Yuletide reveal post
Jan. 2nd, 2014 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dhampyresa First off, HAPPY NEW YEAR y'all! I hope 2014 is awesome for you.
I got two fics for yuletide: Transverse orientation by perryvic and/or Zaganthi (I honestly have no idea what's up with the authorship of this fic) in the Lucifer (comics) fandom, a reunion fic between Elaine and Lucifer that is pretty great and a treat, The Horsewoman's Tale by skazka (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
samgrass ) in the Demon Knights fandom, a fic where Horsewoman and Ystin (+ Al Jabr) tag along with the pilgrims from Canterbury Tales while looking for a weird saint relic. You should all read it, even if you know nothing about Canterbury Tales, because I didn't, but it was utterly awesome anyway.
I wrote 6 fics, in 6 fandoms. I'll do reveals in alphabetical order of fic title since that (coincidentally) puts my main assignment first.
Embers, for reyka_sivao (Norse mythology / Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok, 2 033 words, Loki, Odin, Gen)
Let me promote Sundown again, because that album looks amazing so far. I was first introduced to it via My Brother, My Enemy (with lyrics) and if you knew me back then, chance are I linked this at you several times. Embers draws a lot from Hearthfire (lyrics!). I've also taken inspiration from Ice and Fire and My Brother, My Enemy. I'm eagerly waiting for the rest of the album, especially the duet between Hella and Baldur and the quartet with Hella, Baldur, Loki and Odin (and maybe then I'll find out if my Hella-and-family fic works with the narrative or not). Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok is an a capella album based on Norse mythology and you should all listen it.
Fully Defined, for runespoor (Batgirl v2, 1 200 words, Brenda Miller, Cassandra Cain, Jason Todd, Gen)
Punica Fides, for sineala (Ancient History RPF, 3 681 words, Hannibal Barca, Scipio Africanus, Hannibal Barca/Scipio Africanus, Gen + F/F)
named Gwen Stacy) and rearranging the AUs. The problem was, I felt like I was left with half a fic, probably because I kind of was. (Don't get me wrong, I think the first draft is somewhat decent and I'll post it a some point (ETA: here), if only because there are a couple of things I did with it I really liked, but it didn't seem fair to foist it unexpected on sineala.) So here I am with half a fic and then I realise that either I could go with the crack-y AUs (in spaaace, with dinosaurs, with superheroes...) or I could keep going with the history-divergent AUs, only with lesbians. I picked the lesbians, to nobody's great surprise. And then I went on to write 65k+ of it. TL; DR: I loved writing this fic.
In case anyone is curious, here's the breakdown of where the AUs diverged from History (with converted datestamps):
Rome, 513 Ab Urbe Condita (240 BCE): Hamilcar won the First Punic War for Carthage and Hannibal and Scipio are somehow the same age.
Ticinus, 535 Ab Urbe Condita (218 BCE): Scipio is convinced Rome let his father be murdered and wants revenge, so he goes to Hannibal
Cannae, 537 Ab Urbe Condita (216 BCE): Scipio is captured at Cannae. Historically, Scipio was at Cannae, but he was of the 3% of Romans who escaped from it. (Can we take a moment to reflect on how completely Hannibal beat Rome at Cannae? Because he started out with roughly half as many men and ended up killing 97% of the Roman army, which had 100 thousand men. Yeah. Yeah. That's how badass Hannibal is.)
Syracuse, 550 Ab Urbe Condita (203 BCE): Hannibal takes Rome (because he received the reinforcements from Mago) and Scipio is like "Lala, I can't hear you over the sound of me taking Carthage".
Ephesus, 560 Ab Urbe Condita (193 BCE): Everything happens as it should, until the aliens show up. (Also, it was really fucking hard finding a date for theirdate meeting in Ephesus, so this is partly guesswork.)
