thedeadparrot

I was productive at the beginning of the year, and then I kind of decided that caring about hockey was more stressful than it was worth, and so I wandered off and didn't write much of anything until the latest monster took me (but I didn't finish it in 2018, so it doesn't count).

Hockey RPF

The Werewolf Prince's Husband (14252 words) - Everything about this fic is ridiculous. It started out ridiculously tropey in concept and then I kept adding in more and more tropes as I was writing it. It is a collection of tropes masquerading as a story, and I'm not sad about it at all.

The Werewolf Prince's Bachelor Party (4116 words) - Written in part because silverandblue knows the easiest way to convince me to write something is blatant flattery and asked me to write something for her to record for pod_together. Not as tropey as the original, but it does feature dudes being very bad at feelings and hopefully enough zingy dialogue to make reading it and listening to it a blast.

push and pull like a magnet do (5309 words) - Sometimes your id just asks you to write things. This was one of them.

H₂S (The Five Rings Mashup) (2195 words) - Kamikaze Remix story. I got this story to remix, and I was like 'wait, who?' But then I used Google and found out this former Pens fourth liner went to the Olympics, and the world-building of hockey witches was fun to play with, so this was cool.

X-Men

Knives Out (3980 words) - Rescued from the drafts folder. I just wanted more fanfic that explored how creepy Charles's telepathy really is, and so I just had him captured and drugged up a lot. I did try to shape some of that into an arc of some sort at one point, and it hung around the fic hoard because I felt like it needed more plot scaffolding. But then I reread it and was like 'nah, it doesn't.'


( superlatives )

I did not do Yuletide this year, and I spent a good 6-7 months not writing anything. But I wrote two 20k+ stories in two separate fandoms. And that is really fucking weird. Anywho, here's what I've got.

Star Wars

The Galaxy Is Not a Cold Dead Place (21019 words) (Poe/Rey/Finn) - I grew up with so many Star Wars feelings. I still have shelves and shelves of EU books. I enjoyed the characters introduced in TFA, but I was frustrated that they got saddled with a plotline that was a bizarro carbon copy of A New Hope. This is my attempt to write a fun sort of space adventure-y story, filled with plot and feelings. Also, it was my attempt to answer 'why did Luke even leave in the first place?' Because I wanted to know.

Sing It Loud, Sing It Strong (1786 words) (Poe/Rey/Finn) - I liked the kinkmeme prompt, so then I wrote it. Porn didn't quite fit into the long Poe/Rey/Finn story, so it was nice to get a chance to write it elsewhere.

Come Together (Over Me) (3266 words) (Poe/Rey/Finn) - Feelings! I wasn't sure what to do with the prompt 'rivals to lovers' but I thought it might be fun to make Rey and Poe rivals. They thwarted my attempts to pit them against each other, though, because they were too nice and friendly.

MCU (Iron Man)

L’esprit de L’escalier (7032 words) (Tony/Rhodey) - I have been a huge fan of Tony/Rhodey for a long time, and Civil War was awful/great for them. The movie gestures to Rhodey's recovery, but there's still a lot of gaps there. I wanted to explore that time period and how they felt about it. Plus, I wanted to write about Tony pining. I am so predictable.

Just a Wrinkle (2589 words) (Tony & Rhodey gen) - My favorite thing about Tony and Rhodey's relationship is all their messy history together as friends. So naturally, time travel. I tried to Google historical info on MIT, but then I remembered that being vague works the best.

X-Men

A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall (1169 words) (Charles/Erik) - If I was more dedicated, I would probably write a million words exploring what brought Charles and Erik back together in the future of Days of Future Past and all of the messy emotional work they'd need to do to get them to the point they are at when we see them. But I am not that dedicated, so I keep chipping off these tiny slices of that world, just to see what they look like.

How to Get Away with Murder

all the things left unsaid (1767 words) (Connor/Oliver) - Band AU! I still have a boatload of Connor/Oliver feelings, because they are such a disaster that juuuuust might work. It was fun trying to translate all of that messy disaster into a different sort of context.

The Good Place

Breaking Bread (622 words) (Eleanors Shellstrop gen) - I loved getting to come up with weird details in the same vein as the show.
Writing in sitcom fandoms is difficult, yo.

