Sense, Nonsense, and Not-Sense

Doctor Ordella and Doctor Aveley work together to help the residents of the magical wildlife refuge. Doctor Aveley needs to get past the Shield of Boringness that prevents her from seeing the residents truly, but also past her own insecurities about what she wants from Doctor Ordella outside of a professional context.

Fandom 5K revealed a little later than it was intended to this year, but I liked writing this story all the same. It was kind of nice getting to write a story about a couple of women, one who was discovering that there was an entire world of magical beings just beyond her realization, and another who was coming to the realization that she was definitely interested in her colleague for more than professional reasons. And all of the anxiety that comes out of realizing you want to take the next step and go from there. And the anxiety that happens when you find that someone is actually pretty okay with the way that you are handling their relationship so far and is encouraging you to be absolutely yourself in the matter.

They kissed. It was supposed to break the curse. The sea-witch lied, and now Ariel intends to get what she was promised, no matter what stands in her way.

Okay, it's nice to write something that's letting the Disney Princess out much more toward being the bloodthirsty girl she intends to be when it turns out someone has been lying to her about the terms of her contract. It was good to see Ariel be smart, and a little lucky, and even though it didn't turn out well for her in the end, she certainly got some satisfying revenge of her own in on Ursula before things went south for her. Clever, cunning Ariel causing problems for the eels in every way that she can.

Tara and George's first date goes well and compatibly despite having very little information on each other, even though the matching service they both used asked for quite a bit more.

I thought a first date between some people who weren't what a matchmaking service expected would be fun to write about, especially when they both ended up with suspicions about what the service awas actually doing compared to the data that it was collecting. So, y'know, some kind of useful small talk between the two of them and then diving into the problem put before them. As with many of the Original Work prompts, there's a fair amount of me and my experiences woven into the characters and their experiences, because sometimes the maxim to write what you know actually makes sense.

Transition Agent Fa Mulan is dispatched to deal with an extremely thorny case involving a young girl with living relatives living in an orphanage, a case worker who is unwilling to give her up, her supposedly crazy father, and the prospect of a magical Beast living in the nearby castle. It's up to Mulan to sort fact from fiction and find a successful resolution to the situation that falls within the jurisdiction of RULES & REGULATIONS.

I read The House in the Cerulean Sea this year, and it was wonderful and fun to explore, so when this crossover prompt popped up for Crossworks, I thought combining the Disney Princess world, with their somewhat magical persons, would be good to mix with the overtaxed, overtasked agency involved in making sure that magical children and adults get safely integrated into their societies around. I was also influenced in my choice of Mulan as the agent by the delightful fic where Mulan is the RA of some of the other Disney Princesses. And then it was a matter of Belle and her desire to be around books, and I thought it would be fun if she could synthesize anything she'd read and what fun that might cause for a Gaston that was trying to keep her in one place so he could marry her. The recipient liked it especially well, and I also definitely recommend The House in the Cerulean Sea.

Peridot is in the middle of her heat cycle ,and it's making her miserable, not least because she doesn't like having to deal with unavoidable matters of biology. When Amethyst turns out to be the most compatible Gem of the ones Peridot has available, the two of them try to come up with a way of getting Peridot through her heat without having to deal with as much of it as she can.

Alternate Universe Exchanges take forever to sign up for, but they do produce some interesting material when they're all said and done, and in this case, it's Steven Universe, except for the part where the gems go through mating heat cycles. Which, for the most part, made me think "yeah, that would mostly actually work," even if none of it ever resulted in new Gems being created. Because the Diamonds are, well, the Diamonds. You can blame an awful lot on the Diamonds any time you like. (Plus, excuse to explore some of my own ideas about what fusion might be like? Always.)

It was also fun to write because it's a study in opposites, at least on the surface, with the way that Peridot is extremely uptight and data-driven, and Amethyst generally seems like she couldn't care less about everything. So the two of them, of course, would end up the most compatible pair in Peridot's formulas specifically because Amethyst doesn't care and will be a perfectly fine heat partner for her and accept everything Peridot needs her to accept.

The discovery or a prison of Gems from well before has Lapis and Amethyst working together to get them out against a prison designed to supposedly stop even fused Gems. The designers did not take into account just how much anger Lapis and Amethyst can channel into strength when they're working on a single, fused purpose.