The obvious answer for the other AUs is 'they're both women', but that's not all of it:
Ticinus, 535 Ab Urbe Condita (218 BCE): In this AU, Hanna's troops are loyal to her personally and she's acting on her own initiative when she takes Seguntum and then when she wages war on Rome, mostly because no one ever supported her when she wanted to be taught strategy, not even her father and she's kind of angry and bitter about that and has done everything she can to distance herself from him. And then Caesia pretty much offers her the acceptance she's always wanted and tells her she's better than her father and Hanna's heart might break a little that it took a Roman to notice and then she laughs, because it's either that or punch things.
Rome, 538 Ab Urbe Condita (215 BCE): In this AU, Hamilcar recognises that his daughter is a strategic genius and makes her pretend to be a boy so he can raise her as his heir and then she takes Rome after Cannae.
Trebbia, 535 Ab Urbe Condita (218 BCE): Mago was leading the Carthaginian army, until they met Caesia's father's army along the coastal roads and he died. Hanna took over since she had tagged along disguised as boy, because this war is her legacy too. Unfortunately, they lost too much of their army and Caesia recruited Gaulish archers to ambush the ambush, basically.
Trasimene, 536 Ab Urbe Condita (217 BCE): Caesia is at Trasimene (Scipio wasn't, as far as I can tell). She doesn't have any brothers and is pretending to be a boy to be her father's heir. Hanna is her father's heir, she doesn't have borthers either, but she doesn't have to pretend she's a boy.
Ephesus, 580 Ab Urbe Condita (173 BCE): The Second Punic War never happened.
Radiance, for traincat (Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, 1 012 words, Gwen Stacy, Gen)
Retrograde, for nomadicwriter (Fantastic Four (comics), 2 679 words, Valeria Richards, Layla Miller, Victor von Doom, Gen)
that was crossed-over with another Marvel 616 comic entirely. Unfortunately, it was either this fic or the further adventures in babysitting of Doctor Doom, and really, no one wants to read that. I tried something compleely new in writing the fic in reverse chronological order and I hope I managed to pull it off. (For the record, I was originally going to have Layla and Valeria cross the Atlantic instead of the Pacific, by going NYC -> Greenland -> Iceland -> Faeroes -> England -> Mainland Europe, but NYC -> Bering Strait -> Mainland Eurasia just made more sense, from a logistical standpoint. There's only one time you have to cross open waters, after all.) There's a bunch of references to various Marvel characters, such as the Hell portals (Ilyana Rasputin), the early winter (Bobby Drake), etc. There's also gratuitous Lovecraft references, because I am apparently incapable of writing Victor von Doom without referencing Lovecraft. What the hell, I don't even like Lovecraft.
Reunion of Broken Parts, for navaan (Demon Knights, 3 096 words, Horsewoman, Al Jabr, Gen)
Regarding the fic itself, I've been wanting to write a "maths saves the day" (especially a "math saves the day from vampires") story for a while now and this was the perfect opportunity for that, because Al Jabr (also, hence the icon of this post). I may or may not have had an argument with my brother over whether or not Fermat's Theorem can be considered solved. (The short answer to this is: yes and no. The long answer is that it's solved, but there is no possible way that Wiles' demonstration was the one Fermat had in mind. So, please, mathematicians everywhere: write down your proofs.) It felt kind of weird writing something that is completely opposite to my headcanon, especially since I'm almost never as attached to headcanon as I am to Al Jabr being immortal following the events of the end of the series. But it was great fun!
In total, I wrote 13 701 words of fic and almost 2k on those very same fics. (I tend to overthink things and could write many more words on these fics (up to and including full-on DVD commentary), like for all my fics, but I've already bored you enough as it is. Unless you'd like to ask me to.)
I got two fics for yuletide: Transverse orientation by perryvic and/or Zaganthi (I honestly have no idea what's up with the authorship of this fic) in the Lucifer (comics) fandom, a reunion fic between Elaine and Lucifer that is pretty great and a treat, The Horsewoman's Tale by skazka (
samgrass ) in the Demon Knights fandom, a fic where Horsewoman and Ystin (+ Al Jabr) tag along with the pilgrims from Canterbury Tales while looking for a weird saint relic. You should all read it, even if you know nothing about Canterbury Tales, because I didn't, but it was utterly awesome anyway.I wrote 6 fics, in 6 fandoms. I'll do reveals in alphabetical order of fic title since that (coincidentally) puts my main assignment first.
