Yuletide 2020 reveals!
Jan. 1st, 2021 11:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiroseI wrote 9 fics this year! All have titles that are translated lyrics from Marco (aka Marco Lin)'s mini album Fan Cloud. I got a bit fic-happy for Epistory - Typing Chronicles (which I met and fell in love with just before signups) and Slime Rancher (my current big comfort game) and wandered about a bit fandom-wise for the rest. Some of them I had more to talk about than others.
I've linked each of them. Of the bunch, a lot of people seem to know the basic concept of Lemmings, and probably readers could get the gist of the rest of the stories (if you're interested in reading "Strolling Through This Jungle" it might help to know at least one of the canons, though). "Let The Struggles Fall Away" was beta tested mostly by people who had never played Epistory and didn't have any problems understanding the general story but people familiar with the canon will get more out of it.
(Since most of my canons were video games, I'll just link quick reviews/overviews from YouTube in case readers want to get an idea of the canons: Epistory, Chip's Challenge, Lemmings, My Time at Portia, and Slime Rancher. Also, a good (and sometimes spoilery) review of Xenogenesis/Lilith's Brood that makes me wonder if I wrote the script in my sleep, for those interested - also, the person has the same edition of the trilogy that I do!).
Let The Struggles Fall Away (Epistory - Typing Chronicles): Since this is interactive fiction of 9000+ words, I decided to split it out - general, coding, and for fun, some of the late changelog.
The Meaning of Being Tired (Chip's Challenge): I think this has been requested before, and I'd been recently playing Chip's Challenge for other reasons so I wanted to fill it. I thought it might be fun to a little about how Chip felt about the whole thing while going through level 12, where you have to clear a million chips and get chased by the teeth things. I think the treat recipient mentioned something about Chip carrying keys as big as himself, and I thought of how you didn't really see Chip carry anything (any keys/boots he steps on just disappear), so dimensional pocket it was!
Light is left shining (Epistory - Typing Chronicles): So, what does the Fox see as you go through Epistory? I tried to imagine the Fox as a conveyor of humans through a shifting landscape. I imagine that each human/ghost/muse sees the world/journey a little bit differently, and the Fox a little bit differently, so I wanted to try to convey how the Fox felt about the whole thing and tried to see how the canon game would look from the Fox's viewpoint and if Audrey/the Muse would exist in the Fox's POV. I watched a few videos of the game (as I'm usually too busy playing the game to notice things like this) and while the Fox and the Muse react together to threats, the magic comes from the human. I think it's the bond between the two that makes them so effective; the human handles words, the fox handles movement, and they work so well together. I at first didn't intend to make it so bittersweet, but that's how it ended up.
Strolling Through This Jungle (Epistory - Typing Chronicles/Captain Marvel (2019)): I wanted to give my assigned recipient something else - a second gift, I felt, when I loved what I was writing for "Let the Struggles Fall Away", and an apology for when I hated what I'd written/coded for that story. When I went back to the letter to see if there was anything I could write, I noticed that my recipient had later added two possible crossovers, one of which was for Captain Marvel. I'd written Captain Marvel for my assignment last year, and the prompts intrigued me. Originally, I was going to have Vers going through the story alone, but then Audrey/The Muse showed up in the middle of it, so it turned out more a crossover than a fusion. Vers sees a human airplane hangar where Audrey/The Muse sees Creation City. (One of the reasons for Audrey/The Muse taking the lead is that I wanted to emphasize Epistory more than the ineligible Captain Marvel, so Audrey/The Muse leading Vers to the Spark power it was!) Vers' version of the flower-like thing in Epistory is the engine from Captain Marvel.
Of Your Gentleness (My Time at Portia): There were a lot of places I could go with this, but the recipient stating that they liked Ginger/female Builder got my attention and so I started thinking about what Ginger's life would be over at the Builder's house. I felt kind of bad that she didn't have constant company (my builder rarely stays in the house for long) like she would at home, since Russo/Gale/Gust wouldn't be stopping by at lunchtime and then again in the evening. My builder's first response was "whoops, maybe we should move to your house then!" The fic grew out of that, because Ginger is a sweetheart that wants to make the Builder happy as well and didn't want the Builder to feel that she had to move just for her.
