Yuletide reveals, 2015
Dec. 31st, 2015 05:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiroseI wrote 8 fics for Yuletide! "The Bench Still Warm" (Kamen Rider Blade), "Never In A Rush" (Power Rangers Dino Charge), "Random Zig-zag" (Plants Vs Zombies), "Looks Upside Down"(Romeo and Juliet - Shakespeare), "Tangled Up The Wire" (Fatal Frame III), "Any Room For Doubt" (Solarbabies), "Exit Wound" (Zero Escape series), and "Pick The Broken Ruins Up" (12 Dancing Princesses)
My gift fics were from kalypsobean (who picked me up as a pinch hit and wrote me Kamen Rider Drive fic!), Yeomanrand (who wrote me my lovely little Monument Valley piece), and Rivulet027 (who wrote the heartwarming Power Rangers Dino Charge fic.)
I've got throughts on my fics. Note that if you have not seen the end of Kamen Rider Blade, there are some spoilers for that, and if you are playing through 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors or otherwise wish to remain unspoiled for that game, you might want to avoid the end of this post. All titles are from songs by "They Might Be Giants".
The Bench Still Warm (Song: Ana Ng)
I got assigned to Estelraca, who fortunately had four fandoms that I was familiar with. I almost went with the Kuuga request, but I decided to go for Blade, which is a fandom I love very much. (I considered the Drive prompt, but I can't write Gou worth anything, even in a post-series AU, I really dislike the character.) Tachibana looking for Kenzaki was something I could at least plot out, because I could well imagine it happening.
The first few days after I did canon review were a bit frustrating. While it was easy to get Tachibana going, I lost motivation to get him to Fukuyama. Then suddenly, when Tachibana was stopping at the cafe, I got things moving with a little mental cheat on my part - the cafe-antique shop that Tachibana stops at is actually Kurosawa's Antiques from Fatal Frame V. The woman he talks to is Hisoka, one of the characters from the game. Her cousin is Rei (nee Kurosawa), Rei's husband Yuu (I got a bit AU from Fatal Frame III here), and Miku Hinasaki. The giggling girls are the Kiryuu twins from Fatal Frame II. Anyway, Hisoka gave Tachibana (and me) what I needed to go on, so I got Tachibana to Fukuyama.
I debated having Kenzaki avoid Tachibana, but that would have done my plot no good and dragged it out. So, Kenzaki decided that he was going to meet with Tachibana even if it made him tense. This actually worked pretty well! And then I got Tachibana to go back so that Karasuma could set things up without me having Tachibana stay at a hotel. Also, I realized that I needed to include Hajime, at least more than a mention, so I had Tachibana meet up with him briefly. And then Tachibana got to go back, spend time with Kenzaki, and convince him to come visit so that Kenzaki's friends could see him again, even if Kenzaki and Hajime couldn't go near each other. This gave me a chance to insert Shiori, Koutarou, Mutsuki and Nozomi. I purposefully gave Mutsuki only one line to disguise somewhat that I was writing the fic (though I'm sure it's not hard to pick up my distinctive writing style).
Little bits of trivia:
* Fukuyama does exist, and is the second largest city in Hiroshima prefecture. I couldn't figure out from my research what people in Japan felt in general about the events at Hiroshima, and I didn't want to use Matsuyama because that would have basically made it obvious that it was me because I use it as my go-to Japanese city, so I chose something nearby.
* Naoko Tanaka is an OC of mine. She's a library tech/assistant. I figured she'd be a good researcher. I decided to refer to her almost exclusively by surname because that would allow me to sneak her in without anybody catching the reference. It also allowed me to refer to Tanaka, the teacher in Decade.
* While I chose the title to go with the end of Blade, there was another line in the song that actually resonated more with me: "They don't need me here, and I know you're there." This is why Tachibana ends up moving to be with Kenzaki at the end.
Never In A Rush (Song: I Am A Paleontologist)
I was planning to treat TheSecondBatgirl anyway, so I grabbed this pinch hit. I grabbed onto the prompt about Ivan calling Shelby "Milady", and went from there. I wasn't sure at first whether to consider this gen or het (Ivan does have feelings towards Shelby, I think, at this point and she is right - he is trying to court her), but went with gen because Shelby kind of ignores the whole romantic angle because Ivan is friend and teammate to her.
While I tried to figure out where to send the two (the places listed are a mix of real places I've been to, made-up names, and a Jungle Fury reference), I finally decided that one of the coffeehouses would probably give them a slight bit more privacy (though probably not by much). Yes, the place called "The Naked Lounge" is real and does have tasteful nudes, by the way. Shelby's reference to fandoms came from some quick lurking-about on TheSecondBatgirl's journal. (The reference to Denny's is because I seem to spend a lot of time at them during Power Morphicon.)
Of course I had to make a reference to Kendall's eating habits!
Ivan did originally kiss Shelby's hand, but I decided that the relationship between the two wasn't at that point, so I had him decide to skip it, perhaps hoping he could kiss Shelby's hand later, when he actually got to talk to her about a relationship.
Little bits of trivia:
* I had to have the song for a Shelby fic reflect Shelby's interests, therefore my choice of this particular album.
* The lady who asks for eels and blowfish is a reference to one of the NPCs in the 3DS game Fantasy Life.
* The thread that Shelby shows Ivan on her phone is about the Dragon Age: Origins origin stories (I've played all but the Dwarf Noble), and the "Mouse" that Ivan mentions is from the Mage Origin.
Random Zig-zag (Song: I Palindrome I)
I really love writing Plants Vs Zombies fic, and I adore Cactus, so a fic requesting Cactus casefic was something that interested me immensely. Not that it turned out to be much of a casefic, mind you, but I enjoyed writing all the same. I figured out that if the zombies didn't get the owner (I didn't want to write a fic where the plants were figuring out how the zombies got past them to gnaw on the owner), something else had to, and I figured that it was probably some very deadly food poisoning. The world of Plants vs Zombies seems like a very crapsack one to me, if the zombies are coming day and night.
So, Cactus ended up being the star, and the poor Sun-shroom ended up being more in the fic than I planned because it was kind of dark in the house and Cactus needed light. (Sun-shroom also got one of my favorite lines in the story when replying to Doom-shroom.) Crazy Dave ended up in the story when I realized that Cactus would not know either about food poisoning or turning on a light switch, so he got to pop up eating his taco! Penny from the second game might have been mentioned/made a cameo, but Crazy Dave decided to not worry about the matter so Penny just remained where she was.
At first, I didn't know how to characterize Doom-shroom. It turned out that having him threaten to blow things up every five seconds turned out to be a good choice, along with using capslock all the time!
Sunflower gets no more than a cameo appearance here, but I think I did well with that one's cheery attitude as well. And of course, I can't imagine Peashooter doing anything more than preparing for the next invasion! I always plant my Sunflowers in the next-to-back row, so that's where Sunflower was put in my story.
Little bits of trivia:
* I made the owner female because "your" gender is not specified in the game, and I thought it might be neat to make the owner female.
* I spent a day deciding whether or not the owner's death counted as the "Major Character Death" listed in my recipient's Do Not Wants. Given that the letter included the owner's death as a possibility, I finally decided that it didn't. I still included the Author's Note just to make sure.
* I chose the title "Random Zigzag" as a short form of the line "See the medical chart with the random zig-zag", implying that there may be something wrong with the person whose chart it is (in this case, the owner).
Looks Upside Down (Song: Ana Ng)
This was actually my next-to-last written fic, because I wanted to do this prompt but I didn't have time until the last day. Some quick canon review later about both of them, I ended up with this quiet fic set during the Capulet Ball about Rosaline and Tybalt. (Tybalt is my favorite character in the play and I've always felt sorry for Rosaline.) The story actually is more about Tybalt and Rosaline, because Rosaline's so eager to leave the whole thing behind and Tybalt is so hot-tempered, and... well, my heart still breaks for both of them.
Little bit of trivia:
* While everything doesn't look upside down as the title implies, everything is about to turn upside down. I thought "Upside Down" was too cheesy and generic, so I left the word just before the phrase so that it wasn't so cheesy/generic.
Tangled Up The Wire (Song: Ana Ng)
I make it a goal to write Fatal Frame every year for Yuletide if I can (I'm aware that BCL's Holiday Exchange exists, but I rarely have the energy to do both). I had the choice between this and a Fatal Frame: The Movie prompt, and I haven't seen the movie. Plus, I love Miku/Rei, even if I can't write Miku/Rei. So, I wrote this nice little pre-game fic where Miku is actually crushing on Rei, but because this is in Rei's POV, she totally misses it.
Yuu's voice being deep is (as mentioned in the author's notes) a reference to Yuu's Japanese VA. I made the reference for two reasons, one being that I like the Japanese VA's voice a little better (and I'm more familiar with his voice acting roles), and Miku's reaction to his voice was very much how I felt when I first heard the voice of one of my new supervisors over the phone - turned out to be very nice but his serious voice awas a bit scary.
