edenfalling | Entries tagged with yuletide

Yuletide reveal day!

My giftee this year was

Dolorosa, and the fandom we matched on was The Lions of Al-Rassan, which is one of my favorite books ever, and one I myself have requested for Yuletide at various times in the past. :)

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All Roads Lead to Ragosa (1818 words) by Elizabeth Culmer
Fandom: The Lions of Al-Rassan - Guy Gavriel Kay
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Miranda Belmonte/Rodrigo Belmonte, Jehane bet Ishak & Ammar ibn Khairan & Rodrigo Belmonte
Characters: Miranda Belmonte, Jehane bet Ishak, Ammar ibn Khairan, Rodrigo Belmonte
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Reunions

Summary: Word of the ambush at Emir ha'Nazar gets out. Miranda moves the Belmonte household to Ragosa.

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I don't have a lot to say about this story, honestly? Dolorosa and I seem to share interpretations of and reactions to the book, so the prompts were exactly up my alley. The main challenge was finding a reasonable point to kick canon in the knees and get Miranda into the same physical location as the other three main characters, while also ensuring that the wider political situation is still careening toward disaster because sociopolitical forces are larger than any one person. I think I found a decently plausible solution for that!

If I'd had more time and energy, I would have liked to write a much longer story that would go into more logistical detail about Miranda's trip south, show word of turmoil in Valledo reaching Ragosa, do some blunt-hammer-meets-subtle-maneuvering politics with Miranda's formal introduction to King Badir, let Miranda actively get to know Jehane and Ammar, include Diego and Fernan around the edges, and possibly trace some of the political knock-on effects this would have as the tragedy of canon continues to unroll. Alas, this has not been a great year for me on the creative front. So I fell back on structure and wrote a tidy little four-perspective medley with the outer segments (Miranda and Rodrigo) echoing each other in their opening lines and the inner segments (Jehane and Ammar echoing a little more subtly as observers), and left the wider effects and relationship stuff as implications for the future.

In summary, it's not what I initially wanted to write, but I think it's a pretty good story nonetheless. :)

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: ithaca, ny
Crossposts: https://edenfalling.livejournal.com/1303869.html

This is tragically belated because life has been happening at me this past week. Still, better late than never, yes?

Anyway, you MUST go read my gift immediately!

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The Gift of Terrain (2557 words) by Edonohana
Fandom: Darkangel Trilogy - Meredith Ann Pierce
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Aeriel (Darkangel Trilogy), Eoduin (Darkangel Trilogy)
Additional Tags: Worldbuilding, Pre-Canon, harvest, Festivals, Fruit, Magic, Non-Sexual Slavery

Summary: Eoduin should be certain that she’d be chosen as Harvest Maiden. Who but the syndic's daughter should be the one to mount the stone step with her new kirtle swirling around her ankles and hold her giftfruit high for all to see?

But the syndic didn’t choose the Harvest Maiden. Terrain did.

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Basically, this is the pre-canon Eoduin & Aeriel story of my heart, which catches their weird, tangled almost-friendship in all its problematic glory. The worldbuilding is AMAZING, full of fruits and flowers and food, and lets you see both how Terrain is still beautiful and rich (despite Oriencor's draining of the world), and what Oriencor's slow poison has done to the people instead of to the land.

Current Mood: pleased!
Current Location: ithaca, ny
Crossposts: https://edenfalling.livejournal.com/1303526.html

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Hi, and thank you in advance for writing a story for me! I'm pretty easy to please -- unless you write a context-free sex scene, I'll be thrilled just to get a fic in one of the fandoms I asked for. *grin* But I realize that's not terribly helpful, so here's the (very!) long version. (I am sorry for the tl;dr, but I like to talk about things I love and I figure more details are better than fewer.)

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( General Information )

Okay. On to specific fandoms!

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( The Darkangel Trilogy )

( Greenwing & Dart )

( Saga of the Skolian Empire )

And that is that. Thank you again, and happy writing!

