Yuletide reveals!
My fic writer this year, Ione, went above and beyond and wrote me a fantastic 20k Rat Patrol fic! I was very impressed. (And ill-advisedly stayed up to 4:30 to finish reading it after the collection opened later than advertised, oops.)
I also managed to achieve my goal of doing better writing-wise than I managed last year, when I only had time to write three fics. This year with the extra time I managed to write five! These are they:
You've Got Male (Arrested Development)
Gob and Tony make a connection, miss their connection, connect, and then fail to make the connection. (3700 words)
I just got into Arrested Development this year and was really hoping to write it for Yuletide, so it was great to get this as my main assignment. It turned out to be a bit of a challenging fandom to write, trying to blend the voice of the in-universe narrator with more standard third-person narration, but I'm really pleased with how it turned out. (And also with that summary!) I ended up mixing and matching several of my recipient's prompts, "You've Got Mail"-style double identity hijinks plus Tony's POV of how he ended up at the place he's in by s4 plus playing with the amnesia effect of the Forget-Me-Nows. Also, I was so sure a zillion people before me would have used this terrible pun title that I actually did an AO3 search just to see how overused it was, and was bemused to find I was only the fourth. (And yet about fifty people have imaginatively titled their "You've Got Mail" slash AUs just "You've Got Mail". Up your pun game, AO3 users.)
Trust in God (And Keep Your Powder Dry) (Secret Wars)
Stephen knows he's in no position to question Doom's decisions... but sometimes he really questions Doom's decisions. (2650 words)
I was pleasantly surprised when the main Secret Wars miniseries was considered eligible this year after being disqualified last year. I was especially happy get a chance to write a treat for dhampyresa/sevenofspade, who's written for me several times before, and who wanted something on the relationship between Doom and Valeria. I struggled a bit coming up with a plot until I came up with the angle of telling the story from the POV of Stephen Strange as he's in the process of his transition from the hero-villain relationship he has with Doom in the regular 616 universe to the friendship they have eight years into the Secret Wars AU. The title was a last-minute choice courtesy of scrabbling through the proverbs section at the back of my dictionary for a good phrase involving 'God', but I feel like it's actually a pretty fitting quotation for where Stephen's at in this AU.
Demento (Black Books)
When Fran, Bernard and Manny wake up with no memory of the day before, they must reconstruct events from subtle clues around the bookshop - and solve a murder. (Or at least cover it up.) (3900 words)
It wouldn't be a Yuletide without a Black Books story! It's become a bit of a tradition for me to write one every year. The recipient suggested three-way amnesia as a possible prompt, which made me think of Memento (hence the "murder mystery" angle, though it doesn't bear much resemblance to the film otherwise, especially since I haven't actually seen it) and from there I leapt to the idea of the three of them "reconstructing" the events of the day before from clues around the bookshop using their own special brand of non-logic.
Days Gone Down (From Eroica With Love)
An aging Klaus has a conversation with his father. (1600 words)
I was sad to see after the main deadline had passed that there were no Eroica fics this year; there wasn't much time left to write anything, but I remembered an idea I'd had for a futurefic involving Klaus and his father that I thought wouldn't need to be too long. I like futurefics in this fandom, but all the ones I've seen have been set after Klaus's father's death, which feels like a missed opportunity considering I'm fascinated by the hints we get of their relationship; I wanted to do a take on it that involved his elderly father having moved back in with him and both of them having somewhat mellowed in their attitudes with time. I did worry that this story might be a little melancholy for people at Yuletide (despite the lighter-hearted ending), but it seems to have gone down well enough so far as I can tell. The title is from a Gerry Rafferty song.
Out on the Wild and Windy Moors (Behind You)
An encounter on a walking holiday. (2150 words)
I fell in love with this collection of single-panel horror comics when I saw it linked during nominations, and I really wanted to write something for it. (Especially since nearly all of my original writing is horror or horror-adjacent, but it's not really something I ever write in fanfic form.) I ended up going right down to the wire on this one because I only had two days to write it and it got a little longer than I expected; I eventually finished and posted it at 6:10 on Christmas Eve, twenty minutes before I had to go out to spend the rest of the evening at my brother's. Hence the rather uninspired summary and song-lyric title; I wanted to use something from Iron Maiden's "Fear of the Dark" but nothing quite fit, so you got a misquote of Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" instead. (Googling tells me the actual lyric is "wiley, windy moors" but I preferred the more standard version.) The particular comic this story is based on is this one.
