistolary piece, entirely an interview like you'd find in TV Guide. As I worked on it I got frustrated with the limitations that put on the story, so I ditched the idea and went for a story around the interview. Gwen deserved a better interview and I thought hey, why not give her a promotion too? But then Laliari poses some tricky questions, what with her social awkwardness (she is an actual alien, after all) and her complete lack of human background. It was a lot of fun trying to figure out just how to deal with that. I've read some great Galaxy Quest fic in the past and was a little intimidated by writing my own, but it was so much fun I might have to do it again.
Title: The Many Duties of Lieutenant Lemont
Fandom: Space Mutiny
Characters: Lieutenant Lemont, lots of bit parts
Rating: PGish? She dies a lot...
Summary: It's tough being the only immortal member of the crew on an accident-prone generation ship.
On AO3
Notes: Being an MST3K fan I couldn't help but want to write a Yuletide Madness treat for this request. Space Mutiny is one of my favorite episodes and the movie itself is, as one of the Brains said about Time Chasers, unbelievably stupid and reasonably watchable. Lemont is a character who dies mid-movie and is then seen later on the bridge, alive as if nothing had happened. So I thought well, what if she's immortal? What if everyone just calls her when they need something ridiculously dangerous done? What if she has to start keeping spare uniforms in the morgue because she finds herself there several times a day? This was so much fun to write and I only wish I'd had more time to work on it.
Title: Bernard's Special Day
Fandom: Black Books
Characters: Bernard Black, Manny Bianco, Fran Katzenjammer
Rating: PG
Summary: It's almost Bernard's birthday!
On AO3
Notes: I have written a fair amount of Black Books fic for Yuletide over the years and I always love revisiting it. The characters are so much fun to work with! A few years back I wrote about Manny's birthday, so when I saw a chance to write something for the fandom this year I thought I'd go ahead and write about Bernard's.
Pacific Rim
Title: Twenty-Five Days 'Til Christmas
Characters: Raleigh Beckett/Mako Mori, Jazmine Beckett, Tamsin Sevier (referred to), Stacker Pentecost (referred to)
Rating: G-ish
Summary: An advent calendar of Christmas festivities for Mako and Raleigh as they settle into life after the war.
On AO3
Notes: The assignment I got had two possible requests to fill: Fluff with Raleigh showing Mako some Western Christmas traditions, or remembrances of Christmases past. I decided to go both ways, writing up an advent calendar of Christmas and winter traditions, one for each day. Some went fluffy and silly, others let me poke around at what life must have been like for civilians during and after the war, others gave me the chance to have Mako and Raleigh think back to Christmases of their youths. I pulled heavily from my own family's Christmas traditions and ended up making a list to get them all in just the right order.
And that's the lot for this past holiday swap season. I swear, this year will be the year I actually get to all those writing projects I keep meaning to do. Seriously.
I also received some wonderful fics this year but I'll be making a separate post after this one for that, because they deserve their own.
For now, here's my stuff, along with notes on the writing:
Highlander
Title: The Opposite of People
Characters/Pairings: Methos and Duncan, paired by the end
Rating: G
Summary: A new life, a disastrous theatrical run, death but not death and a surprise in the audience.
On LJ * On AO3
Notes: The request I got for this mentioned liminal spaces, either physical or conceptual. I decided to go with both by setting the story in a theater while Methos is in the beginnings of a new life, no longer Adam Pierson, but not quite his new persona yet. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead seemed like the perfect play to set this against, with its focus on identity and purpose and death and the lack of each. I did a lot of theater in high school and college and very much enjoyed getting to use some of my experience to write each theatrical disaster in the story. This story went through a LOT of revision until I realized I had to keep the vast majority of it in the theater.
Title: Mi Casa
Characters/Pairings: Methos/Duncan
Rating: PG
Summary: Methos has a new house and a seriously ugly couch.
On LJ * On AO3
Notes: I wrote this quickly, I admit. But I got to write more for Methos and Duncan and think about what Methos would keep in a storage locker. One would assume he has them. One would assume many Immortals keep things in storage, waiting for the right time to go retrieve them, hoping they don't go to auction (and there's another idea - an Immortal's storage locker goes up for auction after they lose their head). I also got to work in the horribly ugly couch, which I'd had in The Opposite of People and had to cut because it wasn't working there. I have a thing for ugly couches.
Title: Practice
Characters/Pairings: Methos/Gregor, Duncan
Rating: PG13
Summary: Methos and Gregor drop in on Duncan at the same time. It isn't the first time they've met.
