schneefink

I wrote three drabbles for fandomtrees :

Providing Entertainment, The Magnus Archives, for badficbilly
Summary: "Do you think Elias can see me?" Gerry asked one day.
Featuring ghost!Gerry because as soon as I saw the prompt for Gerry haunting Jon I knew I wanted to write something.

Escaping the Night, Hades, for yhlee
Summary: Dying from sunlight felt different than dying from being staked.
Featuring vampire!Zagreus because I could not resist that prompt.

Last Kiss, Nirvana in Fire, for shadaras
Summary: After Lin Shu's death, Nihuang and Jingyan kiss only once more.
As soon as I thought about this threesome I could not get that image out of my head.

I also got beautiful gifts, very nice Lin Chen & Nihuang art from mekare and Lin Chen icons from kingstoken and a wonderful Castlevania fic:
Three-Body Problem by dishonestdreams
Summary: In which Sypha wants to capitalise on an opportunity, and Trevor has a headache...
Post-canon pre-OT3 fic with perfect character voices.

Some recs from this year's Nirvana in Fire Exchange:

whatever you can still betray by nemainofthewater
1.4k, AU – canon divergence, angst
Summary: Mei Changsu wants to die as Lin Shu. Lin Chen has a problem with that.
OR Lin Chen would sacrifice anything to save Mei Changsu's life. Even his trust. Even his friendship.
Why I love it: This is such beautiful angst that hurts in all the best ways.

with honor by tciddaemina
20.5k, Lie Zhanying/Xiao Jingyan, pre-canon
Summary: Zhanying is fifteen when he joins the army, bringing with him nothing but a change of clothes and a few copper coins. He was never one of those sons that was destined for the service, never even dreamed of it, but when he was fourteen his father had died and his mother had been left with eleven hungry mouths to feed, and even with his first and second brothers taking the helm at his father's business and his eldest sister taking shifts at the seamstress' down the road, even with his mother working every hour of the day and Zhanying working dawn till dusk laying bricks to bring back a few extra coins, it wasn't enough.
For seven months, Zhanying watched his mother grow more thin and gaunt, watched his brothers grow more brittle, the bags beneath their eyes deepening with every long night spent in the workshop. For seven months, Zhanying watched his youngest siblings smile and laugh and try to pretend their stomachs weren't still rumbling when they went to bed, growing thinner every day, and in the eighth month Zhanying said no more and joined the army.
Why I like it: Great look at Zhanying and his relationship with Jingyan.

tho' drifted deep in parian by qwertyuiop678
2.5k, post-(fixed)-canon
Summary: Lin Chen and Nihuang bond over their longtime crushes on Lin Shu, Mei Changsu, Su Zhe - whatever you want to call him. Who, for all his many brilliances, is just a touch behind on this particular subject.
Why I like it: This is very funny, and I enjoy Lin Chen and Nihuang together.

memories to bury or live by by FaiaSakura
10.5k, female!Yujin, pre-canon
Summary: Yan Yujin spends her maiden years growing up in the shadow of the Chiyan Rebellion.
Why I like it: I really enjoyed this look at the different challenges a female Yan Yujin faces and how she deals with them.

Jingyan and the Pirates by ThimbleRig
1.1k, pre-canon
Summary: The pirates had stopped giving them water two days ago.
It was, Jingyan thought wearily, blearily, an act of foolishness...
Why I like it: Jingyan makes such a great noble damsel in distress, and MCS, jianghu chief, a great noble prince rescuer.

In the Middle by sandalwood
Vid, OT3
Summary: Nihuang knew what to do when she saw the way Mei Changsu and Xiao Jingyan looked at each other.
Why I like it: I approve of her plan :D Even more so after watching this vid.

Lauren by absternr
Vid
Summary: who's gonna hear this song through the wall and sing it right back
Why I like it: Lin Chen is the best. (His taste in men is sadly unfortunate for him.)

