my yuletide, revealed!
I ended up writing four things this year.
I sort-of-gamed my signup this year so that I would match to one of two people, with the plan that whoever I didn't get assigned to, I would write a treat, because those were the two things I really, really wanted to write this year. And so I did!
My assignment was for
psocoptera, who I wanted to write for because I had read the short story she requested, "Octo-Heist in Progress" by Rich Larson (free to read at Clarksworld) on her rec and really loved it, and also, she wrote me a fantastic Jane, Unlimited story last Yuletide:
Octo-Heist in Space (4623 words) by
Isis
Fandom: Octo-Heist in Progress - Rich Larson
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Characters: Pico (Octo-Heist in Progress), Original Characters
Additional Tags: Octopi & Squid, IN SPACE!, Space Pirates, Space Stations, Science Fiction, Action/Adventure, Handwaving, Worldbuilding, Biotechnology
Summary: The Muneta Starlane's regular shuttle run turns out to be anything but regular.
The idea took me a while to come up with, because the original story uses such a vivid invented slang and implicit worldbuilding, and I was daunted at the prospect of attempting pastiche. Also, I didn't feel quite up to the challenge of writing from Pico's point of view, and honestly a lot of the charm of Larson's story is that Pico is revealed through another character's eyes - but how would an original character know his name is "Pico"? That led to the idea of the voice sim, and that led to IN SPACE! This is very nearly an original work, but I do recommend reading Larson's short story first, if you want to read mine.
The other thing I really wanted to write was
Rhea's request for the Black Coffee - The Careless Lovers music video, which I discovered while approving fandoms during the tagmod process and watched over and over again because I loved both the song and the implicit story told in the video. So I wrote this treat:
The Lingering Taste of Paradise (2436 words) by
Isis
Fandom: Black Coffee - The Careless Lovers (Music Video)
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Barista/Man with Briefcase | Daily Grind (Black Coffee)
Additional Tags: Coffee, Coffee Shops, Dancing, Supernatural Elements
Summary: The next day, the coffee shop was gone.
When I saw the request, I immediately thought of (as someone said in a comment) "the fae disappearing coffee shop of eternal dance that never appears in the same place twice" and so it was just a matter of sitting down and writing it.
I also wrote two pinch hits, both of which are probably not interesting unless you are familiar with the canons:
Two Things (2652 words) by
Isis
Fandom: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Characters: Jeannemary Chatur, Isaac Tettares, Magnus Quinn, Abigail Pent
Additional Tags: POV Jeannemary Chatur, Teenage Drama, Jeannemary has a tiny little crush on Gideon, But don't we all?
Summary: There were two things Jeannemary Chatur wanted: to fight for the Emperor Undying by the side of her necromancer, and for the stupid pimple on her chin to go away already.
I had originally planned to offer GtN but decided last-minute not to, instead vulturing the pinch hits. I wrote for
shadowkeeper, who had also requested the "Agents of Sleep" commercial (as I did), so that automatically made them awesome. Their letter requested any characters and suggested seeing Canaan House from someone else's POV. The hardest part for me was basically writing a POV-change remix of (part of) canon without making it a boring rehash, which I think I managed (mostly by including only one line of dialogue from the book). I was pleasantly surprised by how much attention the fic got, though I suspect it's partly due to my having redated to the 25th so it was at the top of the list, and also because we all love these awful teens.
It Really Must be End Times (1891 words) by
Isis
Fandom: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Naia/Tavra (Dark Crystal)
Characters: Naia (Dark Crystal), Tavra (Dark Crystal), Kylan (Dark Crystal)
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Camping, Episode: s01e04 The First Thing I Remember is Fire, Episode: s01e05 She Knows All the Secrets
Summary: A Vapran, a Drenchen, and a Spriton walk into out of a bar...
We had just finished watching the show when this popped up in the pinch-hit list, so I was full of Gelfling feels and excited to write a little femslash for
Tam_Cranver. Tavra is my favorite of the three sisters, and I think Naia's hot, and it seemed to me the gap between the scene in the Podling tavern and the scene in the Castle of the Crystal was ripe for a little enemies to reluctant allies to lovers. (Though apparently at least one reader disagreed; this is the first gift fic I have ever deleted a comment from.)
