neveralarch

Hello author! Happy Yuletide season :) Treats are also welcome, if anyone's wondering!

( details under the cut )

A very belated happy new year - I got sick right before New Years and I've been shuffling my way thru a sinus infection ever since :( But! There is Yuletide to sustain me.

I wrote one fic:

Summoning
Fandom: Bartimaeus Trilogy
Rating: gen
Characters: Nathaniel, Bartimaeus, Kitty Jones
Wordcount: 1600ish
Summary:
Nathaniel returns to the land of the living. There are, however, a few conditions.

A fix-it for the Bartimaeus trilogy. These are Good Books and I really do love the more tragic/melancholy ending... But I crave chaotic cheerful trios so. Here you are.

And! I got Wimsey fic!

The Convoluted Conundrum of the Poached Rabbit by curtaincall
Fandom: Peter Wimsey
Rating: gen
Characters: Peter/Harriet
Wordcount: 4800ish
Summary:
The Agricultural Show is in less than a month—and the three-time champion rabbit has just gone missing.

A Peter and Harriet adventure! It's such a warm and thoughtful fic, with some intense moments of suspense - really a feat for a story about a missing rabbit. Non-murder detective stories are truly my fave genre. Also. Peter and Harriet ;-; I love them

Happy new year! I only wrote one Yuletide story this year, but I had fun with it :)

Split Stitch (4125 words) for FitzKreiner
Fandom: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Rating: Teen
(Brief references to sex and violence)
Characters: Gawain/Lady Bertilak, Gawain/Bertilak de Hautdesert
Summary: The Lord and Lady Bertilak are friendly, hospitable, playful people. Gawain endeavors to keep up with them.

This is fic for the folktale, rather than the movie. Basically I took it, shook it up in a can with some gender stuff, and poured it back out again. Thanks so much to Dez for cheerleading and betaing when I was struggling with it!

I also received TWO fics:

Lair Actions (7490 words) by 20thcenturyvole
Fandom: Murderbot Diaries
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Murderbot, ART
Summary: I’m a magic clockwork zombie and nobody can tell me what to do.

Many Worlds, One Murderbot (1050 words) by 20thcenturyvole
Fandom: Murderbot Diaries
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Murderbot, ensemble
Summary: Five universes that Murderbot doesn't have to deal with.

Both of these are based on a very broad prompt I gave that boiled down to AUs PLEASE. Lair Actions is a really lovely fantasy AU and Many Worlds has 5 different AU ficlets - it's just so fun to see Murderbot causing problems in other contexts haha.

Happy New Year and happy Yuletide reveals! I only wrote five fics this year, but it was nice to do a much more scaled-back version of my Yuletide tradition.

For Yuletide this year I was gifted this amazing fic:

In our house full of violets and sun (1527 words) by caughtinanocean
Fandom: The Half of It (2020)
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Ellie Chu/Original Character(s), Aster Flores/Original Character(s), Ellie Chu/Aster Flores
Summary: Sometimes, falling for someone is about learning who you are – not about ending up together.

This is such a lovely thing! After watching this movie I really really wanted a fic about their lives after high school where they DON'T get together, where they learn and grow and become complete people and look back on each other with fondness but not necessarily regret. IDK, man, but I'm glad caughtinanocean was like 'ok I got you' haha. Several of the comments are along the lines of 'this is the first fic I've read that isn't endgame Ellie/Aster but it's so good.' The heart wants what it wants!!

My main fic is:

Lost Thoughts (2479 words) for janie_tangerine
Fandom: Johannes Cabal - Jonathan L. Howard
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Horst Cabal, Johannes Cabal
Summary: Johannes Cabal woke up on the stone floor of a bare room. It smelled of dirt and mildew, with a faint undertone of something that Johannes easily identified as blood. There was a little light filtering dimly through a slit in the door—just enough to see that the room was indeed as bare as bare could be. Except, of course, for the man lying on the floor next to him.

 

Johannes kicked him.

