Yuletide reveals!
Dec. 31st, 2016 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estirose(I keep forgetting that reveals happen sooner now!)
Anyway, my main fic was written by sheaferotherdon, and my treat by lousy_science.
I wrote 9 fics this year! My main fic was "Know You Now A Cycle's Gone" (Ghostbusters 2016), and my pinch hit was "Why This Is So" (Monument Valley). In addition, I wrote 7 treats: "Five for the Five" (Stardew Valley), "Your Brief Moment" (Kamen Rider W/Kiva), "So meek and so mild" (Gladiator - Dami Im), "A Song With No End" (Fatal Frame III: The Tormented), "For the bones that tear" (Nancy Drew (Video Games)), "And If You Take My Hand" (Fantasy Life (Video Game)), and "Strengthened by the Vision" (Doubutsu Sentai Zyuohger).
This year, I titled all my fics after lyrics sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary. Also, I tried to stick a robot cat into whatever I could, and did some rather random unlabled minor crossovers.
"Know You Now A Cycle's Gone" was my assignment! I wanted to focus on Patty (my letter mentioned how much a favorite of mine she was), and my recipient wanted pasts and making it gayer, so I gave Patty a former girlfriend who had been interested in ghosts. (And languages! Linda's greeting is "Hello! My ghostbuster! How are you?" and Patty's answer is "I'm fine.") I was hoping to actually get a long fic where the team flew out to Long Beach and did ghostbusting - I'd done some research on the Queen Mary ghosts - but I couldn't get it to coalesce. I wrote the shorter fic so that I could actually give something to my recipient while I tried to get it to work. (Maybe I'll get it done for NYR? I don't know.) I pulled the information on the Queen Mary's history from its official webpage and gathered the ghost information from several haunting-related websites.
Trivia: I picked up the haunted inn that Linda mentions from a television series, and the languages she uses are Swedish, Esperanto, and Mandarin. (She also speaks these languages much better than I do, but she started emailing Patty that way because Patty likes that.)
"Why This is So" was a pinch hit I picked up. I wanted to write Ida backstory, and it gradually kind of happened as I wrote and rechecked my canon. I wanted to explain Ida's two forms. Now it was possible that she was cursed to wander forever in human form (and lose her memories) while her people just lost their memories, but I had her be the daughter of a human mage and a Crow prince. The question-answer format was modeled after a similar one in the Eddas. I tried to make the Crow not sound like she was speaking some kind of bad pidgin, so her sentences kept getting longer than I intended. After I turned this into my beta (who is not responsible for the typos I accidentally initially posted - whoops!), they mentioned that one of my pronoun choices made the Geometries sound sentient. I kind of ran with that, therefore it was the Geometries that guided Ida on her way, as a kind of substitute for the player.
Trivia: I chose the title because the story was the Crow explaining things to Ida.
"Five for the Five" was written because I liked the idea of a genderqueer character. Erin was given the traits of Erion, my Fantasy Life character, except that I thought "Erion" sounded weird so I named the character "Erin" instead. Which turned out to be a very amusing thing! I also decided that they would tackle 20-29 as it wasn't too far down but it was farther down than the original levels. Also, I decided that the small rocks that you see on screen are actually very large (explaining why you can't just step on/over them). This also explained why Erin and Abigail couldn't see the slimes at first.
Trivia: I included the "watering monsters" line because I adore the coal sprites and would love to cultivate the darn things.
"Your Brief Moment" was supposed to be IF, but it didn't happen. I liked the idea of Haruna having an adventure with Masao (and maybe someone else), even if they were older than the prompt suggested. I also thought a haunted house would be great. Thus, I created a little house on the water that is actually modeled after one of the dungeon-type sites from the video game Yo-Kai watch, and randomly decided that since I was doing that, I might as well stealth crossover little Chitose Tachibana from Fatal Frame II. (Though she's misplaced the Bell Key that Haruna and Masao find.) I took the little bit about ghosts from the Kiva writer's guide and possibly borrowed a little folklore. The items that Haruna and Masao run across are typical of the Fatal Frame games - they came there with Chitose. (Also, Haruna and Masao were originally going to have a third friend with them, Shoutarou and Phillip's son, but I decided shortly into the fic that this didn't quite work because there was little enough for Haruna and Masao to do.)
Trivia: The flying robotic cat is not only part of my robot cat thing, but a reference to Robonyan from the Yo-Kai watch game.
"So Meek and So Mild" was written for the music video "Gladiator" (Dami Im). I was drawn to the story of a young, female destined warrior going to rescue a princess. Researching it, I found that the singer was Korean, and so gave my characters Korean-ish names. I wanted to write about the background for the Mentor and see what the White Warrior looked like from her POV, so I did.
Trivia: That orphaned non-Yuletide ficlet in the fandom? I wrote it to get the tag wrangled for Yuletide.
