Yuletide reveals!
Jan. 1st, 2024 01:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiroseSo, this year I wrote 5 fics! Four in Main and one in Madness.
The fics in question were: "Edit out of the Myth" (PowerWash Simulator), "Adam Ruins Cybersecurity, a minisode" (Adam Ruins Everything), "Celebrate the Small Things" (Boyfriend Dungeon), "Rock Dared Dream of Me" (The Little Mermaid (2023)), and "Some Measures Comely Tread" (1990s Tomorrow People).
So, in order of writing:
Edit out of the Myth: I matched this person technically on Zero Escape, but the whole section on PowerWash Simulator in my recip's letter interested me so I went and got myself a copy. Fell mad in love with the whole thing, was hooked when I hit the Detatched House (which is Aura and Jenny's), decided to write in it instead of Zero Escape (I love the heck out of writing Akane, but I felt like I wanted to write something new).
So, initially I was going to write more about Aura, her partner Jenny, and their adventures (also, I just loved the lore about Esther - I adored her car and it was so nice to see the poster in the subway) because of the lore in the RV level, but my brain went "cats!" so the plot idea reshaped itself into what I ended up writing. Aura wanted to know about the whole missing cats/Ulysses plot, so Lettie, her love of history, and her podcast were born. I felt there was a little contradiction between the implied cat sacrifice and the mayor's obvious love of Ulysses (more or less), plus the whole hat thing, so this is why Ulysses got to catch a mouse instead of, say, getting sacrificed. (I figure the current mayor stopped that tradition.) So, Lettie of course had to go research her distant relative's history and get the idea to propose the dual podcast/video thing with Aura. I made her a low-level clerk because I didn't want the absolute complete "this is everything that happened in the mayor's office, but rather 2nd and 3rd hand stuff.
Random other facts: Lettie's coworker, Hazuki, shares a name with Zero Escape's Lotus. The rich lady who hires "Doc"/"Dirtfinder" is Lara Croft (a free DLC), and the movie studio reference is the (paid) Back to the Future DLC. Lettie's former employer is the mini-golf course that is in one of the bonus missions.
Title is from the poem "Spirit", by Annie Boutelle.
Adam Ruins Cybersecurity, a minisode: I was perusing the Interactive Fiction post on the yuletide comm when I ran across a mention of this show and I thought "oh hey, another new piece of media to consume that sounds Relevant To My Interests! Also maybe to write for." I ended up binging and enjoying the entire series, though my favorite remains "Adam Ruins Security". I relished the chance to talk about cybersecurity and in particular phishing, so I started research while I was also playing through PowerWash Simulator for my assignment. I couldn't figure out a good way to tackle it as Interactive Fiction, but I thought I could do a regualr fic for it.
Comedy is not my strong point and I would never have dreamed of trying to pastiche a show like this, so it was quite a challenge! It took me two drafts to feel like I had both Adam and the show down (and even then I needed a beta to make sure I'd hit canon feel). I had an array of things that Adam could have talked about and I could find sources for, so I let the flow determine what Adam debunked.
The only thing I wanted to make sure I got in was the concept of social engineering (which is why there's more time spent on that than the other debunks and why Adam's expert specializes on the subject). That flowed into talking about alert fatigue as people think chasing alerts is a matter of security staff pressing a button and bringing up actual alerts instead of a bunch of alerts that the security software thinks might be an actual security issue. I have friends who have stories about how Microsoft's cybersecurity solution flagged the login page for OneDrive (its own product) and other hilarious false positives (things that look like alerts but actually aren't)! Then that wandered into a small bit about not all hackers being malicious (Adam refers to black hat hackers as just hackers in Adam Ruins Security, which is a stereotype and was the only bit of the episode that annoyed me). And then finally, I had to bring up the fact that most attacks are actually attacks of opportunity. Do cybercrimials try to attack high-value targets? Yes! Are they happy to phish (for identity theft or login credentials) anybody who gives them a chance? Also yes!
