thedeadparrot

I have partaken in my now yearly participation of yuletide by picking up a pinch hit, and I don't think anyone can guess it because it's NICHE, but I think anyone could guess from the title alone, so you're welcome to try your hardest.


Anyway, here are some recs:

Sense 8 - serve me the sky tonight (2615 words) - I love Kala/Rajan/Wolfgang, and this is such a sweet, well-contained story about Rajan reaching out.

Over the Garden Wall - the road through the woods (3223 words) - I only saw this series for the first time this year, and this fic is such a rich, sad, aching continuation of it. What happened to Wirt and Greg lingers on, and maybe that's okay. Maybe that's what needs to happen.

I'll try to add more as I read more!

I'm trying to read ALL THE FIC and probably failing, but here's my lovely gift fic while I try to cobble together a collection of real recs.

At Play (1603 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Banlieue 13 (Movies)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Leïto/Damien Tomaso
Characters: Leïto (Banlieue 13), Damien Tomaso, Original Male Character(s)
Additional Tags: Sparring, Playgrounds, Police, POV Outsider, Parkour, Post-Canon
Summary:

Jean stuck his head inside the station break room just as Luc was laying out his lunch. “The Captain is sparring with Leïto!” he said breathlessly, and ducked back into the hallway.

So much delight to be found here! Excellent character voices. Fun outsider POV. And goodness, an actual fight scene that feels as much about characterization as the banter. Hooooooray!

I am surprisingly reluctant to post things on here, and I'm not sure why. I guess I was thinking I'd do a big post on my trip back home to Taiwan, and that just never happened. WHOOPS.

Anyway, a quick rundown on things.

I completed a 5k on Sunday! I got 31:12, which is better than I was expecting since my practice runs have been around 34-35 minutes. My next goal is to get that below 30 minutes. My knees have been a little weird, though, so I took (am taking) Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off.

I got my Yuletide assignment! Yay. I need to start reviewing my source material, though, and I've been dragging my feet on that.

I wrote more of my TSN mafia AU for the timestamp meme, and I'm super proud of it, so here:

19th Nervous Breakdown (2033 words) by thedeadparrot
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Social Network (2010)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Eduardo Saverin/Mark Zuckerberg
Characters: Dustin Moskovitz, Sean Parker
Additional Tags: Weddings, Timestamp, Alternate Universe - Mob, POV Outsider
Series: Part 9 of Sympathy For The Devil
Summary: Mafia AU. It wouldn't be Mark and Eduardo's wedding if everything went smoothly.

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 )

Because of course I did. Less than two weeks left. /o\ While I'm in a good place with it, I do still have to wrap up and finish my original assignment. And write and finish a second assignment.

Um, anyone want to volunteer to be an additional beta?

Hi Yuletide Writer!

Thanks so much for writing this fic for me! I am sure I will enjoy anything you come up with, so thank you so much!

Here's some of my general likes/dislikes: I like happy feelings and sad feelings and silly feelings and angry feelings and everything in between. Happy endings are not required. The things that I really dig are characterization and worldbuilding, and I think pretty much all of my requests have tons of interesting nooks and crannies to explore along those lines. Not into character bashing, not even for the gigantic assholes who probably deserve it. I'm pretty open to shipping or not shipping depending on how you feel about it. I've tried to leave things as gen as possible with the option for things to become more shippy or romantic if you do so desire. Or hell, feel free to go in a more gennish direction if that's more interesting to you.


Here's my prompts copy/pasted from the sign-up.

( Broken Age, Saga, Gotham Central, How to Get Away with Murder )

Anyway, have fun! I hope you enjoy writing this as much as I'm sure I'm going to enjoy receiving it!
-thedeadparrot

I have started Yuletide fic! This has been great for feeling out the character voices, but I have no plot yet! I kind of want to do something ambitious with it, but ambitious things take work and effort! There are a lot of nuances that the source does well that I want to do even better, and I want to do a lot of worldbuilding that the source doesn't touch on at all, and it is all so difficult. But also fun! Writing is so soothing, and I do enjoy throwing myself head-first into Yuletide. It was good for me to skip last year so that I could come back to it with my full enthusiasm. I feel like some of the stuff I wrote even two years ago weren't up to my usual Yuletide efforts. So! It is good that I do have ambitions for this story. Even if it does go horribly.

Still interviewing at places! The one place I really like hasn't rejected me yet, and I am crossing my fingers that this one interview this week is, in fact, the last one I need to go through. And that it goes well, etc.

I can has awesomely hilarious Middleman fic!

Five Times Wendy Flew Solo, which is fun and ridiculous and involves giant cybernetic penguins. Let me repeat that for you: GIANT CYBERNETIC PENGUINS. It is so delightful and nerdy, and it makes me sigh happily. I just love it so much.


Anyway, I am catching a flight today, so I am loading up as much fic as possible before I leave. SO MUCH FIC. I want to roll around in it all.

I accidentally a pinch hit today.

I kind of forgot that I have a full time job and everything and because I'm traveling on Thursday, I only really have two days nights to write it.

Whoops.

Man, holidays are coming up! Everything is nuts! No one is in the office right now!


Yuletide this year isn't going to be rough as last year's, which is good with the compressed timeline and full time job, but I'd still like a place to vent any possible frustrations and anxieties.




I gave in and bought the Xbox 360 version of Portal, even though I already have a PC version. *facepalm* But there is cake at the end! THEY TOLD ME THERE WOULD BE CAKE.


It's so weird to think that there are lurkers who might be reading this sentence right now, and I could lurk with the best of them in my day. Hi, everyone! It's cool if you never want to say anything, you guys. You are awesome, and I love you. Rock on with your lurker selves.