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Posts Tagged ‘fanfiction’

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuletide

Sometimes you just hit the jackpot.

I got two fics for Yuletide this year, and both of them are brilliant in different ways. The first is “a stuttered ancient alphabet in skin,” which is an Elfquest story exploring the early days after the fall of the High Ones, when the creation of the Wolfriders causes some of the pure-blooded elves to depart and seek their own way. It’s absolutely gorgeous in its exploration of the different philosophies, and the horror some of the the High Ones feel at living in a world where mortality and death are not just distant possibilities, but near-guarantees. The second fic is “The Winter Wind,” and it is nothing less than an epic retelling of Captain America: The Winter Soldier in the setting of the Sengoku Avengers fan-art set by Genesischant, which reimagines the characters as mystical samurai in early seventeenth century Japan. Watching the writer fit the various characters and beats into that setting is just fantastic.

As for my own fics, I managed to uphold tradition and write four, three of them full-length: “The Book of the Duchess, or, In the Dungeons of Her Grace” (A Knight’s Tale; Chaucer tries to tell a story, but keeps being interrupted), “A Prayer to Mother Night” (Legend; Lily’s actions in the aftermath of Darkness’ downfall), “Hush” (Ghostbusters; the origins of the library ghost), and then a little ficlet entitled A Scientific Proposal” (The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage; Babbage has a notion for how to improve their crime-fighting efforts).

It was a good way to close out 2016. And, unlike the fifth of the Memoirs, it’s stuff I can talk about and show to you now — but trust me when I say the latter is going well. 🙂

Onward into 2016!

This time Mary Robinette Kowal has done a Very Silly Thing

. . . and an awesome one. 😀

You see, during our tour we made a pact. I wasn’t going to hold her to it, because I know she’s a ridiculously busy woman — but when I came up with my idea for a Glamourist Histories fanfic, we agreed that if I wrote that one, Mary would write the Lady Trent fanfic idea she had come up with.

And so she has.

It should still work just fine even if you aren’t familiar with Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. (Though if you aren’t: oh my god, you should go watch that show. It’s fabulous.) There’s also an AO3 version, if you have an account there and want to be able to do the whole bookmarking/reccing/etc thing — but you should still check out Mary’s post, which has an explanation for how the story came about. (As I recall my reaction, it looked a bit like this. Or that look Mako Mori gives Pentecost in Pacific Rim, when Raleigh says he wants Mako to have a shot at the co-pilot test and she looks like every Christmas for the rest of her life just got offered to her at once.)

I hope you all are half as entertained by the result as I was. 😀

I have done a Very Silly Thing

So Mary Robinette Kowal and I were on tour back in May, which gave us abundant time to chat about various things. At one event, an audience member asked several questions that began with the disclaimer of “this probably isn’t a thing you’ve bothered to think about, but” — which had the effect of proving that no, really, Mary has thought about pretty much everything in the world of her Glamourist Histories. As we were changing back into civilian clothing at the end of the event, I said to her, “I’m willing to bet you’ve thought about the uses of glamour for porn.”

To which she laughed and told me about a glamural Vincent created in his student days.

Here is the tale of Vincent’s old glamural — and how Jane wound up seeing it.

All errors are my own (and there may be more than a few, since I wrote this on the plane flight from North Carolina to San Francisco and did basically no research whatsoever, apart from asking Mary a couple of glamour questions while we were retrieving our luggage). She is in no way responsible for any missteps of either history or canon. But I when I told her I was going to write this fic, she laughed so very evilly — and I hope you all will laugh, too!

(No spoilers for the series, apart from the inevitable and rather obvious one of “which characters got married at the end of the first book?”.)

Yuletide after-action report

I wrote four stories this year — not anywhere near a record, but the fourth Memoir has been leaving me with very few spare processing cycles.

