Be my undoing, be my slow road to ruin...

Perpetually behind on everything, so it stands to reason I'm doing this 2011 Fic Recap in February 2012! Stolen from, like, everyone.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2011?

I did think I'd be writing in U2 fandom, thanks to the Concert That Rocked 360 Degrees, so that wasn't a surprise, but I didn't think I'd write a threesome in Guy Gavriel Kay fandom, so thanks, lareinenoire :) I also didn't think I'd be writing breath control play, and it's all fieryrogue's fault.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

I think 2011 felt like The Year of Risks. I dipped my toe in other fandoms: Inception/Inception RPF, U2 RPF, Duran Duran RPF, Lions of Al-Rassan. I wrote more kink - magic realism mpreg and strippers as well as breath-play. I wrote some explicit het! (I also wrote paitac some ridiculous Justin Bieber self-insert fic...)

( Various 2011 fic-related histories )

Choice Lines:

From Three Lions: There was nothing fraternal in the way ibn Khairan followed his hand with his lips, and Jehane bet Ishak slid from his lap into Belmonte's and put her physician's fingers into his hair and her cool mouth against his, and Rodrigo closed his arms around them both as if they might yet hold off the dark for a while, all three of them.

From The Grass Won't Pay No Mind: She's calling out to him, words he can't hear but can feel against his collarbone, his skin, the ink on his skin.

From Four Dreams: He sees the boy called Neil as a palimpsest over the adult Arthur - how Arthur has never shown more than an eyelid's flicker of desire, or moved in this loping, hip-swaying, provocative way. How Eames has never seen the bare, vulnerable flesh under the sharp grey tweed. But now Eames sees those things are there inside Arthur, just below the mysterious surface of this skin.

From Sew It Up: Edge paused by the threshold of their room, where the grey morning heralded storms up ahead, and more if they didn’t navigate this small, true thing very carefully.

“Go,” Edge said, and Bono sighed.

From In the Alleyway: Angel danced like Arch sang, free and unashamed, a million miles away from the teenager who'd taken his first dance lessons with Paula Abdul. As Arch took center stage, he wondered if Paula would approve of Angel's technique. He kind of thought she might, if the shock didn't kill her first.

From The Adventures of the Boy David and Captain Cook: The story said he was the boy who'd never grow up. The story said the Captain would always be his hated nemesis. But the story can't be true forever. Boys grow up, they become men, they fall in love, and love is just hate in reverse.

From Counting Down To Zero: Cook runs his fingers along David's cheekbone. The new scar on his wrist from where his TiMER was removed is raised and red and itches like crazy, but he knows he did the right thing.

He doesn't need a piece of clockwork to tell him what he already knows is true.

Anything Your Heart Desires
(When You Wish Upon a Star)
Cook/Archuleta, PG-13, 2,000+ words
Hundreds of thousands of stores across the known worlds and absolutely nothing to buy.
Written with my dearest frackin_sweet. Beta by rajkumari905.
Written for domesticbingo’s prompt “gift shopping”.
For aohatsu, the awesome remixer of Somewhere Out There. Thank you for your remix, hon. A belated Merry Christmas, and may 2012 bring you the gift of your heart’s desires.
Not for profit work of fiction.



( When you wish upon a star, anything your heart desires will come to you )

Thank you to aohatsu and soverignthorn for their hard work on the disneycookleta challenge. So many lovely Disney AU stories, do head on over to the challenge comm to check them out!

Herewith my darker, conflicted take on Peter Pan the movie.



The Adventures of the Boy David and Captain Cook: The Real Story (as narrated by Wendy C., 13-and-a-half)

Cook/Archuleta, 18,000+ words, betas random00b & maerhys
PG-13 for nudity, violence, underage sexual situations (non-explicit), language
This has all happened before, and will all happen again.
Not for profit work of fiction. Please refer to in-story detailed disclaimer.