Hockey RPF

Living in Salt (24347 words) (Carter/Richards) - The first time I saw Pacific Rim, I predicted that there would be a ton of AUs, starting in hockey. Three years later, I am my own cliché. I ended up with a ton of sad Mike Richards feelings, and then read every single Carter/Richards fic on the internet that I could find. And then I wrote 20k words of it myself because that wasn't enough sad feelings. It did help.


( meme/superlatives )

Bonus round:

A year in fic 2006 - My first year writing House fic! Damn, I can't believe that House/BSG series I wrote is ten years old. WTF, life.

As always, my Yuletide reveal stories first! There were a whole four (4!) of them this year. I honestly wasn't trying to write this much. It just happened, man. Yuletide. It gets into your head.

Gotham City Blues (9790 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Gotham Central
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Josie MacDonald, Marcus Driver
Additional Tags: Case Fic, Character Study, Female Character of Color
Summary: A week in the life of Josephine MacDonald. Gotham's not an easy city to love.

My assigned fic! I was really excited for Yuletide this year because I was going through a bit of a writing dry spell, and I always like the way that Yuletide always tosses me something that throws me for a loop. This year was no different. Gotham Central, in terms of characterization, tends to do the most interesting things with Renee Montoya and Crispus Allen, which means that a lot of other great characters fade into the background. Josie and Marcus, even though they do get a lot of narrative attention, never have quite the same level of compelling drama. The best part about writing this fic was getting to meet them in a way that reading the comics didn't give me a chance to. I love Gotham Central as a whole -- I think it's of the best kind of fanfiction, loving the original material while also willing to explore and undermine it -- and I loved this chance to dig deeper into it.

It took a while, when writing this, to get into the flow. It wasn't until I got to the pure plot of the case that it felt like the story really started to gel in my mind. I think that difficulty shows a little bit in the fic, but I think the character study bits of Josie's weekend still work. I'm glad that I wrote them, and I'm glad they're still in there.

Also, the weirdest thing about this was that I was like 'oh, I'll write a simple case that is easy to solve.' but then it turned out that the case, despite having a simple(ish) explanation, was not actually easy to solve, and it ended up taking 70% of the fic to get to the resolution. I've written case fic before, but this is the first time it's actually ever felt natural to write, probably because the case in my head was supposed to be simple. It's easy, as a writer, to want to make it convoluted and twisty, and for it to come out feeling like you're trying too hard. Sometimes, it pays to keep things simple.


An Ever-Fixed Mark (11702 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: How to Get Away with Murder
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Oliver Hampton/Connor Walsh
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Rimming, Anal Sex, Flogging
Summary: BDSM AU. "So," Connor says. "Just say the word and I'd be happy to kneel for you."

Ah yes. This one. This was picked up as a pinch hit about two weeks before stories were due. I was like 'oh, hey, Connor/Oliver. I can do that.' and so I volunteered for it. I was mulling over what to do with it, because the prompt was pretty open ended. On a lark, I saw that the Yuletide Writer letter had mentioned D/s and D/s AUs, and I was like 'ha, wouldn't it be funny if I wrote that?'

And then I did end up writing it.

One of the first things I had to do while writing this is sit down and write out the most bare bones outline I could make it. I needed to keep the word count (and the number of sex scenes) down, because I was on such a tight timeline. I wish I could have put more scenes into the beginning, to really put a lot more into building that relationship, but I needed to make sure that the backend had enough development so that it could build to the ending that I wanted/needed.

I had a lot of fun writing this, even though it was pretty much non-stop writing for a week. A lot of BDSM AUs are either about subs who resist submission or subs who embrace their submissiveness wholeheartedly. It was fun to write about Connor as a sub who isn't conflicted about his identity at all, but who doesn't quite fall into the usual mold, either. Also, writing sad and needy Connor will never not be fun.


userspace (1084 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: Transistor (Video Game)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Farrah Yon-Dale, Lillian Platt, Niola Chein, Bailey Gilande, Transistor - Character
Additional Tags: Interactive, Interactive Fiction, Character Study
Summary: A modern computer operating system usually segregates virtual memory into kernel space and user space. This separation serves to protect data and functionality from faults (by improving fault tolerance) and malicious behaviour (by providing computer security).

So after barfing out 11k of fic for a pinch hit, I decided it was a brilliant idea to take on doing something interactive. Ahahaha. It's a terrible idea. Don't do it.

