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This year for Yuletide I matched on a recipient who requested Edge of Tomorrow and Only Lovers Left Alive, both of which I'd offered. After briefly toying with doing a demented crossover of both fandoms (and brainstorming with the Sweetie; vampires who can remember the time loops and are really miffed about it, yay!) I settled on just doing an Edge of Tomorrow story.

It was a movie I'd already loved in the theatre and had been telling people to go see it. But now I've watched it a bunch more times and I am here to tell you that it is an awesome film, probably my favourite film of the summer (yes, more than Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America) and you should totally go see it. No, it doesn't matter if you hate Tom Cruise. In fact, it might help, because the start of the film plays on that smarmy asshole-ness that Cruise so frequently presents. His character starts off as a coward and a jerk and has to learn to do better. And then it has Emily Blunt as the badass soldier who needs to train him to become a hero. But the film doesn't handle this in a way that negates her contributions. Right until the end, if Blunt's Rita Vrataski hadn't been with Cruise's character, he would have been sunk.

So, yeah, totally check out Edge of Tomorrow.

And here's my story:

The First Time 'Round (3198 words)
Fandom: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Relationships: William Cage/Rita Vrataski
Summary: The first time you meet Private Cage, you think Christ, not another one.

Besides Yuletide, I wrote seven stories this year. It was a lower story count and a much lower word count than the last few years when I was setting personal records. I haven't been around much online, either. There have been a few contributing factors to that, I think. One big part of it was organizing BistoCon with FJ Bryan. Even though it was a small con, getting it all put together took a significant amount of the time and energy I had for fannish activity for the first two thirds of the year, and after it was all over I felt knackered for longer than I would have thought. It took the amazing SHareCon to rejuvenate my fannish ambitions.

Another big part is Ros getting older. She's doing activities every day but one, and gets to bed just that little bit later, giving me less time to work on anything at night.

The last thing that's taking my time is Taekwando, which is rapidly becoming as consuming as fandom. I tested for my red belt just before Christmas (I broke three boards!), two away from black. I'm aiming to test black in spring of 2016, and that's going to require three classes a week, a two hour training session on Saturday mornings, and regular volunteering in other classes. The black belt test requires a whole weekend spent at the dojo in March where they keep you going for most of 60 hours and push you to your limit, and then there's another couple of months of rehearsing performance routines for the June Black Belt Spectacular. Oh, and 2016 is also when we've promised to hold the next edition of BistoCon. I have a feeling there will not be much fic written in 2016.

Anyway, here's a list of the fic I did manage to write. ( List o' fic this way )

Yesterday was spent doing some de-cluttering in the house and getting the takethatslash Secret Santa sorted, but now that everything's under control, I thought I'd do my Yuletide reveal and a wrap-up of my 2012 fic.

For Yuletide, I was matched on Haywire, a film I love for its kickass heroine, Mallory Kane, and its really top-notch fight scenes. The first thing my recipient's Dear Yulegoat letter listed as a like was, and I quote, "WOMEN BEING AWESOME." Which led to a little story about Mallory protecting, and training, two very different women. It's not my usual run of things, but I'm pretty happy with it.

The Diner Rules (4523 words)
Fandom: Haywire (2011)

Massive thanks goes to shayheyred for doing a fantastic beta on this story.

Besides Yuletide, I wrote 12 other stories: 11 Take That RPS, 1 Take That/Wings of Desire crossover, and my monster Pros/TT/zombie crossover. ( Here are the links: )