My assignment was “Crushed Upon the Shore” for the manga Tokyo Babylon. It takes place between that and the anime/manga X/1999, and involves Subaru investigating a case that turns out to have some, uh, personal resonance. WARNING: it is not a nice story. It involves dead children and other less-than-lovely things. Because let’s face it, Seishirou is not a good person, and Subaru’s feelings toward him are more than a little messed up.

Next I took on a pinch hit, which in terms of readership has been my big success of this Yuletide: “Eldest” for the Disney film Sleeping Beauty. The request was for Maleficent backstory that is different from what you get in the Jolie movie. This is the one I think has a dead giveaway in it; I had to name some other fairy women, and after exhausting the obvious two (Titania, Mab) my brain went straight to Nicneven. Who most people have never heard of — but she plays rather a large role in the main conflict of In Ashes Lie.

The remaining two were treats. One, “It’s Betty from Apartment 2204”, was sparked by the recip making an offhand comment wondering what Dana’s neighbors make of all the snarling and such going on in her apartment in Ghostbusters. The other, “The Only Way to Be Sure”, is a brief look at what Rita Vrataski did during and after Verdun in The Edge of Tomorrow. (There are quite a lot of fics for that movie this year, most of them on the theme of “Rita Vrataski is a badass and I heart her.” This is a sentiment I could easily get behind.)

If there are fics you especially enjoyed this year, please link in the comments! I haven’t had a lot of time to read, so recommendations are extremely useful.

A belated Yuletide yay

I must have been a very good Swan this year, because I got two fics in Yuletide: my gift and a treat.

My gift is for the sort of fandom that makes even Yuletide participants say “wow, that’s tiny.” There’s a musical show called Songs for a New World, and the very first time I heard the piece titled “King of the World,” I wanted to know what that guy’s story was.

“the weight of living” is the answer I got, and it achieves that elegant trick of being something I hadn’t even considered before reading the story, that fit beautifully as soon as I saw it. My anonymous writer made the speaker a megapastor televangelist type, and my god does that make sense with the tone of the song. Thank you, Yulemouse, whoever you are!

Then there’s the treat, which is also for a fandom so tiny it essentially doesn’t exist. Sengoku Avengers is a fan-art set that reimagines the Marvel heroes as people in Sengoku-era Japan (think Oda Nobunaga, etc). As I said in my comment to the writer, they had me at the tag “onmyoujutsu.” “The Middle Way” is from the perspective of a young woman who encounters Kaibutsu (the Incredible Hulk: a yin-yang magician who has trapped a demon in his own body) — a woman who knew him before the demon changed him, and can see the man behind the monster.

I reeeeeeeeeeeeeally hope the writer does more in that fandom. This taste is awesome, and I want more. 😀

***

If anybody would like to play the traditional “guess what I wrote for Yuletide” game: I produced four full-length stories this year. All were in different genres; one was for a manga and three for movies. One of the four contains what I consider to be a dead giveaway that I wrote it, though admittedly it probably looks more subtle to people who aren’t me. 🙂 Any guesses?

Yuletide!!!!!

Travel and working on the book have kept me busy (and quiet) around here, but I should say something about Yuletide!

I got a lovely gift this year: “Ninth Life,” which is a Chrestomanci filling in the details of how Christopher stole his life out of Gabriel’s safe before the events of Conrad’s Fate.

On the writing side, I produced four full-length stories — my assignment, two pinch hits, and a treat — and four stocking stuffers for Yuletide Madness. If anybody wants to try and guess what they are, I can offer the following hints:

1. Two of the full-length stories were for books; one was for a video game; and one was for a play.
2. Three of the stocking stuffers were for movies; one was for a comic book.
3. I’d written for one of the full-length fandoms before, but the other three were new.
4. The same is true of the stocking stuffers.

Any guesses?

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/605514.html. Comment here or there.

Yuletide signups are open!

One last post before I leave on my trip. (Okay, that might be a lie. I have no idea if something else will prod me into posting in the next twenty hours or so. But this is the last one I intend to make.)

Yuletide signups are open. If you already know and love Yuletide, go forth and have fun!

If you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about, keep reading.

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