"A Song With No End" is my yearly entry for the Fatal Frame fandom. I decided to tackle Yuu and Rei's relationship, though it got a bit stuck. This is why Yuu does not go into detail about Rei's festival photos. I unstuck myself by stealth crossovering with the Nancy Drew video games (Yuu's friend is the creator of the Suki robot from "Shadows by the Water's Edge") and Kamen Rider Fourze (Yuu's childhood friend is Gentarou's father). I did manage to finish it out with a fond thought of Yuu and Rei wandering about the country, documenting folklore with both words and pictures.
Trivia: I accidentally labeled this "Major Character Death" and didn't catch it until the stories were revealed. Of course, the Major Character Death happens after this story.
"For the bones that tear" was written because the recipient wanted meta and/or minor characters, so I went with an epilogue of sorts to "Shadows at the Water's Edge". This was partially Arglefumph's fault - he was commenting on the "bloopers" bonus and toward the end he said something along the lines of "Suki made Miwako cry!" That made me think of Miwako's relationship with Suki after what happened in the game. (I will not mention why this is important in case people reading this have not completed the game or otherwise been spoilered for the culprit in the game.) I also mentioned some little bits of meta (yeah, Nancy, why are you carrying around random things you picked up that don't belong to you) and a little bit about that really annoying Calligraphy puzzle. (Just because I can read the katakana without the book doesn't mean I like trying to do brush strokes with a mouse!)
Trivia: Suki is the reason why I have so many references to robot cats.
"And If You Take My Hand" was because I wanted to thank TheSecondBatgirl for introducing me to Fantasy Life. Erion was built as a blacksmith/miner specialist (I didn't even try for anonymity) that I was playing. I also have a Liam in there, therefore the name of Erion's ex-boyfriend, and Kirie is the name of the main antagonist of Fatal Frame I. Yuelia is an alchemist because I think she'd be great at it. I figured Odin would know a lot about Damien's (and others') magic because he has to defend Damien. It is possible to be railroaded into helping Yuelia at the start of the game, thus the reference to it.
Trivia: "Miso" is the default name of the cat (at least in my games) of Stardew Valley.
"Strengthened by the Vision" was written because... well, Misao and Christmas had to be hilarious. My fic turned out to be less so, but it gave me a chance to write Misao and his head-Zyumen. I would have loved to tackle Zyuman holidays, but the muses were less than helpful. (I remembered that the head-Zyumen had stated that they were his guilty imagination, not the souls of the dead ones.) At least it didn't quite contradict canon, as it turned out, since Misao could have gotten those presents after the events of the Christmas episode!
Trivia: Yes, if Misao had had money, Yamato would have had his very own Suki (from "Shadows at the Water's Edge")!
Anyway, my main fic was written by sheaferotherdon, and my treat by lousy_science.
I wrote 9 fics this year! My main fic was "Know You Now A Cycle's Gone" (Ghostbusters 2016), and my pinch hit was "Why This Is So" (Monument Valley). In addition, I wrote 7 treats: "Five for the Five" (Stardew Valley), "Your Brief Moment" (Kamen Rider W/Kiva), "So meek and so mild" (Gladiator - Dami Im), "A Song With No End" (Fatal Frame III: The Tormented), "For the bones that tear" (Nancy Drew (Video Games)), "And If You Take My Hand" (Fantasy Life (Video Game)), and "Strengthened by the Vision" (Doubutsu Sentai Zyuohger).
This year, I titled all my fics after lyrics sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary. Also, I tried to stick a robot cat into whatever I could, and did some rather random unlabled minor crossovers.
"Know You Now A Cycle's Gone" was my assignment! I wanted to focus on Patty (my letter mentioned how much a favorite of mine she was), and my recipient wanted pasts and making it gayer, so I gave Patty a former girlfriend who had been interested in ghosts. (And languages! Linda's greeting is "Hello! My ghostbuster! How are you?" and Patty's answer is "I'm fine.") I was hoping to actually get a long fic where the team flew out to Long Beach and did ghostbusting - I'd done some research on the Queen Mary ghosts - but I couldn't get it to coalesce. I wrote the shorter fic so that I could actually give something to my recipient while I tried to get it to work. (Maybe I'll get it done for NYR? I don't know.) I pulled the information on the Queen Mary's history from its official webpage and gathered the ghost information from several haunting-related websites.
Trivia: I picked up the haunted inn that Linda mentions from a television series, and the languages she uses are Swedish, Esperanto, and Mandarin. (She also speaks these languages much better than I do, but she started emailing Patty that way because Patty likes that.)
"Why This is So" was a pinch hit I picked up. I wanted to write Ida backstory, and it gradually kind of happened as I wrote and rechecked my canon. I wanted to explain Ida's two forms. Now it was possible that she was cursed to wander forever in human form (and lose her memories) while her people just lost their memories, but I had her be the daughter of a human mage and a Crow prince. The question-answer format was modeled after a similar one in the Eddas. I tried to make the Crow not sound like she was speaking some kind of bad pidgin, so her sentences kept getting longer than I intended. After I turned this into my beta (who is not responsible for the typos I accidentally initially posted - whoops!), they mentioned that one of my pronoun choices made the Geometries sound sentient. I kind of ran with that, therefore it was the Geometries that guided Ida on her way, as a kind of substitute for the player.
