przed

For last year's FTH auction, I wrote a Marvel wild west AU for lou2. (It's sort of a Marvel 1872 mashup, but without the whole everyone dying thing.) Then the two of us went in on a MTH auction and managed the winning bid on Nix to create art for the story.

She's still working on the main illustration, but she's done a little sketch of Steve. And it's fantastic!


Can't wait to see, and share, the rest of the art and get the story posted. (The story is Clint/Bucky/Nat with a side helping of Stony, because apparently I'm going to write every Marvel OT3 I can get my hands on.)

I got two lovely gifts for Yuletide this year!

The first was for the thing I most wanted fic for, but figured was a long shot. The Crimson Kimono is a noir-ish movie from the '50s with two cops, one white and one Japanese American, investigating a murder. The cops work together, live together, and are very slashrific. Though the movie has a woman push them apart at the end, I'm a firm believer that the three of them should just form a happy little polycule.

Almost Makes You Feel Alive gives the backstory of the Japanese American cop and how he and his partner met, and gives a nice fix to the ending of the film. It is fab! You should read it! And also watch the film because it is great.


The second was an adorable story for the Batman: Wayne Family Adventures webcomic, my current favourite DC title. (For reasons possibly related to the ongoing pandemic and world-wide trash fire we're all living in, a Bat family title focused on low stakes domestic comedy is very appealing to me these days.)

Curriculum has Alfred getting Jason to help Damian with his English homework, and features Alfred Pennyworth's famous chocolate chip cookies. It is an absolute gem.

I managed to finish my Yuletide story well ahead of time this year. Yay! Pressure off!

But then...I was looking at pinch hits, and there was one that languished for several hours without being claimed, and it's for a fandom source I know very VERY well, even if the requested character is not one of my absolute faves.

So, yeah, I now have until Tuesday at 4 a.m. to write for this pinch hit.

Yikes! Pressure back on!

I've come to the back end of the fest, and through sheer luck this is where most of my favourite movies of the fest were.

( Sweet As )

( Aftersun )

( The Eternal Daughter )

( How to Blow Up a Pipeline )

The fest is over for another year, and I saw lots of good films, and even a few great ones. So here's my next batch of mini reviews.

( War Sailor )

( What's Love Got to Do With It )

( We Are Still Here )

( Viking )

( Kacchey Limbu )

Two years ago, I bought a membership to this year's WorldCon in Chicago, figuring surely we'd all have this Covid thing figured out by then. To their credit, the concomm is requiring proof of vaccination and wearing of masks, but I really didn't want to risk getting sick in another country, so I decided not to risk attending in person. The con is running virtual panels and events, so at least I get to participate in a small way from the comfort of my balcony.

Watching a panel in a computer screen on your own isn't quite the same experience as being in a room with your tribe, but I'll take it for now. (Next year, Winnipeg won the bid for the North America con while WorldCon is in China, so that one I'm going to definitely attend in person. I've wanted to go to Winnipeg for years anyway.)

There's been lots of interesting ideas, and it seems like after every panel I come away with another long list of books to check out. Here's a few that went straight to my TBR list:

The Asian SFF Panel Recs
The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco. Necromancy and coming of age from a Filipino perspective.
Never Have I Ever by Isabel Yap. Short stories from a Filipino writer.
Lion City by Ng Li-Sheng. More short stories from a Singaporean poet.

The Middle Ages Weren't That Bad Panel Recs
Langue[dot]doc 1305. Time travelling historians travel to 1305 France.
The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe. Pretty much what it says on the tin.

Oh, and just for just_ann_now, Martha Wells did a reading from a new Murderbot novella to come out sometime next year, so yay to that!

Apparently, I haven't posted anything here since February! So here's my official notice that I'm not dead.

I've been working on a Stucky story for the Captain America Reverse Big Bang, for which I miraculously got my first choice of art. The minimum word count is 5K. So, of course, my brain came up with a plot-heavy story that's come in just over 23K. I finished the first draft earlier this week, and made a second pass through today, so I'm in good shape for my posting date, July 26.

Then I've got two stories to write for the FTH auction, one Tony/Bucky, and one Nat/Clint/Bucky. The Tony/Bucky one should be especially fun because I was bid on by an artist whose auction I also won, so we're going to collaborate on an illustrated story.

In non-fannish news, I've apparently become a person who plays hockey three times a week in the summer. I signed up for Thursday night lessons before finding out a woman in my regular winter league was putting together a summer Sunday league for women over 45. Then my winter league decided to offer lessons on Mondays. The Sunday league finished in June, and my last Monday lesson was this week. That just leaves the Thursday lessons. Which are...challenging.

First of all, they're two hours long: an hour of drills followed by an hour of scrimmage. That is exhausting. Second, it's co-ed, which was a little terrifying at the start because the guys are way bigger than me and way faster. And I am objectively the worst player on the ice. But fortunately, the coaches and other students have all been helpful and encouraging, and it's all definitely helped me up my game.

