Yuletide Reveal: "Those Sighs on Which I Fed My Heart" (Leonardo [TV])
So despite the minor panic I caused myself by reviewing canon and brooding over various ideas in my head and not actually starting my Yuletide story until the second week of December, and then finding out that it wanted to be 7K instead of the 2-3K I'd anticipated, I'd have to consider my first Yuletide as a pretty great experience.
For one thing, it got me over my "Woe, I haven't been able to write anything since I finished Nomad copyedits in July, what if I've forgotten how to write FOREVER" fit of the vapours. This is no small thing, seeing as I had tried several times to work on other stories (including the post-Quicksilver Alison/Faraday fic I've been promising people forever) but couldn't seem get past the first page. Writing this story, however, knowing that it would be read by very few people but that I had a good chance of making at least one person very happy, turned out to be therapeutic. I wrote the whole thing in just under a week.
So here it is:
Those Sighs on Which I Fed My Heart (7K, Leonardo [TV], gen/mild het, teen)
I like to think this fic is pretty comprehensible even if you haven't seen the TV show, if you grant the premise that Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli, Lorenzo de' Medici and the girl Leonardo will one day paint as the Mona Lisa are all wacky teenagers hanging out in Florence together having adventures. Here's a a great rundown and summary of the series (with screencaps!), courtesy of innerbrat. (At the very least, you should pop over to see how insanely pretty the cast is. Especially Akemnji Ndifornyen.)
As soon as I offered this fandom for Yuletide I was pretty sure that I was going to end up writing it, and lo, it came to pass. And I knew that innerbrat did love herself some Mac/Lisa, and I was not sure that I shipped it, yea, for I was foolishly blinded by the show's notions of shipping Lisa with Leo instead. But in the process of rewatching canon, I saw the light and did repent of my former folly. Mac/Lisa is the best.
Also, innerbrat said something about "Lisa and her art" in her Yuletide letter, and also about the possibility of her having a conversation with Lorenzo's ex-fiancee Angelica, and all these things came together in a glorious explosion of ideas, and the result was this fic. Which I described to one of my betas in an e-mail as "6K of cross-dressing proto-feminist career angst and fluffy romance in 15th century Florence," because I was fairly sure that would make her want to read it even though she wasn't familiar with the show. (It worked.)
Will I sign up for Yuletide again next year? It depends on my schedule, but there's a pretty good chance, I think. I like the idea of writing at least one fic a year to remind me what it's like to write for fun and for the pleasure of a small audience, instead of angsting over contracts and deadlines and Bookscan rankings and all that dreary business stuff.
For one thing, it got me over my "Woe, I haven't been able to write anything since I finished Nomad copyedits in July, what if I've forgotten how to write FOREVER" fit of the vapours. This is no small thing, seeing as I had tried several times to work on other stories (including the post-Quicksilver Alison/Faraday fic I've been promising people forever) but couldn't seem get past the first page. Writing this story, however, knowing that it would be read by very few people but that I had a good chance of making at least one person very happy, turned out to be therapeutic. I wrote the whole thing in just under a week.
So here it is:
Those Sighs on Which I Fed My Heart (7K, Leonardo [TV], gen/mild het, teen)
I like to think this fic is pretty comprehensible even if you haven't seen the TV show, if you grant the premise that Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli, Lorenzo de' Medici and the girl Leonardo will one day paint as the Mona Lisa are all wacky teenagers hanging out in Florence together having adventures. Here's a a great rundown and summary of the series (with screencaps!), courtesy of innerbrat. (At the very least, you should pop over to see how insanely pretty the cast is. Especially Akemnji Ndifornyen.)
As soon as I offered this fandom for Yuletide I was pretty sure that I was going to end up writing it, and lo, it came to pass. And I knew that innerbrat did love herself some Mac/Lisa, and I was not sure that I shipped it, yea, for I was foolishly blinded by the show's notions of shipping Lisa with Leo instead. But in the process of rewatching canon, I saw the light and did repent of my former folly. Mac/Lisa is the best.
Also, innerbrat said something about "Lisa and her art" in her Yuletide letter, and also about the possibility of her having a conversation with Lorenzo's ex-fiancee Angelica, and all these things came together in a glorious explosion of ideas, and the result was this fic. Which I described to one of my betas in an e-mail as "6K of cross-dressing proto-feminist career angst and fluffy romance in 15th century Florence," because I was fairly sure that would make her want to read it even though she wasn't familiar with the show. (It worked.)
Will I sign up for Yuletide again next year? It depends on my schedule, but there's a pretty good chance, I think. I like the idea of writing at least one fic a year to remind me what it's like to write for fun and for the pleasure of a small audience, instead of angsting over contracts and deadlines and Bookscan rankings and all that dreary business stuff.