Fall Into My Gentle Swamp (Slime Rancher): I really don't know how the prompt "being in a new place, ranching strange creatures" turned into the first ever Far, Far Range potluck, to be honest. I think it was because the recipient didn't specify "you can use only some of these characters if you want" and I was rereading Casey's letters anyway, so when I was thinking of a way to do that, the idea of the potluck came into my mind and didn't leave. It turned out to be really fun, figuring how everybody would react, especially Ogden and Viktor. I love the secret styles so I made sure they went into the fic, and of course Ogden's kookadodoba obsession that of course nobody else shares.
Feeling Infinite (Lemmings): The recipient of this story requested in Epistory, but I couldn't figure out a good fic for the request after writing 3 others, so I swapped over to Lemmings and did some worldbuilding instead. In all versions, the Lemmings are indistinguishable from each other, so I decided to try to POV an individual Lemming and tried to figure out how they would keep track of each other (if they did). The number-as-name things hails back to the Qunari of Dragon Age Inquisition, and I think it worked well here. (It's not the first time that I had a fandom with a "Guiding Hand" - Virtual Villagers 5 actually had the villagers worshipping the player as the nameless entity that had moved them around during that game series.)
Like A Token of Me (Xenogenesis series - Octavia E. Butler): I grabbed this as my yearly pinch hit and ended up with All The Feels. I skipped it the first time on my treating list (even though I was vaguely familiar with the canon) because it was a blank signup and honestly, I prefer some kind of prompt and what DNWs to avoid - after all, I want my recipient to get something they like! I was drawing a blank and then I found an article linked from Wikipedia that among other things mentioned the lack of LGBT+ individuals in the Xenogenesis. Canon-wise, I can see it as the Oankali not wanting to use humans that wouldn't mate with other humans and/or didn't themselves as cisgender. I figure Kerri and her partner Kimmi were asexual/biromantic and bisexual/polysexual respectively, so the Oankali figured that they'd hook up with men (and not with each other). What Kerri doesn't mention is that they both inadvertently "paired off" with men in the training rooms (they were in the same group) so the Oankali thought they'd stay hooked up with men. They didn't, needless to say. They ran with each other and ended up in Phoenix as a couple. (They're very closeted, which is why Kimmi ruffles Kerri's hair when she sees Tino in the room instead of giving her a kiss, but they consider themselves more or less married.) I also figure that the Oankali thought that they could do an end run around Kerri's pregnancy squick, but... no. Kimmi being a blacksmith is from me watching way too much "Forged in Fire", while I figured Kerri's interest in wood (she took woodworking/shop in high school and continued woodworking when she was an adult) would allow her to make the handles for Kimmi's knives and also bring in more profit for the shop. Kerri's attitude towards the Oankali is less extreme than most people in canon because she is very much a "you do yours, I'll do mine" that I think some people would still have (despite the war). I did try to get Kimmi to talk, but she didn't want to, thank you very much.
In the endless night sky (Slime Rancher): What did the average person know about the Far, Far Range and the slimes, anyway? I wanted to write about Beatrix's decision to go to the Far, Far Range (given what we know of her life prior to her arrival from Casey's letters) and her decision to run it by Casey. It might deviate from what Casey sings in "1000 light years away" a little bit ("oh don't say that you'll go, my heart can't bear the news"), partly because it's Beatrix's POV and not Casey's, and Casey doesn't otherwise mention that they're possibly still in love with Beatrix. The reason that Casey is looking at the screen at all is because Beatrix wants to get their blessing on her plans. I had Casey meet Beatrix in Beatrix's shop because Casey mentions buying a cactus from Beatrix's shop. Casey mentions going to San Francisco to spend time with/be with Beatrix, and that didn't sound like where her plant shop was, so I had to figure out why Beatrix moved to San Francisco. That's how I came up with Beatrix taking over an expansion of her family business in San Francisco, which is (relatively?) close to Sacramento. Angie is a bandmate/former love of Casey's; her existence is due to a letter from the early version of Slime Rancher where Casey mentions an unnamed person that they were in love that Beatrix met at a Halloween party. I also thought about (especially after the other Slime Rancher treat that I wrote) of how Beatrix handled standard life stuff, like eating and going to the bathroom. I presume that for the bathroom part she took care of it somehow in idle moments or was changed so she didn't need to go as often. For food, I figured some stuff was shipped in and that the prices you see in canon were actually the profit you get after transportation fees for emails/food/plorts was figured in.