Random other facts: Emily showed up in the first draft before I realized maybe Adam explaining a computer concept to a woman was a bit sexist. So Jim was created. I wanted to include a joke about zombies (as a zombie is a cybersecurity concept; it refers to a computer that's been infected with malware and made part of a botnet) vs the "professional network for the formerly living" but couldn't quite find a place to fit the concept of infected computers to set it up. Mirinda's name shifted over time; she started out as Marigold Lew, but I decided I didn't like her first name and changed it out to Mirinda, which means "amazing" in Esperanto. Likewise, her surname was chosen as a homage to the movie "WarGames".
Title-wise, I tried to keep to the same naming convention as the actual series, but added "a minisode" because that's exactly what this was.
I've also done a DVD commentary for this fic because otherwise it would take over the entire reveals post.
Celebrate the Small Things: Another requester and I both wanted Boyfriend Dungeon worldbuilding, and I figured that one of us should get some! Also, it was an excuse to write about Isaac's mention of fighting trucks in his early-game dialogue.
To hide the fact that I wrote it, the Wielder in this story is in a polyamorous relationship with the entire cast (sans Pocket). That being established, I started writing, and the story flowed fairly easily - probably the easiest fic to write this Yuletide. I don't know how old Isaac is or how long he's been in Verona Beach so I may have made his friendship with Paige far too much in the past. That being said, I had a blast figuring out Paige's weapon form. I also got to incorporate some of my other headcanons like how the dunj not only appears different to each wielder, but sometimes slightly different to each weapon-partner when you visit the dunj; this also explains why you can get the same dialogue over and over at each rest spot as the partners don't see the same place that you do (and may not even remember some of the places/conversations).
Paige's storyline just practically wrote itself, and I just loved how she came out - she came out as more of a real person than my actual wielder did! (Sorry, Alyssa.)
Random bit: I've defeated the game several times, and most of the time I use Sawyer in the boss fight as they're the easiest one for me to use there - and thus the reason why Sawyer is the one that Alyssa mentions sharing a tub of ice cream with.
The title came from what Paige believed, that one should celebrate the small things.
Rock Dared Dream of Me: I try to grab a pinch hit every year if I can. This year I saw a MMPR (Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers) request come up with a movie that I could easily access as a backup and grabbed it. Looked at the recipient's one treat in MMPR, and went with the movie. (The treat is awesome and I couldn't have done better.) So I went and watched the live action Little Mermaid remake, and it's just as well that my memories of the animated version are... a little vague. I watched it especially for Ariel/Eric content and the movie did not disappoint.
I loved the movie, and characters that are curious and love learning are my jam, so both Ariel and Eric appealed to me. It looked like the movie was set up for the two of them to take off in that ship + Ariel mentioned something that would require her to have fins and a tail, so my mind went from there. I tried to think about what the two of them would (try to) talk about, and what would be possible for Eric to bring for his new bride. And how they would cope with being stuck in a ship - or at least how Ariel would. I'm sure Eric would love to explore the oceans too! (Though the line about him thinking about asking his new father-in-law about the possibility was added in an edit a day or so before reveals, funnily enough.)
Random other bits: There were points where I got stuck - Eric wasn't the only one that felt a little tongue-tied in this fic! I got a bit sidetracked thinking about language and description, and had to stop and rewrite bits because I kept getting carried away with speculation about what language the merfolk usually spoke etc. Also on how descriptions vary between cultures, which made it difficult for Ariel and Eric to actually have much of a frame of reference besides what Ariel had managed to learn from her time on the land. Also, this is my first Disney movie fic since 3 treats I wrote back in 2010/2011 for the animated Mulan!
The title is from the poem "The Wonder of It" by Harriet Monroe.
Some measures comely tread: The reason this fic was written was a bit convoluted. Tptigger, a longtime friend of mine, got coralysendria, a person she normally treats in Yuletide, as her recipient this year. She also had some RL issues that prevented her from writing more than her assignment. So in order to try to keep coralysendria from realizing that tptigger was her assigned writer (because lack of treat), I volunteered to write 1990s Tomorrow People fic to throw her off.