Current Mood: excited
Current Location: ithaca, ny
Crossposts: https://edenfalling.livejournal.com/1296340.html

I nominated 3 things this year, all three of which have been approved:

1. The Darkangel Trilogy by Meredith Ann Pierce, with Eoduin, Syllva, Sabr, and worldbuilding (because I think someone else had already nommed Aeriel, Irrylath, and Erin). I always want more female characters and worldbuilding for that fandom. It is my perennial tiny fandom of the heart, and it deserves far more than the 40 extant works it has on AO3 (plus I think a couple of 3-sentence ficathon fills floating around various corners of the internet).

2. The Saga of the Skolian Empire by Catherine Asaro, which I will continue to nominate until somebody finally writes me the Lisi-centric story of my dreams, goddammit. (I am kind and also nominate Jai, Kelric, and Dehya every year, partly because those are the three characters I am most interested in seeing Lisi encounter, but also because they're each already the protagonist of at least one book so maybe someone else will discover a sudden need for a story centered on one of them. You never know!)

3. The Greenwing & Dart series by Victoria Goddard, with Violet, Lark Indrilline, Mrs. Jullanar Etaris, and worldbuilding. Because again, I would like more stories centered on female characters, all three are awesome (Lark in a horrifying way, but still), and I would pay actual cash money for a story focusing on any combination of those three having some kind of adventure or fraught conversation. :D

So that's three requests neatly sewn up. I may add another request or two if something really jumps out at me from the tagset, but those are the ones I wanted to make SURE existed.

Current Mood: anticipatory
Current Location: ithaca, ny
Crossposts: https://edenfalling.livejournal.com/1293677.html

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

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: ithaca, ny
Crossposts: https://edenfalling.livejournal.com/1260191.html

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

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: ithaca, ny
Crossposts: https://edenfalling.livejournal.com/1259832.html

I wrote two stories this year -- my assignment and then a last-minute treat just because -- so there's one in the main Yuletide collection and one in the Yuletide Madness collection.

If you guess either of them... um... I will write you a ficlet of at least 500 words? They are both in fandoms for which I have previously written. I feel that one of them is blatantly obviously mine, while the other might be recognizable as mine via context clues if you've read my other work in that particular fandom.

Anyway, now let me talk about my gifts -- because I got gifts, plural! Two whole stories!! This is extremely exciting!!!

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Three Clowns and a Camel Walk Into a Bar... (1045 words) by InArduisFidelis
Fandom: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Azu & Grizzop drik acht Amsterdam & Sasha Racket
Characters: Azu (Rusty Quill Gaming), Grizzop drik acht Amsterdam, Sasha Racket, Topaz T. Camel
Additional Tags: Families of Choice, Missing Scene, Damascus Arc (Rusty Quill Gaming), Episode: e103 Everybody Out! (Rusty Quill Gaming)

Summary: After jumping out of the carriage (for perfectly valid reasons!), the three remaining party members have some time to kill.

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I asked for a missing-scene feel and a sense of friendship, and I got that in spades. This is adorable and warm and lovely and so very, very them. ♥

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The Final Tribulation (1290 words) by ExtraPenguin
Fandom: FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion Of Your Thesis Defense (McSweeney's Post) - Luke Burns
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Snakes, thesis defense

Summary: The story of how Ksora Azmidi prepared for and completed the snake fight portion of her thesis defense, complete with a valuable lesson on improvisation.

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I would cheerfully maim people in defense of Ksora and Noodles, and the worldbuilding in this fic is impeccable. ♥

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And now I am going to read some more in the Yuletide collections, and maybe poke at a couple of my WIP prompt ficlets, before I go visit Susan (outside! standing six feet apart!) around 4pm to exchange Christmas gifts.

