eccentric_hat

I had a strangely thematically consistent time with this year's Candy Hearts exchange! I received a fic for Conclave and a fic where some dudes in the eighteenth century go to the opera, and I wrote a fic for Conclave and one where some dudes in the eighteenth century go to the opera. The opera-going dudes are all also pretty Catholic. I don't recall having written or received any fics about priests or operas before, or really any stories about Catholicism; things just assembled in a cluster this time around.

So, I received a lovely heartfelt post-canon Conclave gen fic:

The doorway into thanks (878 words) by maharetr
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Conclave (2024)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Vincent Benítez & Thomas Lawrence (Conclave)
Additional Tags: Prayer, Shame, Grief/Mourning, so many feelings
Summary: Benitez did not immediately take his rapt gaze from the turtles. “Are they escaping because they’re bored? Or because they don’t feel safe, maybe?”

And, to my delight, a fill for my wildcard Les Misérables request, which took the crackship just seriously enough to relish in it--I found myself picturing young Gillenormand here as rather resembling the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair:

Two Gentlemen of the Paris Opera (1168 words) by strikethesun
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Luc-Esprit Gillenormand/Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel (Les Mis - Hugo)
Characters: Luc-Esprit Gillenormand, Bishop Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel
Additional Tags: missing chapter, Post-Opera Flirting, Strongly Implied Offscreen Slash, First Meetings, invented backstory
Summary: Over the course of, according to M. Gillenormand, a rather tedious opera—he has not recorded the name, but his scant description leads one to believe it was a work of Rameau’s—the young, dashing bourgeois appears to have become utterly engrossed in the appearance of a gentleman he did not recognize who was seated nearby.
A hitherto lost chapter of Les Misérables in which M. Gillenormand and M. Myriel have a memorable meeting.

So those were a delight. Of course I spent the month-and-change before Valentine's Day thinking only in a vague, anticipatory way about what I would receive, while focusing my bits and bobs of spare time and attention on what I was going to write.

( Many words about my assignment )

The end product was this:

Cattivo (2746 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Amadeus - Shaffer
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart/Antonio Salieri
Characters: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonio Salieri, Constanze Weber Mozart
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Daemons
Summary: Salieri took righteous offense at Mozart, at his unjust measure of genius, at what it meant for himself. Salieri's daemon had a slightly different response.

After that was up and beta'd, I tried to write some treats, and I ended up writing one. I have much, much less to say about this story than the last one, though I am fond of it. I wanted to write something for Conclave, having a sense that this is the moment to do so, and the only person besides me who had requested that fandom was requesting / ships. So I once again had to find a way to write something shippy enough it would meet the brief, although I wasn't really interested in sex-at-the-Vatican. I settled on giving two of the main characters a past relationship. This is the easy answer for me, a person who loves writing about people's relationship to the past; once it was posted, the fandom found it and said "ow." I'm sorry, but not very sorry.

You can, or at least I can, see some of my real-world feelings toward the Catholic Church peeking through in this fic, especially the beginning (I only wish the archdiocese of Minneapolis and Saint Paul had gotten someone like Aldo Bellini installed when Nienstedt stepped down), though nobody seems to have particularly noticed. Mostly it's about two old friends having poignant coffee. I wrote most of this the day the collection opened, and was happy that I found a simple enough central metaphor that I didn't have to spend long seeking a title or summary:

Fulcrum (1151 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Conclave (2024)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Aldo Bellini/Thomas Lawrence (Conclave)
Characters: Aldo Bellini (Conclave), Thomas Lawrence (Conclave)
Additional Tags: Past Relationship(s)
Summary:
Give me a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.

Overall, an exceedingly good Candy Hearts. I didn't really have time for any of this, but it was a major bright spot in a strange winter.

I almost forgot to do this, but I did write a story for Yuletide 2024! Writing has been really slow in the last couple years, and I signed up for Yuletide offering a bunch of canons I know well and/or would be able to review quickly--mostly one-off stories and plays and feature films. Then my assignment was for someone who did not understand some things about Yuletide, and I contacted the mods and ended up basically insta-defaulting and getting first dibs on pinch hits. I was a little worried about getting an assignment, so I gave them the entire list of fandoms I had even considered offering, and the end result was that I picked up a request for The Dark is Rising and then spent the remainder of autumn and early winter meaning, and forgetting, and remembering again, to do canon review. I did not actually finish rereading the series before I had to stop and write this story; but I got halfway through Silver on the Tree, and jumped ahead and read the end, and that was enough, because it had to be.

