wakeupnew | yuletide reveals!

OKAY SO, I wrote the following things for Yuletide this year:

A Very Serious Matter (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency), for

lydiabell
More Than Kin and Less Than Kind (Sons of Anarchy), for

fated_addiction
Two of a Kind (The Red Star), for

rushin_doll
Stars Are Born (Hellboy movies), for cimera
Small Blind (National Treasure), for starfishchick

Most of my recipients found and seemed to like their stories, so I am very happy! My Yuletide experience in general this year was just excellent, and I didn't really even think about comments or recs; I have no idea why this changed (as last year and the year before, I felt very liiike meeee, please like me!), but it made Yuletide a lot more relaxing. It was really nice to just enjoy Yuletide and not fret over things that I couldn't control. But I did get a lot of really wonderful feedback and several recs (including recs from one or two people who recced more than one of my stories, which always makes me laugh and wonder if they had any idea that the same person wrote both), and I have many people to go forth and thank.

And now, some notes on each individual story!

A Very Serious Matter (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, TV; 6524 words), for

lydiabell

"No!" Mma Makutsi's voice railed. "No, no, no, you silly man, that is not what has taken place here! It is a crime!"

Mma Ramotswe stepped through the bead curtain and into the former Kgale Hill Post Office. Inside, Mma Makutsi was pacing vigorously, her heels clicking with each step, and she gestured wildly with a stapler. BK sat perched on the edge of the desk with his arms folded; he looked exasperated. "I know that it would be a cri--" he said, and then his eyebrows rose and he stopped. "Mma Ramotswe." She wiggled her fingers at him in a small wave, and he began to smile.

"Yes," said Mma Makutsi fervently, her back to the door. "She would know what to do, but she is away on a very important case, and we cannot disturb her."

Mma Ramotswe gently cleared her throat. Mma Makutsi spun around and her face lit up. "Mma!" she cried, taking several quick, skittering steps toward her. "Oh, Mma, I am glad that you are back!"

I was both overjoyed and freaking terrified when I received my assignment. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency was one of those fandoms that I had signed up for on a whim, not actually expecting to get it. I first saw the series last spring, watching the entire series while deathly ill and unable to get out of bed for several days, and I had many fond feelings toward it, given that it was one of the only things to make me feel better in a very miserable week. When I got my assignment I ordered the DVDs and spent several days watching the entire series through again with my mother, who is now completely obsessed (but cannot remember anyone's name for the life of her, so she calls all female characters Mma and all male characters Rra), and then I ordered as many of the books as I thought I could read in the time that I had and powered through them. That helped the 'oh my God, I don't know canon well enough for this' terrors, but I was still left with the 'oh my God, I don't know Botswana well enough for this' ones. I was really scared. I'm a little white girl from one of the two whitest states in the U.S., who has never been to any country in Africa, and I didn't want to accidentally be a dick.

I'd signed up thinking that it would be really great to see more Yuletide fic set in Africa, but I'd neglected to think about my levels of knowledge in doing so. I studied South Africa and the Great Lakes Region (Rwanda, the Congo, Uganda, Burundi) in college, but I knew little about Botswana except that its government is relatively stable and that it has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world. So I threw myself into research. Alexander McCall Smith's books were an invaluable resource and so were several websites. (I went to the library and had conniption fits, because, predictably, given that I live in [suburb of Portland], Maine, there were no resources on Botswana to speak of.) I can't speak to the accuracy of the Setswana phrases, not speaking the language myself, but for each one that I used, I triple checked against three different internet sources, so I think that they are most likely correct. Ee is yes, nyaa is no, and sala sentle and tsamaya sentle are the person-leaving and person-staying variations of a farewell; those are just a few that I remember using off the top of my head.

lydiabell basically said to go wild in her prompt. She didn't specify characters or situations or anything, so I was left to my own devices, which was mostly thrilling and only a little scary. I didn't quite know what to do at first, but she had mentioned liking confident women who know what they want and how to get it, so that told me that my focus would be Mma Ramotswe and/or Mma Makutsi, and that they would definitely have to triumph in the end. Mma Makutsi is my favorite. That much is apparent from my writing, I suspect -- I adore her. One of my favorite moments from the series is the one when Mma Makutsi tells Mma Ramotswe that she has a brother who has AIDS, and that, because she hid this fact from her, she is not fit to be a junior detective. It's really sweet and sad and moving, and it cemented the bond between the two ladies for me, so I wanted to write something that featured their fondness for each other. I also wanted to do something that allowed Mma Makutsi to stand up for Richard, because ashamed or not (and certainly ashamed; from what I read, there is a huge stigma associated with AIDS in Botswana in particular and Africa in general, and I know that's the case in places all over the world as well), he is her brother and she loves him, and I loved the idea of her getting fierce in order to protect him.

Cephas Buthelezi came about because, while re-watching the series again, I was re-struck by my hatred. :D I realized that he had never been dealt with at the end of the show; his gambit with Note had failed, but he was still presumably running around Gaborone and being a jerkface. I wanted to make him go away, and I remembered his dismissal of Mma Makutsi in the first scene when they meet, and that he very quickly changed the subject when she began to press him for details on when he lived in New York. From there, the entire story came together very quickly, and the rest was in the details. I wanted to include as much of Botswana's scenery as possible, as we get a lot of it from Mma Ramotswe in the books and the show used those long sweeping shots to such good ends; I learned more about environmental science than I honestly probably ever needed to know. I honestly had a hell of a time finding Batswana names on the internet and wound up finding a lot of the ones I used in a list of famous politicians from Botswana; I mixed and matched first and last names. *rueful* There was originally a subplot with a Nigerian shopkeeper and I considered doing something about the treatment of Zimbabwean refugees, but that wound up falling to the wayside, especially since the latter was briefly covered in the show itself. I also originally considered doing something concerning the mistreatment of the Basarwa, but just didn't find a place for it in the story.

For musical inspiration, it was tough to go wrong with "Music of the Tswana People." After being unable to find any sort of compilation of the music used in the show, I found this album on iTunes and it was perfect; it's beautiful music and it sounded just like what you hear in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. It comes highly recommended; it was instrumental (harhar, instrumental) in helping me write.

And Festus Mogae was the president of Botswana until last year, and he does, indeed, have very little hair.

In case you hadn't gathered, I had a blast with this assignment.

More Than Kin and Less Than Kind (Sons of Anarchy; 5740 words), for

fated_addiction

Jax was perched on the concrete front steps of St. Thomas with his knees draw up, shoulders hunched, and his chin low. He looked so small, so unlike his usual gangly swaggery self, that Tara paused for a long moment before quietly coming down one step, then two. Her sneakers made next to no noise as she sat down beside him, hip nearly brushing his.

Jax held the familiar top rocker in his hands, his thumb running across the TELLER patch just above the one that read PRESIDENT. Dried blood flaked off the leather under his hands. Tara wrapped both her arms around his near one and held on tight.

Okay, this one has kind of a funny story to it.

fated_addiction made a request in Yuletide last year, asking for a story that followed Tara Knowles as she left Charming and then returned to it. I started writing it as an NYR this fall, after I finished marathoning the first season of Sons of Anarchy and went looking for fic/things to write, but I didn't finish the story before the archive closed. I figured that was the end of it, that maybe I'd finish it post-Yuletide, and I went on my merry way.

And then Yuletide letters went up, and I realized that

fated_addiction had made the same request again this year. My joy knew no bounds! I hadn't gotten very far with it as an NYR before running out of time; I started with the jail cell scene between Tara and Gemma and wound up building around it. I don't think it's any great secret that Gemma is my favorite ever, and

fated_addiction's old letter mentioned how awesome Katey Sagal is and that she wanted to see Tara's relationship with Gemma explored, so I quite happily went to town with Gemma mentions.

I have always thought that Tara's main reasons for leaving Charming are as follows: ambition, boredom, and fear. Some fear of the violence and the dark side of the Cub, but more importantly, fear of herself; fear of what she is capable of, of her own dark side and her capacity to do terrible things, and of what would happen if she stayed. Gemma, in turn, sees Tara as taking Jax from her. Tara has a mind of her own and can't be influenced, and her closeness to Jax makes Jax harder for Gemma to ~~manipulate~~ reach. I see John Teller as a good man who had a good relationship with Tara (when she was a friend of Jax's, as he died when they were still young to be dating yet), who she liked very much, and Clay as someone Tara never felt entirely comfortable with. And then there's Jax, of course, stuck in the middle of all of this. I tried to show as much of the reckless, stupid, fierce passion of teenage first-love as I could. In a lot of ways, he was her savior; I see them as having had a genuinely good relationship, unusually serious and loving given their young age, and Jax gave her places to go that weren't her house, where her mom was dead and her dad was always drunk. But of course, on the other hand, Jax was a terrible influence as well, leading her into violence, shoplifting, drinking, arrests, and the Sons.

I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to end with Tara meeting Kohn in Chicago. (A) because it was a disquieting ending, and (B) because that moment marks the start of her return to Charming, even if she doesn't know it yet. She would look at him as the anti-Jax at first; polished, law enforcement (even in the same branch of the service who would be after the Sons), and seemingly normal, which is something that I think she craves. But then, of course, it turns out that Jax is the better man, and that Kohn is a violent stalking psychopath who eventually sends her running home to Charming. I liked the idea that as a teenager, she ran from Charming and the Sons and what they would do to her life, and (hopefully) the implication in the story is that she's going to come back as an adult and embrace that life. Instead of being afraid and being sick after beating someone up and realizing that she sort of liked it, she's going to viciously beat a hospital administrator to get what she wants, and she's going to accept violence as an option. I think that in a lot of ways, season 2 Tara is becoming the woman she was trying to avoid being when she left Charming.

The title is a Shakespeare line (it's Hamlet's withering assessment of his relationship to his uncle/stepfather Claudius), which I thought appropriate due to the show's "Hamlet" structure, and I think it works well for the show, and especially for Tara. Her relationship with the Sons is that of closer than family, yes -- but definitely less than kind. Especially when it comes to Gemma.

Two of a Kind (The Red Star; 906 words), for

rushin_doll

"Yeah," hollered Urik Antares sarcastically, ducking a high-flying chair and rolling across the top of the bar. He hit the floor behind it hard enough that he knew he'd still be feeling the impact in his shoulder in the morning. "This was a great idea, Goncharova!"

Alex Goncharova, on the other hand, was laughing like a maniac. "Wasn't it?" she shouted back, and she popped over the top of the bar long enough to hurl a heavy beer stein in the general direction of the knot of combatants. She was grinning like a wild thing when she came back down, but she held an enormous bottle of blue-ribbon vodka in hand, which immediately made her a remarkably more suitable companion in Urik's eyes.

Oh, come on. How could I not? It depressed me that there was no Red Star fic in Yuletide last year or this year. So I wrote some. The fact that it was for

rushin_doll was just added bonus, really. This was one of my Madness treats, so it came out pretty quickly, but I still like the idea of Alex and Urik getting to know each other, sitting side by side behind a bar, during a brawl. I'm pleased with it! And I'm pretty sure everyone who read it who knows us knew it was me.

(You're going to notice far less commentary on the Madness stories. They are so little!)

Stars Are Born (Hellboy movies; 684 words), for cimera

"My God," said one of the three judges seated up front. "It sounds like a herd of elephants back there." He raised his voice. "Can we have some professionalism backstage, please! We have a bloody television program to put on!"

Four stagehands carried on pushing a digital screen across the enormous stage. One worker followed along behind them, keeping an eye on trailing electrical wires. Just as the screen reached its place, a huge shaggy gray werewolf entered, stage left. Hellboy burst onstage a half a second behind.

There was a very long moment in which no one moved and no one said a word.

Hellboy and the werewolf stared out at the audience. Three-thousand four-hundred and one audience members -- and three judges -- stared back at them.

This is one of the crackiest "serious" things I've ever written. Seriously. The recipient asked for nothing of the sort, for the record; this is entirely my own fault. When I first became obsessed with America's Got Talent last spring, I was watching videos very, very late one night, and the idea of Hellboy chasing a supernatural creature on-stage at America's Got Talent (and then loving the attention) came to me. So when I saw a request for a fic that featured Hellboy, Liz, Myers, and Abe -- I took it. It felt a little too self-serving to set it at America's Got Talent, so I invented a reality show and based some bits of it on some more famous counterparts; the three judges are an English guy, a woman, and one other person (oh reality competitions, you so formulaic), and it's set in the Kodak Theater (the capacity of 3401 listed is that of the Kodak), where the big American Idol shows are shot.

I originally wanted to write a story set between the two movies where Hellboy gets Myers sent to Antarctica, but after I started that, I realized that I wouldn't have enough time to finish it. Maybe someday!

Small Blind (National Treasure; 884 words), for starfishchick

Rolling his eyes, Ian shoved two cards over to him across the rickety card table, and then his eyes slid to Ben, who had, Riley privately thought, the single worst poker face in the history of the game ever. He was currently frowning at his cards, like doing so would make them magically give up their secrets to him the way that historical artifacts seemed to. "Gates?" Ian prompted.

"Oh," said Ben, looking up. "I'll take, uh -- no, I'll take none. Thanks."

"You're really bad at this," Riley said, sitting with his feet up on Shaw's empty chair.

Ben glanced at him sideways. Dryly: "Thank you, Riley."

Riley tipped his invisible hat to him.

The request asked for Ian and Ben playing poker (there's a reference in movie #1 to this happening, and to Ben having a godawful poker face) and mentioned that she would be amenable to a Riley cameo, so away I went! This one was fun.

yuletide reveals!

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