Bagheera

Hello 2015! Happy New Year to everyone :) New Year's Eve in the US is /weird/ - no fireworks! No people on the street! No noisy banging and drunken yelling all day long! I went to a pub with some friends and they had free party hats and a screening of the ball dropping on Times Square and people sang Auld Lang Syne, so that was nice, but still it doesn't really feel like New Year's Eve normally does.

Jan 1 also means that it's reveal time on Yuletide. Here's what I wrote this year:

First Steps (11207 words) by Bagheera
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Culture - Iain M. Banks
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: GOU Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints, Lededje Y'breq, Original Female Character(s), Original Male Character(s), Original Non-Human Character(s)
Additional Tags: Minds (Culture), Drones (Culture), Crimes & Criminals, Childhood, Artificial Intelligence, Surface Detail, Cameos, Meet the Family, Special Circumstances
Summary:

"Did I design you a warship or a party clown, child?"

Writing this fic was HARD (so many failed attempts!) but ultimately it all came together, and now that people have commented on it I feel very happy about it. If there was an active Culture fandom on LJ/DW, that could be my new fannish home. I love this series, and do highly reccommend it if you're a) into sci-fi and b) into socialist anarchist utopia and c) don't mind it getting pretty dark and violent at times. Banks had A++ politics, although I recommend starting with one of the later books and not "Consider Phlebas" (I reccommend "Look to Windward", "Excession" or "Surface Detail" [though this one has many triggery things, so beware] as starting points - each book has a different set of characters, so spoilers are rarely an issue). Check it out, people who like space opera like Star Trek or the Vorkosigan Saga!

I'm sorry. The title is very appropriate (you'll see) yet very misleading. I see you thinking now: ah, this must be a cracky, light-hearted romp! Possibly with musical interludes! That's because I didn't come up with it: Erin did. If I had come up with a title, it would be something earnest and overly serious, like this fic. Well, at least it's not a pun containing the letter Q.

Title: Jean-Luc and the Technically-Navy Dream Coat (No Really It's Made Of Thought Matter)
Fandom: Star Trek: Next Gen + Star Trek: Voyager
Pairing: I ship P/Q with the power of a thousand suns... in an entirely platonic way
Rating: some canon P/Q scenes have higher ratings than this
Length: 4528 words

Beta-read by x_los. This is set between the first Next Gen movie (the one with Kirk) and VOY: "The Q and the Grey", in which he wore a different uniform, but that was clearly for Janeway's benefit. Written for xparrot. The prompt was "learning/teaching", which turned out to be more difficult than I thought at first.

( But this wasn’t a hypothetical encounter with your average god-like alien. This was Q on his couch close to midnight. Whether Picard wanted it or not, it was already personal. )

Before posting my newest invitation to give me prompts, I checked whether there were any old prompts waiting to be written, and unearthed a half-finished draft for a prompt given to me by dragonofmemory

Title: All Been Done Before
Pairing: Eight/Jacobi!Master, Ten/Simm!Master, Eleven/original Master
Length: 3278 words
Rating: I was too lazy to write porn
Spoilers: general Eleven era spoilers
Prompt: D/M and a song by the Barenaked Ladies - this is proper songfic, guys, with lyrics and all

( Alone and bored on a thirtieth-century night Will I see you on The Price Is Right? Will I cry? Will I smile? As you run down the aisle? )

I've got a prompt game still running, so if you want to give me a prompt, please go here!

This is for aralias. It's very short, Katy, but if you give me a different prompt, maybe I can write you a longer Benny fic...

Fandom: Bernice Summerfield
Characters: Benny
Spoilers: This is set at some point after S11.
Prompt: "Fandom: Bernice Summerfield", "souvenirs/mementos"
Length: 323 words

( Souvenirs )

Hello from France. The weather has turned less beach-y, and there's only so many medieval cities like Carcasonne you can go sight-seeing in, plus I feel like I could write something. So here's a little prompt game I cooked up.

List A is a list of Pairings, Fandoms or Characters I'm feeling in the mood to write. List B is a list of prompts. Pick one item from A and one from B and I'm gonna write you something :)

List A:

1) Pairing: Doctor/Master (any version)
2) Fandom: Bernice Summerfield
3) Pairing: Xavier / Magneto (X-Men Movieverse)
4) Fandom: Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire
5) Pairing: Picard / Q (ST: Next Generation)
6) Character: Data (ST: Next Generation)
7) Fandom: Journey into Mystery*
8) Pairing: Clark Kent/Lex Luthor (any version)
9) Fandom: Avengers - Earth's Mightiest Heroes
10) Character: Loki (any version)
11) Fandom: Star Trek – Voyager
12) Fandom: Star Trek – Deep Space Nine

*I’m only up to Manchester Gods, so no spoilers for Everything Burns in comments, please!

