#i actually managed to cobble together my little spare time to write a fic

[mrpenguinpants]

oh my god I finally got this card (The Hero's Journey and it's one (1) bullshit requirement)

[lostlegendaerie]

Six Fics of 2016

someone. someone tagged me in this. multiple someones tagged me in this while my PC was broken as shit so fuck. i dont know but i Wanted This, so. originally by @secretlystephaniebrown​ !

So I thought I’d pick 6 fics of mine written during this year, grab a favorite quote from each of them, give a short explanation of why it’s one of my favorites, and then tag 6 people to do the same! Let’s get some self love rolling as we head towards the end of this year!

and yeah i did write other fandoms this year but its like mostly RvB and Entirely in space, so.

6. Save and Restore - York & Delta, canon compliant

“That’s a-- dirty word, D.” A light, airy chuckle follows; one he remembers following an exchange with Carolina years ago. It sounds so much younger than the rest of York’s words, and he realizes he may not have anything more recent. “Better-- clean it off.”

“I… beg your pardon?”

“Nah, it’s free.”

i mean im Mostly so fond of this one because it was how I met @agentyorkdakota​ my moon and stars, but i also really enjoyed just getting to play with language a lot with this? like i’m pretty sure i’ve discussed this before but for a senior year project i worked a lot on a play called The Skriker where the title character kind of... used mixed metaphors and all sorts of jumbled language to communicate and it just. stuck with me. this language that was kind of cobbled together and makes sense but doesn't and yet does? so that was def a highlight of mine working on this fic. (also it placed me in the Angst War, a feather in my cap if there ever was one)

5. blow you like a popsicle stand - Tucker/Wash, canon compliant

He swallows his fear and creeping horror and lifts the lid. Buried under the crystalline ice of the remarkably still-functioning freezer is a collection of brightly colored little packages, all about the size of his hand.

“What.”

“I know!” Tucker replies, with exactly the kind of enthusiasm than ensures Wash he does not know, “I can’t believe it either. Ice cream! Here! On Chorus! Man, Caboose is gonna flip out when he sees this.”

Wash is tired, and adrenaline-tingly, and by this time he should just always expect to be betrayed and disappointed but here he is. He pulled a door out of a crumbling concrete wall for decades old ice cream sandwiches. Couldn’t save the lives of kids under his command, but sure. He can demolish a building in a fit of panic.

“What,” he repeats again, trying to shove all of his feelings into one ambiguous syllable. But Tucker just hip-checks him out of the way, flourishes his sword with a buzz of light, and carves a path through the ice to a red and blue package.

this one was done in a swap for @playerprophet​ (whom i also love and tag in this, there you go) and was just. okay. listen. l i s t e n. if i’m gonna write porn im gonna write specific porn. i’m gonna write mildly kinky porn with new shit y’all aint even knew you liked so someone can find me at a con and tell me to my face “oh yeah you wrote the iceplay fic” and i can be like “y e s” but also i can barely scrub the Feelings out of anything i write, so. SO. this was a pretty lighthearted excuse for Porn and it went over really, really well. so im Happy.

4. Golden Boy - York-centric, semi-canon compliant

Not that York can go back, now; not that there's anything left to go back to, with the entire project turning on itself in a disjointed, cumulative sort of cannibalism as every man, woman, or construct fights for themselves. And he’s not entirely blind to the fact that being wired to Delta on a neurological level makes the Director’s treatment of the AI feel infinitely more personal; makes it easier than it should have been to turn his guns on people he’d worked with for years. No. He’s not blind, not in that sense anyway.