Embers, for reyka_sivao (Norse mythology / Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok, 2 033 words, Loki, Odin, Gen)
Odin has wrongs to right.This fic was my assignment. Right up until I posted it, it lived in my files as "Yuletide assignment 2013, take 2". The reason for this is that there was a take 1, that I had to scrape because I wasn't sure it fitted with the Sundown narrative. It's a Hella-and-family fic that I very well might finish some day. I like how Embers turned out, for the most part. There's really no way for me to explain what I don't like about it without going into the fact that I have a mild form of synesthesia, so here goes: the relationship between Odin and Loki at that point in time is orange-purple and while I managed to hit the orange part properlyy, it's not as purple as it should be and the purple is too blue-dark and not purple-pink enough (I nailed the yellow-grey edges, though, nailed them). There. I'm sure that made no sense to anyone.
Let me promote Sundown again, because that album looks amazing so far. I was first introduced to it via My Brother, My Enemy (with lyrics) and if you knew me back then, chance are I linked this at you several times. Embers draws a lot from Hearthfire (lyrics!). I've also taken inspiration from Ice and Fire and My Brother, My Enemy. I'm eagerly waiting for the rest of the album, especially the duet between Hella and Baldur and the quartet with Hella, Baldur, Loki and Odin (and maybe then I'll find out if my Hella-and-family fic works with the narrative or not). Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok is an a capella album based on Norse mythology and you should all listen it.
Fully Defined, for runespoor (Batgirl v2, 1 200 words, Brenda Miller, Cassandra Cain, Jason Todd, Gen)
Brenda makes tea, Cass' brother comes to visit and superheroes happen in the background.I originally bookmarked runespoor's letter back before assignments went out, because Brenda ♥. Then it turned out we lived in the same city and I felt bad that I couldn't meet with them despite commenting in the yuletide post. I really enjoyed writing this, even though I'm not entirely what the superhero happenings are, and I definitely share the headcanon that Jason Todd is mixed-race, now.
Punica Fides, for sineala (Ancient History RPF, 3 681 words, Hannibal Barca, Scipio Africanus, Hannibal Barca/Scipio Africanus, Gen + F/F)
Conversations Hannibal Barca and Scipio Africanus never had.So. This fic. I expected to enjoy writing this fic, but not even nearly half as much as I did. I ended up writing my NaNoWriMo inspired by this fic, that's how much I enjoyed writing it. At the same time, I have a complicated relationship to it, mostly because it's not the fic I set out to write, except that is, except not? It's also half a fic + half a fic, only not. Okay, so the first draft of this fic was essentially what's now the first chapter + timetravel. I ended up cutting all the timetravel parts (because of Reasons
In case anyone is curious, here's the breakdown of where the AUs diverged from History (with converted datestamps):
Rome, 513 Ab Urbe Condita (240 BCE): Hamilcar won the First Punic War for Carthage and Hannibal and Scipio are somehow the same age.
Ticinus, 535 Ab Urbe Condita (218 BCE): Scipio is convinced Rome let his father be murdered and wants revenge, so he goes to Hannibal
Cannae, 537 Ab Urbe Condita (216 BCE): Scipio is captured at Cannae. Historically, Scipio was at Cannae, but he was of the 3% of Romans who escaped from it. (Can we take a moment to reflect on how completely Hannibal beat Rome at Cannae? Because he started out with roughly half as many men and ended up killing 97% of the Roman army, which had 100 thousand men. Yeah. Yeah. That's how badass Hannibal is.)
Syracuse, 550 Ab Urbe Condita (203 BCE): Hannibal takes Rome (because he received the reinforcements from Mago) and Scipio is like "Lala, I can't hear you over the sound of me taking Carthage".
