donutsweeper

battleshipex had reveals yesterday. That was an insanely amazing yet batshit crazy exchange where we had to write fics to meet a certain number of tags to "fire shots" at a board to try to hit ships hidden there (like the battleship game) but we were moving too fast so the mods created a new board that the two teams combined to try to hit stuff on. As a result I wound up writing and crafting a bunch for it and created:

Cut to save scrolling

Three crochet things (the third added after reveals due to having so much fun with crocheting octopuses):
Knit One, Pearl Two (a big crocheted octopus knitting), My Tentacles Are Yours, My Love (a little octopus proposing to a big one), and Multiplying Tentacles (the octopus family) The little guys turned out to be surprisingly fun and easyish to make.

Fic-wise I wrote three Old Guard fics:
Dispatches From the Data Stream - Summary: The news holovids have begun to claim that the tide of war has begun to turn. The reason why might be one of myth and legend. (rated G, 874 words) This was inspired by the outsider POV, Epistolary and In Space! tags and a lot of fun to write.
Food of the Ages - Summary: If Nicky was going to try to bake baklava for Andy, he was make sure he did it right. (rated g, 448 words) Inspired by the comfort food and found family tags.
Blossoming Warmth - Summary: Just because the cold couldn't kill them didn't mean they found it pleasant. (rated g, 553 words) Who can resist combining huddling for warmth, h/c and sharing a bed tags in a fic, right?

Three Steve Rogers centric ones:
Three To Be- Summary: It was Bucky who realized what Peggy had suggested, but they both had been more than eager to take her up on it. (rated M, 316 words) a combination of the multi (Steve/Bucky/Peggy in this case) tag, first kiss and first time.
Openness Ahead - Summary: It's time for just the two of them, to focus on healing, happiness, and hope. (rated G, 353 words) for m/m (Steve/Bucky), fluff, healing, hair and h/c tags.
A Captain's Needs - a crossover with Torchwood/Doctor Who, summary: The five times Captain Jack Harness encountered Captain Steve Rogers and the one time they had an "encounter." (rated E, 980 words) which included the 5+1 Things, Desk Sex, Clothed Sex, and Intercrural Sex tags

a lone FMA:B fic
More Than Fuel Summary: Alphonse had said some terrible things to his brother and wanted to make up for it but he wasn't sure how. (rated G, 444 words) for comfort food, fluff and h/c tags

and three The Untamed fics:
Rescuing the Rescuer - summary: Jiang Cheng couldn't even pretend to be surprised that Wei Wuxian showed up out of nowhere to rescue Hanguang Jun. Of course he had. And if it gave Jiang Cheng the chance to do a little rescuing of his own? Well, even better. (rated g, 1,537 words) this was a fun one combining the Angst, Assassination Attempt(s), Blood, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon and Rescue tags.
Avoiding the Ripples - summary: The trick to traveling in time was avoiding changing too much. Wei Wuxian didn't want to destroy the world, after all. Just, maybe, make it a little nicer. (rated g, 1,547 words) time travel and The Untamed work so well together
Marks From Another Time - summary:Wei Wuxian found the whole idea of soulmates and soulmarks odd. (rated G, 1,219 words) The Untamed and Soulmate-Identifying Marks was fun to play around with too.

Writing Rainbow Red revealed yesterday and I wrote three things:

The Red Spray, 911 Lone Star fandom, rated PG, 546 words. Summary: Carlos had thought it'd be a simple call, a secure scene. It turned out to be anything but. (Missing scene from 1x08)

Splash of Red, Captain America fandom, rated pg-13, 632 words. Summary: Bucky had been killing people to keep Steve safe for a long time.

The Ferrari's Red Remained the Same, Magnum PI (1980/2018 crossoverish), rated G, 300 words. Summary: There were times when Higgins thought Robin's Nest felt... wrong.