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth
I sort-of-gamed my signup this year so that I would match to one of two people, with the plan that whoever I didn't get assigned to, I would write a treat, because those were the two things I really, really wanted to write this year. And so I did!
My assignment was for
psocoptera, who I wanted to write for because I had read the short story she requested, "Octo-Heist in Progress" by Rich Larson (free to read at Clarksworld) on her rec and really loved it, and also, she wrote me a fantastic Jane, Unlimited story last Yuletide:
Octo-Heist in Space (4623 words) by
Isis
Fandom: Octo-Heist in Progress - Rich Larson
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Characters: Pico (Octo-Heist in Progress), Original Characters
Additional Tags: Octopi & Squid, IN SPACE!, Space Pirates, Space Stations, Science Fiction, Action/Adventure, Handwaving, Worldbuilding, Biotechnology
Summary: The Muneta Starlane's regular shuttle run turns out to be anything but regular.
The idea took me a while to come up with, because the original story uses such a vivid invented slang and implicit worldbuilding, and I was daunted at the prospect of attempting pastiche. Also, I didn't feel quite up to the challenge of writing from Pico's point of view, and honestly a lot of the charm of Larson's story is that Pico is revealed through another character's eyes - but how would an original character know his name is "Pico"? That led to the idea of the voice sim, and that led to IN SPACE! This is very nearly an original work, but I do recommend reading Larson's short story first, if you want to read mine.
The other thing I really wanted to write was
Rhea's request for the Black Coffee - The Careless Lovers music video, which I discovered while approving fandoms during the tagmod process and watched over and over again because I loved both the song and the implicit story told in the video. So I wrote this treat:
The Lingering Taste of Paradise (2436 words) by
Isis
Fandom: Black Coffee - The Careless Lovers (Music Video)
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Barista/Man with Briefcase | Daily Grind (Black Coffee)
Additional Tags: Coffee, Coffee Shops, Dancing, Supernatural Elements
Summary: The next day, the coffee shop was gone.
When I saw the request, I immediately thought of (as someone said in a comment) "the fae disappearing coffee shop of eternal dance that never appears in the same place twice" and so it was just a matter of sitting down and writing it.
I also wrote two pinch hits, both of which are probably not interesting unless you are familiar with the canons:
Two Things (2652 words) by
Isis
Fandom: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Characters: Jeannemary Chatur, Isaac Tettares, Magnus Quinn, Abigail Pent
Additional Tags: POV Jeannemary Chatur, Teenage Drama, Jeannemary has a tiny little crush on Gideon, But don't we all?
Summary: There were two things Jeannemary Chatur wanted: to fight for the Emperor Undying by the side of her necromancer, and for the stupid pimple on her chin to go away already.
I had originally planned to offer GtN but decided last-minute not to, instead vulturing the pinch hits. I wrote for
shadowkeeper, who had also requested the "Agents of Sleep" commercial (as I did), so that automatically made them awesome. Their letter requested any characters and suggested seeing Canaan House from someone else's POV. The hardest part for me was basically writing a POV-change remix of (part of) canon without making it a boring rehash, which I think I managed (mostly by including only one line of dialogue from the book). I was pleasantly surprised by how much attention the fic got, though I suspect it's partly due to my having redated to the 25th so it was at the top of the list, and also because we all love these awful teens.
It Really Must be End Times (1891 words) by
Isis
Fandom: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Naia/Tavra (Dark Crystal)
Characters: Naia (Dark Crystal), Tavra (Dark Crystal), Kylan (Dark Crystal)
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Camping, Episode: s01e04 The First Thing I Remember is Fire, Episode: s01e05 She Knows All the Secrets
Summary: A Vapran, a Drenchen, and a Spriton walk into out of a bar...
We had just finished watching the show when this popped up in the pinch-hit list, so I was full of Gelfling feels and excited to write a little femslash for
Tam_Cranver. Tavra is my favorite of the three sisters, and I think Naia's hot, and it seemed to me the gap between the scene in the Podling tavern and the scene in the Castle of the Crystal was ripe for a little enemies to reluctant allies to lovers. (Though apparently at least one reader disagreed; this is the first gift fic I have ever deleted a comment from.)
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth