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yuletide reveal!
Since it is Yuletide Reveal Day, I can now say that I wrote four stories in three fandoms: my original assignment, a pinch hit, and two Treats. I wish I'd had more time for all four of them; I ran into the usual problem that I have with Yuletide, which is that mid-December is a busy time of year. One day, I'm going to learn to start early, college be damned!
I obviously wasn't allowed to talk about these for a while, which apparently made me really want to talk about them a lot now.
The Leaves in the Glen Have Fallen, for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
asprosdrakos (3484 words): Nuala and Nuada through the centuries.
Story #1 was Hellboy (movie). This is another where if I had had more time, it would have been longer. Alas!asprosdrakos wanted something dealing with the disturbing aspects of the Nuada/Nuala relationship, and mentioned that she was interested in the border between the supernatural and the natural. Possibly, I took that part a little literally.
I wound up writing five vignettes set in the past and five set in the present, and alternating them. I wanted the past-stories to feel like fairy tales and to feel thematically a little like The Golden Army's puppet opening, which is why there are no names in them; only titles. They're in backward chronological order, because I thought there was something interesting about going from the most violent moments to the most innocent ones; I liked the idea of the last Nuada-Nuala scene being one from when they were children. The present-stories, on the other hand, move in forward linear time. (I wrote those first; the idea of writing Nuada and Nuala and their father and coming up with a mythology was scary. Yuletide: bringing new characters and new fandoms every year!)
I wanted to tie the past and the present together; to show this dark relationship based on uneven power against the innocent one that Nuala begins with Abe. I thought that after meeting Abe -- and seeing Liz and Hellboy together -- Nuala would slowly come to realize that her relationship with her brother is not normal, and that love doesn't have to be like that. (I thought that, for his part, Nuada really did care for her, but he always had to be the dominant one; always had to have his way.) His jealousy of (and fury at Nuala for being enchanted with) Abe in The Golden Army is pretty blatant. Plus -- I wanted to see more agency for Nuala. I wanted to see that her choice at the end was a choice, and I wanted to see more examples of her learning to stand up for herself, and why she might have gone along with her brother for as long as she did.
The elves were once creatures of the forests, and they're presented as still much more connected with the land than humans are. The scene in the council in The Golden Army looked like autumn, with those fluttering leaves and those colors; gorgeous. And because I am a literal soul at heart, the seasons in the story follow the elves' fate. The earliest flashback is spring; the one with the first appearance of the dagger is summer; the one with the king is early autumn; the film is set in the fall and has that gorgeous autumnal council scene; and dead Bethmoora is winter.
Gift That Keeps Giving, forhalfshellvenus (5021 words): It's Christmas, and Tony's got a gift or two for Rhodey.
Story #2 was, in the least surprising news ever if you know me even a little, Iron Man. In slightly more surprising news, I did not slash Tony and Rhodey. Mostly because I ran out of time. :((((halfshellvenus requested movie-verse fic, which let me do some neat stuff! What I wound up doing was something that attempted to bridge as much of the gap between movies and comics as possible, looking at the comics as the future. In the story, Tony's a full-fledged member of the Avengers and has started down the road to the alcoholism of "Demon in a Bottle"; there are allusions to Rhodey maybe going to work for Tony (like he does in the comics) and hints that Pepper isn't thrilled with her job (because eventually she's going to quit, marry Happy, and move away, maybe or maybe not in that order; I squeezed in a mention of Happy, too). Dr. Maya Hansen from "Extremis" is mentioned (which is funny because I haven't actually read "Extremis" yet); so is the New York firm Cabe & McPherson, though I made it a detective agency instead of security specialists. Ling McPherson and Bethany Cabe are such great characters that I really wanted to fit in a mention somehow, and the same went for Mrs. Arbogast, who is the most badass secretary ever.
The bulk of the comic book shout-outs come through Rhodey's sister and the ending. The entire plotline with Rhodey's sister Jeanette being the black sheep of the family who ran off to New York is entirely canonical, coming from the short-lived series The Crew. The money-stealing, the mom!heart attack, and the Rhodes sibling estrangement were my invention, because it always drove me nuts that such an upstanding guy as Rhodey could (A) have no idea what was going on in his sister's life, and (B) not try to help her. (Plus, Mama Rhodes appears in some older comics and is awesome, and in later comics, she's referenced as dead. I always wondered how and when she died.) In The Crew, Rhodey goes to New York because his sister, Jeanette, has been murdered by gang members in a neighborhood called Little Mogadishu. She was living in a crackden, went by the name Star, and was selling herself to finance her drug habit, if I remember correctly (and I hope I do!). The Jeannie in this fic, and the encounter between the Rhodes siblings -- I figure it's something of a stepping stone. In a couple of years, she'll be dead on the hood of a car in the Mog, just like the original Jeanette. If you're interested in The Crew, it got canceled damn fast and it's hard to find, but there's some good information here.
The final, most obvious shout-out was the suit at the end. Tony designs the War Machine for Rhodey, and for the record, what's listed isn't even a quarter of the thing's canonical armament. It's fictional, I know, but dude, baby's a tank.
(I didn't get the chance to explore it, but I think Tony's a wicked Scrooge when it comes to Christmas.)
P.S. - Love Doctor Doom and Latveria, and the old school Crimson Dynamo.
Waiting, forzelempa (2754 words): Robin's still not enjoying the holiday season, and it doesn't go unnoticed. By the Barnacle. Yeah, I said it. (That dosn't even make sense! Gah! I always come out of HIMYM mini-marathons talking like Barney.)
I ventured into How I Met Your Mother for the first time, which was slightly terrifying given that I had been familiar with canon for all of two weeks. There is something to be said for watching the entire series for the first time ever the week before Yuletide Madness, though, because damn was it easy thinking up references to episodes. *beams* I didn't watch the show for Yuletide purposes, but it worked out well for said purposes! I haven't written for a sitcom in ages and had a ridiculously good time with this, and I only wish I'd had more time/was a faster writer, because there were going to be about 14 million other parts which had to get cut at the last second (thanks to the life-saving suggestion ofiamsab) in order for it to be done on time.
(In retrospect, I kind of wish I had called the fic "Wait For It..."; I may actually email the mods to get that changed. *thoughtful*)
Notes: Barney/Robin: I ship it like the fist of an angry god. I love the pairing and want them to get together, but I'm also sort of terrified that they will get together and it won't be epic and bro-tastic and that it will dull Barney's proverbial fangs. (I should have way more faith in the creative team, considering that they have never let me down, but I love my shiny new fandom, damn it!) So I tried to walk the line as much as possible, like the show does.
Every time Barney calls Robin 'Scherbatsky,'an angel gets its wings I die a little of glee.
Robin Sparkles: I want there to be a third video on the show so badly. In the meantime, I'm going to continue writing the lyrics to the horrible Christmas song -- with sexualized music video -- that I made up. I'm going to post the fic here eventually, and I'm thinking that the 'video' is going to be a DVD extra. *cheerful*
Other note: the line that is getting quoted more often than anything else is the line that I added at the very last second, as I was on my way to upload, worrying that it was terrible and cheesy and not in the least bit funny. Score!!!
Greatest Show on Earth, forvega_ofthe_lyre (1399 words): Hellboy meets Liz Sherman.
Behind door #4: Hellboy (movie)! I remembered seeingvega_ofthe_lyre's Dear Santa letter and that it had said that she wanted Liz and Hellboy, so I went and found her requests when it came Treats time. I knew all that letter-reading was going to produce a story or two! :D
Guillermo del Toro's timeline for Liz's age is completely wonky; if you follow the dates given in the biography of Liz on the Hellboy DVD, she should have been 14 when she joined the B.P.R.D. in 1988. Instead, del Toro says that she's 17. Given that del Toro also says that Liz quickly became a star agent and that Hellboy fell in love at first sight, I went with 17 for the purpose of the story. 'In love at first sight' was still just a little too weird for me; I mean, she's 17 and he's, what, 40? Even with that funky aging of his, that's a pretty huge gap. I decided on 'connection at first sight' instead, with a little hint of something more at the end.
Picturing Liz as a suspicious, angry, acidic teenager was too much for me to resist. I know she's kind of skittish and a little -- I think maybe 'heavy-lidded' is a good phrase, in the earlier movie, but I honestly think that Blair was playing her as on some pretty hardcore medication, particularly in the beginning. If you watch the DVD extras there's a line where Liz tells Hellboy that, oh yeah, she's going to mix lithium and beer; GREAT IDEA or something similar. I think that Liz is by nature very sharp, edgy, and I liked the idea that she would have been comfortable with Hellboy right from the get-go; never afraid.
The cigarettes have no canonical basis; I've been reading so many of the comics lately and Liz smokes like such a chimney in them that I had to go for it.
P.S. - OMG some of you were really sneaky and are getting emails MOMENTARILY. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
I obviously wasn't allowed to talk about these for a while, which apparently made me really want to talk about them a lot now.
The Leaves in the Glen Have Fallen, for
asprosdrakos (3484 words): Nuala and Nuada through the centuries.Elizabeth mutters something sharp under her breath, says a brusque, "Abe, take care of the princess, okay?" and starts after Hellboy.
"Certainly," Abraham says, and he looks at Nuala just as she shyly glances at him. Nuala's eyes widen at being seen and she swiftly looks away again, just as Abraham does the same in the opposite direction.
Halfway across the garage, Elizabeth catches Hellboy. She stops him with a hand on his arm; reaches up and touches the cut on his cheek where he was struck by a rock, gentle care obvious even from a distance. He doesn't flinch.
For a brief moment, sneaking another look at Abraham, Nuala allows herself to believe that this entire mess may turn out well.
Story #1 was Hellboy (movie). This is another where if I had had more time, it would have been longer. Alas!
asprosdrakos wanted something dealing with the disturbing aspects of the Nuada/Nuala relationship, and mentioned that she was interested in the border between the supernatural and the natural. Possibly, I took that part a little literally.I wound up writing five vignettes set in the past and five set in the present, and alternating them. I wanted the past-stories to feel like fairy tales and to feel thematically a little like The Golden Army's puppet opening, which is why there are no names in them; only titles. They're in backward chronological order, because I thought there was something interesting about going from the most violent moments to the most innocent ones; I liked the idea of the last Nuada-Nuala scene being one from when they were children. The present-stories, on the other hand, move in forward linear time. (I wrote those first; the idea of writing Nuada and Nuala and their father and coming up with a mythology was scary. Yuletide: bringing new characters and new fandoms every year!)
I wanted to tie the past and the present together; to show this dark relationship based on uneven power against the innocent one that Nuala begins with Abe. I thought that after meeting Abe -- and seeing Liz and Hellboy together -- Nuala would slowly come to realize that her relationship with her brother is not normal, and that love doesn't have to be like that. (I thought that, for his part, Nuada really did care for her, but he always had to be the dominant one; always had to have his way.) His jealousy of (and fury at Nuala for being enchanted with) Abe in The Golden Army is pretty blatant. Plus -- I wanted to see more agency for Nuala. I wanted to see that her choice at the end was a choice, and I wanted to see more examples of her learning to stand up for herself, and why she might have gone along with her brother for as long as she did.
The elves were once creatures of the forests, and they're presented as still much more connected with the land than humans are. The scene in the council in The Golden Army looked like autumn, with those fluttering leaves and those colors; gorgeous. And because I am a literal soul at heart, the seasons in the story follow the elves' fate. The earliest flashback is spring; the one with the first appearance of the dagger is summer; the one with the king is early autumn; the film is set in the fall and has that gorgeous autumnal council scene; and dead Bethmoora is winter.
Gift That Keeps Giving, for
halfshellvenus (5021 words): It's Christmas, and Tony's got a gift or two for Rhodey."Yeah," says Rhodey, well-versed in translating Tony-speak. "The secretaries are throwing a Christmas party."
"Wow," Tony mouths, setting the candy cane on the table. "I forget sometimes that the rest of the secretary pool is blonde and has incredible legs."
"And Mrs. Arbogast can run secretary circles around the rest of 'em," Rhodey points out reasonably. He accepts the glass of brandy that Tony hands him in passing. He concedes: "The little Santa hats, those're a nice touch, though."
"Rhodey, I'm surprised by you," Tony says, propping his feet up on his desk. He takes a sip of his drink. "The correct term these days is actually 'administrative assistant.' "
Story #2 was, in the least surprising news ever if you know me even a little, Iron Man. In slightly more surprising news, I did not slash Tony and Rhodey. Mostly because I ran out of time. :((((
halfshellvenus requested movie-verse fic, which let me do some neat stuff! What I wound up doing was something that attempted to bridge as much of the gap between movies and comics as possible, looking at the comics as the future. In the story, Tony's a full-fledged member of the Avengers and has started down the road to the alcoholism of "Demon in a Bottle"; there are allusions to Rhodey maybe going to work for Tony (like he does in the comics) and hints that Pepper isn't thrilled with her job (because eventually she's going to quit, marry Happy, and move away, maybe or maybe not in that order; I squeezed in a mention of Happy, too). Dr. Maya Hansen from "Extremis" is mentioned (which is funny because I haven't actually read "Extremis" yet); so is the New York firm Cabe & McPherson, though I made it a detective agency instead of security specialists. Ling McPherson and Bethany Cabe are such great characters that I really wanted to fit in a mention somehow, and the same went for Mrs. Arbogast, who is the most badass secretary ever.The bulk of the comic book shout-outs come through Rhodey's sister and the ending. The entire plotline with Rhodey's sister Jeanette being the black sheep of the family who ran off to New York is entirely canonical, coming from the short-lived series The Crew. The money-stealing, the mom!heart attack, and the Rhodes sibling estrangement were my invention, because it always drove me nuts that such an upstanding guy as Rhodey could (A) have no idea what was going on in his sister's life, and (B) not try to help her. (Plus, Mama Rhodes appears in some older comics and is awesome, and in later comics, she's referenced as dead. I always wondered how and when she died.) In The Crew, Rhodey goes to New York because his sister, Jeanette, has been murdered by gang members in a neighborhood called Little Mogadishu. She was living in a crackden, went by the name Star, and was selling herself to finance her drug habit, if I remember correctly (and I hope I do!). The Jeannie in this fic, and the encounter between the Rhodes siblings -- I figure it's something of a stepping stone. In a couple of years, she'll be dead on the hood of a car in the Mog, just like the original Jeanette. If you're interested in The Crew, it got canceled damn fast and it's hard to find, but there's some good information here.
The final, most obvious shout-out was the suit at the end. Tony designs the War Machine for Rhodey, and for the record, what's listed isn't even a quarter of the thing's canonical armament. It's fictional, I know, but dude, baby's a tank.
(I didn't get the chance to explore it, but I think Tony's a wicked Scrooge when it comes to Christmas.)
P.S. - Love Doctor Doom and Latveria, and the old school Crimson Dynamo.
Waiting, for
zelempa (2754 words): Robin's still not enjoying the holiday season, and it doesn't go unnoticed. By the Barnacle. Yeah, I said it. (That dosn't even make sense! Gah! I always come out of HIMYM mini-marathons talking like Barney.)"Doug's kinda on the war path today," Lily explains sotto voce, and as the big man glances their way from the bar, all five of them smile -- big and fake -- and wave.
"You should've seen the guys he threw out earlier." Ted puts his glass down on the table and leans back, his arm across the back of the booth behind Robin. "I swear to God, at least one of them was on American Gladiators."
"Yeah, Ted, nobody's interested in who you may or may not have seen in porn," Barney says, his eyes momentarily tracking Ted's arm, and then they snap back to Ted's face.
I ventured into How I Met Your Mother for the first time, which was slightly terrifying given that I had been familiar with canon for all of two weeks. There is something to be said for watching the entire series for the first time ever the week before Yuletide Madness, though, because damn was it easy thinking up references to episodes. *beams* I didn't watch the show for Yuletide purposes, but it worked out well for said purposes! I haven't written for a sitcom in ages and had a ridiculously good time with this, and I only wish I'd had more time/was a faster writer, because there were going to be about 14 million other parts which had to get cut at the last second (thanks to the life-saving suggestion of
iamsab) in order for it to be done on time.(In retrospect, I kind of wish I had called the fic "Wait For It..."; I may actually email the mods to get that changed. *thoughtful*)
Notes: Barney/Robin: I ship it like the fist of an angry god. I love the pairing and want them to get together, but I'm also sort of terrified that they will get together and it won't be epic and bro-tastic and that it will dull Barney's proverbial fangs. (I should have way more faith in the creative team, considering that they have never let me down, but I love my shiny new fandom, damn it!) So I tried to walk the line as much as possible, like the show does.
Every time Barney calls Robin 'Scherbatsky,'
Robin Sparkles: I want there to be a third video on the show so badly. In the meantime, I'm going to continue writing the lyrics to the horrible Christmas song -- with sexualized music video -- that I made up. I'm going to post the fic here eventually, and I'm thinking that the 'video' is going to be a DVD extra. *cheerful*
Other note: the line that is getting quoted more often than anything else is the line that I added at the very last second, as I was on my way to upload, worrying that it was terrible and cheesy and not in the least bit funny. Score!!!
Greatest Show on Earth, for
vega_ofthe_lyre (1399 words): Hellboy meets Liz Sherman."Do you have any nicknames?" asked Liz, lit cigarette pressed between her fingers. She sat with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them, hood still covering her head against the biting winter wind. There wasn't a star in the sky, the taste of snow in the air.
"I mean, 'Hellboy,' " she continued. "It's a little Biblical."
Behind door #4: Hellboy (movie)! I remembered seeing
vega_ofthe_lyre's Dear Santa letter and that it had said that she wanted Liz and Hellboy, so I went and found her requests when it came Treats time. I knew all that letter-reading was going to produce a story or two! :D Guillermo del Toro's timeline for Liz's age is completely wonky; if you follow the dates given in the biography of Liz on the Hellboy DVD, she should have been 14 when she joined the B.P.R.D. in 1988. Instead, del Toro says that she's 17. Given that del Toro also says that Liz quickly became a star agent and that Hellboy fell in love at first sight, I went with 17 for the purpose of the story. 'In love at first sight' was still just a little too weird for me; I mean, she's 17 and he's, what, 40? Even with that funky aging of his, that's a pretty huge gap. I decided on 'connection at first sight' instead, with a little hint of something more at the end.
Picturing Liz as a suspicious, angry, acidic teenager was too much for me to resist. I know she's kind of skittish and a little -- I think maybe 'heavy-lidded' is a good phrase, in the earlier movie, but I honestly think that Blair was playing her as on some pretty hardcore medication, particularly in the beginning. If you watch the DVD extras there's a line where Liz tells Hellboy that, oh yeah, she's going to mix lithium and beer; GREAT IDEA or something similar. I think that Liz is by nature very sharp, edgy, and I liked the idea that she would have been comfortable with Hellboy right from the get-go; never afraid.
The cigarettes have no canonical basis; I've been reading so many of the comics lately and Liz smokes like such a chimney in them that I had to go for it.
P.S. - OMG some of you were really sneaky and are getting emails MOMENTARILY. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
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YOU WROTE FOR GINA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHY DOES THE UNIVERSE ALWAYS COME BACK TO THE FIVE COLLEGES. WHAT. WHAT. WHY! XD
(Incidentally, she apparently thought it was exactly as creepy as she hoped for. XD)
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JESUS. FIVE COLLEGES. Holy cow, she wasn't one of the people I met, was she? That would blow my mind completely. And yay! I was gunning for creepy, so that's good! :D
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BUT SERIOUSLY. WHAT IS IT WITH THE PIONEER VALLEY. XD XD XD
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.... sorry, Lexie. Discworld reference.
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