Miku is trying to make reference to Mafuyu, but because it's set pre-game and Rei doesn't know who Mafuyu is, Miku had to be kind of not mentioning things.
Little bit of trivia:
* I think this is almost the only story I wrote with a title that was totally unrelated because I was kind of rushing at that point.
Any Room for Doubt (Song: Put It To The Test)
I was in dire need of a fairly light movie one weekend, and I remembered that TpTigger had requested Solarbabies, so I rented it so I could write fic. I got a bit distracted by the 80's hair and plot (I am an '80s kid, after all), but managed to write out a tiny ficlet. In some ways while everybody else was adorable, I really felt for poor Metron, which is why the fic is about him changing his mind - kind of predictable but still emotionally rewarding, and Metron's choice, in a way, was the reason everybody was saved. It was something I found very cool and had to fic it.
Little bit of trivia:
* I felt that a song about the scientific method fit Metron's character fairly well, and this bit especially.
Exit Wound (Song: Ana Ng)
I just have such a weak spot for Akane, despite what a terrible person she is. She's ruthless, she's trying to save the world. She's willing to sacrifice herself and two people who had gone through the Nonary Game at least once. Which means, of course, she makes a wonderful POV character. I debated what to do with Aoi, since there's no real mention of him in VLR, and rewrote what happened to him several times before going back to my original wording in the end.
Little bit of trivia:
* I used the phrase "exit wound" because it was not only part of the song, but I think describes what Akane's pain is very well.
Pick the Broken Ruins Up (Song: They'll Need A Crane)
I wrote this at the last minute, and it was my best hit (due to being in a semi-popular fandom). I reread the story in the Brothers Grimm version, and was struck by how little agency the princesses had. This became the impetus for the fic. At first I wrote a ~200 word ficlet during a break at work, but decided that I wanted more. So I completely restarted the story, retaining only character names. Of the princesses, only Ingrid has a name that isn't old Swedish as I didn't have time to find a new name for her at break and didn't want to change it for the new version. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. My princesses vented my irritation at their father and came across as pretty darn nasty. Their poison plan was actually influenced by the plot of Dorothy L Sayers' "Strong Poison", and while I'm not sure it would have worked, I enjoyed writing about them plotting.
Little bits of trivia:
* Another mostly random title, though I thought that it was appropriate, given that it's exactly what the princesses were doing, at least in their view.
* I put the original version up in a prior post so that it could be read in its original glory.
My gift fics were from kalypsobean (who picked me up as a pinch hit and wrote me Kamen Rider Drive fic!), Yeomanrand (who wrote me my lovely little Monument Valley piece), and Rivulet027 (who wrote the heartwarming Power Rangers Dino Charge fic.)
I've got throughts on my fics. Note that if you have not seen the end of Kamen Rider Blade, there are some spoilers for that, and if you are playing through 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors or otherwise wish to remain unspoiled for that game, you might want to avoid the end of this post. All titles are from songs by "They Might Be Giants".
The Bench Still Warm (Song: Ana Ng)
I got assigned to Estelraca, who fortunately had four fandoms that I was familiar with. I almost went with the Kuuga request, but I decided to go for Blade, which is a fandom I love very much. (I considered the Drive prompt, but I can't write Gou worth anything, even in a post-series AU, I really dislike the character.) Tachibana looking for Kenzaki was something I could at least plot out, because I could well imagine it happening.
The first few days after I did canon review were a bit frustrating. While it was easy to get Tachibana going, I lost motivation to get him to Fukuyama. Then suddenly, when Tachibana was stopping at the cafe, I got things moving with a little mental cheat on my part - the cafe-antique shop that Tachibana stops at is actually Kurosawa's Antiques from Fatal Frame V. The woman he talks to is Hisoka, one of the characters from the game. Her cousin is Rei (nee Kurosawa), Rei's husband Yuu (I got a bit AU from Fatal Frame III here), and Miku Hinasaki. The giggling girls are the Kiryuu twins from Fatal Frame II. Anyway, Hisoka gave Tachibana (and me) what I needed to go on, so I got Tachibana to Fukuyama.
