Happy New Year!

Today I:

1. Completed a lease. \o/

2. Took a prospect on an apartment tour (after some logistical issues with him A. finding parking and B. finding the building in questions) and they may well rent it. *crosses fingers*

3. Bought groceries. Mmm, delicious food. :)

4. Wrote a few more words to round out the year. (rosaxx50, I think I'm nearly done with your prompt ficlet... unless it goes sideway on me rather than wrapping up, which is always a possibility.)

5. Zoom call with my parents, Nick, and my Aunt Jan.

6. Stayed up 'til midnight just because.

And now, to bed. 2020 has been a hell of a year and I'm glad it's over.

[Fic] "String New Threads" -- The Darkangel

Yuletide reveal day!

I made about negative 100% attempt to be anonymous with my assignment this year. On the one hand, it's in a tiny obscure fandom, so who's going to know? On the other hand, so far as I can tell I have either written or been gifted literally half the extant fic for this fandom, so, you know, it's not a huge stretch to compare writing styles and peg me for this story as well. *wry*

Anyway, the story, written for MarsDragon:

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String New Threads (1202 words) by Elizabeth Culmer
Fandom: Darkangel Trilogy - Meredith Ann Pierce
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Aeriel/Erin (Darkangel Trilogy)
Characters: Aeriel (Darkangel Trilogy), Erin (Darkangel Trilogy)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Despair, Hope, Misses Clause Challenge, Astronomy

Summary: When the last fragment of the soul of the world was regathered and Aeriel stood in the heart of Crystalglass before the loom where she had learned to weave numbers into truth, she broke the cloth she wove and sank to her knees, weeping.

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MarsDragon's prompts were so entirely up my alley in terms of worldbuilding that it was actually a little tricky to choose one! I also got kind of overwhelmed by December and the posting deadline snuck up on me, so I wrote this in a bit of a rush at the last minute -- if I'd been more organized, I would have tried to write a couple treats as well, and in fact I may raid MarsDragon's prompt for future story ideas.

As for this story specifically, well. Like I said in my post-fic note, the working title was "let's go steal a comet," and I had the damndest time thinking of something that fit even half as well but was more tonally appropriate. It wound up a little bit as a relationship study (because Aeriel is occasionally prone to despair and taking the "freeze" option in a fight-flight scenario, whereas Erin is more likely to fight), but mostly it's an excuse to indulge in a canon-typical blend of science fiction and fairy-tale logic, and tease out some implications of Pierce's worldbuilding related to stars and methods of interplanetary travel.

And also to lay ground for a story about hijacking a comet, which I may go back and explore in more detail someday. :D

[Fic] "A Whirlwind Visit" -- Oz

And then I wrote a treat for aurilly, because why not!

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A Whirlwind Visit (2230 words) by Elizabeth Culmer
Fandom: Oz - L. Frank Baum
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Button-Bright & Polychrome
Characters: Button-Bright, Polychrome
Additional Tags: Family, Friendship, Yuletide Treat, Homecoming

Summary: The first time Polychrome took Button-Bright to visit the kingdom of the sky fairies, all went well. They were both determined that the second visit would be even better. Button-Bright asked Princess Ozma and the Wizard to help him pack and shrink a whole week's worth of food, Polychrome asked her aunt for help weaving a blanket of moonbeams to keep Button-Bright warm in the chill of the upper air, and they picked a week that should start and end with sun, but have some rain in the middle so Polychrome could show off the sky kingdom in all its moods and weathers.

It was a very good plan.

Unfortunately, it went awry.

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It was late on Christmas Eve, and I was at my parents' house without access to most of my various canon sources, so I poked around the prompt spreadsheet until I found something that I thought I could write fairly quickly and without needing extensive canon review. (And the canon is also entirely in public domain and available online.) I actually wrote a story about Button-Bright as my Yuletide assignment two years ago, which concluded with him sending a letter to his parents to let them know he was safe and living in Oz. That still nagged at me a little, so when I saw aurilly's prompt about Button-Bright and Polychrome perhaps ending up in Philadelphia for a while, that struck me as something I really wanted to write, right now.

I did no planning for this whatsoever, which is why Button-Bright's parents don't actually appear on-page and instead all the interaction is with a housemaid and a cook -- basically, it occurred to me as he rang the doorbell that his family is filthy rich and would have a servant to answer the door. I also backfilled some of the opening, because it's important the first visit to the Sky Kingdoms went well, and also I think sky kingdoms (whether made of fairy magic and clouds and rainbows, or floating islands, or I think I once read about one that was held up by hot air balloons?) are inherently cool.

I think I will keep an eye out for future excuses to write Button-Bright and/or Polychrome, because I've enjoyed both this story and my 2018 Yuletide assignment a LOT. :D