The idea of a Parents of Tomorrow People support group appealed to me as a premise. In canon, of the six Tomorrow People who appear, only three of them - Megabyte, Ami, and Lisa - have parents who know about them being Tomorrow People (if Adam's parents know, it's never mentioned, Jade's mother is in the dark and her dad is never mentioned, and while Aunt Ruth knows, neither of Kevin's parents do). Mrs. Davis/Davies, like her daughter, is never heard from again after the events of Origin Story so a 2-person Parent Support group it was! I actually tried to avoid mentioning Mrs. Davis as everybody who writes Tomorrow People for Yuletide know that I like Lisa, but it didn't make sense that Bill wouldn't acknowledge her existence, and a slight mention of her helped to move the story along.
It was a bit more difficult to figure out what the parent of a superpowered teenager would worry about, but after a session of brainstorming I was able to put together a list to insert as the flow of the story allowed. I also wanted to incorporate found family/team as family as it's a trope that is common in tptigger's fics (and a favorite of mine, though I write it less), thus Bill as Team Dad. I also had a bit of trouble writing Mrs. Jackson - I've written Bill before but not her and I have to confess I didn't like her very much when I first was watching the series back in the 90s. I did have fun giving Ami and her mum a bit of back story though! And once I could figure out what her worries were it was much easier and I was able to get this treat done between deadline and reveals.
Random other bits: The reference to Witch Mountain was because that was the fandom tptigger was writing in and she was going to have a TP reference in there. I spent some time trying to figure out if it was plausible for Ami to be young enough to have seen Witch Mountain repeatedly and for her mom to have a VCR (and tape Escape to Witch Mountain off the telly, as the official video came out too late to fit in my mental timeline). Also, there are more tags than I usually put in to aid in the deception. Also, I started this before "Rock Dared Dream of Me" but finished after as getting that fic done gave me the oomph I needed to figure this one out.
The title comes from the poem "Now Winter Nights Enlarge" by Thomas Campion.
(And because I will be looking back at this post, here are the stats at the end of the day on 12/31: Rock Dared Dream of Me, 102 hits/15 kudos; Adam Ruins Cybersecurity, 52 hits/21 kudos; Edit out of the myth, 31 hits/7 kudos; Celebrate the Small Things, 10 hits/3 kudos; Some measures comely tread, 9 hits/kudos)
The fics in question were: "Edit out of the Myth" (PowerWash Simulator), "Adam Ruins Cybersecurity, a minisode" (Adam Ruins Everything), "Celebrate the Small Things" (Boyfriend Dungeon), "Rock Dared Dream of Me" (The Little Mermaid (2023)), and "Some Measures Comely Tread" (1990s Tomorrow People).
So, in order of writing:
Edit out of the Myth: I matched this person technically on Zero Escape, but the whole section on PowerWash Simulator in my recip's letter interested me so I went and got myself a copy. Fell mad in love with the whole thing, was hooked when I hit the Detatched House (which is Aura and Jenny's), decided to write in it instead of Zero Escape (I love the heck out of writing Akane, but I felt like I wanted to write something new).
So, initially I was going to write more about Aura, her partner Jenny, and their adventures (also, I just loved the lore about Esther - I adored her car and it was so nice to see the poster in the subway) because of the lore in the RV level, but my brain went "cats!" so the plot idea reshaped itself into what I ended up writing. Aura wanted to know about the whole missing cats/Ulysses plot, so Lettie, her love of history, and her podcast were born. I felt there was a little contradiction between the implied cat sacrifice and the mayor's obvious love of Ulysses (more or less), plus the whole hat thing, so this is why Ulysses got to catch a mouse instead of, say, getting sacrificed. (I figure the current mayor stopped that tradition.) So, Lettie of course had to go research her distant relative's history and get the idea to propose the dual podcast/video thing with Aura. I made her a low-level clerk because I didn't want the absolute complete "this is everything that happened in the mayor's office, but rather 2nd and 3rd hand stuff.
Random other facts: Lettie's coworker, Hazuki, shares a name with Zero Escape's Lotus. The rich lady who hires "Doc"/"Dirtfinder" is Lara Croft (a free DLC), and the movie studio reference is the (paid) Back to the Future DLC. Lettie's former employer is the mini-golf course that is in one of the bonus missions.
Title is from the poem "Spirit", by Annie Boutelle.