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: madison, nj
Crossposts: https://edenfalling.livejournal.com/1258702.html

Things I have done today:

1. Reeled in one prospective tenant and sent out a lease (waiting for payment and signed documents), and I should have another on the hook tomorrow providing their rental and employment background check goes well. \o/ I also have a line on some people for a 3-bedroom which is excellent; we have a whole bunch of those coming vacant in January as Ithaca College students intend to move back on campus.

2. Finished my NYS tax prep continuing education, which I was TRYING to do last night but the website was catastrophically down, boo hiss. And apparently it takes 24 hours for my completion record to make it from the education part of the website to the TPRIN renewal part of the website, because I was unable to make my payment and get my registration renewed this afternoon. GRRRR.

3. Shoveled ~1/3 of my back porch, all of my back stairs, and a pathway to the communal compost bin in the back yard. Proceeded to dump A LOT OF COMPOST which had been collecting for a while and which I hadn't had a chance to deal with since the snowstorm last week.

4. LAUNDRY. UGH.

5. Started a batch of pork, greens, and onions, because greens don't keep but cooked food freezes nicely. :)

6. Agreed to beta somebody else's Yuletide fic, which I am looking forward to! ...Tomorrow.

7. Currently steaming broccoli and baking some fish patties for dinner, because jesus fuck I am hungry.

...

Yesterday I baked banana bread, sliced it up nice, and stuck it in Ziploc baggies to bring in to the office for my coworkers. It is always helpful to build a reputation as a person who brings in snacks to share. :)

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: ithaca, ny
Crossposts: https://edenfalling.livejournal.com/1258292.html

That is all.

Current Mood: bears
Current Location: ithaca, ny
Crossposts: https://edenfalling.livejournal.com/1258232.html

Yesterday there were two rallies on the Commons -- one for Black Lives Matters (etc.), and one for the police -- which was a little worrying both on a Covid-19 front and also because of the potential for things to escalate when the two groups encountered each other. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have gone beyond some yelling.

The BLM rally was in Bank Alley, a block and a half(ish) away from my office, and didn't disrupt my day at all. The Back the Blue rally, on the other hand, started right in front of my office while I was on my lunch break. People started crowding up against the office door, so I flipped the sign to "closed" and kept the doors locked until they moved east along the Commons around 2:45pm.

Other than that, it was a pretty calm day.

Today I have very deliberately done nothing in particular, aside from mail my November rent check. I got a call from Landlord Dude on Friday asking me to not rake the leaves this year because he feels weird paying somebody to do it. He doesn't exactly pay me, as such -- I've just been in the habit of knocking off $25 from my November or December rent (only one of them, not both) in recognition that raking is a lot of work and also I've had to buy yard waste bags and yard waste disposal tags. I started doing this because Landlord Dude kept not getting around to the yardwork and I do, you know, like having grass in the yard rather than letting the trees smother it. But I guess since he lives closer now (he used to live halfway up the lake, in Locke) he feels more able to handle the yardwork... or else he's going to rope his son into doing it, since I know he's had his son helping out with some mowing and roof work and such this summer and fall. *shrug* I told him I'd put my spare yard waste bags onto the porch and wash my hands of the issue.

...

If he still hasn't raked anything by mid-November, though, all bets are off. An unraked yard is just itchy, you know?

I have also signed up for Yuletide. That's always an interesting experience in years when I forget to participate in the nomination process -- I have to comb through the tagset looking for stuff I want to request, not just stuff I want to offer. But I found four things, all of which would make me very happy to receive, so it's all good. I have posted a placeholder letter and will get the real version up on... Tuesday, probably. Tomorrow will be busy.

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: ithaca, ny
Crossposts: https://edenfalling.livejournal.com/1251270.html

the deep moans round with many voices

[Fic] "All Roads Lead to Ragosa" -- The Lions of Al-Rassan

[Rec] my Yuletide gift!

Dear Yuletide Writer 2021

Yuletide thoughts

[Fic] "A Whirlwind Visit" -- Oz

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

Yuletide!

why does everything always happen at once?

BEARS

this, that, and the other

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June 2025

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