Yuletide reveal post!

[dhampyresa]

Like I said previously, I wrote 8 fics for yuletide: 1 assignments, 6 full-length treats and 1 madness treat (presented here more or less in the order in which I wrote them). Now you get to hear me talk about them and be a giant nerd. At length.

The Devil's Party (2987 words) by sevenofspade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Lucifer (Comic)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Lucifer Morningstar, Elaine Belloc, Mazikeen, Beatrice (Lucifer), Rachel Begai, Lady Lys, Duma Angel of Silence
Additional Tags: Post-Canon
Summary: Lucifer returns from the Void in Hell. Lucifer returns from the Void in LA. Both these things are true.

This was my assignment. I had no prompts whatsoever from my recipient, which I always find a little disheartening, because I like writing stuff for people to make them happy, which is really hard without prompts and/or a letter. However, I don't offer fandoms in exchanges without having at least an idea I can use as back-up if I don't get any prompts. (If anyone remembers this f-locked entry, you can see the seeds of this idea in there.)

As I reviewed the canon, I got ideas for several other stories, but they were almost all canon-divergent AUs and I had no idea if my recipient would like that. Luckily, I found a way to work my original idea into the canon without adding extra worldbuilding -- everything that's in there is an expansion on canon -- so I went with a post-canon fic based on that.

I feel like you can tell it was kind of rushed (a problem shared by everything I wrote this yuletide, tbh), like in the way the whole Ragnarok plotline is completely dropped via Elaine ex machina, but overall I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

I was originally going to call Nick "Paul", as a reference to Paul Gornek/Paol Gornek ("Horned Paul", which is one of the names for the Devil in breton), but as Rachel's brother is already named Paul in canon (also, literally no one would have gotten it). I went with "Nick", from "Old Nick" an English folk nickname for the Devil instead.

(Speaking of things no one got: when Lucifer "played another piece of classical music -- too many chords for his single hand on the keys", he was playing Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps. /is a giant nerd)

My favourite lines are either "And Lucifer had been an angel once, hadn't he? Which told you all you needed to know about angels, really." or "Lucifer smiled. He smiled like a snake with an apple might have smiled, in a garden in another Creation. It was perhaps as close to kind as Lucifer's smiles ever got."

The title is a pun. It's both a party/reunion and reference to the quote "The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it."

Lion Champion (1376 words) by sevenofspade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Nancy Whitehead, Doreen Green, Tomas Lara-Perez, Ken Shiga
Summary: Nancy's life takes a turn for the unexpected.

That was the next fic I wrote. I'm actually pretty sure the canon is going to go for "Nancy talks to lions" in future, because there is hints of it in that one issue, before Ratatosk shows up. I really wanted to write friendship fic for Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. Hopefully I managed. (There may or may not be something really fishy happening with that horror movie.)

Hunter's Moon (1293 words) by sevenofspade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Gwen Variants (Marvel Comics Covers)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Gwenverine/Laura Kinney
Characters: Gwen Stacy | Gwenverine, Gwen Stacy | Gwoot, Laura Kinney
Additional Tags: Post-Apocalypse
Summary: Gwen's day gets weird.

Because I am still bitter about the 2013 Gwen Stacy Ultigate clusterfuck Because the mods are consistently inconsistent about comics in yuletide and it's not like it's really fucking annoying to have people who don't know what they're talking about assume bad faith all the fucking time oh wait it is FOR REASONS, I had to write some Gwen Covers fic this yuletide. This was it. I went with a combination of general prompts more than anything specific from the letter: Gwenverine + Gwen team-ups + Green Aesop + F/F + relationship with Laura. I wish I'd gotten slightly more time to flesh out the plot, but it works this way too.

All's Fair (1006 words) by sevenofspade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hellenistic Religion & Lore
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Ἄρης | Ares (Hellenistic Religion & Lore), Αθήνα | Athena (Hellenistic Religion & Lore)
Summary: Ares and his sister have a complicated relationship.

I've been meaning to treat Anndy since they requested Hannibal in Punic Wars RPF last year, but I didn't manage it last year. I did treat them this year! In a completely different fandom! (Sort of.) I'm quite happy of the resolution I found. (I felt like it would be a dead give away it was me who wrote it, but apparently not!)

Ogygia (1570 words) by sevenofspade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Ancient History RPF
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Scipio Africanus/Hannibal Barca
Characters: Hannibal Barca, Scipio Africanus
Additional Tags: What-If
Summary: Hannibal was captured after Zama.

