przed

Owing to the fact that it's been one hell of a year, my Yuletide reveal and year-end writing wrap up are exactly the same thing! The only piece of writing I finished in 2020 was my Yuletide story.

That story was for Random Harvest. It's a movie I've adored since I was as a kid, and is perhaps the Ur-amnesia story. It also has just soooo many fucked up twists that when I sat the Sweetie down to watch it on the grounds that we couldn't be together if he hadn't seen it, he was having WTF moments every 20 minutes. So, if you haven't seen the movie, go watch it!

In doing research for the story, I came across a gorgeous colour pic of the stars, Ronald Colman and Greer Garson, and couldn't help using it to make a banner:

Many Roads (8025 words)
Fandom: Random Harvest
Relationships: Margaret Hanson | Paula Ridgeway/Charles Rainier | Smithy

Three chapters, three AU ways to give Paula and Smithy a happy ending, including one that fixes the, IMO, most tragic loss the two of them experience in the movie.

If you've now seen the movie, this story will hopefully fix some of those WTF moments for you.

And that was it for my stories (or story!) this year.

It was not, however, the only writing I've done. I've got an MTH auction story that has now been delayed by a broken wrist, a concussion and a pandemic, and is over a year late, but I'm still plugging away at. I've had the last two weeks off and have used it more as R&R recharging time, but I'm going to spend the next couple of days figuring out what kind of a regular, manageable writing schedule I can put together to finish it. Once that's done, I want to get to work on a Pacific theatre AU Stucky story with a racebent Chinese Bucky that I've been wanting to write for several years now.

Fingers crossed, 2021 is a much better year for all of us.

This Yuletide, I matched on a recipient who requested The Nice Guys. If you haven't seen it (and not many people did, alas) the movie stars Ryan Gosling as an alcoholic mess of a private eye, and Russell Crowe as a thug-for-hire he accidentally starts working with. It is a glorious thing, and possibly my very favourite Gosling performance ever. (I'm not a huge fan of broody!Gosling, but here he's a drunken goofball who occasionally has flashes of brilliance, and he is glorious.)

So, here's the story, in which Gosling's wise-beyond-her-years daughter plays matchmaker:
Holly March's Dad Dating Service (4,581 words)

I also managed to write one treat, for the lovely

dorinda. She requested Trapeze, a circus story with Burt Lancaster and (a very pretty) Tony Curtis as trapeze artists pining after each other. I've been wanting to see the movie for ages, and it does not disappoint. Except the ending. Which this story fixes:
Fight or Flight ( 2,640 words)

Beyond Yuletide, it's been another crazy year, and I haven't posted here much. Partly it's RL competing with time for fannish pursuits. (Along with the usual work, kid, house stuff, Ros is back playing hockey again. And after two years doing learn-to-play classes, I'm now playing in a real league! And I was stupid excited that I got a picture day in my hockey gear. I will totally be posting that as soon as I get it.) With Tumblr imploding, my hope is to post here more often. And to start there, here's my annual writing round up.

I'm still in Marvel fandom, but I've burned through that first flush of being in a new fandom when the words come quickly and easily. Still love the characters, though. Especially these two idiots:

I wrote a lot fewer stories this year than last, four, but one of those stories is the second longest thing I've ever written. I wrote two stories for the Cap Reverse Big Bang, both OT3s. (OT3s seem to be a thing for me. Huh.) The long fic I wrote was for the FTH auction, and took most of the year.

So, here it is, ( the list o' fic: )

Crossposts: https://przed.livejournal.com/368770.html

I've fully intended to post more this year, but that clearly hasn't worked out. Partly, it's with Ros being older, she's going to bed later and leaving me with only scraps of time at the end of the day for doing anything personal/creative/fannish. Partly, it's that a lot of what fannish time I do manage I'm spending faffing about on Tumblr.

But mostly, it seems, I've spent my time writing a truly record-breaking amount of fic.

Stumbling into a new fandom usually gets me writing a lot, but for whatever reason, Captain America and the Winter Soldier have been especially inspiring. Hmmm, I wonder why?

