neveralarch

Philadelphia
Johannes Cabal
Rating: teen
Characters: Johannes & Horst Cabal, Carnival of Discord ensemble
Wordcount: 18000ish
Summary: Johannes' bet with Satan is going relatively well. Horst isn't enjoying himself. Johannes is learning to juggle. These observations aren't related, exactly, but Horst spent eight years with nothing to do but think and it's difficult to stop himself now.

A/N: Thanks to my brother, who has spent hours and hours with me dissecting the Cabal books in general and Horst in particular. A lot of the ideas in this fic came from our conversations, and I wouldn't have written it without the chance to rant at him. When it was done, of course, he was too busy with 'college' and 'work' to edit it for me. Huge huge thanks to thehorseofadifferentcolour who stepped in, read the whole thing like three times, and let me continue rambling about Horst indefinitely.

This fic is set during Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, and is not at all compliant with the later novels. The fic contains threats of violence toward both adults and children, actual violence toward adults, human and animal death, suicidal thoughts, soul stealing, vampirism, and a lot of sibling conflict. It's sort of a comedy. Please let me know if you need details before reading.


Read it on the AO3!

I started writing this right after I finished the first Johannes Cabal novel, so I just barely beat a year to completion, haha. Incidentally, writing this and also talking to a lot of people about siblings while I was writing this made me realize how weird and fundamental sibling relationships are. I just typed a long explanation of this, but it didn't make any sense and anyway I kind of do that in the fic, so. But I would just like to reiterate: weird.

Hello hello! For those wondering, I did survive Yuletide and I DID write 11 fics. Which is... all of the fic I managed to post in 2016. So look forward to seeing an in-depth analysis of these fics in a couple days when I get my act together and do the year in review.

First, though, let's talk about the AMAZING fic I received:

Lapidary (3367 words) by Parhelion
Fandom: Nero Wolfe - Rex Stout
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Archie Goodwin/Saul Panzer
Summary: Saul brings his hobby to work; Archie decides he wants both cake and pie.

Nero Wolfe novels sort of define my early-to-mid-teens, and I think I first decided that Yuletide was an amazing thing because there were three (three!!) Archie/Saul fics buried in their old archive website. It’s the wisecracking sappy professionals ship of my heart. And this fic Gets It and also has an amazing vision of the Nero Wolfe universe from Saul’s pov:

If you haven’t heard of Mr. Wolfe, he was the one Manhattan P.I. back in the thirties able to handle cases where the brother-in-law maybe did it with a silver spoon in the conservatory, but you had to have brain-power, out-talk a white-shoe lawyer, and win access to a Tiffany bracelet to prove it. I found such affairs to be nice little vacations. Mr. Wolfe, like most national monuments, was always something to see. Archie Goodwin, who was Mr. Wolfe’s associate in charge of bracelet-accessing, was a friend of mine.

Parhelion has written several Archie/Saul fics and they’re all great - I feel so lucky to have received this new one. Check it out!

(And also read the Nero Wolfe novels - I’ve already gotten a few friends hooked, you could be next.)

On to what I wrote:

Catch You When You Drop (6211 words) for perdiccas
Fandom: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Beverley Brook, Oxley (Rivers of London)
Summary:
Draft message to Peter Grant
look maybe i dont want to find myself in the country maybe i wanted to stay comfortable and happy in london maybe i wanted to keep fighting with the thames boys maybe it was kind of fun

Beverley right after the end of the first book, trying hard to adjust to being out of London and also get hot water in her caravan. As usual I just wish I had more time to rewrite this properly, but I am proud that I managed to conceive a reasonable amount of fic and write it in a reasonable amount of time, rather than Last Year. I even managed to get everything posted well before the deadline, although as usual I was surprised by how much trouble the AO3 servers have with Yuletide and ended up stressing out as I tried to get things posted through the 500 errors.