This one came later in the year, but because it was for the same recipient, and in the same general idea (a fusion with Amethyst), it's a little bit of a stealth sequel, as you can tell from the similar titles. This time, though, instead of Peridot, it's Lapis Lazuli, who I really see as someone who has a lot of extremely pent-up anger about everything in her life and the part where she's ended up with the Crystal Gems. Which would seem like another one of those situations where someone meshes well with Amethyst because she doesn't care, but this one rolled a little differently to be that it's Lapis and Amethyst both having a fair amount of suppressed anger together, and their anger runs in similar directions, which makes their fusion much more interested in satisfyingly smashing things. And I decided to give them a group of Gems to escort and a bunch of barriers to smash as a first date. I think it went well.

Team JNPR is escorting Ruby to Haven and keeping their skills sharp. Pyrrha is frustratingly perfect. Nora is trying to keep her temper from leaking out about this. When the Grimm that destroyed Nora and Ren's village reappears in their lives, it's going to take teamwork and drawing on their own pasts to defeat it.

And here's this year's single Fandom Trumps Hate offering! Once again I got matched up with someone who watned something interesting, and I managed to spin out nearly 10k of words for their generous donation and explore a little bit of what Season 4 of RWBY might have looked like had Pyrrha lived past the event that canonically killed her and set the remnants of Beacon on their way to do something else. I picked the Nuckelavee fight, because that's the big showpiece of Season 4 and the thing they're most likely to still encounter if you handwave, as I did, that Qrow and Tyrian's fight still happened, but not around the five of them, and because it has significant emotional importance to Nora and Ren. With Nora as the focus for the work, it made good sense to choose things that would give her the opportunity to shine.

With this work posting, I also realized there's an interesting thing that happens when I post things for exchanges, which have anonymity periods and generally then show up pretty far back into the list of latest things, as opposed to the things I do for Fandom Trumps Hate, which generally don't, and that's I tend to get people showing up in my comments with how much they disliked the work when I post without the anonymity period. People presumably trolling the latest works, click through, read, and then apparently feel moved to leave terrible comments about how the story didn't fit their expectations. (No shit, it wasn't written with your expectations in mind.)

I realize that it's a fandom trend to have haters and all that, but sometimes I get baffled about what people are looking for in their works. Like: "This is an F/F story between Kagami Tsurugi and Marinette Dupain-Cheng, and I am upset because it didn't have enough Adrien Agreste/Nino Lahiffe in it." Or "This is a story about the feelings that Pearl has to work through and how her relationship with Rose Quartz wasn't healthy for her, because Pearl demonstrates love through service, and Rose/Pink was mostly incapable of returning that love, and I am upset that you have chosen to portray the relationship with Rose Quartz as unhealthy for Pearl." For this particular one, the negative comment that appeared immediately hated that Nora was being an "annoying cunt," especially to Jaune (the regular Butt-Monkey of the series, especially at this point in the narrative) and had "autismo energy," which says a lot about what the commenter thinks about women, fictional or otherwise. Just could not stand the idea that Nora might have a few emotional issues to work through in her life. Especially because she's regularly near Pyrrha, who seems to flawlessly perform social functions and keep up a facade of perpetual cheer while also being an extremely strong Huntress. Which, mate, that's a way to interpret it, go for it, but maybe think just a little bit before posting your opinion as a comment to the story, and think about what's likely to happen from it. Then again, many of the people who do post those opinions are firm believers that their opinion is the only valid one and there are no others that matter. They probably get Surprised-Pikachu when the fic author deletes their comment almost as soon as it arrives. (Or they feel vindicated that their opinion is the only correct one and the stupid fic author just can't handle that.) Seriously, people, why the fuck would you post something like that.

The recipient enjoyed it greatly, however, and the beta really helped improve it and helped me remember where a character was at the end, because it was important for her to be there. So it was a success, negative comment aside.

Orrin loves both Margot and Sir Blep, but the two of them can't seem to figure out a way to get along with each other, demanding more of Orrin's time to themselves or trying to interrupt whatever the other has planned for him. If they can't figure out how to get along, Orrin's going to find some way of making it happen, even if it means that both Margot and Sir Blep will be unhappy with the compromise.

Okay, this was just fun to do, because I've lived in enough places with cats who don't get along with each other, even if they're perfectly affectionate to the humans that are in their lives. So this was mostly about dumping as much cat behavior as I have observed into a story, and just making it so one of the cats in question is a catgirl, and theoretically more able to handle some of the situations that arise when cats have territory disputes. But, at her heart, Margot's still a cat, even if she's a catgirl, and that means sometimes she gets in spats with the other cat and puts her mind toward trying to make sure that the other cat knows his place in the hierarchy. I'm glad the recipient picked up on how much cat-ness there was in the cattiness and appreciated it.

