the deep moans round with many voices

Summary: Nyota Uhura, Christine Chapel, Hikaru Sulu, and Gaila -- the not-quite-senior officers of the Enterprise, minus the two disqualified for being underage and/or crazy -- gather for their weekly game and gossip session. This week's mission is Hearts.

Notes: This fic was written for Cotton Candy Bingo Round One in incredibly belated response to the WILD CARD square. (Yeah, I went literal. Sue me.) It's also in response to a prompt from vehrec: Kirk, Spock, kicking back and relaxing over 3D chess-or maybe even some sort of 4D chess where you can phase out pieces for a certain number of turns. Just relaxing on the Enterprise I suppose, R&R, the actual people don’t matter.

It's nominally set in the same universe as A History of Handcrafts and A Guide to Guerrilla Knitting, but that has no practical effect on the story. (1,975 words)

[ETA: the AO3 crosspost is now up!]

( All on a Summer's Day )

---------------------------------------------

This was not the fic I meant to finish tonight -- that would be the Narnia genderswap "unexpected love" fill -- but what the hell, it's a thing, and I wrote it, and it's done. *resolve face*

Also, yes, I did in fact deal four hands of Hearts and play the entire game out against myself. I was going to decide the hands for thematic reasons, but that got ridiculous and unworkable very fast, so I figured I would go with random chance instead. :-)

I took a rather lackadaisical approach to A History of Handcrafts (Because a Sweater Equals Love), otherwise known as "the unexpected remix." I had no outline and, initially, no plot or theme either -- just the knitting gimmick and some implied backstory about Amanda and Gaila from MelayneSeahawk's drabble. This resulted in several exploratory rough draft fragments that I cut and replaced for various reasons. Nonetheless, I think the unused fragments are often cute, and kind of interesting from a process-of-writing standpoint.

So here they are. (1,400 words, give or take)

---------------------------------------------
A History of Handcrafts: alternate scenes
---------------------------------------------

( first attempt at scene 1 )

---------------

( alternate conclusion to scene 2 )

---------------

( first attempt at scene 3, Spock POV )

---------------

( alternate scene 3, unexpected Gaila cameo )

---------------

( alternate conclusion to scene 3 )

---------------------------------------------

In other news, I've been writing at work the past few days, but it's been kind of useless, at least from a can-I-post-this perspective.

For example, on Monday I wrote half a scene from at least two chapters ahead of myself in "Ashes" -- when Riam, Zalir, and Morgalen are at least a week into their journey, out in the tainted lands beyond Zerlon. Yesterday I wrote most a scene that is best described as fanfic for an original novel I haven't written. It's a little transitional incident that would probably not be in the actual book, if the book existed, because it's tangential to the main plot. I am writing it for my own amusement because it's a nice bit of emotional connection between two characters. I have another scene from that world (with different characters, but also a tangential transitional incident that wouldn't make it into the actual story) that I have been plotting in my head but haven't yet committed to paper.

...

I dunno, I may post them anyway when I finish. I do like my trio from "Ashes," and while I will probably never get around to writing their real story, I am also quite fond of Tom Redding, ri-Lady Lourdés Rodelay of House Ié'carranze dh Thrae, Vek abakak in'Ifut, and Signy of Vigjal, as well as the remaining cast of thousands their story contains.

Remix reveal day! I wrote three stories this year: A History of Handcrafts (Because a Sweater Equals Love) and In Foreign Tongues (Been All Over You) for melayneseahawk, and Postcards from Naxos (You Don't Have To Go Home, But You Can't Stay Here) for sour_idealist.

I am going to talk about each in a separate post.

---------------

A History of Handcrafts (Because a Sweater Equals Love): 3,200 words, April 2011. Love doesn't have to be difficult: all you need to do is reach out to your friends. A story in three parts and many knitting projects. Contains background Amanda/Sarek, Kirk/Gaila, and Spock/Uhura.

Remixed from Spock's Sweater, a drabble by MelayneSeahawk.

This is the one I call my unexpected remix.

I offered to write Star Trek: AOS mostly on a whim, and was not at all expecting to get assigned to anyone in that fandom. I assumed I'd get Harry Potter, Naruto, or Narnia, since those are the fandoms I actually qualified in, and Naruto and Narnia are also notably smaller fandoms (in Remix terms, at least -- Naruto utterly crushes Star Trek: AOS if you go by number of stories on ff.net, but Remix tends to skew away from anime and manga fandoms). Anyway, once I recovered from my surprise, I read through MelayneSeahawk's archive and was promptly attacked by a vicious, tenacious, novel-length plotbunny for the story of Gaila's life from birth through old age.

( Unfortunately, that required absurd amounts of world-building, and wasn't... )

I am sorry for turning a drabble that was (as I later learned) intended as slash into a story with so much background het, but I am not in the least sorry for focusing on the power of family and platonic friendship, because the world always needs more gen fic and friendship is awesome, amen, the end.