I've linked each of them. Of the bunch, a lot of people seem to know the basic concept of Lemmings, and probably readers could get the gist of the rest of the stories (if you're interested in reading "Strolling Through This Jungle" it might help to know at least one of the canons, though). "Let The Struggles Fall Away" was beta tested mostly by people who had never played Epistory and didn't have any problems understanding the general story but people familiar with the canon will get more out of it.
(Since most of my canons were video games, I'll just link quick reviews/overviews from YouTube in case readers want to get an idea of the canons: Epistory, Chip's Challenge, Lemmings, My Time at Portia, and Slime Rancher. Also, a good (and sometimes spoilery) review of Xenogenesis/Lilith's Brood that makes me wonder if I wrote the script in my sleep, for those interested - also, the person has the same edition of the trilogy that I do!).
Let The Struggles Fall Away (Epistory - Typing Chronicles): Since this is interactive fiction of 9000+ words, I decided to split it out - general, coding, and for fun, some of the late changelog.
The Meaning of Being Tired (Chip's Challenge): I think this has been requested before, and I'd been recently playing Chip's Challenge for other reasons so I wanted to fill it. I thought it might be fun to a little about how Chip felt about the whole thing while going through level 12, where you have to clear a million chips and get chased by the teeth things. I think the treat recipient mentioned something about Chip carrying keys as big as himself, and I thought of how you didn't really see Chip carry anything (any keys/boots he steps on just disappear), so dimensional pocket it was!
Light is left shining (Epistory - Typing Chronicles): So, what does the Fox see as you go through Epistory? I tried to imagine the Fox as a conveyor of humans through a shifting landscape. I imagine that each human/ghost/muse sees the world/journey a little bit differently, and the Fox a little bit differently, so I wanted to try to convey how the Fox felt about the whole thing and tried to see how the canon game would look from the Fox's viewpoint and if Audrey/the Muse would exist in the Fox's POV. I watched a few videos of the game (as I'm usually too busy playing the game to notice things like this) and while the Fox and the Muse react together to threats, the magic comes from the human. I think it's the bond between the two that makes them so effective; the human handles words, the fox handles movement, and they work so well together. I at first didn't intend to make it so bittersweet, but that's how it ended up.
Strolling Through This Jungle (Epistory - Typing Chronicles/Captain Marvel (2019)): I wanted to give my assigned recipient something else - a second gift, I felt, when I loved what I was writing for "Let the Struggles Fall Away", and an apology for when I hated what I'd written/coded for that story. When I went back to the letter to see if there was anything I could write, I noticed that my recipient had later added two possible crossovers, one of which was for Captain Marvel. I'd written Captain Marvel for my assignment last year, and the prompts intrigued me. Originally, I was going to have Vers going through the story alone, but then Audrey/The Muse showed up in the middle of it, so it turned out more a crossover than a fusion. Vers sees a human airplane hangar where Audrey/The Muse sees Creation City. (One of the reasons for Audrey/The Muse taking the lead is that I wanted to emphasize Epistory more than the ineligible Captain Marvel, so Audrey/The Muse leading Vers to the Spark power it was!) Vers' version of the flower-like thing in Epistory is the engine from Captain Marvel.
Of Your Gentleness (My Time at Portia): There were a lot of places I could go with this, but the recipient stating that they liked Ginger/female Builder got my attention and so I started thinking about what Ginger's life would be over at the Builder's house. I felt kind of bad that she didn't have constant company (my builder rarely stays in the house for long) like she would at home, since Russo/Gale/Gust wouldn't be stopping by at lunchtime and then again in the evening. My builder's first response was "whoops, maybe we should move to your house then!" The fic grew out of that, because Ginger is a sweetheart that wants to make the Builder happy as well and didn't want the Builder to feel that she had to move just for her.