Speaking of fics I thought everyone would know I was the one to write! But apparently there were too many Hannibal(/Scipio) fics this yuletide that picking mine out was not doable. Safety in numbers and all that. (Which is not a sentence I ever thought I'd write about this fandom.)

NO BUT LOOK. PEOPLE WHO AREN'T ME WROTE/REQUESTED IT. There exists Hannibal/Scipio in the world where I was (practically*) not responsible for existing!

(*My treat recip did link to several of my comments about the ships on FFA, including the original draft of this primer, so I can't claim to be totally uninvolved, but still. SUCCESS! Fandom created: achievement unlocked! And other exclamations of joy!)

Anyway! I had my recip's letter open in one tab and in another tab I came across the Odyssey quote ("Even so I yearn day after day, longing to reach home, and see the hour of my return. And if some god should strike me, out on the wine-dark sea, I will endure it, owning a heart within inured to suffering. For I have suffered much, and laboured much, in war and on the seas: add this then to the sum") and then I couldn't get the idea of Hannibal quoting it out of my head. So I wrote a story in which he would quote it. I feel like someone else would have written a different story based on that scenario "Hannibal was captured after Zama", but try as I might, the best I could do was fade-to-black. (I mentionned dicks WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME /probably doing fandom wrong)

Also, I find it hilarious that even though me and the other Hannibal/Scipio writer ended up writing pretty much the exact opposite of of what the other wrote (Hannibal PoV vs Scipio PoV, Hannibal as captive vs Scipio as captive, beginning of the war vs end of the war, etc) we both managed to compared Hannibal to Ulysses. There's A LOT of mileage in this analogy, I feel. (I am half-tempted to write another fic, in which Hannibal quotes the exact same bit of the Odyssey, but in a completely different context.)

I don't really like to think about what happens next, in this verse. I actually cut out a few of the more depressing lines in Hannibal's internal monologue.

Zero Sum Game (1357 words) by sevenofspade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Marvel Secret Wars Battleworlds
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Victor von Doom, Reed Richards, Valeria Richards, Franklin Richards
Additional Tags: Secret Wars
Summary: It's not the Sheriff who finds the ship, it's the Foundation.

ALSO FOR REASONS I also had to write some Secret Wars/Battleworld this year. So I did. And there's not a one of them that could stop me.

I treated Nomad because I know Nomad loves Doctor Doom and I found the prompt about Doom interacting with the Richards kids, Franklin especially, super interesting. My problem was how to get Reed in there, but then I figured: canon-divergent AU! (The point of divergence is given in the summary.)

This fic is the reason I only wrote 8 fics this yuletide. I was going to try and write one more treat, but then I realised I'd had a brain blip earlier and the fic was missing an ending. It basically just stopped. (Right after " "I wasn't talking to you," Franklin snapped." in case anyone is curious.) So I had to write an ending. On my phone.

And that's the story of the time I ended up writing yuletide fic on a it's-not-theft-if-you-give-it-back-and-no-one-notices-it-was-gone chapel bench.

But anyway, I'm really glad I caught that, because I quite like the ending I did come up with. (The switch from "Doom" and "Richards" in the whole fic to "Victor held out his hand to pull Reed to his feet." in the last paragraph is 100% deliberate.)

That said, I wish it hadn't taken me until about ten minutes to stories reveal to realise that I could have written Doom training Franklin into the ways of having unlimited power.

Lies told by firelight (1533 words) by sevenofspade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Loki: Agent of Asgard
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Loki (Agent of Asgard), Verity Willis
Additional Tags: Post-Canon
Summary: As it turned out, what Loki had meant when he'd said "I need a break. So... Let's skip ahead a bit" was "Let's do yuletide".
As it turned out, what "Let's do yuletide" meant was "Let's spend the end of the world telling stories about stories".

For Reasons (afaik unrelated to the above REASONS), I felt like NightsMistress/batman really deserved a story they'd like on Yuletide Day. So I wrote the only story I could write, which was Agent of Asgard + stories about stories (ladymercury_10

God Games (512 words) by sevenofspade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Ambition (ESA Short film)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: The Apprentice (Ambition short film), The Master (Ambition short film)
Summary: This is how the world is made.

I really enjoyed the short film when I saw it on the fandom promo post, so I wrote a fic for it. I probably spent waaaaaaaaaay too long staring at the Wikipedia page on the evolutionary history of Earth while writing this.