it's a magical world

So as you may have guessed, while I did not sign up for Secret Mutant this year, I did pick up a pinch hit. Which I wrote most of in one frantic all-night session and then finished up the next day, and huge thanks to pocky_slash for the last-minute beta on top of her writing three pinch hits of her own AND, y'know, running the entire exchange.

I didn't try to make a guessing game out of it this year, but this one was mine:

Tabula Rasa (6224 words) by kaydeefalls
Fandom: X-Men (Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, 5 Things, all the aus, Meet-Cute, ...sorta
Summary: Five ways Erik might have first met Charles.

( some blather about writing it which will make no sense unless you've already read the fic )

All right, let's do this thing. (There are still several unclaimed days, if anyone wants to add to it!)

From via_ostiense: thought processes, ideas, any commentary on writing Queen's Gambit?

Ah, yes, the three-year fic. And here I thought I could finally stop talking about it now that it's done. :P ( lots of ramble ahead )

I am just copying and pasting my Yuletide letter from last year. Let's be real, my tastes are fairly consistent.

DEAR YULEBAT:

Basically, you are awesome. Because there is nothing about the fandoms requested that I don't love. More importantly, there are no characters in any of these fandoms that I don't love with an all-consuming passion, because seriously, THEY ARE ALL AMAZING AND BRILLIANT AND SPARKLY. I don't care, I love them all.

So here are some quick and dirty things that I like and don't like in fics in general:

LIKES: witty banter, wacky hijinks, random shenanigans, everyone being a BAMF in their own particular way, long plotty fics, quick incisive character studies, romance, friendship, TEAMS, ensemble casts, happy (or realistic but generally hopeful) endings, boys being boys, girls kicking butt and taking names, first time fic of any rating.

DISLIKES: torture porn, excessive angst, excessive schmoop, mpreg, hardcore kink, kid!fic, character bashing of any kind, humiliation, death!fic.

But really, my dear author, I'm pretty easy. As long as you avoid the "dislikes" list, write whatever suits you and the fandom and the story you want to tell, and I will LOVE it. Sure, I'm a fan of happy-ish endings, but if you want to break my heart instead? Go right ahead and shatter it into a million pieces, it's all good. The "likes" list are by no means mandatory in any way, write what you want, I have complete faith in you.

I have nothing fandom-specific or request-specific to add that wasn't on my sign-up forms, but for posterity, my Yuletide requests are below: ( Fandoms: Band of Brothers, Code Name Verity, Red Doors, Life (TV), Valor series - Tanya Huff, The Sting )

Okay, I am not writing this, because I don't think I could handle it properly, but I'd really like to read an MCU!Captain America AU set during the Vietnam War. Because so much of who Steve becomes is forged in WWII -- which, in the end, was a just war, where it was obvious who the bad guys were and what made them bad. I want to see Steve becoming Captain America during a war that permanently tarnishes America's image in the world, and struggling with what that means.

I want to see the story where Steve has just as much heart, just as much determination to make things right, but is thrust into a conflict where there are no good guys and there is no moral imperative and he's not sure we ever should have gotten involved in the first place. Maybe Steve and Bucky enlisted early on, before anyone understood what a mess they were getting into. Maybe Bucky got drafted and Steve only tried to enlist in order to go with him. Maybe that loyalty, that determination, is what Erskine spotted in him, why Steve was chosen -- because of course the military wanted to create an army of supersoldiers to crush the Commies, but Erskine wanted someone pure, someone truly good, someone morally strong enough to turn the tide of public opinion. Someone who would be able to make the right choices in impossible situations. But as the war goes on, Steve becomes increasingly horrified by what his country is doing and Bucky (always the realist) becomes dark and cynical and angry but loves Steve too much to walk away from him (not that the army would ever let him out anyway) and the problem with this whole concept is that I can't see anyone getting out of it alive.

(Also, super problematic when it comes to figuring out who the Red Skull and Zola would be in this AU -- Viet Cong? Um, god no. Soviets? Ugh.)