Crafting-wise I finished the brown afghan, which I made wider than planned so came out more stockily rectangular than I usually do throws, but will still be a good lap/leg blanket:

( brown throw )

I reworked the market/string bag pattern to make it bigger, but it still wasn't what I wanted so I'm currently trying a different pattern on a new one and gave these to daughter to use ( bags )

I finished the pantyhose/stocking rug (aka ran out). I really love this knotting technique, although I didn't quite do the increasing/tension right so it needs flattening and is under big dictionaries for the moment.
( rug )

Then I pulled out the huge amount of plastic bags I had and made a second rug
( rug#2 )

I'm probably going to dip into my 'ancient and shitty sheets collection I've been keeping because you're supposed to keep stuff like that' and rip them into strips to make another of these rugs, I really like the technique and it's very easy on my hands. Although, one of the things that made them so easy was not having to really prep/prepare the material for it so we'll see how it goes. I also need to figure out a new project to actually use up yarn stash, since that's what I'm supposed to be doing.

I decided not to sign up for genfreeformexchange since I kept checking requests and there wasn't many fandoms I knew being asked for. I will be signing up for hurtcomfortex though and signups for that are still ongoing. *Goes back to perusing its beautiful tag set*

Writing Rainbow Yellow revealed and I wrote 2 things:

The Twinkling of a Dozen Yellow Stars, Captain America/MCU fandom, Steve/Natasha, 300 words. Summary: Tonight, they have each other.

Like the Adventure of the Yellow Whatever, 9-1-1 Lone Star fandom, rated G, 841 words. Summary: It wasn't long before Paul developed a reputation at the 126th, but it wasn't the kind of reputation he expected (aka S1E2 opener explanation).

I haven't managed a single treat for Chocolate Box so far (stupid brain) or written a thing for my Losers bingo card (same reason), so I've been spending time doing more crafts. In trying to use up random yarn from my stash I made this tiny shawl out of some super soft grey and sparkly dark pink yarn.

( picture )

It crocheted up quickly but I ran out of compatible yarn and it was only 2.5' by 1.5 or so which is nice for an extra layer for cold neck/shoulders but not terribly useful overall so I pulled out one of my larger cones of 100% wool to try the pattern again and made this:

( picture )

which is closer to 5.5' wide and 3.5' long and works much better as an actual shawl. It used up SO much yarn, wow. Although it's a dusty rose color than a purple, not sure why the picture came out like that. Also, lying it flat like that makes me realize I probably should block it but ugh, effort.

I'm still working on my denim scraps braided rug, but I need to decide on a crocheting project to do as well since I like having a bunch of different projects going for for different brainpower/wrist pain/back issue times. I really want to try ripping up some old tshirts and making tshirt yarn and crocheting or braiding/knotting with that but that would not use up stash. Hampering deciding on a new crochet pattern is a lot of my yarn is.. err.. bright 90s colors (which 2020 me is side-eying the hell out of 90s me for buying, even if I honestly don't remember if better colors were being offered when this yarn company went out of business) or pretty random (skeins of rug yarn, baby yarn, thin cotton sheen) and a lack of real need for anything. How many throws and blankets does one family need? Crocheting animals for EAD's Birthday Bash was fun, but now they're just sitting around and I've no real desire to try to get good enough at them to sell (also, holy hell doing the eyes for them was a ridiculous pain).

I barely did Snowflake this year. I dunno, a combination of the different schedule and bad brain and general malaise I guess. Oh well. *sigh*

I started watching two new shows that premiered this month (911 Lone Star and FBI:Most Wanted) and while neither should probably be considered 'good' shows, I'm appreciating all the diversity popping up in them. We need canon characters of all types on our screens (ftm trans character, Muslim woman, m/m couple, interracial couple, f/f couple) especially when they write it as just a part of who they are rather than it being their one defining characteristic.

I also watched, and mostly liked, Netflix's The Witcher and am debating trying the books. We'll see.