Ahem.

Yes, well, the end result of falling down the Stucky rabbit hole was that I wrote just slightly over 150K words of fic. Which beats the 108K that resulted when I first got into Take That.

So, here's the list of everything I've written and finished this year.

( List o' fic )

Crossposts: https://przed.livejournal.com/366629.html

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted here.

I wasn't on the computer or online much during the holidays, so I didn't post about the lovely stories I got for Yuletide. There were two (two!) both for Velvet Goldmine, a movie I love past reason.

The first one is the pairing of my heart, Arthur/Curt, and shows them a few years older and in Berlin. It's beautifully written and a perfect take on the two of them:

Sound and Vision (2272 words) by yeats
Fandom: Velvet Goldmine
Rating: Explicit
Relationships: Arthur Stuart/Curt Wild
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Christmas, Oral Sex, Yuleporn
Summary: Arthur and Curt in Berlin, December 1989.

The second story is a much more melancholy take on what might have happened to Arthur if he'd failed entirely to achieve his dreams and his night with Curt had never gone further.

Not-Returning Time (3035 words) by thegirlwiththemouseyhair
Fandom: Velvet Goldmine
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Relationships: Arthur Stuart/Curt Wild, Arthur Stuart/Original Character, Ray/Arthur Stuart
Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat, Unrequited Love, Loneliness, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Awkward Flirting, Self-Esteem Issues
Summary: Shop boy Arthur Stuart tries to make a proper life for himself, in between surviving and reminiscing about Curt Wild and the dead glam rock scene.

My Yuletide assignment was for Spy, a fun movie I love and think is a lot of fun. My recipient asked for Susan's back story, so my muse decided it would turn a wacky comedy into a meditation on self-esteem and fighting sexism. With some female ass-kicking thrown in.

A (Not So) Well-Behaved Woman (1982 words)
Fandom: Spy (2015)
Summary: Susan's mother raises her to be a nice, neat, well-behaved girl... Or how Susan Cooper learned how to be the spy she was always meant to be.

One of my favourite Yuletide stories was this Spy story that's much more in keeping with the wacky tone of the movie. It's funny and filthy and just a little bit touching.

Every Single Holiday (4043 words) by rsadelle
Fandom: Spy (2015)
Relationships: Susan Cooper/Rick Ford
Additional Tags: Dick in a Box, 5+1 Things
Summary: When it comes to gift-giving, Ford's repertoire is somewhat limited.

My writing wrap up is going to be dead easy this year. The first part of the year was all martial arts all the time, and then there were months of relaxing because I was knackered. Then in the fall, the Cap Stucky fandom hit me like a truck. So apart from Yuletide, the only other fic I finished was the Stucky one from the end of the year. (I've got two half-finished stories on the hard drive, one Pros and one Take That, but the whole Stucky thing hit me hard in the fall and shorted out all other writing.)

The Altar Boy Act (1411 words)
Fandom: Captain America (Movies)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Summary: Stark thinks Steve is a prude. Bucky knows better.

My total word count for the year was a paltry 3393. But that's okay. I've already got that more than beat for the new year. I'm awaiting a beta on 23,000 words of the first two stories in a Stucky series, and have already started the final story. That one looks like it's going to hit at least 10,000 words.

A belated Happy New Year, everyone!

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 )

I wrote one story for Yuletide this year.

The Case of the Visiting Spies (4074 words) by PR Zed
Fandom: A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman, Wild Wild West (TV)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sebastian Moran/James Moriarty, Artemus Gordon/James West
Additional Tags: Crossover
Summary: The New Worlders were not what I expected of God Killers.

I always hope to manage a fun crossover for Yuletide, and when I matched on a recipient who asked for both A Study in Emerald and Wild Wild West, I couldn't resist merging the two worlds.

Besides the Yuletide story, I wrote 11 other stories, mostly TT (yeah, that's not a surprise), with a couple of Pros and one Tennis RPF to round things out. ( This way to the details )

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: )