skygiants

And now for something completely different: like three months later, there is now a Chapter 2 of this Jupiter Ascending fic.

Eventually there may be more! WHO KNOWS. I believe I have at least fulfilled my obligation for Space HGTV.

I wrote a Jupiter Ascending fic? I wrote a Jupiter Ascending fic. That appears to be a thing I have done.

(It may end up being more of a thing, but it also may not be, so for now let's all pretend it's just one thing and leave it at that.)

The Convergence of Genetics and Quantitative Analysis

It's basically self-insert fic, in that Aleksa and Nino Bolotnikova get exactly the same degree of judgmental joy out of appending 'space' to every word they possibly can as I would in their situation.

I woke up this morning after three or four hours of sleep, dazedly packed my bag, and then even more dazedly went to check the Yuletide archive.

Guys! When I saw that I'd gone out to the pinch-hit list last-minute, I was feeling guilty because I was convinced I was going to be the awful and difficult-to-match person who would hold up Yuletide for everyone else. Instead I got not one, BUT TWO stories, and BOTH OF THEM AMAZING:

Finding Aid, "The Provenance Game"

Amateurs would tell you “Oh, it’s just bits of paper.” Archivists knew better. The critical difference between an archive and a pile of documents was that in an archive, you knew where things were.

GUYS. SOMEONE WROTE ME ARCHIVES PORN. (In the metaphorical sense.) I mean, "The Provenance Game" as a short story is archives porn in and of itself, which is one of the things that makes it so delightful, but this is EVEN MORESO. I'm so delighted! And political archives intrigue, to boot. >:D I'm about 90% sure that whoever wrote this is an archivist themselves -- the reference to authority controls is what convinces me -- and if not, congrats, mystery author, you did an AMAZING job of faking it.

The Queen's Award, The Summer Prince

It's music of a sort, rough and wild but music all the same. The true anthem of our city, though almost no one has heard it, being sung here in the isolated reaches of Tier Ten.

AND THEN I GOT FEELINGS AND ART AND FEELINGS ABOUT CITIES PORN. (Um, and a little actual femslash porn as well.) Someone wrote me the June/Bebel postcanon fic I have been craving, and it's everything I could have asked for. Perfectionist ladies! Artistic partnerships! Finding the balance between politics and art! IT'S SO GREAT, everyone should read it.

WHAT A GOOD YULETIDE. I'm about to go to the movies with the family for the traditional Jewish Christmas ritual so I won't get to dive into the archive properly until later, but I'm super excited to do so!

I also, for the record, received one present from my dad for Christmas -- despite the fact that we don't ACTUALLY CELEBRATE it, he decided to get gifts for us all ANYWAY and surprise us. Which is unfair and we shouted him down vociferously! Then I opened my gift.



Okay, that's fair actually, I guess.

elsane has already tackled the theme of 'Marius accidentally helps the Revolution' and done it better, but here's another stab at it.


Title: Marius Rises in the Esteem of the Revolution
Fandom: Les Miserables
Characters: Marius, Courfeyrac, Enjolras. Up at the AO3 over here.

( It is not Marius' fault that his friends mix their metaphors. )

I said to myself, "all right, all right, I'm back in the same fandom that I was when I was SEVENTEEN, but at least I'm not writing overwrought fanfic for it!" Cue hollow laughter.

Title: on your way up to the light
Fandom: Les Miserables
Characters: Jean Valjean, Eponine, Cosette, Marius, Gavroche
Summary: Brick AU of the 'small canon divergence leads to slightly larger changes' variety, and also of the 'I have a lot of feelings about parallels between Eponine and Valjean' variety. Eponine throws a note at Valjean; she doesn't anticipate the consequences.
Notes: Warnings for suicidal ideation. Title comes from the Mountain Goats song Amy aka Spent Gladiator. Also up at the AO3, over here. Thanks to genarti for the beta!

( He took it, unfolded it, and read on it, in large letters written with a pencil: MOVE OUT. )

I only have one scene left to do on this year's Yuletide, which I guess means it's my turn to procrastinate by doing that Meme of Yuletides Past!

( Five years and fourteen ramblings under the cut! )

And that brings us to this year! Status: not bears, exactly. Maybe teddy bears? I'M SO CLOSE (and yet so far.)

So I've been rewatching Capital Scandal with shati (who has never seen it before) and the other day, after a lot of lulzy discussion on the way home, I woke up and went in to work with the opening of a fic in my head.

So I typed it up hastily and emailed it to her . . . and she emailed me back saying "I WAS WRITING THIS SAME FIC ON THE WAY TO WORK IN MY HEAD."

All of which is to say: a.) apparently shati and I have gone back to being interchangeable again and b.) her way funnier version of this fic will be coming along soon, I have read the beginning and then laughed out loud for five minutes straight. BUT WHILE YOU ARE WAITING PLEASE ENJOY THIS ONE.


Title: The Last Hero of the Revolution
Characters: Lee Su Hyun/Cha Song Joo, Geun Duk
Word Count: 1,417
Summary: Geun Duk disapproves of so many of his comrades' life choices.
Notes: Implied sexual content, spoilers up to episode 15 (but not THAT spoiler.)

( Geun Duk had joined up with Ae Mool Dan for the assassinations. If anybody had thought to warn him about all the matchmaking, he sometimes thought he would have stayed in Russia. )

Well, it seems increasingly likely that tomorrow's episode of Korra is going to completely ruin my headcanon that everyone from Avatar: the Last Airbender lived to a happy old age of being cranky curmudgeons, so I am hastily posting this UNDER THE WIRE while it could still conceivably have happened!

Title: How It's Done
Characters: Toph, Katara, Zuko, Sokka, Lin
Word Count: 2008
Summary: Toph really wants to try out this pro-bending thing.
Notes: Set about ten years before Korra. Spoilers for . . . the existence of pro-bending? The existence of Lin?

( Do I look like I'm here to play pai sho? )

Yuletide reveals are live! I wrote three fics this year, thus officially ending my streak of writing one more fic each year than the year previous, ah well.

My main assigned fic was Nice Holystone Remains Unafraid To Throw Herself Into Explosive Situations, a Baccano! fic about Nice and Jacuzzi, and Eve Genoard, and Al Capone, and obviously a whole lot of bombs.

I got called out as the author of this almost the first day the archive opened, which, I will admit I was sort of expecting, given that it is exactly like all my other Baccano! fics in being enormously long and having a ridiculously convoluted plot full of lulzy cameos and too many puns. In short, I AM THE SNEAKIEST NINJA. (Although I laughed so hard when I saw the comment -- nextian, it's not fair, I didn't even know you'd seen Baccano! I guess you have probably earned some sort of fic-shaped prize if you want one though, so let me know!) One way in which this is not exactly like all my other fics: people actually make out onscreen! THIS IS A STRANGE AND PERPLEXING THING FOR ME. Generally as far as I get is people hanging around not making out due to their issues. So go me, I guess?

The other full-length fic I wrote was And Every Homestead Holds a Ghost, a Downton Abbey pinch-hit I grabbed for newredshoes, because a.) I love her and I wanted to write something for her and b.) I'd been eyeing her prompts for the past two months. So, uh, HAPPY YULETIDE, ESTHER! :D

I think I may have been slightly more successfully sneaky on this one,even though it's much more the kind of thing I usually write - gen, ensemble-fic, and what genarti called a very Diana Wynne Jonesish ghost, although thinking back it was probably based more on the Shirley Jackson I'd been reading than anything else. I spent a few days complaining to my long-suffering betas about my extreme frustration with the fact that the Downton Abbey Christmas special was not going to air until the day after fics were due; then it did air and ( spoilers! )

Lastly, I wrote Barriers for Hexwood as a Yuletide treat, mostly because dictator_duck and I had been talking about Hexwood a lot recently and I had it on the brain.

Barriers was a weird fic for me to write. Basically, it was my effort to show some of Mordion's severe and complex psychological trauma, while keeping a DWJ-ish style, and also trying to deal with the fact that Hexwood -- while containing absolutely nothing sexual and barely even romantic onscreen -- is nonetheless one of the most strangely sexual of DWJ's books. (ALIENS TRY TO MAKE THEM DO IT. Still not over that one.) I have no idea if I succeeded in any of this, and basically what it boils down to is a proud return to form of people hanging around not making out due to their issues, so, uh . . . happy Yuletide, world!

Edited to add: I forgot that I was also going to use this time to talk about what I wrote for Kaleidoscope, since I never did that! I wrote Soulmates Never Go Out of Fashion, a Capital Scandal backstory fic about Cha Song Joo and Woo Wan being lulzy friends that officially means that 50% of the Capital Scandal fic in existence was written either for or by me! CAPITAL SCANDAL-INATING THE COUNTRYSIDE, ONE FIC AT A TIME.

Also now I can say thank you to everyone who took the time to listen to my Yuletide (and Kaleidoscope) flailing and read my fics in their proto-form: genarti, thewickedlady, agonistes, saramily, rushin_doll, and dictator_duck. (Special kudos go out to Gen, who refused to let technology defeat her and wrote out a detailed line beta for my fourteen thousand word Baccano! fic THREE TIMES OVER. That is dedication far above and beyond the call of duty.)

Speaking of Gen: I may have forgotten to mention it, but I kidnapped her for an awesome weekend that included hijinks and fic-planning and the lovely aquamirage, and today she's driving me back up to New York, where we will proceed to kidnap jothra! So I have been scarce and will probably continue to be for a few days, and you can all spend your time being jealous. :D

Hahaha, while I think the Fullmetal Alchemist ballroom dance fic probably still counts as the most self-indulgent thing I have ever written, this definitely comes a close second.

It was worth writing either way though because it prompted izilen to make some BEAUTIFUL YOKO/RAKUSHUN ARTWORK to illustrate it which you should all go see RIGHT NOW and which could not possibly delight me more!

(Thanks also go to izilen for the IM conversation that spurred this on to begin with and to dictator_duck for looking over this and reassuring me that it was un-terrible enough to post.)

Title: all things grow
Fandom: Twelve Kingdoms
Characters: Yoko, Rakushun, Shoukei, Suzu, Keiki
Pairings: Yoko/Rakushun, Keiki/hilarious social incompetence
Word Count: 6210
Summary: With Rakushun's graduation from university, the future shape of the court of Kei starts to emerge


( 'Tell me how to use you best.' )