I love crossovers, so of course one of the first things I did after finishing TMA was start thinking about crossovers with other fandoms I love, and then I came up with a NiF crossover ( TMA s3 spoilers )

And then I realized that I forgot to account for cultural differences, which must be huge, especially if you add different times. In ancient China spiders were symbols of luck and good fortune, for example. So what might things have looked like in wuxia ancient China?
( Thoughts )

I don't read many NiF fics anymore (I still have several in my to-read bookmarks), but I did find some very good ones.

Thaumatrope by ancient_moonshine
33.8k, Pacific Rim fusion, LS|MCS/JY
Summary:Lin Shu fights to regain what he had. Jingyan's just trying to save the world and his husband. Mei Chang Su watches and plots, but humanity is both more fallible and dangerous than it seems to be.
They all pay the price.
Why I love it: I only just read this one so I still have a lot of tangled up feelings. (As the tags correctly say, "Angst, so much angst," in the best way.) Instead of only metaphorically, here MCS literally possessed LS; but of course Jingyan is not willing to just accept this, and he's not the only one. The fusion is wonderfully done. Once or twice I was confused by the nonlinear narration but overall it works very well.
Canon knowledge required: NiF: probably not, Pacific Rim: overview should suffice

for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you by soera
23.4k, daemon AU, LS|MCS/JY
Summary: Jingyan's greatest secret, that no one will ever know, is that Foya still hasn’t settled.
Why I love it: In contrast, this one is much happier than NiF canon :) Probably as much fluff as you can have in a fic based on the canon plot. All the daemon choices are wonderful.
Canon knowledge required: NiF yes, HDM no

meteoric // 平步青雲 by justjoy
2k, gen, canon-divergence AU
Summary: What if the ones framed alongside Prince Qi wasn’t the Chiyan army... but Prince Jing’s?
Why I love it: I love canon-divergence AUs, and this one is excellent. A great look at what-if in not many but very effective words.
Canon knowledge required: yes

Obviously this is subjective, but after it took me weeks to watch the first half of Nirvana in Fire 2 and I didn't really mind waiting days between episodes, I started watching the second half on Sunday and then binge-watched the rest of it until I was finished. I enjoyed it a lot! Season 2 still doesn't come close to season 1, but to be fair very few shows do.

( Very general slightly spoilery notes )

( More detailed spoilery notes )

One thing I dislike about NiF 2 is that it has far fewer wonderful female characters than season 1. ( Spoilery complaints )

I'm curious if there will be a more than a handful of fic and if yes, which characters/pairings, and also which time periods: before season 2, during, or after.( Read more... )

Happy Yuletide!
The first of probably several Yuletide rec sets:
( Nirvana in Fire, Punic Wars RPF, Krabat, Winnetou, Integrate, Pod Save America RPF, 12th century Historical RPF, Murderbot Diaries, Magnus Chase, Critical Role RPF )

Today is world poetry day, and in some cafés in Vienna you could pay for a coffee with a poem. I met with my mom and my cousin at a café after work and wrote three poems featuring coffee in five minutes each. The ability to relatively easily write silly poems and rewrite song lyrics is among my favourite things I inherited from my dad, who occasionally rewrites the lyrics of entire musicals for anniversary birthdays.
I also wanted to post a poem but I'm too lazy to pick one out, but I will post at least one sometime in the next month.

DD and I are rewatching NiF two episodes a week, which we decided on because we needed a fixed number to stop ourselves from speeding through it in time we don't have. On the one hand it's something I now look forward to every week and it's great to rewatch it together, but on the other hand there's fic I want to edit or write for which I need to rewatch later episodes and I don't want to skip ahead. Ah well, better late than never. In the meantime I have so many feelings about all the NiF characters that I seem to be able to only express nonverbally, especially about Jingyan and Liyang who are so good and deserve so much better and just *flails*

Not that I have too much drive to write right now anyway. Hopefully next week? I try to at least keep up with commenting on fic I read during the day in the evenings, because it feels too awkward to visit the Archive at work and typing on my phone is annoying.