Janie_tangerine wanted Cabal brothers fic and I looked at my giant pile of Cabal brothers fic I'd already written and panicked a little because I couldn't think what else to do. But! Eventually I came up with this. It was so easy to write once I got started (banter!!), and fascination_ex very kindly poked at me when I needed to work on it and betaed it for me once it was done :)

I also wrote four treats:

The Best Defense (1271 words) for kouredios
Fandom: FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion Of Your Thesis Defense (McSweeney's Post) - Luke Burns
Rating: General Audiences
Summary:
You had to fight a big snake for your thesis defense. One of the largest ones you'd ever seen—and you'd attended plenty of defenses, seen the fear in the doctoral candidates' eyes as they sought out their snake in the shadows. You don't actually know if it's the biggest snake the facilities department had to offer, because they don't like to give out that much information. But it was a very big snake indeed.

First off, if you've never read this McSweeney's article, please do, it's amazing. Second, uhhhh I might have some. Thoughts about grad school and academia. My experience has mostly been positive! I feel very lucky with where I ended up. But man, is it a perilous road and I've seen so many people fall down hidden pits through no fault of their own. Kouredios had a particularly difficult time and wanted a snake to eat their abusive advisor, so I needed to oblige.

Face-up (1192 words) for DesdemonaKaylose
Fandom: 月刊少女野崎くん | Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Hori Masayuki, Kashima Yuu (Gekkan)
Summary: "Hey, Kashima," Hori said, staring intently into his tea, "do you have makeup?"

I wrote a little thing for Dez! This one is about gender nonconformity in an anime she suggested to me earlier this year. Dez actually got a much longer response to the same prompt by an amazing veteran Hori/Kashima writer, hooray for Yuletide! It was so fun to write this, but it was also very fun to be like 'hehehehe.... I did a nice thing for Dez.... LITTLE DOES SHE KNOW....'

(She says she knew.)

Monitor Lizard (1906 words) for Rosencrantz
Fandom: Transformers: Beast Wars
Rating: Mature
Relationships: Dinobot/Rattrap (Transformers)
Summary: It's a long, boring shift on monitor duty. Fortunately, Rattrap's got some ideas for how to liven it up.

We watched all of Beast Wars in the discord chat this year and oh MAN is it good. It's so good, and this is such a good ship. That's really all I can say, haha.

Energon on Your Lips (1236 words) for rayguntomyhead
Fandom: Transformers: Shattered Glass
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Relationships: Jazz/Prowl (Transformers)
Summary: Jazz was already good at killing before he met Prowl. That was the joke about Autobots, wasn't it? Hang around with them too long and your head might just come off.

raygun is a v rad person and I was delighted to write some Jazz/Prowl for them - and then even more delighted bc they left a series of amazing comments on my ongoing Prowl wip!! Another 'hehehe I have a dastardly plot to be nice' moment :) Jabberish also sent this fic to me like 'I think you would like this but I also think you wrote it' haha. I wanted to take SG a little more seriously, and spin Prowl a bit on his conscience - here he likes sharing information and doesn't like killing people, which implies that 'normal' Prowl is actually the evil one.

And that's all of em! Here's to 2021, hope it gets better from here.

Happy New Year! I started writing fic in 2010 and also started doing Yuletide in 2010, so it's now been a decade :) Always one of my favorite things about December.

For Yuletide this year I was gifted this amazing fic:

How I Spent My Vacation Between Survey Missions (3727 words) by Satchelfoot
Fandom: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries), Asshole Research Transport (Murderbot Diaries)
Summary:What happens when ART reunites with Murderbot during another break between research survey missions? Media gets viewed, of course, but there might also be some bad news for more shady corporations.

It's a fun little adventure about two characters who were made by humans but don't entirely understand how humans think, trying to figure out how firendship works. I loved it!! It also looks like Satchelfoot maybe picked me up as a pinch hit, which I so so so appreciate. What a good Yuletide.

I wrote 11 fics, as usual - though I'm reconsidering this tradition a little, haha. Christmas Eve turned into a pretty late night for me. My main fic is:

Worthy of Attention (2563 words) for Xochiquetzl
Fandom: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Gem of Sphene & Zeiat (Imperial Radch)
Characters: Gem of Sphene (Imperial Radch), Zeiat (Imperial Radch), Queter (Imperial Radch)
Summary: Sphene has a new captain. Ambassador Zeiat isn't sure what to think about that.

I struggled with this quite a bit and actually ended up writing half of a different plot before starting over, but I'm happy with what I ended up with :) This is, coincidentally, also a fic of two not-really human people trying to figure out how friendship works. This might be, uh, symptomatic of the whole Transformers thing that's been happening over here all year.

( 10 more fics under the cut: Gideon the Ninth, Nero Wolfe, lies about baseball, Hustlers, Inspector Chen, JSMN, Rivers of London, Matthew Swift, The Raven Tower, and Murderbot Diaries! )

I hope you also had fun, if you did Yuletide! And if you didn't, please feel free to ask me more about the exchange - it's my favorite fic event of the year, and I'm always happy to talk about it.

Once again: 11 fics, this time in 11 fandoms. My main fic:

Every Sundown (10515 words) for Trismegistus
Fandom: Imperial Radch - Ann Leckie
Rating: Teen
Relationships: Seivarden/Breq
Summary:
Breq is a traitor, a rebel, and a captain a thousand years out of date. Mercy of Seivarden is drifting without a crew.

I'm always a little scared of writing Radch fic, but I love love love Breq and Seivarden's relationship! I got the idea right away to write a roleswap where Breq was the captain and Seivarden was the ship. I got really into it and ended up writing... too much. As usual it turned into a last minute panic to edit it, so thanks immensely to tweedymcgee for the beta help!


( 10 more fics of varying length under the cut! Vantablack pigment feud, The Happytime Murders, Megalo Box, The Way of the House Husband, Rivers of London, Inspector Rebus, Dirk Gently (TV 2016), Squirrel Girl, Transformers: Shattered Glass, and Nero Wolfe )

Hope everyone had a good Yuletide!! And if you have recs they'd be super welcome, as usual I've been too busy to really dig through the archive.

Hello hypothetical future author! I'm excited for Yuletide, I hope you are too!

( details under the cut )

The Enchanting Wedding of Magica de Spell
Disney Ducks (comics)
Summary: "You are cordially invited to celebrate the wedding of Magica De Spell (witch) and Rosolio (fully trained magician) this All Hallows' Eve. You may bring a guest."

My yuletide gift this year is cute, fun, and EXTREMELY satisfying - basically everything that I ever wanted! 8k of pg Disney Ducks fic, Magica de Spell/Gladstone Gander accidental marriage and adventure. Featuring: a villain who’s not very good at being bad, a hero who’s only heroic when pestered, and a raven who is going to make this work or someone’s losing an eyeball. Guest starring: one of the best versions of Scrooge I’ve ever read, some truly great cameos from the Beagle Boys, and a volcano.
I read a bunch of duck comics when I was a kid, and I watched some of the shows, but @modmad​‘s Magica & Gladstone fancomics really brought me back into the fandom this year. I’m so glad someone picked up my desperate pleas prompt and ran with it!

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.)

Only a couple days late. I just flew back to grad school land and immediately came down with a miserable cold that just graduated into a shivering fever :/ Time to do a Yuletide post, basically!

My main fic:

Just Like Ice on the Dune (26519 words) for sophiahelix
Baseball RPF, gen
Tim Lincecum & Hector Sanchez, Giants ensemble and special guest appearances from Adam LaRoche, Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke
Summary: Tim is feeling good. At least, he's trying pretty hard.
(Or: the magical story of Tim Lincecum and Hector Sanchez's friendship.)

I nearly murdered myself with Yuletide this year, haha. I initially didn't have a clue for what to write, and then in mid-November I came up with a great idea that involved writing a fic over the entire 2014 MLB season. I finished the second (ie presentable) draft on the afternoon of the 21st and sent it to tumblr user inkstrangle who was super super nice and betaed for me on short notice. I got it back the evening of the 23rd and spent the 24th rewriting a ton of the dialogue and also the ending and also adding scenes... and then got surprised by the Yuletide archive actually opening on time for once. I actually finished editing the fic 2 hours after the archive opened, but fortunately sophiahelix was willing to wait a little while to look at her gift and it all seems to have worked out.

I really wish I had started earlier or had more time to work on it - I just finished doing a last round of edits tonight to correct some mistakes I noticed. It's not 100% the fic I envisioned. But I'm still really glad I wrote it. This has been a very tough sports year for me, and this fic was cathartic in a lot of ways and seems to have entertained, so it's at least mostly a success.

And I survived Yuletide! And still managed to write 10 more treat fics as usual, during that period between 2nd and 3rd main fic draft.

( treat reveals under the cut )

Year-end fic round-up coming sometime this week! Now I'm going to go to bed before my brains leak out my ears.