In a moment of weakness, I have signed up for the Fandom Trumps Hate auction. Mostly because there's some really fantastic organizations being supported. So, if you'd like a 5-10K story from me (possibly longer if I get inspired) stay tuned for the auction details.

In TV news, I watched the first episode of Station Eleven on Thursday out of curiosity, and now three days later I've finished zipping through all ten episodes. Pre-Covid, I was rather fond of Pandemic Wipes Out Most of Humanity stories, but I have to say all the pandemic stuff in the beginning of the show now really stresses me the eff out.

Infectious disease stress aside, I thought the show was really beautifully made and constructed. The narrative jumps forward and backward in time, making you work a bit to keep up, but everything ties together in a very satisfying way in the final episode. And it's just full of brilliant performances, from the leads down to minor side characters. I was especially happy to see Lori Petty, playing the conductor of the Traveling Symphony, the nomadic theatre troupe keeping Shakespeare alive, post-pandemic.

In the midst of writing my Yuletide assignments this year, my trusty MacBook started throwing battery errors and not holding a charge nearly as long as it used to. I crossed my fingers and got all my stories done, then took my machine in as soon as we got back from my mom's after Christmas, figuring it would take, what, a week to get the new battery installed?

But you know, supply chain, blah blah blah, and it took almost a month. But now I've got it back!

All of which goes to explain why this is a very, VERY late Yuletide post.

I got a truly lovely Yuletide gift for the Marvel What If...? series. It was my way of sneaking a Stucky request into Yuletide, and the result is a really beautiful story.

Moonglow (3558 words) by lionessvalenti
Fandom: What If...? (TV 2021), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter, Howard Stark
Additional Tags: Episode: s01e01 What If... Captain Carter Were The First Avenger?, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Getting Together, Dancing, Time Skips
Summary: After the war, Bucky pines for Steve while Steve pines for Peggy, who is gone.

I ended up with two Yuletide assignments. My original assignment was for Political Animals, and the recipient asked for a happy ending for TJ. I was very happy to oblige.

Making Friends in Rehab (10975 words)
Fandom: Political Animals
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Characters: Thomas "T. J." Hammond, Margaret Barrish, Agent Clark, Douglas Hammond
Additional Tags: Recovery, Rehab, Fluff
Summary: TJ Hammond managed to wait until his mother was elected President to fall off the wagon. But now that he's in rehab, he's going to need friends to help him figure out what to do with the rest of his life.

The second story was a pinch hit for Point Break, one of my all-time favourite films. I had just four days to write the story, and I spent three of them doing a deep dive into surfing in Indonesia and Fiji, as you do. Fortunately, I miraculously managed to vomit out a 4K word first draft on the fourth day, then had a couple of days before the reveal to do a bit of tweaking.

Doing What You Love (4376 words)
Fandom: Point Break (1991)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Bodhi/Johnny Utah
Summary: What if Johnny didn't miss Bodhi in Fiji?

I've just finished and posted my Yuletide story (nearly 11K words and done early! Yay!) So I figured why not break my not posting slump and do the Yuletide meme.

1) First year you signed up for Yuletide
2009.

2) Last year you signed up for Yuletide (other than this one)
2020. My Yuletide story was about the only thing I wrote last year. Funny how a pandemic will do that to you.

3) Have you signed up this year?
Yep!

4) Have you skipped signing up any years since you first took part?
One year. 2015, which was the year I both turned 50 and did my black belt in Taekwondo. That year I didn't do much besides training, sleeping and working. The crazy amount of commitment, plus a few injuries I still haven't fully recovered from, are why I no longer train in martial arts.

5) How many years have you defaulted by the default deadline?
None!

6) How many years have you treated in addition to your assignment?
Two. Three if I get the one I'm planning done this year.

7) How many years have you treated but not signed up?
Never. Part of the fun (if you can call it fun) for me is the anxiety of not knowing what fandom you're going to be matched on. Just picking a fandom to write almost feels like cheating.

8) How many different canons have you covered in your Yuletide stories?
Thirteen, not including this year. A new one every year:
Tombstone
Buckaroo Banzai
Haywire
Edge of Tomorrow
Spy
Gifted
The Nice Guys
Stumptown
Random Harvest

And then my two crazy crossovers, which I am inordinately fond of:
Wild Wild West/A Study in Emerald
A Knight's Tale/Hotel California (yes, the song)

9) What AO3 ratings have you covered in your Yuletide stories?
Not rated: 6 (Unless there's stuff that really requires ratings, I hate rating my stories.)
Gen: 2
Teen: 4

10) What AO3 categories have you covered in your Yuletide stories?
It always surprises me that in spite of considering myself mostly a slash writer, I've written a lot of Gen and a bit of het for Yuletide.
M/M: 5
F/M: 2
Gen: 5