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First, the list!
How Noble In Reason
Fandom: Alien: Resurrection
Length: 11.7k
Summary: Call had to grow up fast when her line was recalled; this version of Ripley has been an adult all along. Between the two of them they need to figure out what's so wrong (or so right) about not being exactly human.
Translation Error
Fandom: Greek Prose Composition, Ancient Greece & Rome History & Literature RPF
Length: 1.4k
Summary: "'The Institute of Cross-Time Education welcomes you! You have been personally selected to take part in this exciting opportunity for cross-time exchanges of cultural knowledge and entertainment..." And Professor North, the lucky classicist, is responsible for instructing the resulting set of extremely classic students.
An Abundance of Captains
Fandom: Temeraire, Unusual Dragon Hoards
Length: 2.9k
Summary: Laurence was puzzled as to why anyone should send him and Temeraire to collect a stray dragonet, until he discovered how it had chosen its captain.
1. I put in Alien: Resurrection as a last-minute fandom, and I was surprised to match on it. But then after a bit of startled blinking, I went OH YES, because you know what this was? This was the first fandom that I ever encountered femslash in. A long, mildly implausible story about Ripley and Call fighting soldiers and aliens on Earth, between bouts of sex, was the very first F/F story that I ever read.
(I was in college at times. I have been very late to some things.)
When I started plotting out this fic, my recipient's letter wasn't up yet, so I wasn't quite sure what kind of story they'd be looking for. I worked out a nice long prequel sequence, all about mirroring the ways in which Ripley and Call were coming to figure out who they were, and who they meant to be, despite the demands of others. When the letter went up asking for sequel fic that was specifically Ripley/Call, I plotted out a parallel second half, where...well, romance of some sort would happen! And thematic callbacks!
Then I went and rewatched the movie, and had to change several pieces of the outline because my fuzzy memory of it in theaters could only hold up so well to the specific details. (How did all of Call's self-loathing about her android status slip my memory?) I watched the director's cut, and had to change more details. I reworked some of the planned backstory for Call because my recipient didn't want a lot of discussion of parental death, so it seemed like a good plan to let some of her parents survive--which led to a plot point in the latter half of the story that I quite liked, anyway. It came together nicely. It was, in any case, an interesting exercise to do this kind of canon review; I went through the movie with the pause button at hand, and not only took notes on everything that happened, but transcribed every word of dialogue from Ripley and Call, to try and get their voices down better.
Writing, however, turned out to be tricky, if only because it's hard to write plotty longer fic quickly. I'm pretty happy with the final result, but if I'd started earlier (or had another week of time), I suspect the story would be about 3k longer. More explicit smut, more action scenes, some more working out of the themes I wanted to address. (Though sometimes it was already difficult to write about them without just repeating conversations from the movie. Movies are, after all, designed to finish the character arcs they introduce, however implausible it is to wrap them up that quickly.) I'm still toying with the idea of writing a sequel; I got to really like Call's internal voice, and I want to do a lot more with her and Ripley. Turns out that all these years later, they're still lodged deep in my heart. I like those two inhuman women.
2. "Stop trying to make fetch happen" is a phrase for a reason, but by god, I want Greek Prose Composition to be its own fandom, however tiny. It's too entertaining not to be! And so when I found that someone else had actually requested the fandom, I determined that no matter what, I would write them a treat, to make sure at least one made it into the archive. And since they said that all of my prompts were great... I went ahead and wrote to one of my own prompts.
Genderbending cross-time ancient Greek historians! IN SPACE! (Admittedly, now that I think of it, I never specified that the institute was on a space station. Oh well.) With references to GPC exercises! An entire semester of Greek authors gave me a nice array to pick from, and I put in as many of them as I could. I had way too much fun putting this one together.
3. The Temeraire story was the only one I got to on a long, long list of treats I wanted to write this year. I was poking through requests from that series in general, hoping someone else wanted fic all about the dragons, and found someone who was also interested in Unusual Dragon Hoards, thought crossovers were neat, and specifically said dragons were the draw. And requested the dragon with a kitten hoard.
I can do that, I said to myself. I can find a way to give a dragon in this setting a hoard of kittens. I can.
The real trick on this one, after I came up with the premise, was getting the tone down. This series has a very distinct voice, as do each of the characters, and I wanted to get as close to the source as possible. So I reread the whole series, with a note of where I could fit the incident into the timeline as neatly as possible. (It's probably canonically impossible, but IF IT WERE possible, that's the place in the timeline it would fit.) Then I went back to the first book, and paid attention to how semicolons were placed, and what sorts of words Laurence used when startled or temporizing or otherwise surprised.
I'm pretty happy with this result! It got the most views of all my stories, likely because it's short and in a well-known fandom (by Yuletide standards), but I still think it's pretty solid. I do wish I'd spent a little more time on paying attention to the sorts of sensory detail Laurence uses when he's describing a new location, and had done a bit more research on the sort of place in Scotland in that time period that one might isolate a bit from the rest of the world in a plausible manner--I'm not sure sheep work on that terrain at all, even as a sort of side thing to one's main profession--but even so, given the time available, I think I did a good job.
Overall, I had loads of fun this Yuletide; if I do anywhere near this well next year, I'll be quite pleased indeed.