P'tero still wants to get into the sky, but he needs to heal.

P'tero wants M'leng to stop telling the very embarrassing story, but he can't bring himself to tell M'leng to stop, because M'leng enjoys it so.

And Ormonth and Sith are interested in tagging along and seeing how humans do their mating rituals and what it feels like.

For as much as I have Opinions about the Dragonriders of Pern (many, many opinions), I often find myself writing fic for the setting, because I believe in it as a setting, and there are all kinds of fix-it opportunities available where the authors stumbled, or were products of their times, or were writing a different story than the one that should have been staring them in the face. And P'tero and M'leng have the honor of having some amount of narrative devoted to them as a gay couple and dragonriders who aren't bronze, gold, or brown. There's a lot of camp in their portrayal in the original, and so with this story, I wanted to make them more complex than what was painted in the narrative, and what was painted by Iantine in the narrative. (I still believe firmly that the painting itself was inspired by Boris Vallejo and his style of muscular men and women in distress (and variable amounts of clothing for both of them), but with M'leng playing the role of the distressed and P'tero in the role of the manly one. Which P'tero mostly dislikes, because it makes him into a more heroic person than he was in the situation. (Which is the thing that M'leng loves to play up.) So it's supposed to be a more thoughtful take on someone's reputation versus how they actually want to be seen.

In typical Twilight fashion, she's planned out a perfect practice date for Princess Luna on the inevitability that suitors will come calling for her hoof. Princess Luna definitely needs the practice in learning how to relate to ponies that she might not already know the intimate dreams of, but because she's already familiar with Twilight's dreams, it's easier for her to say what she needs to about the whole affair.

I love to write awkward characters, because they generate their own plots by themselves, rather than needing a whole lot of external motivations to do things and go places. Or to try and spend time making up for the awkward thing they did. Which makes things really nice for Twilight (awkward in a need to plan everything out and who doesn't do great with social interactions with others) and Luna (awkward becauuse she sees into people's dreams regularly, and that whole amount of time spent trapped in the moon has made her a lot rusty on social interactions). Things could potentially get a lot more awkward for both of them if the rest of the Friendship is Magic crew appeared and did what they usually do, which is try to help people toward their belief of what should happen using their own talents to do it and then trying to fix the mess-ups they've created by interfering, but I decided to spare Twilight and Luna both that particular situation. They're good enough at generating awkward on their own.

A letter from the Department Chair, with reminders and updates about what will be expected, permitted, and forbidden for this doctoral defense period.

Yuletide was a delight this year, and I was pretty happy about the opportunity to do the "Snake Fight" fandom, because I like the way that Ulteide is about the very tiny fandoms and the exxercises of reativity that come along with that idea. It wasn't hard to write the thing, it was hard to make sure I had written enough to get over the line and make sure the gift was going to be a valid one. I've been in academia long enough, and workplaces like it, that this kind of e-mail wasn't a stretch to find or to write, it just had to incorporate the fandom that we wanted to have with it. Several of the comments said that this was something that reminded them of the tone of the appropriate academics, so I definitely nailed the brief on this one. It was a good one to close out the year with. (And even though it only had the shortest amount of time in the year to garner kudos, it's already the most-kudosed work of the year. Some of that, I suspect, is because Yuletide's reading audience is vast, but still. Pretty good work, this one.)

In the middle of giving an interview that she's sure will end her practice and her career, Dr. Cassandra has to treat a patient. Which might be exactly the thing she needed to grow her business instead of kill it.

Original Works are often a place where the creativity has to come out. I liked the idea of a veterinarian for Magical Creatures, and my brain helpfully provided the knowledge that such a person is likely rare in their world, and always has to deal with the possibility that they look like they're not mentally competent to anyone else. And the TV interview story went with that so that they could prove that they were quite competent, indeed.

Squiggles is a cougar in his animal form. And Pullman is a campus location for Washington State University, whose animal mascot are cougars. Meta-referential humor, hee.

Training Yuna on pistols is easier for Lightning than confronting the reality that both of them are more alike than Lightning wants to admit.

rynia proposed, early on in our friendship, that the worlds of Final Fantasy VII and X are related to each other, with VII being the far future world of X (or the other way around, potentially), and I think I've always had a little bit of "Final Fantasy is a multiverse," or possibly "Each Final Fanatasy takes place on the same world, but with significant time differences between each narrative". And since the XIII series has a significant time-travel component to it with regard to Lightning, Serah, and others, it seemed like a good idea to pair up Lightning the consumate Guardian not that soon after the fall of Cocoon with Gunner Yuna who's getting used to the idea that she's defeated Sin permanently and now needs to figure out what to do with the rest of her life. I think it's pretty true to the characters.