( treat fics under the cut. More RoL, Discworld, Johannes Cabal, Baseball, Matthew Swift, and a couple small fandoms )

(Please give me Yuletide recs if you have any - I'm too overwhelmed to go diving, but I do love Yuletide and Yuletide fics and I want to read more than the three I've done so far.)

FIC TAKES FOREVER TO POST. I had it coded. It was done. It still took me an hour and a half from blank AO3 to now.

The Bearing of a Scholar
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Rating: gen
Characters: Mr. Norrell, Childermass, ensemble.
Wordcount: 9000ish
Summary: "A man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one." —Dr. Samuel Johnson
Or: A very important fic about Childermass fighting with Drawlight and Lascelles over what waistcoat Mr. Norrell should wear to the ball.
A/N: Thanks tremendously to cosmogyral for editing, character correction, and a really good suggestion about footnotes. And thanks to prodigy for linking me to how-to-footnote a while back and making the clicky numbers possible.

Read it on the AO3!

I finished a fic!!!! It is for like... two people to read. Maybe three. But I've been meaning to write it for 1.5 years and now it exists!

Walk the Straight Road Alone
The Crossroads and the Gate - Imogen Calhoun
Rating: adult
(swearing, non-graphic violence, explicit sex, god problems, and a lot of stuff about consent - mostly trial-and-error negotiation)
Characters: Arruén/Venadan
Wordcount: 7100ish
Summary: Gods make endings difficult. Gods make everything difficult.
(Alright, Venadan makes things a little difficult too.)
A/N: This is a fanfic of The Crossroads and the Gate, which I love a lot and also have thought way too much about. I recommend reading that before you try to read this (also, I just recommend it in general).

Read it on the AO3!

I wrote this and three other fics by voice memo while driving across the country, which means that I have a weird first draft podfic. Dunno what I'll do with them, maybe some kind of process post. It was interesting, though! I've been reading about Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham and several other authors from around that time dictating their novels and my reaction was basically 'woah what how????' The writing technique that I've built up through constant word processor use tends to be very choppy and non-linear, and would drive a typist up the wall. But I was stuck in a car and my phone has a very good voice recorder, so I thought I'd give it a shot with some fics I've had kicking around for 1.5 years to a couple of days, (relatively) short fics that I had fully plotted out. I think it turned out well! Although I then put this fic through four drafts, haha, and I'm still catching typos now that I've posted. ...Let me know if you see anymore.

I checked who my authors were as soon as they were revealed because I really wanted to know, haha. Not Like I Feint Every Time We Touch is by Aja, and VII. Lakeland is by livii (which I had kind of guessed). Very grateful to both of them, this was an awesome Yuletide :)

My main fic:

On Land and At Sea (8283 words) for binz
Hornblower - C. S. Forester, Adult
William Bush/Horatio Hornblower/Barbara Wellesley
Summary: Hornblower introduces his captain to his wife. (A missing chapter from the beginning of Commodore Hornblower.)

This was super last minute for me - I had to upload a finished but very rough draft for the deadline, then got aralias to do a last-minute beta for me, and edited and posted the final version on the 23rd/24th. But it did get finished, and I think it turned out pretty well :) It was a little weird to be writing sex stuff for Yuletide, but I am huge fan of binz (and shiplizard)'s kinky Hornblower fic, so as soon as I saw binz's prompts I wanted to write something along similar lines.

On the 22nd and 23rd I wrote a bunch of Madness fic (as usual), and all of those are under the cut.

( Read more... )

Update, June 2013: Dudes, I am super lazy about updating this, and AO3 is way more navigable than this mess of a list. If you want to find fic on my journal, the tagging system should have your back (or leave a comment and I will help you find the fic!).

Since fanfiction and fanart are basically the only things I post, here's a list. I realize you could just go through my tags, but I hate doing that on other people's journals, so why should I make anyone else?

( List, list, list. )

Two pieces of news!