Fall Into My Gentle Swamp (Slime Rancher): I really don't know how the prompt "being in a new place, ranching strange creatures" turned into the first ever Far, Far Range potluck, to be honest. I think it was because the recipient didn't specify "you can use only some of these characters if you want" and I was rereading Casey's letters anyway, so when I was thinking of a way to do that, the idea of the potluck came into my mind and didn't leave. It turned out to be really fun, figuring how everybody would react, especially Ogden and Viktor. I love the secret styles so I made sure they went into the fic, and of course Ogden's kookadodoba obsession that of course nobody else shares.
Feeling Infinite (Lemmings): The recipient of this story requested in Epistory, but I couldn't figure out a good fic for the request after writing 3 others, so I swapped over to Lemmings and did some worldbuilding instead. In all versions, the Lemmings are indistinguishable from each other, so I decided to try to POV an individual Lemming and tried to figure out how they would keep track of each other (if they did). The number-as-name things hails back to the Qunari of Dragon Age Inquisition, and I think it worked well here. (It's not the first time that I had a fandom with a "Guiding Hand" - Virtual Villagers 5 actually had the villagers worshipping the player as the nameless entity that had moved them around during that game series.)
Like A Token of Me (Xenogenesis series - Octavia E. Butler): I grabbed this as my yearly pinch hit and ended up with All The Feels. I skipped it the first time on my treating list (even though I was vaguely familiar with the canon) because it was a blank signup and honestly, I prefer some kind of prompt and what DNWs to avoid - after all, I want my recipient to get something they like! I was drawing a blank and then I found an article linked from Wikipedia that among other things mentioned the lack of LGBT+ individuals in the Xenogenesis. Canon-wise, I can see it as the Oankali not wanting to use humans that wouldn't mate with other humans and/or didn't themselves as cisgender. I figure Kerri and her partner Kimmi were asexual/biromantic and bisexual/polysexual respectively, so the Oankali figured that they'd hook up with men (and not with each other). What Kerri doesn't mention is that they both inadvertently "paired off" with men in the training rooms (they were in the same group) so the Oankali thought they'd stay hooked up with men. They didn't, needless to say. They ran with each other and ended up in Phoenix as a couple. (They're very closeted, which is why Kimmi ruffles Kerri's hair when she sees Tino in the room instead of giving her a kiss, but they consider themselves more or less married.) I also figure that the Oankali thought that they could do an end run around Kerri's pregnancy squick, but... no. Kimmi being a blacksmith is from me watching way too much "Forged in Fire", while I figured Kerri's interest in wood (she took woodworking/shop in high school and continued woodworking when she was an adult) would allow her to make the handles for Kimmi's knives and also bring in more profit for the shop. Kerri's attitude towards the Oankali is less extreme than most people in canon because she is very much a "you do yours, I'll do mine" that I think some people would still have (despite the war). I did try to get Kimmi to talk, but she didn't want to, thank you very much.
In the endless night sky (Slime Rancher): What did the average person know about the Far, Far Range and the slimes, anyway? I wanted to write about Beatrix's decision to go to the Far, Far Range (given what we know of her life prior to her arrival from Casey's letters) and her decision to run it by Casey. It might deviate from what Casey sings in "1000 light years away" a little bit ("oh don't say that you'll go, my heart can't bear the news"), partly because it's Beatrix's POV and not Casey's, and Casey doesn't otherwise mention that they're possibly still in love with Beatrix. The reason that Casey is looking at the screen at all is because Beatrix wants to get their blessing on her plans. I had Casey meet Beatrix in Beatrix's shop because Casey mentions buying a cactus from Beatrix's shop. Casey mentions going to San Francisco to spend time with/be with Beatrix, and that didn't sound like where her plant shop was, so I had to figure out why Beatrix moved to San Francisco. That's how I came up with Beatrix taking over an expansion of her family business in San Francisco, which is (relatively?) close to Sacramento. Angie is a bandmate/former love of Casey's; her existence is due to a letter from the early version of Slime Rancher where Casey mentions an unnamed person that they were in love that Beatrix met at a Halloween party. I also thought about (especially after the other Slime Rancher treat that I wrote) of how Beatrix handled standard life stuff, like eating and going to the bathroom. I presume that for the bathroom part she took care of it somehow in idle moments or was changed so she didn't need to go as often. For food, I figured some stuff was shipped in and that the prices you see in canon were actually the profit you get after transportation fees for emails/food/plorts was figured in.