What starts as a question about one story needs several more stories to try and answer fully.

I loved The Tea Dragon Society as a book, and I think it's a great story for small children and adults alike. And, lucky for me, it appears that I might have written the first work in AO3 specifically about those characters (there's a crossover with Nimona that has an earlier date, so it's not the first work on the tag.). That's actually very scary, that the thing on the tag that's mine is the thing that's there. I can hope with time there will be more, and people will enjoy it. But wow, a first in something that I don't think I'd ever end up with a first involved.

Three perspectives on one relationship, over time, as it becomes both two and stays the one that it always was.

There are a lot of things about writing in RWBY that start staring you back in the face if you notice them for long enough. There are remarkably few opportunities for men characters to interact with other men (and that's by design, from the looks of things), and so making a pairing that works was a bit of an exercise in writing the things that haven't been on screen. (And a little bit of judicious use of an alternate universe-style setting.) I'm pleased with how it turned out, and my recipient was, as well.

Our Herione, Penelope Pitstop, is at the track to observe the inaugural running of the Pitstop 500. But even though Penelope's not racing on the track, there's still plenty of peril from that dastardly villain, The Hooded Claw!

Okay, I had fun with this one. Writing for a series where the narrator is not only interactive, but has definite opinions about the things that are going on, and is voiced by Gary Owens, yeah. What I needed most for this particular work was to find a copy of the show itself so that I could be sure I wasn't remembering wrong about the style to adopt and use for the narration and the characterization. I also enjoyed getting to write a Penelope who is both competent and has a few secrets of her own.

Having free reign to let out the hurricane of puns was also really nice

It's the first day of the Triwizard Tournament, and Hermione is pretty annoyed that nobody seems to have taken her advice and planning.

It's the first day of the Triwizard Tournament, and Hermione finds herself in the middle of a strange conspiracy put on by Luna for unknown reasons.

It's the first day of the Triwizard Tournament, and things seem to be going according to plan, except when they don't.

It's the first day of the Triwizard Tournament. That much is certain.

There's a certain glee that comes out whenever I get to write Luna Lovegood at her fully-weirdest, and some of that is due to the way that Evanna Lynch portrayed her in the movies, but also because the Harry Potter universe needs more harmless weird instead of the malicious weird that tends to happen to it.

I took a little inspiration from a Star Trek: Discovery episode on how to frame the main character as experiencing the time disruptions but not actually being the one to cause them, and I think it worked out well.

For the 30th Hunger Games, all the prettiest girls in the Districts were reaped. But prettiest doesn't mean least intelligent, least strong, or least crafty. There's a plan (or two) afoot to try and get as many of them out alive, and embarrass the Capitol as much as possible while they're at it.

I am always on board with getting to write competent Princesses, and the Disney crew were due up for this treatment, because there are enough of them they could very easily make a Hunger Games complement all on their own. I really enjoyed the setting that I've started working with here, and so maybe if I get the opportunity to write more in that universe (or decide to do more in that universe), I've still got plenty of potential space to go.

The Queen's newest plaything took quite the journey to her current place. The Queen tells her story to the most appreciative audience.

This started with a good idea -- "What if the girl trapped in the fairy realm is murderously competent at trying to get out?" and expanded from there into a story about selling parts of yourself just to stay alive, and eventually landed in the ending. I thought the whole thing came together as a work quite nicely, even if it took a couple different attempts at the end game before I settled on the thing I actually wanted.

Hermione makes the acquaintance of an extremely athletic redhead after her softball game. Unlike at Hogwarts, this particular version of Ginny seems more interested in her than in who she was back at school. Hermione isn't sure whether to hold off or to take the opportunity presented.

So what do you do when you get nothing for a prompt other than a pairing? You write something you're going to enjoy yourself. And since I still have this Storybrooke world kicking around, I thought I'd give it another story, since there wasn't any reason not to. Haven't received anything from the recipient about it, even at this later date, so I can only guess they didn't like it or something terrible happened to them and they're not able to comment about it at all.

Practice for the Remnant Women's Hockey League is anything but routine for Blake. For once, though, Yang shows more than just her legendary temper.