I wrote a fic for holli's Discworld fanzine "The Turtle Moves" earlier this year, and I just posted it to the AO3. The whole zine (and other zines) can be downloaded free here, but here is the header info and link for my fic:

An Incomplete List
Discworld (The Truth)
Rating: g
Characters: Mrs. Cake, ensemble
Wordcount: 540ish
Summary: Being an incomplete list of the documents found in the 'Complaints and Comments' office of The Ankh-Morpork Times, after the disappearance of Mr. Timothy Bauer.

Doctor Who fans need not feel left out! I also wrote a fic about the Master's facial hair for the Katyzine, which can be downloaded here. I will post the fic separately eventually, but for now it is zine-exclusive. Check out the zine! It has amazing cover-art and many recipes and also 'recipes' and Star Trek with cats. Truly it is the best of zines.

First thing: I have been trying to do a personal tumblr again. I'm not sure if I'll stick with it, but I do enjoy looking at pictures. If we haven't connected on there yet, let me know your tumblr (mine is just neveralarch).

Second thing: I have been consuming media this summer! It's nice.

Still watching FMA! It is good, and keeps subverting my expectations, because I know how the story goes and IT'S NOT GOING THERE. Reserving final judgment until I finish the series - I'm at like episode 41 right now.

Next - I saw The Lion in Winter with my mom and brother, and OH MY GOD

( lion in winter reaction )

Finally! I have blown through books two and three of the Matthew Swift series. I think there are a couple people on my flist who are fans? I can't remember.

( matthew swift reactions! )

So, yes. I am enjoying consuming all of this media.

Drove over 1000 miles Saturday and Sunday, and made it back to grad school land. It's -20 windchill out there. I can't really say I'm pleased, but everything's unpacked and I am become human again instead of a driving machine, so that's awesome.

Tomorrow is my first (only) class of the week! And tomorrow evening I'm directing sabre at a highschool competition, for which service I will be given Money. So my outlook on life is pretty great :)

ALSO, on the drive I was listening to the Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell audiobook, which is rad. I guess some people complained about how the footnotes interrupt the story, but I'm not sure how they could have gotten around it. Skipping the footnotes could have gutted some of the chapters, and I didn't find them that distracting. But I have also read the book twice? three times? so it's probably easier for me. I do wish they had gotten a woman to do the reading though, since I've always felt that the strong (and female) authorial narration was great in Strange and Norrell. But audiobooks always seem to be read by dudes, for some reason. I love the guy who's doing the audiobook now, his voices are excellent, but... dudes.

The main thing I am getting out of this relistening is that this book is ridic long. Which I knew, obviously, but I just drove 18 hours and I'm not even halfway through the audiobook. I will persevere! I love listening to audiobooks, because I'm way more active than when reading - I shout at the tape and laugh more and try to give the characters advice. My current favorite exclamations are "Poooor Mr. Norrell," "Strange, your life is so hard, I'm sure," and "CHILDERMASS."

Which brings me to the other main thing I am getting out of this relistening - I love Childermass. And Norrell. They're such terrible people. And I really really want to write Childermass/Norrell, that's probably going to happen soon.

Let me mention my giftfic again real quick first: A Pain in My SideKICK (The Non-Adventures of Wonderella) and Nonstarter (By the Sword), both by leidolette who is apparently a stellar human being. They're awesome.

Here is what I wrote:

Some Time Before (7080 words), for anstaar
Discworld, Teen. Sybil Ramkin/Samuel Vimes, Adora Belle Dearheart/Moist von Lipwig
Summary: The thing about being young is that it happens to most everyone.

My assigned fic! I was deeply uncertain about this as I was writing it, but people liked it and I think it must have turned pretty well after all. And it has four of my favorite Discworld characters in it, so.

And then I wrote ten treats while not writing a term paper:

( these are cut to save your scrolling )

The end! Tomorrow I start replying to comments, and then I will finally stop talking about Yuletide for at least nine months.