Still. Steve struggling with figuring out what the right thing is in an untenable conflict. Bucky's whole unit getting captured and sent to a POW camp, and of course no one's coming to rescue them. Peggy the intelligence agent who's completely disillusioned by the war and knows there's no winning but she stays because she's trying to keep her people alive. Steve fighting on only to defend those who can't fight for themselves, but the locals don't even want him here and hell, he can't blame 'em (ugh please no horrible White Savior trope, that is not where I want this to go). What it means to be Captain America when America is forcibly shoving itself in where it doesn't belong, when Steve feels like he's becoming exactly the sort of bully he'd always hated.

Um. So that's sort of bleak. But I think it would be fascinating?

(I also think it's just as possible that Steve would've been at the head of the antiwar protests back home, would've become known as "Captain America" in a countercultural sort of way, and that story would be interesting, too. I guess he never would've gotten the serum, though. Or maybe that's when Bucky got drafted and Steve followed him because what the hell else was he supposed to do?)

I will say, the nice thing about having three active WIPs is that I can kind of bounce between them depending on my mood and write little bits and bobs here and there and still feel like I'm making some kind of progress. Which is nice, because the Steve fic is at about 7000 words right now and probably not even halfway done yet, and that's freaking me out a bit, so it helps to focus on the other ones instead.

( blather about Queen's Gambit, mostly, because talking it out helps me organize the thoughts in my head )

Much like 2012, I sucked at being fannish this year. For once, my primary pull away from fandom was actually being social and reasonably busy in my real life, as opposed to being swamped with working too many jobs and lonely and depressed. 2013 treated me better than any year has in a while, although there's still plenty of room for improvement, so while I didn't produce as much fic as I would have liked, I'm not particularly sorry about it. (I AM sorry for still not having finished Queen's Gambit, if only because having that damn thing hanging over my head constantly is really freaking aggravating now.) My word count for this year is about 10k lower than it was for 2012, but I did create more total fics and vids this year. The fics were just shorter overall. And I dunno what the equivalent for word count should be for vids -- length in minutes?

So while I wait for the new Sherlock episode (!!!) to download, here comes the usual yearly writing/vidding round-up. Also, at the end there's a scene from the next chapter of Queen's Gambit, as my promise that I really will finish it someday.

( by the numbers )

( fannish year in review )

My Yuletide fic continues to be more or less nonexistent, with less than 36 hours to deadline, so that's a thing. But in the meantime, Secret Mutant fics have been revealed! I haven't been posting about this at all, because me and the free time this week haven't been very mixy, and I haven't read very many of the fics yet so I can't do a rec post -- um, not that I ever do rec posts, I suck -- but I did get the most fantastic gift EVER: Xmas in Connecticut, by the incomparable Yahtzee. It's already been recced all over the place, for good reason, but guys, it's REALLY REALLY GOOD. Charles/Erik on the homefront in WWII, Raven being SPECTACULAR, and very sweet background Raven/Hank. READ IT. LOVE IT.

So then I wrote a thing. Or, well, two things, one for the exchange proper and one for Secret Mutant Madness. But both in the same 'verse. I feel like these are very obviously my fics, but because the main fic focused on an unpopular ship, not many people read them or would know to link them to me. ANYWAY.

tell them I ain't coming back (14186 words) by kaydeefalls
Fandom: X-Men: First Class (2011), X-Men (Movieverse), Firefly
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Relationships: Armando Muñoz/Alex Summers, Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Characters: Armando Muñoz, Alex Summers, Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr, Raven | Mystique, Hank McCoy, Emma Frost, Angel Salvadore
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Alternate Universe - Space, Families of Choice, Spaceships, Slow Burn, Plotty, POV Character of Color
Summary: In which the crew of Cerebro picks up a passenger on a border moon, Emma has a lead on an anti-mutant conspiracy, and Armando might be getting more than he bargained for. (Fusion with the Firefly 'verse.)

My recipient, unveiled, prompted: "Darwin and Havok IN SPACE!" -- which, for me, obviously meant a Firefly fusion, because there is nothing in the world I enjoy more than crossovers with Firefly. Plus, I've always liked Armando/Alex as a ship, but there are tragically few fics written about them, though it's moderately popular as a background pairing in Charles/Erik fics. So this was fun! I've written a fair amount of Alex POV through the Boden's Mate 'verse, but Alex in that AU has a backstory all his own, so it's not the same, and I've never written Armando POV at all. He was a bit tricky for me, because he's a very calm, likeable character by nature, but it was hard for me to work out what his driving motivations would be. And then, y'know, I made it a Firefly fusion, which meant I had to write the entire fic in the vernacular of that 'verse, which was a special challenge of its own. I rewatched a LOT of Firefly to get that voice sorted in my head. But I really fell in love with the fusion as I was writing it, and realized as I was sketching out an outline that I had buckets of backstory for various characters that didn't fit into an Armando/Alex-centric story, plus a whole category of plot notes that I labeled "SAVE IT FOR THE SEQUEL", so, um, this is a 'verse that I will likely return to. I kind of don't care if only like three other people will be reading it. In terms of Firefly, this fic is roughly concurrent with "Serenity" and "The Train Job", about five years after Unification; the crew of Cerebro works a slightly different route than that of Serenity, so while they may have a few associates in common, they don't tend to visit the same Rim worlds or pick up the same sort of jobs, though everyone passes through Persephone at some point.

And since I really liked ALL of unveiled's prompts (seriously, if I had the time, I would have written a fic for all four of them, they were that awesome), and my head was already filled to the brim with backstory for characters who weren't Alex or Armando, this happened:

burn the land and boil the sea (5410 words) by kaydeefalls
Fandom: X-Men: First Class (2011), X-Men (Movies), Firefly
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Characters: Erik Lehnsherr, Charles Xavier, Hank McCoy
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, First Meetings, War, Romance, Alternate Universe - Firefly Verse, Prequel
Summary: In which the Unification War begins, Erik leads the Browncoats' mutant faction, and Charles searches for something worth fighting for.

This prompt was: "Charles is a world-weary activist and advocate. Erik is the idealistic firebrand who sets his life alight." SO YEAH THAT HAPPENED. I originally thought it'd be Charles POV, at home in the Core as war was breaking out, seeing vids of this random Browncoat mutant on the Cortex and becoming increasingly intrigued, and then maybe Raven introduced them somehow? But that never really took shape in my head, and the more I thought about it, the more it became Erik's story instead. I dunno. This one was written in a rush to make the Madness deadline -- most of it in one epic late-night writing session -- and I wish I'd been able to take more time with it, but I like it anyway.

I have to finish Yuletide and then Festivids, and the final two chapters of Queen's Gambit are next up on the docket -- I'd hoped to have one done before the seasonal challenge madness set in, but alas, that was not to be, although I've made decent headway -- but after that, I'm likely going to return to this playground for a while. It's been a while since I've been this excited about a fic idea, anyway. Continuing with using lyrics from the Firefly theme as titles, because at this point I may as well accept it, I know that "take me where I cannot stand" is Charles POV of the end of the Unification War, when he and Erik finally take down Shaw but lose the war anyway. Then probably "take me out to the black" is the crew of Cerebro gradually coming together in the first year or so after the war ends. I have BUCKETS of Angel backstory -- dunno if that'll fit in there, or if she'll get her own spinoff fic that no one will read. And then I want to start overlapping with the events of Firefly and Serenity more, following up the plot threads left unresolved at the end of the Alex/Armando fic. I know for certain that in this AU fusion, River Tam is also a mutant (telepath/empath -- she can't control people like Charles, but she has a much wider range, and some precognitive abilities). The Miranda broadcast at the end of Serenity will spark off a second revolution of some kind, which Charles&co will be heavily involved in. I haven't worked out the details yet. But yeah.

< / blather >

DAMN this festival I'm stage managing is exhausting. But in a good way. And my friend's boyfriend is in charge of tech staffing for an events company, and he got me on the electrics crew contact list, so I've got a 10-12hr day tomorrow hanging and focusing lights. Which, YAY PAYCHECK, but less yay 9am crew call on what's usually my Monday off. (On the plus side, it was originally 8am, so this is an improvement.)

I signed up for a whole bunch of seasonal exchanges this year, plus a nifty fun vidding project that I'm not sure if I can talk about yet. But I can guarantee that the next two months will see more fannish productivity on my end than probably the entirety of the past year. At bare minimum, I'll have a Yuletide fic, a Sleepy Hollow something, a Festivid, a vidding project vid, and a Secret Mutant fic. But for the first time ever, I'm super intrigued by all four of my Secret Mutant prompts, so I may try to fill more than one of them; plus, based on the Dear Whoever letters I've been reading on my circle, I may well try to create at least one Festivid treat and one Yuletide treat by virtue of really loving their prompts. And over the past couple of days, I've actually been making active progress on the next chapter of "Queen's Gambit" for the first time in MONTHS, so that's actually my priority right now. And I'm still sitting on that Buffy high school vid that just needs one more good round of edits before I post.

I have solid ideas for all the exchange prompts so far except Yuletide, for which of course I matched with a fandom I probably shouldn't have offered and has a prompt that's a little too specific for my tastes -- you know the kind when the person CLEARLY knows exactly what fic they want, and you kind of wonder why they don't just write it themselves? Yeah. But I'll figure it out eventually.

Something tells me that I'm going to spend December in a blind panic because I'm waaaay overcommitted to fandom. But at least I know I'll be unemployed-ish for a solid three weeks in November, so hopefully I'll be able to knock out a bunch then. And Festivids aren't actually due until mid-January, which I always forget and think I have to do them RIGHT NOW RIGHT AWAY when, really, those are the last things I need to tackle.

OH HEY MEME TIME.

7. Your pet hates
Apart from the usual (homophobia, racism, misogyny, transphobia, general un-grooviness), I really hate passive-aggressiveness. Ugh. That kind of attitude just makes my skin crawl.


ETA: Oh hey sign-ups are still open for the Sleepy Hollow fanwork exchange (any kind of fanwork -- fic, podfic, vid, art, icons, etc) and everyone in this shiny new fandom should check it out:

Sign-up October 14 - Oct 25!

I'm really no good at the daily posting thing.

3. Your favorite quote
"White. A blank page or canvas. His favorite. So many possibilities." -Sunday in the Park with George, Stephen Sondheim

Because storytelling, that's why.

Anyway, it's Yuletide time again, and once again, I am stumped for offers. I can always come up with three fandoms that I've never written before, and then I flail around desperately to find a fourth I think I can write. (I've been playing Yuletide from the very first year; I learned the hard way about offering fandoms I'm not 100% sure about.) So as always, I'll wind up filling the rest of my quota with fandoms I've already written for Yuletide before, and as always, that's what I'll end up matching on. But I am not offering History Boys ever ever again. I've written that three times already for Yuletide. There has to be a limit.

My work schedule is very weird this week, but today was a day off, and I have given myself permission to have zero social interaction all day. It's been SUCH a relief, oh my god, I didn't realize how badly I needed that. I've been...very, very social lately, which is a good thing! Really! I like people! But I'm still an introvert, and I haven't had much in the way of recharge time over the past couple of weeks, so, yeah. (I also have strep throat, and no idea how I contracted it. Fortunately, I figured it out within a few hours of symptom onset and got diagnosed and on antibiotics that evening, so I only had like one day of minor pain before the drugs kicked in, and now I feel totally fine. I mean, I have to keep taking the antibiotics for another week, but still.)

Haven't had much time or energy for writing lately at all. But I've been working on fic on and off all day, which is awesome. Um, of course, it hasn't been any fic I SHOULD be writing (finishing Queen's Gambit or starting on my eleventyfest assignment). So now I have like 2500 words of always-a-girl!Kirk fic? And still going strong? Look, I don't even know at this point, Star Trek Reboot fandom has kind of eaten my brain since seeing "Into Darkness". Which, believe me, I know all the ways in which that was not a good movie and in fact failed on many levels, but it awakened my long-dormant Kirk/Spock fangirl, so, that happened? But that fails to explain this fic. I have never once in my life written a genderswap. And yet. I don't even know how shippy it'll wind up being -- Kirk/Spock is and always shall be my endgame pairing in this fandom, so probably it'll at least sort of go there? But mostly I'm just interested in how Kirk's utter Kirk-ness would both change and stay the same if he'd been born cis-female. (Like, she really doesn't start off on good terms with Bones, but on the flip side, she's way better friends with Uhura.) I AM WRITING A FIC THAT NO ONE WILL READ.

I kind of avoided even thinking about writing in the Trek fandom, because I'm not a "real" Trekkie (never watched TOS, have seen but not particularly liked some TNG and DS9); I really only got interested in the fandom through the Reboot, which I know is heresy. But the AU implications inherent in the Reboot 'verse fascinate me, and so taking that AUness a step further by making Kirk female doesn't feel quite as blasphemous. Still. I've only seen one genderswapped!Kirk fic so far (it was awesome, FYI, but mostly just PWP), and while I'm sure there must be more out there, I get the sense this is not a popular fandom fad. OH WELL, WRITING ANYWAY.

God, it's just a relief to be writing something, at least.

So I legit had a dream last night that for some reason involved working out a plot snag on Queen's Gambit, and woke up and grabbed my laptop and started writing. (So I...incepted myself? I suppose that's fitting.) And while this hasn't been my most productive day ever, it did end up with several thousand more words written, and I'm only like two or three not-terribly-long scenes away from finishing the next chapter. Except now I'm having all kinds of weird self-conscious feelings about the fact that it's been nearly a year since I updated that fic, and nobody wants to read it anymore, and how the way I've broken up the next couple of chapters means that I'm banking everything on the hope that the handful of people who might actually still be reading are somewhat invested in Alex, because there is basically no Charles or Erik in this chapter at all, and ugh of course no one likes this fic as much as Boden's Mate because really the central character arcs belong to Raven and Alex, neither of whom are terribly popular characters in this fandom, and by now my brain is in some kind of weird awful feedback loop of fail.

In conclusion, this is a pretty good summary of why I haven't updated Queen's Gambit in close to a year. Um, that and the whole MASSIVE SERIES OF UPHEAVALS that have been the past ten months of my life, but yeah.

But I am only 2k words or so away from having the next chapter ready for beta. And for the record, Cain Marko's head is not a fun place to visit.

Secret Mutant reveal has happened! So now I can 'fess up at last. Both of these fics drew heavily from personal experience, so fair warning, I'm about to blather on a bit.

First up, my original assignment:

Trigger Discipline (3931 words) by kaydeefalls
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Characters: Raven Darkholme, Moira MacTaggert, Erik Lehnsherr, Charles Xavier
Summary: In which Raven learns how to fire a weapon, and maybe even when not to.

( Gasp! Gen fic about female characters! )

Next up, the incredibly obvious pinch-hit:

The Opposite of People (9217 words) by kaydeefalls
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr, Raven Darkholme, Sebastian Shaw, Alex Summers, Logan (X-Men), Armando Muñoz, Hank McCoy, Ororo Munroe, Jean Grey
Summary: In retrospect, it probably didn't help that the first time Charles met Erik Lehnsherr, the man was up a ladder in well-worn, close-fitting jeans. Modern!nonpowered!AU where they all work in the theatre, Shaw is still a bastard, and Charles is doing his best to get this damn show open with his sanity (relatively) intact.

a.k.a. the Theatre!AU I've been talking about for over a year now. Seriously, this is my ultimate id!fic. ( No, you don't understand, that fic is a 100% accurate and true representation of my life. )

Also I can say that my gift fic was written by ninemoons42, which was hilarious and awesome because she's one of my usual betas, and I recognized her writing style instantly. :D :D :D