Twine 2 had just been released, and I wanted to put it through its paces. I have a whole post about Twine that I want to write coming up, I think, so I'll save a bunch of rambling for then. But yeah, I ended up glancing through the list of people who said they'd be happy to get interactive fiction for Yuletide, and this Transistor prompt jumped out at me.

Transistor is one of those games that hooked itself into my brain this (last?) year, and I had already been thinking about writing Yuletide treats for it. I love the weird world that the characters inhabit, and it was nice to poke around a little bit at it. And that ending. Jeez. I wanted to capture some of how that made me feel.

As far as interactive fiction goes, this story is pretty simplistic. I wanted to keep things achievable in the timeframe that I had (about a week). Twine 2 was still rough around the edges. But I think I managed to get things into a good place. The interactivity changes how you experience it, and I like to think that I managed to make each of the characters distinct and memorable in their own ways.


Girlhood (299 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Broken Age
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Vella Tartine
Additional Tags: Pre-Game(s)
Summary: This is what Vella remembers.

Broken Age is one of those games that I adore, and I really wanted to write for it. No one else had written anything for it during Yuletide, so I was gung ho about giving it a shot even as burned out as I was. At least Madness opening made it easy for me to keep it short. This came together pretty quickly. I love writing details like this, so it was fun to try to construct an entire ficlet around them. And Vella is so badass. I loved getting a chance to spend more time with her.

You don't really need to know that much about the context since the fic takes place pre-game, but if you want the context, this trailer tells you everything you need to know.

( the rest of the year in fics )

( the superlatives for this year )

Woohoo. This is so late, but I've had a busy New Year, and this is possibly even longer and ramblier than usual.

First off, my Yuletide fic!

Songs for the Unsung (1607 words) by thedeadparrot
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bastion
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Zia (Bastion), The Kid (Bastion), Rucks (Bastion), Zulf (Bastion)
Summary: This story I'm about to tell you ain't much like the Kid's stories of the Calamity. No windbags, no peckers, no anklegators. No fightin' at all, when you get right down to it. But it still got meaning all the same.


This was super fun to write. The distinctiveness of Rucks's narration has such a big impact on the game, and trying to imitate that in writing can be really difficult. I'm not particularly well-versed in first person, so this was a great challenge for me.

( the rest of the fic I wrote this year )
( Superlatives )

Man, this has been quite the ride, this year. Sherlock ate my brain. A bunch of new fandoms for me, a little bit of crossovers with old fandoms. This is an incomplete list, mostly because I got lazy halfway through.

Anyway, as always, let's start with the yuletide reveals:

Main Hoon Na

Over The Face Of The Water - Main Hoon Na was my introduction to Bollywood, and I love it so. I had so much trouble figuring out how to approach this story, and I don't think I got to the heart of the movie, but I liked trying to get at some of the more serious emotions. I always liked Ram and Lucky's brotherly BFFery, and I liked trying to untangle some of the things that tie them together.

Sherlock RPF

Why Benedict Cumberbatch Shouldn't Quit His Day Job - This was a pinch hit that was written at the last minute and with much panicking. I haven't written as much straight-up comedy in Sherlock fandom as I would like, and this was a chance to go for the crack again. Also, I am sad that I couldn't make Martin swear as much as I wanted to, because I love characters who have filthy mouths.

( the rest of the stories! features Sherlock, the West Wing, Star Trek, NCIS and more! )

( superlatives, etc )

Um, I'm not dead, really. Yay?

So, another year, another set of fics.

Total number of stories: 21
Total word count: 45,551 words

Not quite the 50,000 words I try for every year, but it's not bad. Here's the list, now with extra commentary!

( By Fandom )
( the superlatives )

And another meme to kick off the new year:

If you could force me to write anything, what would it be?

I also have to respond to my yuletide feedback, but that will probably happen tomorrow. Probably.

Yeah, so yuletide authors are up, and I can now say that I wrote The Beginnings of All Things Are Small, a Batman Begins story that introduces Dick Grayson into this particular Batverse.

I'd really like to thank ignited for the beta job, even though she was busy, and all the RL friends who listened to me whine about how much this was stressing me out, even if they never end up reading this. Apologies to Cicero for stealing one of his quotes for the title.


So, the year in fic meme, (now with self-indulgent author's notes!):

( all the fic sorted by fandom )
( the actual meme )

So fannish resolutions for next year! Write more, interact more, feedback more. I really have to shake off my bad lurker habits.