Adam Ruins Cybersecurity, a minisode: I was perusing the Interactive Fiction post on the yuletide comm when I ran across a mention of this show and I thought "oh hey, another new piece of media to consume that sounds Relevant To My Interests! Also maybe to write for." I ended up binging and enjoying the entire series, though my favorite remains "Adam Ruins Security". I relished the chance to talk about cybersecurity and in particular phishing, so I started research while I was also playing through PowerWash Simulator for my assignment. I couldn't figure out a good way to tackle it as Interactive Fiction, but I thought I could do a regualr fic for it.
Comedy is not my strong point and I would never have dreamed of trying to pastiche a show like this, so it was quite a challenge! It took me two drafts to feel like I had both Adam and the show down (and even then I needed a beta to make sure I'd hit canon feel). I had an array of things that Adam could have talked about and I could find sources for, so I let the flow determine what Adam debunked.
The only thing I wanted to make sure I got in was the concept of social engineering (which is why there's more time spent on that than the other debunks and why Adam's expert specializes on the subject). That flowed into talking about alert fatigue as people think chasing alerts is a matter of security staff pressing a button and bringing up actual alerts instead of a bunch of alerts that the security software thinks might be an actual security issue. I have friends who have stories about how Microsoft's cybersecurity solution flagged the login page for OneDrive (its own product) and other hilarious false positives (things that look like alerts but actually aren't)! Then that wandered into a small bit about not all hackers being malicious (Adam refers to black hat hackers as just hackers in Adam Ruins Security, which is a stereotype and was the only bit of the episode that annoyed me). And then finally, I had to bring up the fact that most attacks are actually attacks of opportunity. Do cybercrimials try to attack high-value targets? Yes! Are they happy to phish (for identity theft or login credentials) anybody who gives them a chance? Also yes!
Random other facts: Emily showed up in the first draft before I realized maybe Adam explaining a computer concept to a woman was a bit sexist. So Jim was created. I wanted to include a joke about zombies (as a zombie is a cybersecurity concept; it refers to a computer that's been infected with malware and made part of a botnet) vs the "professional network for the formerly living" but couldn't quite find a place to fit the concept of infected computers to set it up. Mirinda's name shifted over time; she started out as Marigold Lew, but I decided I didn't like her first name and changed it out to Mirinda, which means "amazing" in Esperanto. Likewise, her surname was chosen as a homage to the movie "WarGames".
Title-wise, I tried to keep to the same naming convention as the actual series, but added "a minisode" because that's exactly what this was.
I've also done a DVD commentary for this fic because otherwise it would take over the entire reveals post.
Celebrate the Small Things: Another requester and I both wanted Boyfriend Dungeon worldbuilding, and I figured that one of us should get some! Also, it was an excuse to write about Isaac's mention of fighting trucks in his early-game dialogue.
To hide the fact that I wrote it, the Wielder in this story is in a polyamorous relationship with the entire cast (sans Pocket). That being established, I started writing, and the story flowed fairly easily - probably the easiest fic to write this Yuletide. I don't know how old Isaac is or how long he's been in Verona Beach so I may have made his friendship with Paige far too much in the past. That being said, I had a blast figuring out Paige's weapon form. I also got to incorporate some of my other headcanons like how the dunj not only appears different to each wielder, but sometimes slightly different to each weapon-partner when you visit the dunj; this also explains why you can get the same dialogue over and over at each rest spot as the partners don't see the same place that you do (and may not even remember some of the places/conversations).
Paige's storyline just practically wrote itself, and I just loved how she came out - she came out as more of a real person than my actual wielder did! (Sorry, Alyssa.)
Random bit: I've defeated the game several times, and most of the time I use Sawyer in the boss fight as they're the easiest one for me to use there - and thus the reason why Sawyer is the one that Alyssa mentions sharing a tub of ice cream with.
The title came from what Paige believed, that one should celebrate the small things.