I debated having Kenzaki avoid Tachibana, but that would have done my plot no good and dragged it out. So, Kenzaki decided that he was going to meet with Tachibana even if it made him tense. This actually worked pretty well! And then I got Tachibana to go back so that Karasuma could set things up without me having Tachibana stay at a hotel. Also, I realized that I needed to include Hajime, at least more than a mention, so I had Tachibana meet up with him briefly. And then Tachibana got to go back, spend time with Kenzaki, and convince him to come visit so that Kenzaki's friends could see him again, even if Kenzaki and Hajime couldn't go near each other. This gave me a chance to insert Shiori, Koutarou, Mutsuki and Nozomi. I purposefully gave Mutsuki only one line to disguise somewhat that I was writing the fic (though I'm sure it's not hard to pick up my distinctive writing style).
Little bits of trivia:
* Fukuyama does exist, and is the second largest city in Hiroshima prefecture. I couldn't figure out from my research what people in Japan felt in general about the events at Hiroshima, and I didn't want to use Matsuyama because that would have basically made it obvious that it was me because I use it as my go-to Japanese city, so I chose something nearby.
* Naoko Tanaka is an OC of mine. She's a library tech/assistant. I figured she'd be a good researcher. I decided to refer to her almost exclusively by surname because that would allow me to sneak her in without anybody catching the reference. It also allowed me to refer to Tanaka, the teacher in Decade.
* While I chose the title to go with the end of Blade, there was another line in the song that actually resonated more with me: "They don't need me here, and I know you're there." This is why Tachibana ends up moving to be with Kenzaki at the end.
Never In A Rush (Song: I Am A Paleontologist)
I was planning to treat TheSecondBatgirl anyway, so I grabbed this pinch hit. I grabbed onto the prompt about Ivan calling Shelby "Milady", and went from there. I wasn't sure at first whether to consider this gen or het (Ivan does have feelings towards Shelby, I think, at this point and she is right - he is trying to court her), but went with gen because Shelby kind of ignores the whole romantic angle because Ivan is friend and teammate to her.
While I tried to figure out where to send the two (the places listed are a mix of real places I've been to, made-up names, and a Jungle Fury reference), I finally decided that one of the coffeehouses would probably give them a slight bit more privacy (though probably not by much). Yes, the place called "The Naked Lounge" is real and does have tasteful nudes, by the way. Shelby's reference to fandoms came from some quick lurking-about on TheSecondBatgirl's journal. (The reference to Denny's is because I seem to spend a lot of time at them during Power Morphicon.)
Of course I had to make a reference to Kendall's eating habits!
Ivan did originally kiss Shelby's hand, but I decided that the relationship between the two wasn't at that point, so I had him decide to skip it, perhaps hoping he could kiss Shelby's hand later, when he actually got to talk to her about a relationship.
Little bits of trivia:
* I had to have the song for a Shelby fic reflect Shelby's interests, therefore my choice of this particular album.
* The lady who asks for eels and blowfish is a reference to one of the NPCs in the 3DS game Fantasy Life.
* The thread that Shelby shows Ivan on her phone is about the Dragon Age: Origins origin stories (I've played all but the Dwarf Noble), and the "Mouse" that Ivan mentions is from the Mage Origin.
Random Zig-zag (Song: I Palindrome I)
I really love writing Plants Vs Zombies fic, and I adore Cactus, so a fic requesting Cactus casefic was something that interested me immensely. Not that it turned out to be much of a casefic, mind you, but I enjoyed writing all the same. I figured out that if the zombies didn't get the owner (I didn't want to write a fic where the plants were figuring out how the zombies got past them to gnaw on the owner), something else had to, and I figured that it was probably some very deadly food poisoning. The world of Plants vs Zombies seems like a very crapsack one to me, if the zombies are coming day and night.
So, Cactus ended up being the star, and the poor Sun-shroom ended up being more in the fic than I planned because it was kind of dark in the house and Cactus needed light. (Sun-shroom also got one of my favorite lines in the story when replying to Doom-shroom.) Crazy Dave ended up in the story when I realized that Cactus would not know either about food poisoning or turning on a light switch, so he got to pop up eating his taco! Penny from the second game might have been mentioned/made a cameo, but Crazy Dave decided to not worry about the matter so Penny just remained where she was.
At first, I didn't know how to characterize Doom-shroom. It turned out that having him threaten to blow things up every five seconds turned out to be a good choice, along with using capslock all the time!
Sunflower gets no more than a cameo appearance here, but I think I did well with that one's cheery attitude as well. And of course, I can't imagine Peashooter doing anything more than preparing for the next invasion! I always plant my Sunflowers in the next-to-back row, so that's where Sunflower was put in my story.
Little bits of trivia:
* I made the owner female because "your" gender is not specified in the game, and I thought it might be neat to make the owner female.
