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I've signed up for intoabar a couple of times, and have gotten terrible assignments, but I'm trying to get myself back into writing so I thought I'd give it one more go.

And I got the pairing of my dreams!

I'm not going to say what it is quite yet, because I could still screw the pooch. But seriously, if I'd had to pick my own match, this is exactly what I'd have picked.

Yuletide reveal was almost a week ago, but I'm just now finding time to post about the stories I wrote this year. I wrote two, a main assignment and a pinch hit.

The main assignment was for Bullet Train, a ridiculously fun action film. Brad Pitt may be top billed, but Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the Twins, smart-arse English assassins, steal the show.

I love character backstories, so I decided to figure out why everyone in the film totally accepts that these two guys are twins.

Family Rules is from the POV of the foster mother who takes the boys in and forges them into a family. She let me tell the Twins' back story, but also save them from the movie's ending.

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The pinch hit was for the 2016 version of The Magnificent Seven. The stars of this are Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt, but I much prefer the pairing of Ethan Hawke as sharpshooter Goodnight Robicheaux and Lee Byung-Hun as knife fighter Billy Rocks. (They are canonically together, and you can't convince me otherwise. They light each other's cigarettes! They pull each other through PTSD attacks!)

I went down a historical rabbit hole for this one, trying to figure out how a Korean dude could possibly end up in the Old West, and found all sorts of interesting side facts. (Did you know the U.S. invaded Korea in 1870?! Neither did I!)


The Destiny of Man is the first meeting of Goody and Billy, and I tried to work in all of the things I love about the characters and how they fit together.

Not only did I finish my main Yuletide assignment (now with an actual title) well ahead of time, but I also finished a pinch hit with a day to spare. Yay!

There is polishing to be done on both stories, but I'm one of those tweak until the last minute kinds of people, so there's always polishing to be done.

I'm also off work from now until January 2. And boy do I need the rest. Though the first few days are going to be full of me running errands and buying Christmas gifts and seeing friends. But I'm also hoping for some lounging around reading books and comics time.

The good news is I have miraculously finished my Yuletide assignment, well ahead of the deadline. And I even think I stuck the landing! I have time to do treats! Or a pinch hit!

The bad news is I just realized I haven’t come up with a title for the sucker yet. (I hate coming up with titles.)

I haven't posted here in forever, and though a lot of you who follow me probably know why, I feel like I need to actually post the words before I can think of posting, or writing anything else.

So, my mom died. In the beginning of May. After a very sudden, very catastrophic illness.

( Cut for those who don't want to see discussions of dying & grief )

This year I got matched on Real Genius. Which, if you've never seen it, is an '80s comedy starring a very young Val Kilmer about a bunch of physics students at a CalTech-like college who get tricked into building a laser weapon by a cartoonishly evil professor and then take revenge on him with science and popcorn.

I adore this movie. I was finishing up my first year of astrophysics when it came out, and in spite of the over-the-top comedy of it all, it felt really true to my experiences and I recognized more than one of my classmates in the characters. So, I was happy, and a bit terrified, to get matched on it.

The story I ended up writing was A Physicist's Guide to Love and Lasers (2900 words)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Chris Knight/Mitch Taylor, Jordan Cochran & Mitch Taylor
Characters: Mitch Taylor, Chris Knight, Jordan Cochran, "Ick" Ikagami
Summary: Dr. Jordan Cochran (you can call her Jordan) knows all the history of her Pacific Tech classmates, including how Mitch and Chris finally got together. If you ask (or even if you don't) she'll tell you the whole story. (A hint: Jordan may have had something to do with it.)

In the movie, there's one girl physicist in the class, Jordan. (This is the one thing that wasn't true to my experience in uni. There were a bunch of other women in my class - though our profs told us we were a statistical blip and had a much higher percentage of women, 30%, than the cohorts both before and after us.) Jordan is a motor mouth, clearly has ADHD and is in constant motion. She knits a sweater for Mitch, the newest student, overnight, and is always building some new contraption.

My Yuletide recipient asked for me to pair up Mitch and Chris, Val Kilmer's character, but I knew I wanted Jordan to play a key role. So, I wrote the start of Mitch and Chris' relationship from Jordan's POV, which meant I got to write in her voice. Which was challenging and fun.

Another fun piece was finding a bit of real science to salt into the story. Mitch and Chris both work with lasers, and I remembered that a Canadian woman physicists, Donna Strickland, won the Nobel prize for an article on lasers that came out in the early '80s. If you're interested in the science, you can read her Nobel lecture here.

It's another Yuletide, and I could not be more excited that you're going to write a story for me. If you already have an idea, I'm sure I'll love it. But if you'd like some guidance about the things I like, here it is.

( Things That Make Me Happy )
( DNWs )

I am open to treats.

And here, again, are the details about my requested fandoms:

( Summer Lovers )
(  Hawkeye Freefall  )
( Batman: Wayne Family Adventures )
( Enola Holmes )
In the end, I hope you write something that gives you joy. That's sure to bring me joy as well.

The last few years, I've somehow become the person who plays hockey several times a week. I play in a league and do a couple of lessons. I can't quite believe I've become someone who loves hockey as much as I do, but there you are.

This week was our league finals. Since my team had managed to finish second, we were in the championship game. And we won! It was a tight game, everyone played well, and I made a few moves I'm proud of.

Here's me with the cup (made mostly out of kitchen equipment from the dollar store). And yes, it is nearly as big as me. Not, as I told a teammate, that that's a high bar to clear.😆



And here's my team!


It may be spring, but this is Canada so the hockey continues. My spring league starts tomorrow. I start a new set of lessons on Wednesday. Also, the World's Women Championships is being held just outside of Toronto this year, and we've got tickets to a game next Sunday. (U.S.A vs. Czechia, because tickets to all the Canada games were gone like a shot.)

I've got my fingers crossed that this is the year I finally manage a few backwards crossovers. Fingers crossed! Oh, and that I don't get another concussion. (I may have fallen and gotten a minor concussion, but it wasn't too bad and I took a month off playing and did physio and I'm fine now, honest.)

I wrote two stories for YT this year.

My main assignment was for The Adjustment Bureau for gwyn. There may have been cheering when I got my assignment. (I've been wanting to write a story for her for that canon for a couple of years.) We've been matched back and forth a couple of times over the years. And yes, gwyn, we clearly should do a mutual subchallenge.

Getting Away With It (4726 words) by PR Zed
Fandom: The Adjustment Bureau (2011), Captain America (Movies)
Characters: Harry Mitchell, The Chairman, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Steve Rogers

Summary: The main problem, Harry realized, was that he'd gotten away with it.

He'd gotten away with letting David slip from the Plan, accidentally at first, and then with intent later. He'd gotten away with teaching David how the doors worked. He'd gotten away with giving David his hat. He'd gotten away with letting David and Elise escape the other adjustors.

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The second assignment was the pinch hit, for Buckaroo Banzai, a movie I know very VERY well. My recipient asked for Perfect Tommy's backstory. Tommy is not one of my top tier fave characters, but I gave it my best shot and they liked it, so yay!

How to Become Perfect (1997 words) by PR Zed
Fandom: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension (1984)
Characters: Perfect Tommy (Buckaroo Banzai), Buckaroo Banzai, Rawhide (Buckaroo Banzai)
Summary: In the beginning he wasn't Perfect. He wasn't even Tommy.

I have finished my Yuletide pinch hit! And I didn't even have to stay up until 4 a.m. to do it.

I'm also now officially off work until January 3rd, thank goodness. I am very crispy fried this year, and very much looking forward to not doing a whole lot but read, write, hang out and play a bit of hockey.