Ephesus, 560 Ab Urbe Condita (193 BCE): Everything happens as it should, until the aliens show up. (Also, it was really fucking hard finding a date for their
The obvious answer for the other AUs is 'they're both women', but that's not all of it:
Ticinus, 535 Ab Urbe Condita (218 BCE): In this AU, Hanna's troops are loyal to her personally and she's acting on her own initiative when she takes Seguntum and then when she wages war on Rome, mostly because no one ever supported her when she wanted to be taught strategy, not even her father and she's kind of angry and bitter about that and has done everything she can to distance herself from him. And then Caesia pretty much offers her the acceptance she's always wanted and tells her she's better than her father and Hanna's heart might break a little that it took a Roman to notice and then she laughs, because it's either that or punch things.
Rome, 538 Ab Urbe Condita (215 BCE): In this AU, Hamilcar recognises that his daughter is a strategic genius and makes her pretend to be a boy so he can raise her as his heir and then she takes Rome after Cannae.
Trebbia, 535 Ab Urbe Condita (218 BCE): Mago was leading the Carthaginian army, until they met Caesia's father's army along the coastal roads and he died. Hanna took over since she had tagged along disguised as boy, because this war is her legacy too. Unfortunately, they lost too much of their army and Caesia recruited Gaulish archers to ambush the ambush, basically.
Trasimene, 536 Ab Urbe Condita (217 BCE): Caesia is at Trasimene (Scipio wasn't, as far as I can tell). She doesn't have any brothers and is pretending to be a boy to be her father's heir. Hanna is her father's heir, she doesn't have borthers either, but she doesn't have to pretend she's a boy.
Ephesus, 580 Ab Urbe Condita (173 BCE): The Second Punic War never happened.
Radiance, for traincat (Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, 1 012 words, Gwen Stacy, Gen)
No one ever asked Gwen Stacy if she wanted superpowers. Tough.I wrote this fic on the 23rd and it was a scramble to get it uploaded before the archive opened, especially since I couldn't actually remember who I wrote it for, at one point. The one time I don't copy-paste a link to the letter in the story document itself! I think it turned out alright, despite the rush, but I wished I'd been able to expand on it.
Retrograde, for nomadicwriter (Fantastic Four (comics), 2 679 words, Valeria Richards, Layla Miller, Victor von Doom, Gen)
Twenty-seven years after the end of the world, Doctor Doom makes a stand.Way back in yuletode 2012, I wrote Strange Aeons for nomadicwriter. We matched on Fantastic Four, but the fic is a crossover with two other Marvel 616 comics: Journey into Mystery (kid!Loki run) and Young Avengers v1. I've always felt bad about this fact, even though I think I did a good joob and the fic was great (I certainly had a blast writing it), so I thought I'd make it up to them by writing them a Fantastic Four fic
Reunion of Broken Parts, for navaan (Demon Knights, 3 096 words, Horsewoman, Al Jabr, Gen)
Cain is on the march again and the Team Formerly Known as Demon Knights has to stop him. Horsewoman just wishes they'd stop arguing long enough to do so.I never intended for this fic to be the only full-length fic navaan got. I started this as a treat (ironically, the fandom that originally drew my in their letter was Locke & Key, because I am extremely predictable) and when I posted it, they already had another fic and a madness treat besides. I don't know why or how that other fic disappeared, but I do feel guilty of having cheated navaan out of a proper fic and for that I am sorry.
Regarding the fic itself, I've been wanting to write a "maths saves the day" (especially a "math saves the day from vampires") story for a while now and this was the perfect opportunity for that, because Al Jabr (also, hence the icon of this post). I may or may not have had an argument with my brother over whether or not Fermat's Theorem can be considered solved. (The short answer to this is: yes and no. The long answer is that it's solved, but there is no possible way that Wiles' demonstration was the one Fermat had in mind. So, please, mathematicians everywhere: write down your proofs.) It felt kind of weird writing something that is completely opposite to my headcanon, especially since I'm almost never as attached to headcanon as I am to Al Jabr being immortal following the events of the end of the series. But it was great fun!
In total, I wrote 13 701 words of fic and almost 2k on those very same fics. (I tend to overthink things and could write many more words on these fics (up to and including full-on DVD commentary), like for all my fics, but I've already bored you enough as it is. Unless you'd like to ask me to.)