Reveals were a few days ago, but I totally forgot to post the fics I wrote for the Trick or Treat exchange here. I wrote:

Two Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood fics:
Left Behind and Moving Forward - Promised Day was over and they'd saved the world. The price, however, had been high. (2900 words)
An Icy Epithet - People called Olivia Mira Armstrong cold. They were right. (300 words)

One The Man from U.N.C.L.E. fic:
The Trust of Self - As partners they trusted each other with their lives; when it came down to it, they trusted each other with their true selves too. (2609 words)

One Charmed (1998) fic:
Crisscrossed and Turned on Its Head - Sometimes all it takes is a few minutes to turn the world on its head. Canon divergent of "Chris-Crossed." (4441 words)

One Captain America fic: (because of course as I seem to be written it for a lot of exchanges this year)
Firsts, of All the Best Kind - It was New Year's, they finally had their own place, and Bucky decided it would be the perfect time for a party. (300 words)

and one for For Sale: Baby shoes. Never Worn (aka that 6 words story falsely attributed to Hemmingway)
For Sale: Baby shoes, Never Worn (Reasons Vary) - Five not depressing but rather perfectly normal (and one not so normal) ads someone might post to sell a pair of baby shoes that have never been worn. (drabble sequence, 600 words)

It felt so weird not to be working on Yuletide in October, ToT was a nice distraction. Something I need to remember for if I ever post the first thing in an unwrangled fandom for an exchange is tagging it with the fandom and also "Undisclosed Fandom" so it will actually show up in something if people are only looking at the collection via the fandom breakdown even if the actual fandom takes a while to get wrangled. It worked pretty well.

There's been so many flashfics lately- seriously at least once seems to be at some stage of planning, noms, signups, writing, or reveals every weekend- and while I've skipped most I did write treats for the second round of WeDieLikeFen, "F is for Fen Who Do Stuff Together." This one's requests seemed to have more of a horror porn focus and there was also a corset challenge to it which might explain some of the treats I wrote. I almost didn't claim most, since they were kind of out there for me, but wth, why not (although check the tags before reading):

A Library, the Final Frontier; FMA:B+stealth/crack crossover (although not star trek), rated G, 200 words. Summary: Getting lost in a library was easier than you'd think.

For Him, For Me (I'll Never Tell); Captain America, Bucky/Steve, rated M, 333 words. Summary:It was something he was supposed to be doing for Steve instead of to him.

Fulfilling Day and Neverending Night; Captain America, rated E (dark fic), 1,648 words. Summary: He thought he'd just been captured and that he'd be able to escape without a problem. He was wrong. So very, very wrong.

Innocent Looking, My Ass (An Essay by James Buchanan Barnes, Aged Old Enough to Have Known Better); Captain America, Bucky/Steve, rated M, 741 words. Summary: As far as dares went it wasn't the stupidest one he'd ever made but he was pretty sure he was never going to regret it.

Give Me Your Words I'll Eat Them; Hannibal (TV), rated M, 243 words. Summary: Given enough time a liver could regenerate. Other body parts? Not so much.

There's over 300 fics in the collection, go take a look!

NPT reveals have happened so I can claim what I wrote for it and I never posted my multifandomdrabble stuff here so....

NPT fic:
Dreams and Aiding Endeavors, Sleepy Hollow, rated G, Summary: Considering everything Jenny had gone through she sometimes felt like she was alone in the world. Then she met a man who made her realize she was anything but; 1706 words

MFD drabbles:
Success, Depending on the Measuring, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015), rated PG. Summary: The mission had some hiccups, but was still a success.

Distinctive Attributes, Leverage/White Collar crossover, rated G. Summary: There were a lot of things Eliot finds distinctive.

Back on the Horse, Doctor Who (classic), rated G. Summary: Ace tried living the normal life, luckily fate intervened.

Scraps and Survival, Babylon 5, rated G. Summary: There were some people who saw a wonderful, bright world and a hopeful future, but not those who lived Downbelow.

There's lots of great stuff in both collections, go check them out if you haven't yet! :)

Whoops forgot to post the drabble treats I wrote for multifandomdrabble. There's a lot of great stuff there, go check it out!