All in all, a really great Yuletide experience this year!
Now, I just have to try to post some stories the rest of the year round instead of waiting until Yuletide 2017.
I also managed to achieve my goal of doing better writing-wise than I managed last year, when I only had time to write three fics. This year with the extra time I managed to write five! These are they:
You've Got Male (Arrested Development)
Gob and Tony make a connection, miss their connection, connect, and then fail to make the connection. (3700 words)
I just got into Arrested Development this year and was really hoping to write it for Yuletide, so it was great to get this as my main assignment. It turned out to be a bit of a challenging fandom to write, trying to blend the voice of the in-universe narrator with more standard third-person narration, but I'm really pleased with how it turned out. (And also with that summary!) I ended up mixing and matching several of my recipient's prompts, "You've Got Mail"-style double identity hijinks plus Tony's POV of how he ended up at the place he's in by s4 plus playing with the amnesia effect of the Forget-Me-Nows. Also, I was so sure a zillion people before me would have used this terrible pun title that I actually did an AO3 search just to see how overused it was, and was bemused to find I was only the fourth. (And yet about fifty people have imaginatively titled their "You've Got Mail" slash AUs just "You've Got Mail". Up your pun game, AO3 users.)
Trust in God (And Keep Your Powder Dry) (Secret Wars)
Stephen knows he's in no position to question Doom's decisions... but sometimes he really questions Doom's decisions. (2650 words)
I was pleasantly surprised when the main Secret Wars miniseries was considered eligible this year after being disqualified last year. I was especially happy get a chance to write a treat for dhampyresa/sevenofspade, who's written for me several times before, and who wanted something on the relationship between Doom and Valeria. I struggled a bit coming up with a plot until I came up with the angle of telling the story from the POV of Stephen Strange as he's in the process of his transition from the hero-villain relationship he has with Doom in the regular 616 universe to the friendship they have eight years into the Secret Wars AU. The title was a last-minute choice courtesy of scrabbling through the proverbs section at the back of my dictionary for a good phrase involving 'God', but I feel like it's actually a pretty fitting quotation for where Stephen's at in this AU.
Demento (Black Books)
When Fran, Bernard and Manny wake up with no memory of the day before, they must reconstruct events from subtle clues around the bookshop - and solve a murder. (Or at least cover it up.) (3900 words)
It wouldn't be a Yuletide without a Black Books story! It's become a bit of a tradition for me to write one every year. The recipient suggested three-way amnesia as a possible prompt, which made me think of Memento (hence the "murder mystery" angle, though it doesn't bear much resemblance to the film otherwise, especially since I haven't actually seen it) and from there I leapt to the idea of the three of them "reconstructing" the events of the day before from clues around the bookshop using their own special brand of non-logic.
Days Gone Down (From Eroica With Love)
An aging Klaus has a conversation with his father. (1600 words)
I was sad to see after the main deadline had passed that there were no Eroica fics this year; there wasn't much time left to write anything, but I remembered an idea I'd had for a futurefic involving Klaus and his father that I thought wouldn't need to be too long. I like futurefics in this fandom, but all the ones I've seen have been set after Klaus's father's death, which feels like a missed opportunity considering I'm fascinated by the hints we get of their relationship; I wanted to do a take on it that involved his elderly father having moved back in with him and both of them having somewhat mellowed in their attitudes with time. I did worry that this story might be a little melancholy for people at Yuletide (despite the lighter-hearted ending), but it seems to have gone down well enough so far as I can tell. The title is from a Gerry Rafferty song.
Out on the Wild and Windy Moors (Behind You)
An encounter on a walking holiday. (2150 words)
I fell in love with this collection of single-panel horror comics when I saw it linked during nominations, and I really wanted to write something for it. (Especially since nearly all of my original writing is horror or horror-adjacent, but it's not really something I ever write in fanfic form.) I ended up going right down to the wire on this one because I only had two days to write it and it got a little longer than I expected; I eventually finished and posted it at 6:10 on Christmas Eve, twenty minutes before I had to go out to spend the rest of the evening at my brother's. Hence the rather uninspired summary and song-lyric title; I wanted to use something from Iron Maiden's "Fear of the Dark" but nothing quite fit, so you got a misquote of Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" instead. (Googling tells me the actual lyric is "wiley, windy moors" but I preferred the more standard version.) The particular comic this story is based on is this one.
All in all, a really great Yuletide experience this year!
Now, I just have to try to post some stories the rest of the year round instead of waiting until Yuletide 2017.