I really enjoy the women's hockey game and am disappointed that it doesn't get television coverage outside of the Olympic hockey tournaments. In this particular case, unlike the Oscar/Ozpin/Qrow work above, it's not that hard to have interactions between Blake and Yang that can be seen as flirtatious or otherwise, but part of that is because they're on the same team. And knowing enough about their respective personalities in RWBY makes it easy to assign them hockey roles. Blake is very much a defensive wizard of poke checks and anticipating passes. Yang is always skating close to the line of how much contact is too much contact, and who plays an extrememly aggressive game in staking out her space in front of the net. The fun goes from there.

The Orville is stuck in a strange pocket of space. Gordon and John will be ready to help the ship get out, once they're done with the windstorm full of sharks.

It's The Orville, and escape rooms, and the usual sort of weirdness that's par for the course in that show. Plus, gratuitous sharknado. What's not to like?

The triplets want the answer to a very important question. All of the people they talk to have a definitive answer to the question. None of them agree.

I thought it might be fun to ask each of the characters involved who they think Merida takes after, and naturally, everyone thinks it's someone else (and in Merida's case, she thinks she's not like anyone else.) The triplets definitely seem to be the best characters for that role.

Penny rescues team RWBY, Qrow, and Oscar from a persistent Grimm horde, but a snowstorm blocks further progress and the team has to settle into a cave for the night, bringing Ruby and Penny into closer contact than either of them would have imagined.

You might notice a bit that RWBY came up a lot this year. That's not bad, because I like the characters and enjoy writing in the universe, but it seems like I might be part of a small minority of people who are interested. I've written more than a few works for this particular recipient this year, and it's great, in so much that so far, I've been able to use different characters each time, so that I don't worry that I'm writing the same story for the same person, but I kind of worry that I'm going to end up having to do the same thing for the same person at some point if I keep matching them. Not necessarily bad, but worrying

As for the story itself, it's robot-Pinochio, who's way sweet about everything, and Red-Riding-Hood thrust into a leadership role and a lot of big decisions, who could use some downtime. And both of them have feelings they need to process about everything, which includes each other, as well. Although Ruby's going to be very reluctant to admit to anything, given the way that relationships seem to end up in the RWBY-verse, and in her family specifically.

Vignettes from Calvin's life as he grows older and discovers love and parenting, grudgingly admits that his mother might actually know something about both of those subjects, and passes on family traditions to the next generation.

There's a lot I liked about Calvin and Hobbes, and I tried to get as much of the mundanely weird into this piece as I could, which meant occasionally drawing on family traditions as well as things I created for Calvin. He always seems like the kind of person who has a story that he's telling at every moment, and it was interesting watching him try to do the same thing for another entity that he didn't know as well as himself or Hobbes.

I'll also admit to being proud of the sheer number of Noodle Incidents I was able to stuff in there, so there were plenty of things the reader's imagination would have to fill in, and that would likely be funnier or more poignant than I could do by myself.

As Yuletide goes, it wasn't as far out into the thicket as I often get, but I still think it was an excellent work and a good way to cap off the year.

It's a date! Except for the monster. And for the Lieutenant that can't actually keep a secret and the other one who doesn't say a whole lot. And the fact the date all happens under a proclamation that says one is technically the prisoner of the other.

But everything will work out fine in the end. Honest.

Both Nenene and Hisami are on the same "meet the fans" cruise and spend some time with their bodyguards. As events go, this one is pretty tame. The power goes out only once, and they get locked in somewhere only once.

Many years afterward, Celes is singing and Mama Terra has a worldwide network of orphans to look after. An opportunity at a fundraiser offers Celes a chance to be clear about her feelings.

Lindsey is clearly desperate for help, because he's come to see his twin, Eliot, who long ago left that world, for help in evading the Senior Partners. Eliot is reluctant to provide anything at all.

Toph comes to visit the shop while it's closed to try and get Iroh to cheer up after his annual remembrance day goes less well than planned.

Susan helps Delenn grieve after Sheridan goes beyond the rim. Everyone learns a lot more about the ISA president than they had before.

Balthier, Summoner and Scourge of Sin, expects a warm welcome from the village when he arrives with Fran, his guardian. Instead, he gets rained on, slapped about, and snarked at from all corners.

Willow goes to the one person she can think of who can help her with getting re-sorted into her lesbian life - no, not Tara. Faith.

Chuck loves a piemaker.

Olive loves a piemaker.

This can only mean one thing.

Pie duel.

On a night when the boundaries between the worlds are thin, the Fire Lord and his daughter meditate and have an adventure.

Two entries in the preliminary rounds of "Around The Campfire", a new television show that pits pseudonymous authors and their stories against each other for a cash prize.