Rock Dared Dream of Me: I try to grab a pinch hit every year if I can. This year I saw a MMPR (Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers) request come up with a movie that I could easily access as a backup and grabbed it. Looked at the recipient's one treat in MMPR, and went with the movie. (The treat is awesome and I couldn't have done better.) So I went and watched the live action Little Mermaid remake, and it's just as well that my memories of the animated version are... a little vague. I watched it especially for Ariel/Eric content and the movie did not disappoint.
I loved the movie, and characters that are curious and love learning are my jam, so both Ariel and Eric appealed to me. It looked like the movie was set up for the two of them to take off in that ship + Ariel mentioned something that would require her to have fins and a tail, so my mind went from there. I tried to think about what the two of them would (try to) talk about, and what would be possible for Eric to bring for his new bride. And how they would cope with being stuck in a ship - or at least how Ariel would. I'm sure Eric would love to explore the oceans too! (Though the line about him thinking about asking his new father-in-law about the possibility was added in an edit a day or so before reveals, funnily enough.)
Random other bits: There were points where I got stuck - Eric wasn't the only one that felt a little tongue-tied in this fic! I got a bit sidetracked thinking about language and description, and had to stop and rewrite bits because I kept getting carried away with speculation about what language the merfolk usually spoke etc. Also on how descriptions vary between cultures, which made it difficult for Ariel and Eric to actually have much of a frame of reference besides what Ariel had managed to learn from her time on the land. Also, this is my first Disney movie fic since 3 treats I wrote back in 2010/2011 for the animated Mulan!
The title is from the poem "The Wonder of It" by Harriet Monroe.
Some measures comely tread: The reason this fic was written was a bit convoluted. Tptigger, a longtime friend of mine, got coralysendria, a person she normally treats in Yuletide, as her recipient this year. She also had some RL issues that prevented her from writing more than her assignment. So in order to try to keep coralysendria from realizing that tptigger was her assigned writer (because lack of treat), I volunteered to write 1990s Tomorrow People fic to throw her off.
The idea of a Parents of Tomorrow People support group appealed to me as a premise. In canon, of the six Tomorrow People who appear, only three of them - Megabyte, Ami, and Lisa - have parents who know about them being Tomorrow People (if Adam's parents know, it's never mentioned, Jade's mother is in the dark and her dad is never mentioned, and while Aunt Ruth knows, neither of Kevin's parents do). Mrs. Davis/Davies, like her daughter, is never heard from again after the events of Origin Story so a 2-person Parent Support group it was! I actually tried to avoid mentioning Mrs. Davis as everybody who writes Tomorrow People for Yuletide know that I like Lisa, but it didn't make sense that Bill wouldn't acknowledge her existence, and a slight mention of her helped to move the story along.
It was a bit more difficult to figure out what the parent of a superpowered teenager would worry about, but after a session of brainstorming I was able to put together a list to insert as the flow of the story allowed. I also wanted to incorporate found family/team as family as it's a trope that is common in tptigger's fics (and a favorite of mine, though I write it less), thus Bill as Team Dad. I also had a bit of trouble writing Mrs. Jackson - I've written Bill before but not her and I have to confess I didn't like her very much when I first was watching the series back in the 90s. I did have fun giving Ami and her mum a bit of back story though! And once I could figure out what her worries were it was much easier and I was able to get this treat done between deadline and reveals.
Random other bits: The reference to Witch Mountain was because that was the fandom tptigger was writing in and she was going to have a TP reference in there. I spent some time trying to figure out if it was plausible for Ami to be young enough to have seen Witch Mountain repeatedly and for her mom to have a VCR (and tape Escape to Witch Mountain off the telly, as the official video came out too late to fit in my mental timeline). Also, there are more tags than I usually put in to aid in the deception. Also, I started this before "Rock Dared Dream of Me" but finished after as getting that fic done gave me the oomph I needed to figure this one out.
The title comes from the poem "Now Winter Nights Enlarge" by Thomas Campion.
(And because I will be looking back at this post, here are the stats at the end of the day on 12/31: Rock Dared Dream of Me, 102 hits/15 kudos; Adam Ruins Cybersecurity, 52 hits/21 kudos; Edit out of the myth, 31 hits/7 kudos; Celebrate the Small Things, 10 hits/3 kudos; Some measures comely tread, 9 hits/kudos)