* I spent a day deciding whether or not the owner's death counted as the "Major Character Death" listed in my recipient's Do Not Wants. Given that the letter included the owner's death as a possibility, I finally decided that it didn't. I still included the Author's Note just to make sure.
* I chose the title "Random Zigzag" as a short form of the line "See the medical chart with the random zig-zag", implying that there may be something wrong with the person whose chart it is (in this case, the owner).
Looks Upside Down (Song: Ana Ng)
This was actually my next-to-last written fic, because I wanted to do this prompt but I didn't have time until the last day. Some quick canon review later about both of them, I ended up with this quiet fic set during the Capulet Ball about Rosaline and Tybalt. (Tybalt is my favorite character in the play and I've always felt sorry for Rosaline.) The story actually is more about Tybalt and Rosaline, because Rosaline's so eager to leave the whole thing behind and Tybalt is so hot-tempered, and... well, my heart still breaks for both of them.
Little bit of trivia:
* While everything doesn't look upside down as the title implies, everything is about to turn upside down. I thought "Upside Down" was too cheesy and generic, so I left the word just before the phrase so that it wasn't so cheesy/generic.
Tangled Up The Wire (Song: Ana Ng)
I make it a goal to write Fatal Frame every year for Yuletide if I can (I'm aware that BCL's Holiday Exchange exists, but I rarely have the energy to do both). I had the choice between this and a Fatal Frame: The Movie prompt, and I haven't seen the movie. Plus, I love Miku/Rei, even if I can't write Miku/Rei. So, I wrote this nice little pre-game fic where Miku is actually crushing on Rei, but because this is in Rei's POV, she totally misses it.
Yuu's voice being deep is (as mentioned in the author's notes) a reference to Yuu's Japanese VA. I made the reference for two reasons, one being that I like the Japanese VA's voice a little better (and I'm more familiar with his voice acting roles), and Miku's reaction to his voice was very much how I felt when I first heard the voice of one of my new supervisors over the phone - turned out to be very nice but his serious voice awas a bit scary.
Miku is trying to make reference to Mafuyu, but because it's set pre-game and Rei doesn't know who Mafuyu is, Miku had to be kind of not mentioning things.
Little bit of trivia:
* I think this is almost the only story I wrote with a title that was totally unrelated because I was kind of rushing at that point.
Any Room for Doubt (Song: Put It To The Test)
I was in dire need of a fairly light movie one weekend, and I remembered that TpTigger had requested Solarbabies, so I rented it so I could write fic. I got a bit distracted by the 80's hair and plot (I am an '80s kid, after all), but managed to write out a tiny ficlet. In some ways while everybody else was adorable, I really felt for poor Metron, which is why the fic is about him changing his mind - kind of predictable but still emotionally rewarding, and Metron's choice, in a way, was the reason everybody was saved. It was something I found very cool and had to fic it.
Little bit of trivia:
* I felt that a song about the scientific method fit Metron's character fairly well, and this bit especially.
Exit Wound (Song: Ana Ng)
I just have such a weak spot for Akane, despite what a terrible person she is. She's ruthless, she's trying to save the world. She's willing to sacrifice herself and two people who had gone through the Nonary Game at least once. Which means, of course, she makes a wonderful POV character. I debated what to do with Aoi, since there's no real mention of him in VLR, and rewrote what happened to him several times before going back to my original wording in the end.
Little bit of trivia:
* I used the phrase "exit wound" because it was not only part of the song, but I think describes what Akane's pain is very well.
Pick the Broken Ruins Up (Song: They'll Need A Crane)
I wrote this at the last minute, and it was my best hit (due to being in a semi-popular fandom). I reread the story in the Brothers Grimm version, and was struck by how little agency the princesses had. This became the impetus for the fic. At first I wrote a ~200 word ficlet during a break at work, but decided that I wanted more. So I completely restarted the story, retaining only character names. Of the princesses, only Ingrid has a name that isn't old Swedish as I didn't have time to find a new name for her at break and didn't want to change it for the new version. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. My princesses vented my irritation at their father and came across as pretty darn nasty. Their poison plan was actually influenced by the plot of Dorothy L Sayers' "Strong Poison", and while I'm not sure it would have worked, I enjoyed writing about them plotting.
Little bits of trivia:
* Another mostly random title, though I thought that it was appropriate, given that it's exactly what the princesses were doing, at least in their view.
* I put the original version up in a prior post so that it could be read in its original glory.