On LJ * On AO3
Notes: Gregor Powers has to be one of my very favorite single-episode characters from the entire series. I always ached a little for him, so desperate and depressed and hopeless. It seemed like it might be a common thing for Immortals to deal with as they realized the mortals around them would always die, that they'd always have to move on. Building new lives was a theme for all three of my Highlander stories this year and I rather like that. It also seemed fitting that Methos would have met Gregor, with their common medical background and Methos' longer and more intense "angry adolescence" in his youth made for a good emotional touchstone for them. I really would like to do more with them in the future.
Yuletide: Library anthropomorfic, Galaxy Quest, Black Books, Space Mutiny"
Title: Donation
Fandom: Libraries (anthropomorfic)
Characters: Book, Catalogue, Archive
Rating: G
Summary: When new books are added to the library, sometimes mistakes are made. Sometimes mistakes are fixed.
On AO3
Notes: This was my original assignment. I tossed Libraries into my bucket list on a whim, so of course that was what I was assigned. I promptly freaked out, thinking I had made a horrible mistake, until I got the idea of having a book "lost" in a library. I wanted to explore how multiple copies of the same book would interact, how a catalog would see things, how books see the shelves and carts and staff and students. My recipient is an archivist themselves, but I've got very little personal experience with archives, so I used what I recalled of the archives at my college library and spoke to an archivist in the Yuletide IRC chat. The decision to make the Archive character a collective came from thinking that the archive is made up of a multitude of unique items that represents a whole. I wanted each piece to have a voice, but then the whole thing to speak together. I hope I succeeded.
Title: Galaxy Gals
Fandom: Galaxy Quest
Characters: Gwen DeMarco, Laliari (Jane Doe), Fred Kwan, Jason Nesmith, Guy Fleegman, Alexander Dane, Tommy Webber, OFC
Rating: G
Summary: The ladies of Galaxy Quest talk about the return of the show, romance on set and paving the way for more women on the bridge of the NSEA Protector! Gwen and Laliari get interviewed, and not about their uniforms.
On AO3
Notes: I picked this up as an early pinch hit and was so thrilled when I got confirmation that I'd gotten it. I originally intended to write it as an epistolary piece, entirely an interview like you'd find in TV Guide. As I worked on it I got frustrated with the limitations that put on the story, so I ditched the idea and went for a story around the interview. Gwen deserved a better interview and I thought hey, why not give her a promotion too? But then Laliari poses some tricky questions, what with her social awkwardness (she is an actual alien, after all) and her complete lack of human background. It was a lot of fun trying to figure out just how to deal with that. I've read some great Galaxy Quest fic in the past and was a little intimidated by writing my own, but it was so much fun I might have to do it again.
Title: The Many Duties of Lieutenant Lemont
Fandom: Space Mutiny
Characters: Lieutenant Lemont, lots of bit parts
Rating: PGish? She dies a lot...
Summary: It's tough being the only immortal member of the crew on an accident-prone generation ship.
On AO3
Notes: Being an MST3K fan I couldn't help but want to write a Yuletide Madness treat for this request. Space Mutiny is one of my favorite episodes and the movie itself is, as one of the Brains said about Time Chasers, unbelievably stupid and reasonably watchable. Lemont is a character who dies mid-movie and is then seen later on the bridge, alive as if nothing had happened. So I thought well, what if she's immortal? What if everyone just calls her when they need something ridiculously dangerous done? What if she has to start keeping spare uniforms in the morgue because she finds herself there several times a day? This was so much fun to write and I only wish I'd had more time to work on it.
Title: Bernard's Special Day
Fandom: Black Books
Characters: Bernard Black, Manny Bianco, Fran Katzenjammer
Rating: PG
Summary: It's almost Bernard's birthday!
On AO3
Notes: I have written a fair amount of Black Books fic for Yuletide over the years and I always love revisiting it. The characters are so much fun to work with! A few years back I wrote about Manny's birthday, so when I saw a chance to write something for the fandom this year I thought I'd go ahead and write about Bernard's.
Pacific Rim
Title: Twenty-Five Days 'Til Christmas
Characters: Raleigh Beckett/Mako Mori, Jazmine Beckett, Tamsin Sevier (referred to), Stacker Pentecost (referred to)
Rating: G-ish
Summary: An advent calendar of Christmas festivities for Mako and Raleigh as they settle into life after the war.
On AO3
Notes: The assignment I got had two possible requests to fill: Fluff with Raleigh showing Mako some Western Christmas traditions, or remembrances of Christmases past. I decided to go both ways, writing up an advent calendar of Christmas and winter traditions, one for each day. Some went fluffy and silly, others let me poke around at what life must have been like for civilians during and after the war, others gave me the chance to have Mako and Raleigh think back to Christmases of their youths. I pulled heavily from my own family's Christmas traditions and ended up making a list to get them all in just the right order.
And that's the lot for this past holiday swap season. I swear, this year will be the year I actually get to all those writing projects I keep meaning to do. Seriously.