My head is full of random stuff. Eh, could be worse, at least most of it is not negative random stuff. Stuff like plans to finally try out the "Lord of the Rings" boardgame I got for cheap over a year ago this weekend, or museums, or calendar confusion, or the surprisingly annoying decision what to wear each morning. Not that the company has a strict dress code but still. I think I want to have more necklaces. It's on my list of things to buy with my paychecks, somewhere after "new headphones" because my current ones only work intermittently, and somewhere before "new laptop" because I know me and it'll take me ages to finally decide on a new model. My current one lasted almost eight years even though I didn't treat it very well, I'm attached (and lazy.)

Happy 2017!
I celebrated New Year's Eve with Lio&Maria and Lisa&Nati, and Maria tried out about ten or so different cocktails, yum. Three other people showed up for a while and drew Lio into a discussion on politics, and I hated that on the last day of 2016 while I wanted to play a game and enjoy myself I couldn't help but hear someone argue on the other side of the room that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were equally bad options. Bleh. Fortunately they left before midnight. We sang a bit (including to Level Up and This Year), and after midnight we played four rounds of cards and I won all of them :) I came home so late that I narrowly missed OT of the Pens-Habs game, but the Pens won so that was good too.

I wrote two stories for Yuletide this year:
See Your Silhouette for lilacsigil
Fandom: Gladiator – Dami Im
1.3k, background White Warrior/Princess
Summary: She hadn't seen the Princess in fifty years.
My assignment. It was pretty frustrating because the prompts were good and I had ideas, but it was hard to put them together into a story, and at some point I planned something much longer and more complex before I condensed it to its current length. It probably made the story better, but there were a few elements I'm sorry I lost.

Step Forward for alessandriana
Fandom: Nirvana in Fire
1.6k, gen, canon-divergent AU
Summary: Jingyan had known this day would come, but for years xiao-Shu had done him the favor of allowing him not to think about it.
The first time I actually finished a Yuletide treat! Jingyu dies from natural cases and so there is no conspiracy. I'd started sketching this AU before I even saw alessandriana's letter, and when I saw that she prompted it it gave me the push I needed to finish. I really like this AU, and there's a possibility that I'm not done with it yet because I keep thinking of more things that would be interesting to explore in it.

There are many Yuletide stories I still want to read (thanks to everyone who recced stories), but I decided to put those aside for now and try to write something for fandom_stocking.
I also still need to do my 2016 year review, aaand I decided to try and do at least half of the snowflake_challenge this year, so at least 7 days.

Day 1: In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Huh. I think I'll cheat a bit and refer to "Step Forward" above, because I really like the concept of this AU and I feel like I wrote a good look into it.

Dark Blue Skies, a Steerswoman fic: "In the third year of Willam's apprenticeship with Corvus, Abremio came to Wulfshaven." It's one of my longer works and I'm quite proud of how it turned out.

Assuming Shape, a Young Avengers fic, Teddy Altman's mom's backstory. (I can't remember if her name is from canon somewhere or if I took it from another fic.) I wrote it because I wanted to make her more real (which makes canon even sadder) and I feel like I succeeded.

Writing every day in November: week one was a success, feels good. So far I have written snippets of one sort-of fusion, time travel, a canon divergent AU, post-canon fix-it with magic, and an ep 54 missing scene, all for Nirvana in Fire. I made some structuring progress for my Yuletide fic too, I think it's coming along.
(Other than that last week was unfortunately unproductive -.- This is most likely related. I'm not looking forward to therapy on Tuesday at all.)

I finished one ficlet:
New Life, Different Fur
NiF, 330 words, short silly post-canon fluff with magic.
I wanted to write post-canon fluff for naye and found out that in this fandom that's harder than I anticipated… I accidentally wrote three snippets of ( spoilers ), I meant to fix it but the angst refused to leave. So I had to come up with something else.

Yesterday I thought about how much fun it can be to mash together two fandoms who have absolutely nothing to do with each other. "But sometimes," I thought, "it's really hard, like, just as a random example of things I've been watching recently, Nirvana in Fire and hockey."
An hour later I had the basic premise of a story I'm not going to write.

( I'll share though. )