Happy New Year!
I was really excited for the Yuletide reveal this year, for a purely selfish reason -- I actually got assigned to write a story for the wonderful tangleofthorns this year. We were matched in a different fandom, but when I read her prompt for a Stagger Lee fic, I knew that I absolutely had to do that one instead. (And also got to have fun telling her about a fake story I was writing and turning down her offer to read over my story for me and keeping mum while she told me about the fic she got for Yuletide. \o/)
So I wrote...
The Red Hot Brawling Sun. Every night, Staggolee comes into the Bucket of Blood looking for trouble.
(1755 words, PG-13, gen, based off the folktale/song tradition of Stagger Lee)
I merged a bunch of different versions of the story pretty explicitly, and made up a few references of my own, but the thing that kept calling to me was the versions where Stagger Lee was such a bad motherfucker that he ended up ousting the devil himself and taking over hell, so that's where I ended up guiding the story towards -- the gradual shift of the story from being a realistic could-happen-anywhere bar tale to something grounded firmly in legend/myth territory. This story was so much fun to write. Thank you, tangleofthorns, for having such fantastic requests.
So I wrote...
The Red Hot Brawling Sun. Every night, Staggolee comes into the Bucket of Blood looking for trouble.
(1755 words, PG-13, gen, based off the folktale/song tradition of Stagger Lee)
I merged a bunch of different versions of the story pretty explicitly, and made up a few references of my own, but the thing that kept calling to me was the versions where Stagger Lee was such a bad motherfucker that he ended up ousting the devil himself and taking over hell, so that's where I ended up guiding the story towards -- the gradual shift of the story from being a realistic could-happen-anywhere bar tale to something grounded firmly in legend/myth territory. This story was so much fun to write. Thank you, tangleofthorns, for having such fantastic requests.