So I wrote the Yuletide fic that was a massive multi-fandom urban fantasy crossover featuring the POV of a cat and elditch tentacle monsters trying to break through the barriers between worlds. Raise your hand if you're surprised! Raise your hand if you're surprised I have now written two of those!

...thought not.

Assistance to British Nationals Abroad (20372 words) by melannen for ambyr
Fandom: British Government Cats RPF, Slip Slidin' Away - Paul Simon (Song), Monstress (Comics), Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch, Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Palmerston (Chief Mouser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office), Larry (Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office), Tam Tam (First Record-Keeper of the Is'hami Temple), Cronus (Assistant to the Chief Whip), Siffha'h (Tower Bridge Gating Team), Toby (Rivers of London), Molly (Rivers of London), The Woman Who Became A Wife, The Man Who Wore His Passion For His Woman Like A Thorny Crown, The Father Who Had A Son
Additional Tags: Crossover, London, worldgates, Cats, Tentacle Monsters, Spiders, Dogs, Wizards
Summary: Three cats, three humans, a dog and a tarantula walk through a Gate -

Me! I was surprised! That's the longest story I've ever finished by about 4,000 words. I wasn't sure I was going to make it (and I won't confess how much of it got written after 12/11) but I did! I sort of painted myself into a corner - ( Read more... )

So it was either default or buckle down and WRITE THE THING. And I've never yet defaulted yuletide (quite), So I did.

But, yeah, if you were wondering about the higher-than-usual amount of bears this year, 20,000 VHAI'ING WORDs is why. Also I had a small mental break on the evening of the 17th and wrote 6,000 words of Clark Kent/Lois Lane fic. And another earlier mental break in which I wrote several thousand words of Steve/Bucky porn. So with the Star Wars reaction story, that's, like, 30,000 words in a month after not posting any fiction for the entire previous year.

But I finished it! With a whole 24 hours to spare after I did my "final" revision, even! (...we'll ignore the last-minute bonus chapter and all the spag errors I found later and the character name problem which I'm blaming on the AO3 tag being wrong.) And it seemed to go over really well with people other than my recip, which I was NOT expecting, so yay. Now I have a bunch of comments to reply to.

And 24 hours meant I had time to beta! For my recip, even! Both of the stories I beta'd this year were really good well before I looked at them, you should read them:

Antelope Dreams (3620 words) by ambyr, Fandom: Summer in Orcus - T. Kingfisher, Rating: Explicit<, Warnings: Underage<, Relationships: Summer/The Antelope Woman, Summer/Original Female Character, Characters: Summer (Summer in Orcus), The Antelope Woman (Summer in Orcus), The Weasel (Summer in Orcus), Additional Tags: High School, Dream Sex
Summary: When she was eleven, Summer thought she was very nearly an adult. At seventeen, she's starting to understand how much she has to learn.

And I Think My Spaceship Knows Which Way To Go. (3832 words) by Lanna Michaels, Fandom: The Martian - Andy Weir, Wonder Woman (2017), Rating: General Audiences, Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Relationships: Beth Johanssen/Chris Beck/Mark Watney, Characters: Beth Johanssen, Chris Beck, Mark Watney, Diana (Wonder Woman), Additional Tags: Yuletide 2017, Post-Canon, Canon Compliant, Crossover, Established Relationship, Summary: No one becomes an astronaut because they want to stay home all the time.

I have been very slowly reading through the collection and rec-bookmarking a lot of stories, too! So much good stuff (as usual.)

In non-yuletide news, sisi-rambles podficced one of my old Marvel fics that I honestly though had been completely forgotten! It is a really good podfic, I had forgotten how much FEELS I had packed into the dialogue of that story, and she does justice to all of them. (Also this may be the only one of my old Marvel fics that could still be more-or-less canon at this point, hmm.)

[Podfic] The One Where Bucky Barnes Was a Yankees Fan All Along (4:21) by sisi_rambles
Fandom: Captain America (Movies)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes, Sam Wilson (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Baseball, New York Yankees, Brainwashing, Podfic, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes
Summary: "I remembered somethin’," Bucky drawled, not looking away from Steve. "Somethin’ I guess I shouldn’t’ve remembered."

And just to top off an interesting week for me in fic, I just got my first AO3 comment on the very first fanfic I ever posted to the internet. (More than half my life ago, that was.....)

Anyway, I've just posted the Thor/Star Wars fic from last post (currently under the title The One With Rey's Mom after I chickened out about putting major movie spoilers in the title) to AO3, since nobody on here yelled at me about how it was wrong and I shouldn't've done it.

I've been seeing everybody's end-of-year wrap-ups going around talking about all the great stories they posted to AO3 this year and I DIDN'T REAlIZE, so either y'all need to get better about announcing fic on DW or I need to finally cave and start using AO3's subscription system, I guess.


....and that's all. I think. Next week should be back to the usual nice helpful SF novel polls and wretched excuses about why I haven't reviewed the previous ones yet. Hurrah!