What Remains, Sherlock (BBC), rated PG. Summary: Some things are harder to move past than others

Props and Moorings, Magnum, PI (2018), rated G. Summary: Magnum has a few words of support for TC. (Episode tag to S1e19, "Blood in the Water.")

and now back to my having my butt kicked by my h/c exchange fic....

I wrote a decent amount for Yuletide this year but mostly in fandoms that ranged from non-existent to really, really small so as I'm fairly sure most will be unfamiliar I figure I'll do like I did last year and promote each fandom some as well although I'll try to keep the babble at a minimum, if anyone wants to hear more about any particular fic just give a shout. Starting with the larger fandoms:

The Haunting of Hill House (TV show) The netflix series (very, very) loosely based on the Shirley Jackson book this is a ten episode story based around a family with 5 kids who bought a house back in the 90s with the idea of fixing it up and selling it for a profit only to find out it was haunted and to have things start to go very, very wrong for them as a result. Despite hating horror as a genre overall, I really liked this series as it dealt with the emotional fallout and the effect of that summer on the family that still lingered today.

-Seeds Taking Root, G, 2335 words. Summary: Luke was trying to go forward and move on after almost dying. He was well aware that it wouldn't be easy and that recovery wasn't a straight line, but with any luck he might just make it.
-Temptation's Tight Grip, PG, 1245 words. Summary: For an addict the temptation to use is always there.
-Walls Growing, Ever Thicker Ever Higher, PG, 1223 words. Summary: The knock that came in the middle of the night was one that Theo had been expecting for years. What Shirley had come to tell her however? That threw her for a loop.

Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik Set in a Tzarist Russia-esque/Fairytale land, the daughter of a (not so successful) Jewish moneylender manages to turn silver into gold. This is actually the first Naomi Novik book I ever read and I was intrigued by setting and curious how it would portray Miryem's Judaism and how the rest of the 'Russians' treated it.

-Laden with Happiness (and Tears), PG, 1183 words. Summary: Miryem’s celebration of her first Shabbat in the Staryk lands after being married was a little different than her previous ones. (Random factoid: I based my description of Miryem's Shabbos prayers after my dim memories of how my great grandmother, who grew up in Russia in the late 1800s, did hers.)
-Glistering Within the Grey, G, 592 words. Summary: Being one of the two servants assigned to serve the Queen was meant as a slight; it turned out to be anything but.

Call Me By Your Name (2017) Set in Italy in the 1980's, a coming of age type film where a 17-year-old eventually gets together with the grad student who comes to live with them for a bit in order to work for his professor father.

-Unforeseen Outcomes, G, 1223 words. Summary: A migraine gives Oliver a few things to think about. (This was a h/c request. How could I not fill a h/c request for Oliver?)

The Usual Suspects (1995)- How to summarize this movie... A US Customs Agent questions a conman after an explosion at a pier left a number of people dead. The conman proceeds to tell him the events that led to said explosion, or did he? (I love this movie, it's one of those that after you watch you immediately want to rewatch and then rewatch again.)

-Phaethon Behind the Wheel, PG, 2333 words. Summary: A rumor's not a rumor that doesn't die but rumors are just rumors and while some are based in fact, some are not. (Random aside, this is probably one of my favorite titles that I've ever come up with. Also, I deliberately left the identification of one character in one scene vague/unclear to make it meld with canon more.)
-Chekhov Gives Up PG, 2178 words. Summary: Five ways "The Usual Suspects" couldn't (and wouldn't) have ended and the one way it probably didn't, but might have. (This got written on a whim after a discussion in discord about various tropes and Lanna requesting them and how they could be basically canon for this, so it's basically 6 ridiculous tropes massaged to work vaguely within canon.)

The Shadow (1994) The Shadow, aka Lamont Cranston, saves people and fights crime in 1930's NYC. Margo Lane winds up butting her way into the battle between him and Shiwan Khan and the entire fate of the city rests in its outcome.