Trivia: I chose the title because the story was the Crow explaining things to Ida.
"Five for the Five" was written because I liked the idea of a genderqueer character. Erin was given the traits of Erion, my Fantasy Life character, except that I thought "Erion" sounded weird so I named the character "Erin" instead. Which turned out to be a very amusing thing! I also decided that they would tackle 20-29 as it wasn't too far down but it was farther down than the original levels. Also, I decided that the small rocks that you see on screen are actually very large (explaining why you can't just step on/over them). This also explained why Erin and Abigail couldn't see the slimes at first.
Trivia: I included the "watering monsters" line because I adore the coal sprites and would love to cultivate the darn things.
"Your Brief Moment" was supposed to be IF, but it didn't happen. I liked the idea of Haruna having an adventure with Masao (and maybe someone else), even if they were older than the prompt suggested. I also thought a haunted house would be great. Thus, I created a little house on the water that is actually modeled after one of the dungeon-type sites from the video game Yo-Kai watch, and randomly decided that since I was doing that, I might as well stealth crossover little Chitose Tachibana from Fatal Frame II. (Though she's misplaced the Bell Key that Haruna and Masao find.) I took the little bit about ghosts from the Kiva writer's guide and possibly borrowed a little folklore. The items that Haruna and Masao run across are typical of the Fatal Frame games - they came there with Chitose. (Also, Haruna and Masao were originally going to have a third friend with them, Shoutarou and Phillip's son, but I decided shortly into the fic that this didn't quite work because there was little enough for Haruna and Masao to do.)
Trivia: The flying robotic cat is not only part of my robot cat thing, but a reference to Robonyan from the Yo-Kai watch game.
"So Meek and So Mild" was written for the music video "Gladiator" (Dami Im). I was drawn to the story of a young, female destined warrior going to rescue a princess. Researching it, I found that the singer was Korean, and so gave my characters Korean-ish names. I wanted to write about the background for the Mentor and see what the White Warrior looked like from her POV, so I did.
Trivia: That orphaned non-Yuletide ficlet in the fandom? I wrote it to get the tag wrangled for Yuletide.
"A Song With No End" is my yearly entry for the Fatal Frame fandom. I decided to tackle Yuu and Rei's relationship, though it got a bit stuck. This is why Yuu does not go into detail about Rei's festival photos. I unstuck myself by stealth crossovering with the Nancy Drew video games (Yuu's friend is the creator of the Suki robot from "Shadows by the Water's Edge") and Kamen Rider Fourze (Yuu's childhood friend is Gentarou's father). I did manage to finish it out with a fond thought of Yuu and Rei wandering about the country, documenting folklore with both words and pictures.
Trivia: I accidentally labeled this "Major Character Death" and didn't catch it until the stories were revealed. Of course, the Major Character Death happens after this story.
"For the bones that tear" was written because the recipient wanted meta and/or minor characters, so I went with an epilogue of sorts to "Shadows at the Water's Edge". This was partially Arglefumph's fault - he was commenting on the "bloopers" bonus and toward the end he said something along the lines of "Suki made Miwako cry!" That made me think of Miwako's relationship with Suki after what happened in the game. (I will not mention why this is important in case people reading this have not completed the game or otherwise been spoilered for the culprit in the game.) I also mentioned some little bits of meta (yeah, Nancy, why are you carrying around random things you picked up that don't belong to you) and a little bit about that really annoying Calligraphy puzzle. (Just because I can read the katakana without the book doesn't mean I like trying to do brush strokes with a mouse!)
Trivia: Suki is the reason why I have so many references to robot cats.
"And If You Take My Hand" was because I wanted to thank TheSecondBatgirl for introducing me to Fantasy Life. Erion was built as a blacksmith/miner specialist (I didn't even try for anonymity) that I was playing. I also have a Liam in there, therefore the name of Erion's ex-boyfriend, and Kirie is the name of the main antagonist of Fatal Frame I. Yuelia is an alchemist because I think she'd be great at it. I figured Odin would know a lot about Damien's (and others') magic because he has to defend Damien. It is possible to be railroaded into helping Yuelia at the start of the game, thus the reference to it.
Trivia: "Miso" is the default name of the cat (at least in my games) of Stardew Valley.
"Strengthened by the Vision" was written because... well, Misao and Christmas had to be hilarious. My fic turned out to be less so, but it gave me a chance to write Misao and his head-Zyumen. I would have loved to tackle Zyuman holidays, but the muses were less than helpful. (I remembered that the head-Zyumen had stated that they were his guilty imagination, not the souls of the dead ones.) At least it didn't quite contradict canon, as it turned out, since Misao could have gotten those presents after the events of the Christmas episode!
Trivia: Yes, if Misao had had money, Yamato would have had his very own Suki (from "Shadows at the Water's Edge")!