On LJ | On AO3

For maerhys, who’s had a birthday, and a hard time lately, and with whom I offered to collaborate on a Neal/all the women multi-chaptered story. I wanted to make this filthy and stylish, bb, as your Neal!het is, but somehow this song had other ideas. I don’t know either, but I hope this made you smile a little :)

this time it is our time
Neal Tiemann/OFC, 1,150+ words, unbetaed.
Neal is flying. Explicit.

Not for profit fiction, no breach of privacy nor intellectual property rights intended. Title from Neil Diamond's And the Grass Won't Pay No Mind

( ...and the grass won't pay no mind )

From celli, whose answer to the world markets going apeshit is, apparently, to spread the fannish love ♥.

The first six people to comment in this post get to request that I write a drabble/ficlet of any pairing/character of their choosing. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their ability level.

Prompts would help. As you know, I not-so-secretly dig Marysueing, and will write character/you :)

ETA: To feed my Marysueing ways, the following kind people who played this meme with me wrote me the following:
* paitac's hot Suits!AU Give It A Minute It's Gone, [Charles Xavier/me/her], teen;
* aohatsu's adorable Harry Potter!AU Severus Snape/me; [Sirius/Remus], [Remus/her], teen; and
* maerhys's flagrant, delicious suns snagged on empire states, [NealFingTiemann/me], explicit :)))

Now calledmelovely Cookleta remix challenge reveals are up, I wanted to try my hand at making a DVD commentary of Counting Down to Zero for soverignthorn.

I’ve seen this kind of thing done really well before, and thought Kayla might enjoy seeing how (and which parts of) her original story Countdown inspired my remix; also that maybe my process might help someone else with remixing for Round 2?

(And, ngl, I hope my fellow remixers might indulge in DVD commentary also, because I would love to see their process as well! ETA: Okay, I think I sold aohatsu on doing this! \\\o///)

[Spoilers, obviously, are inherent in any DVD commentary, so caveat lector XD.]

( Behind the Countdown… )

Here I am, finally throwing my strangely-shaped hat into the large and illustrious Inception ring.

Title: Four Dreams
Beta: frackin_sweet
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Cobb/Tom Hardy as Handsome Bob, Eames/JGL as Neil McCormack, Arthur/Ellen Page, Ariadne/Leonardo diCaprio; Saito/Cobb if you squint sideways
Warnings: Language, some violence, zombie apocalypse, crossovers
Summary: The team experiments with a new mix, which peels back a corner of the silver screen for four of them. Actors!AU, written for au_bingo.
Disclaimer: Not for profit work of fiction. No libel, privacy or intellectual property infringements intended. All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc, are the property of their respective owners, whether RPs or relevant media franchise. Plot and bizarro premise belongs to me.

Four Dreams, various pairings, 6,000+ words

( The agenda for today is a dry run of the maze built for the Pinnacle project. Cobb has planned a quick walk-through of Ariadne's new dreamscape: in and out in an hour and a half in dreamtime. )

This entry was originally posted on dreamwidth; you can choose to read it there.

Holiday Hangover Thing the Seventh: moar fic!

clover71 made this lovely banner for the mpreg story I wrote for her in June, And Spring Became the Summer, and I'm woefully late in thanking her for her efforts! I have to say I'm kind of thrilled at the recent rash of mpreg in this fandom, and am unexpectedly excited about contributing this final chapter to that effort. This was originally intended as Christmas fic, but better late than never - Clover, I hope you enjoy!

Beta thanks to my dear bethbetter and indispensible cincodemaygirl, the latter of whom fortunately convinced me to spare you my squicky fertility metaphors! Warnings for magic realism pregnancy sex, wanton fire horse imagery, and birth.



And Spring Became the Summer | Between the Summer and the Fall | Fire in the Winter

Fire In the Winter
Cook/Archuleta, [NC-17], for magic realism pregnancy, sex and birth, 4,300+ words
After fall, it was time for the winter, and for their child to be born.
Not for profit fictional work. Title and lyrics from “Longer”, copyright Dan Fogelberg, as sung by Arch on Idol

( I'll bring fire in the winter, we'll fly through falls and the summers with love on our wings... )

This entry was originally posted on dreamwidth; you can choose to read it there.