-The Shadow Knows, But Not Everything, G, 1504 words. Summary: Lamont might know a lot about how running an underground network like the Shadow's, but that didn't mean he knew everything. Luckily, he had Margo there to help him out.

Southland (TV) (from the wiki) a "raw and authentic look" at Los Angeles and the lives of the LAPD officers who police it.

-Cleaning Up R, 100 words. Summary: After a day of garbage runs there is only one way to get clean. (sarken wanted a manhandled, bottom!Cooper, how could I not write that?)

Kung Fu: The Legend Continues A Shaolin priest father and his son, now a police detective, reunite to fight crime. Ah the 90s and the ridiculous sounding plots of shows that aired then.

-The Tread of Time, Step By Step, G, 1528 words. Summary: It'd been twenty years but Peter was still there, keeping the city safe.

And now the fandom I'm sure no one has even heard of......

Outliers:Strange Stars (Podcast) Outliers is a series of seven one shot stories released last year by RustyQuill and the Strange Stars episode (17 minutes long and can be heard here as well as most podcast type places), written and performed by Jonny Sims (known for his work on "The Magnus Archives"), revolves around the historical figure of Hew Draper a Bristol innkeeper who was arrested for attempted poisoning and witchcraft in 1561. After being found guilty Draper was incarcerated in the Salt Tower of London where he made a rather detailed, incredibly unusual carving. The carving and what little record exists about the man can be found here. Hew Draper's story is fascinating and Sims' building on it, showing Draper through the eyes of the prison's chaplain and how a man of the cloth might attempt to console, if not even convert, a man who historically admitted to having "once been an 'astronomer' but had since burned all his books" is amazing. (I really enjoyed this podcast, go give it a listen.)

-Strange Suns, Ominious Stars G, 2222 words. Summary: After Hew Draper's strange disappearance from the Salt Tower I assumed I would never see the man again. I was wrong. (Trying to match Sims' style was a hard, yet really fun, challenge. I wrote this knowing it would get few eyeballs and I was right. At reveals it had less hits, let alone kudos, than any of the 100+ other fics I've ever written for Yuletide. The recip loved it though, so I don't mind.)

As I mentioned earlier, I wrote three stories for NPT this year. Authors have now been revealed so I can claim:

Title: Clearing the Way
Fandom/Rating: The Magnificent Seven (TV), rated PG
Word Count: 2788 words
Summary: When Chris and Vin are trapped in a cave some revelations come to light.
Author's Note: Written for farad

Title: Silver Linings and What Might Be
Fandom/Rating: Forever (TV), rated PG
Word Count: 4,248 words
Summary: A case brings Joanna and Henry together, in more ways than one.
Author's Note: A treat written for Karios

Title: Between Memory and Moment
Fandom/Rating: Charmed (TV), rated PG
Word Count: 5,925 words
Summary: Chris was going to save his brother or die trying. He never considered the possibility he might do both and still see the future he'd worked so hard to change.
Author's Note: A treat for jaegermighty

Reveals have happened so I can claim the two Chocolate Box fics I wrote as treats:

Title: Easing the Burden
Fandom/Rating: Sherlock Holmes, rated PG
Word Count: 657 words
Summary: After an exceptionally long and terrible day all Watson wanted was to slip into Baker Street and go to sleep. That was, thankfully, not to be.
Author's Note: Written for tjs_whatnot.

Easing the Burden

Title: To Not Exceed the Limit
Fandom/Rating: The Losers, rated PG
\Word Count: 4223
Summary: Things that Clay had been careful not to see come to light at the worst, or perhaps best, moment.
Author's Note: Written for tommygirl.

To Not Exceed the Limit

As someone who doesn't really read or write PWP this isn't really an exchange with a lot for me to read, but I've heard lots of good things about the original fic section and in the various mega fandoms so if that's something that tickles your fancy you can check out the whole collection here.