But if he’s going forward, he wants to understand in full what he did in the name of science and progress.

this fic once shared a name with @littlefists​ ‘s epic because it was literally the first thing I wrote in the fandom and I Wasn’t Into Tuckington So I Didn’t Know, and i swear to GOD this is the last time i bring this up but i worked so fucking hard on it, it has Combat and Betrayal and Introspection and World Building and while i’ve gotta better grip on canon now I still really, really enjoyed this fic as an explanation for how York, of all people, could have gone so low in OOM

3. Overflow - Tucker/Wash, canon compliant

His thoughts about Tucker have often felt like a glass of water that’s just a little too full. He moves carefully so they don’t slosh around and make a mess of the place, barely keeping it all inside . And he’d thought that, once the newness of the whole ‘ sure we’ll risk lying to the faces of UNSC police to keep you out of prison even though you’ve done next to nothing nice for us your entire life ’ gratitude thing wore off (it didn’t, not entirely, it still pops up sometimes in the worst of moments and chokes him like the noose he should have gotten) the level would go down.

[...]

Tucker does something to him. Tucker finds ways to make him forget, at least for a little while, all the ways he’s fucked up. Even if it’s just finding more tolerable faults, like how the stick Washington has got shoved up his ass does wonders for keeping his back straight. Tucker talks loud enough to drown out the ghosts of everyone he underranked but outlived, listens enough to make his hard-won experience and advice mean something, and he is terrified for the day that everything overflows.

this was birthday fic for @strangestquiet that i actually took a day off from work to ensure i completed it in time but just. anyway. i’m pretty proud of it because it’s Big and it’s Coherent Mission Fic that managed somehow to tie into a little bit of preexisting lore. i’m also unfortunately very fond of all the little OC children bc i’ve constantly had tons of trouble with original characters and even tho no one else seemed to notice them i had fun and i love them all. but just in general i feel like i had a good balance of humor and feelings and also imagery? but as far as the latter goes it falls short of...

2. gethsemane - implied Shepard/Vakarian, Archangel-centric, game-compliant

On his last trip out of the Citadel, tying off loose ends, he bought a pack of playing cards from a human vendor. He had memories - they’d been fond once, but were souring like milk left in the sun - of losing miserably to Shepard and Williams at some gambling game. Leaving gifts on the graves of the departed wasn’t exactly the norm for turian culture, but neither was it strictly a human one either.

The flowers around the small crystal pillar were already wilting with neglect when he arrived. There might have been other tributes left there, but security had loosened until it fell away, slack like discarded clothes. Garrus left the cards there, under the shimmering list of names of casualties from the attack on the Citadel, and took the next transport ship as far away from Widow as possible.

okay so like. whenever possible i love to put good imagery in fic and like. understate emotions when i can and just in general do the literary version of the color saturated wide shot, you feel me? like the pullback with the characters in silhouette but you can still understand everything they’re feeling? anyway i feel like this fic really nailed a lot of my own personal goals for just Vivid fics. can’t wait to write more mass effect fic but it’s gonna be Hard to meet the standards i set for myself with this one.

1. Throw Away the Key - York/Carolina, Alternate Universe

Carolina fights to find the best angle for her umbrella as gusts of wind swat rain at them in little bursts, but by the time her car gives a satisfying click they’re both uncomfortably wet and she’s run out of things to say. Thankfully, he hasn’t.

“We have got to stop meeting like this,” York reflects as he withdraws the metal blade, inch by careful inch. “This is getting a little absurd. Like, bad soulmate romcom Hallmark movie levels of coincidence.”

“Not my fault if you keep breaking the law.” She’s a little surprised by the movie analogy, but decides against teasing him for his choice in films.

“I am bending it, at best.”

listen i’m fucking neck deep in all the complexities of longfic hell and this sure isn’t the artsy stylistic stuff that i can be proud of (or regret) later on down the road but i’m trying. i’m trying to write something massive and happy and so far it’s working. i can’t say for sure if it’s actually Good because i get to see all my messy drafts and stops and starts that the rest of you are spared, but I wanted so badly to write A Good Longfic for the Y/C fandom and with that, at least, I feel like I’m doing well. if nothing else, literally nothing else at all, i am proud of myself for trying this and i hope that it can continue to give people joy long after it’s done and i’m gone.

i’m gonna go ahead and tag @therewithasmile @sinelanguage @lady-of-rohan @flecksofpoppy @owaire and of course @playerprophet but if you’re reading this and wanna do it go right ahead!