Holiday Hangover Thing the Second: Yuletide, the time of greatest mirth and joyance among men, and also the time for writers to exchange fanfic gifts in rare fandoms (ranging from Goodnight Moon to Top Gear RPF to Terry Pratchett's Discworld) hosted on the Archive of Our Own. This was my first year participating, and I have cincodemaygirl to thank for holding my hand and speaking very slowly and calmly when she talked me through the rules and offering and requesting and whatnot.

I might have been initially intimidated, but I had the best experience! I requested stories in Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantine Mosiac and Lions of Al-Rassan fandoms, vintage Battlestar Galactica, and Gabriel Knight adventure game.

And I received the most incredible story:
What Lies in Books, by prolific profic writer russian_blue
Gabriel/Grace, Gabriel/von Glower, [Mature], 4,064 words.

This was the Gabriel Knight story I most desired when I signed up for Yuletide 2010, a story that discussed the relationship between Gabe and his nearest and dearest, that let us see how far Gabe had come, post-The Beast Within while staying true to his canon self. It has everything I loved about the game: a historical setting, an intricate plot that was the perfect framework to explore Gabe's hopes for Grace, his desires for Friedrich and the darkness within, and, at the heart of it, his own strengths and weaknesses. Oh, and cameo by Silvio Berlusconi :)

The reason didn't matter, only the result. He was learning to control it. Bit by bit, starting with the medallion, until he could touch it without screaming, as Friedrich had done. There had to be truth in the hunting club's philosophy, the notion that the beast within could be a source of strength. That he could master it, and not become a monster.

...Gabriel forced his lips into a smile. Ludwig had done it, the pansy-ass bastard, at least for a while; a Schattenjäger could surely do better.

In another corner of Yuletide, I wrote this Cook/Archie friendship fic:
Fairytales Can Come True, It Could Happen To You for poppetawoppet
David Archuleta, David Cook, [Gen], various pairings, [PG-13], 11,110 words.
Davids Archuleta and Cook go to extremes with impossible schemes: life's more exciting for them with each passing day, with love either in their hearts, or - thanks to their own judicious plotting - on its way. All-singing, all-dating, multiple pairings, crossover with Country Music RPF and Kris Allen Band.

And I also wandered out to Bruce Springsteen fandom, to make this:
Cars & Girls for twistedchick
From Springsteen's Born to Run (album), various pairings, [PG-13], 767 words.
Life's a highway: these two lanes can take us anywhere. Three stories about cars and girls.

Sending much love to my Yulegoat, my gracious recipients and betas frackin_sweet, cincodemaygirl and likeadeuce!

Various other amazing Yuletide stories which I think my non-Yuletiding f-listers might enjoy: ( Hunger Games, Discworld, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Pundit RPF, Kris Allen Band )

This entry was originally posted on dreamwidth; you can choose to read it there.

For james_padfoot, from the cookleta roundtable:

Anthemicronicon: The Age of Conflict
Skib/Tiemann, Cook/Archuleta, [PG-13 for violence], 4,000+ words.



Character bookmarks by my amazing au_bigbang collaborator, clover71.

Alternate ending to Edwardian steampunk A.I./H.P. Lovecraft crossover au_bigbang story, Anthemicronicon: Book of the Ages. Old fashioned medical treatment, Alternate History: Major Historical Event Changed.

Betaed by fount-of-Skibmann knowledge celtic_fish; consult by my redoubtable frackin_sweet
Not for profit work of fiction. Original sources and full disclaimer here.

The Age of Conflict

( Andrew Skib, Third of the Anthemic, crossed the courtyard of House Nineteen at a rapid clip. Under his arm he bore the morning's copy of the York City Times with its alarming headlines. )

This entry was originally posted on dreamwidth; you can choose to read it there.