How Noble In Reason
Fandom: Alien: Resurrection
Length: 11.7k
Summary: Call had to grow up fast when her line was recalled; this version of Ripley has been an adult all along. Between the two of them they need to figure out what's so wrong (or so right) about not being exactly human.
Translation Error
Fandom: Greek Prose Composition, Ancient Greece & Rome History & Literature RPF
Length: 1.4k
Summary: "'The Institute of Cross-Time Education welcomes you! You have been personally selected to take part in this exciting opportunity for cross-time exchanges of cultural knowledge and entertainment..." And Professor North, the lucky classicist, is responsible for instructing the resulting set of extremely classic students.
An Abundance of Captains
Fandom: Temeraire, Unusual Dragon Hoards
Length: 2.9k
Summary: Laurence was puzzled as to why anyone should send him and Temeraire to collect a stray dragonet, until he discovered how it had chosen its captain.
1. I put in Alien: Resurrection as a last-minute fandom, and I was surprised to match on it. But then after a bit of startled blinking, I went OH YES, because you know what this was? This was the first fandom that I ever encountered femslash in. A long, mildly implausible story about Ripley and Call fighting soldiers and aliens on Earth, between bouts of sex, was the very first F/F story that I ever read.
(I was in college at times. I have been very late to some things.)
When I started plotting out this fic, my recipient's letter wasn't up yet, so I wasn't quite sure what kind of story they'd be looking for. I worked out a nice long prequel sequence, all about mirroring the ways in which Ripley and Call were coming to figure out who they were, and who they meant to be, despite the demands of others. When the letter went up asking for sequel fic that was specifically Ripley/Call, I plotted out a parallel second half, where...well, romance of some sort would happen! And thematic callbacks!
Then I went and rewatched the movie, and had to change several pieces of the outline because my fuzzy memory of it in theaters could only hold up so well to the specific details. (How did all of Call's self-loathing about her android status slip my memory?) I watched the director's cut, and had to change more details. I reworked some of the planned backstory for Call because my recipient didn't want a lot of discussion of parental death, so it seemed like a good plan to let some of her parents survive--which led to a plot point in the latter half of the story that I quite liked, anyway. It came together nicely. It was, in any case, an interesting exercise to do this kind of canon review; I went through the movie with the pause button at hand, and not only took notes on everything that happened, but transcribed every word of dialogue from Ripley and Call, to try and get their voices down better.
Writing, however, turned out to be tricky, if only because it's hard to write plotty longer fic quickly. I'm pretty happy with the final result, but if I'd started earlier (or had another week of time), I suspect the story would be about 3k longer. More explicit smut, more action scenes, some more working out of the themes I wanted to address. (Though sometimes it was already difficult to write about them without just repeating conversations from the movie. Movies are, after all, designed to finish the character arcs they introduce, however implausible it is to wrap them up that quickly.) I'm still toying with the idea of writing a sequel; I got to really like Call's internal voice, and I want to do a lot more with her and Ripley. Turns out that all these years later, they're still lodged deep in my heart. I like those two inhuman women.
2. "Stop trying to make fetch happen" is a phrase for a reason, but by god, I want Greek Prose Composition to be its own fandom, however tiny. It's too entertaining not to be! And so when I found that someone else had actually requested the fandom, I determined that no matter what, I would write them a treat, to make sure at least one made it into the archive. And since they said that all of my prompts were great... I went ahead and wrote to one of my own prompts.
Genderbending cross-time ancient Greek historians! IN SPACE! (Admittedly, now that I think of it, I never specified that the institute was on a space station. Oh well.) With references to GPC exercises! An entire semester of Greek authors gave me a nice array to pick from, and I put in as many of them as I could. I had way too much fun putting this one together.
3. The Temeraire story was the only one I got to on a long, long list of treats I wanted to write this year. I was poking through requests from that series in general, hoping someone else wanted fic all about the dragons, and found someone who was also interested in Unusual Dragon Hoards, thought crossovers were neat, and specifically said dragons were the draw. And requested the dragon with a kitten hoard.
I can do that, I said to myself. I can find a way to give a dragon in this setting a hoard of kittens. I can.
The real trick on this one, after I came up with the premise, was getting the tone down. This series has a very distinct voice, as do each of the characters, and I wanted to get as close to the source as possible. So I reread the whole series, with a note of where I could fit the incident into the timeline as neatly as possible. (It's probably canonically impossible, but IF IT WERE possible, that's the place in the timeline it would fit.) Then I went back to the first book, and paid attention to how semicolons were placed, and what sorts of words Laurence used when startled or temporizing or otherwise surprised.
I'm pretty happy with this result! It got the most views of all my stories, likely because it's short and in a well-known fandom (by Yuletide standards), but I still think it's pretty solid. I do wish I'd spent a little more time on paying attention to the sorts of sensory detail Laurence uses when he's describing a new location, and had done a bit more research on the sort of place in Scotland in that time period that one might isolate a bit from the rest of the world in a plausible manner--I'm not sure sheep work on that terrain at all, even as a sort of side thing to one's main profession--but even so, given the time available, I think I did a good job.
Overall, I had loads of fun this Yuletide; if I do anywhere near this well next year, I'll be quite pleased indeed.
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