List B

1) souvenirs / mementos
2) learning sth / teaching sb.
3) blind faith / doubt
4) stealing / giving gifts
5) old age / long distance
6) harm sb. / help sb.
7) revenge / redemption
8) giving orders / serving
9) playing games / deadly serious
10) freedom / captivity
11) alternatives / experiments
12) art / artificial
13) shadows / mirrors
14) strangers / meetings
15) magic / childhood
16) power / force
17) wild / tame
18) saint / dragon
19) betrayal / proof
20) disguise / revelation

You could just go through my "fic" tag to find all these, but here's the big list, anyways. (Yes, this is just a feeble excuse for me to feel accomplished about something!)

( Fic )

Tumblr is addictive. I think the main reason is that it's so active - compared to tumblr, LJ is a ghost town, or a film in slow motion. I wish you could somehow combine tumblr's liveliness with LJ's far superior comment function - what annoys me most is that you can't really reply to comments on tumblr, so any kind of interactivity is severely limited.

Anyway, my newly found tumblr addiction has caused two Gallifrey ficlets to happen (there is, like, an honest to god living Gallifrey fandom on tumblr!)

Title: Intervention Agency
Rating: all ages
Characters: Narvin, Romana, Gallifrey cast
Spoilers: Set in S1 or S2 of Gallifrey, no spoilers

( In which Narvin repurposes the Gallifreyan surveillance state for therapeutic uses )

Title: Childless
Rating:all ages
Characters: Leela/Andred
Spoilers: set shortly after "Invasion of Time", no spoilers

( In which Leela and Andred discuss parenthood. )

Late fic for the Gallifreyathon at morepolitics.

Title: A New Refutation of Time
Rating: PG
Length: 2883 words
Characters: Brax
Prompt: atraphoenix's prompt was As Lord Burner, Braxiatel was ordered to burn "an old man and his granddaughter" from history. I'd love any story that elaborates on this. How did he warn the Doctor and Susan? What happened to Braxiatel in the aftermath? Did he come close to carrying out the order or did he know immediately that it wasn't an option?

Thanks to x_los for beta-ing this (and for having helpful/hilarious ideas, like the bit where Brax is Aunt Flavia's intern) and to aralias for also beta-ing this and organizing the gallifreyathon and then listening to me whine about it a lot (by proxy...). The cut text is brought to you by Jose Luis Borges, and so is the title.

( Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. )

Happy New Year to those of you for whom it is a new year :)

We had a little rather traditional party with food and fireworks and (in the very end) a terrible drinking game where you have to drink every time someone says "Forrest" in "Forrest Gump". We really need to think of cooler things to do next year.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is a good movie, even though it's full of EPIC FAIL where continental European landscapes are concerned. Germany and Switzerland look nothing like that. ( more spoilery thoughts )

Finally, obligatory yuletide reveal: I wrote a little "Once Upon a Time" fic with Emma and Mr Gold called, The Language of Gifts is the Language of Deals.

I wanted to make a Yuletide recs post, but everything I want to rec is what everyone else had already recced (like that Horrible Histories fic), so it seems kinda pointless.

But there still needs to be a post, because I got not one, but two yuletide gifts, one for regular yuletide, and one for madness.

The Scientific Method (Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Mature, Tony/Hank, Jan/Hank)
Anon combined two things I like and asked for, fanfic clichés and Tony/Hank. In this case it's sex pollen, except that this fic shows that Tony can't actually distinguish himself under the influence from himself as he is usually. And he almost makes a mess of things, but everyone else reacts quite well, because they're awesome people and this is an awesome yuletide gift :)

Told in fallen skies (Krabat, Master/Jirko)
Another fic that is EXACTLY what I asked for, in ways I didn't dare hope for. This one is dark and sad and wonderfully in-character, plus it fills some of the gaps in the Master's story. Anon is an extremely cool person because they wrote me a fic in a fandom hardly anyone knows and so it's pretty much a one person audience.

I also wrote a story, on the 24th/25th. It was meant to be a small treat, but turned into a proper 1000+ sized thing because I'm incapable of keeping things short.