I wrote a deleted a fair amount of scruff for this piece before I got my legs underneath me, and while I was dawdling through canon review. I write every day, but it's mostly journaling, and as far as actual creative work I'm willing to share, the well has been dry, dry, dry. I drafted an essay about Moby Dick in the summer that I would like to shape up just to the level of blog post, but it's slow going. This story came together all right, though, I think--some trademark eccentric_hat melancholia, and only as much reflection on mortality as the canon justified. The race to a bus pass was rocky, but once I got to start revising, I felt like I got my sea legs. So that's good to have. A little gift of the end of the year. Here is the story:

Rooted in the flesh, stone, tree and flower (1778 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bran Davies/Will Stanton
Characters: Bran Davies, Will Stanton (Dark is Rising)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon
Summary:

Sometimes Will lets himself talk of the true shape of human history. Usually no one notices.

Format stolen from

chestnut_pod who got it from

sharpa !

STATS:

Total # of works posted — 5, a relatively high number for me

Total volume of works — 19,255 words

Total # of fandoms — 5

Longest work — "The Consolations of Arabella Strange," which at 11,289 words constitutes the majority of this year's fic posted

Shortest work — "Out of Touch," 400 words exactly

WORKS:

The Consolations of Arabella Strange, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Arabella-centric gen

Who Could Ask For Anything More, Dimension 20: The Unsleeping City, Josefina Gatsby/Misty Moore

Out of Touch, The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Cimorene/Mendenbar

Feeling comes in aid of feeling, Ghosts BBC, Thomas/Kitty

or hesitate to love, Ocean's Echo, Tennal/Surit

REVIEW:

Favorite work — "Consolations" is very, very close to my heart, and I can't really compare it to anything else.

Hardest work — "Consolations" again; but that work mostly didn't occur this year. The final process that led up to posting it was relatively painless. "Feeling comes in aid of feeling" involved a lot of thinking about how to construct it without bumping up against some recipient DNWs and without making it angstier than would be enjoyable, and then a lot of steady work as I ushered the characters through two centuries' worth of posthumous character development.

Out-of-the-comfort-zone work — "Who Could Ask For Anything More" was the first time I've really written about attraction without romance--it's not at all explicit, but aiming for heat instead of warmth was something new.

Most popular work — "Feeling comes in aid of feeling." It's gotten a kudos bump lately, probably because the final season of Ghosts was released. I haven't watched that yet, so I'm not up on happenings in the fandom, but the ship in this fic was pretty rare when I wrote it so I'm glad people liked it.

Least popular work — "Who Could Ask For Anything More," which surprises me a bit because the Dimension 20 fandom is probably the most active one out of all of these. It's easy for stories to get buried there, though, especially for rarepairs, and this story and the one I received in return were the first in English for the ship.

I wrote a lot about grief this year. I only just managed not to put additional non-canonical dead mom content into "or hesitate to love."

LOOKING AHEAD TO 2024

I want to finish "Easily Assimilated." I posted nothing to that fic last year, although I wrote some words. I'm a little stuck on this one--I just need to get the characters out of New York, and then figure out what the story will look like after the New York sections are over. I think the difficulty is that when my brain goes to these characters for comfort, it's usually in the NYC scenario I've established for them, so those are the scenes I'm spinning up in idle moments. Even with a clairvoyant character in the mix, sometimes it's hard to see the way forward.

I impulsively picked up a pinch hit for Seasons of Drabbles and then fell a week behind on Les Mis Letters so I could reread Ocean's Echo and write this:

or hesitate to love (600 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 3/3
Fandom: Ocean's Echo - Everina Maxwell
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Tennalhin Halkana/Surit Yeni
Characters: Tennalhin Halkana, Surit Yeni, Elvi (Ocean's Echo), Legislator Yasanin
Additional Tags: References to Canonical Character Death, Drabble Sequence, Drabble Sequence: single double triple
Summary:

Tennal, Surit, and parents.

I didn't expect to be doing this just when AO3 went down under a DDOS attack--indeed, if I'd been working on it today, the attack would have prevented me from finishing--but I got inspired by melannen's tutorial and made a neocities site for my fanfic. It's very simple! I'm quite pleased with it. I spent a bunch of this weekend messing around with CSS; there are a couple different styles on the website, one default for most of the pages and a different one for fics that have a markedly different vibe (which so far means Americana, apparently). There's something nice about having everything collected in such a straightforward way, and with tidy URLs. If I want to point someone to my Arabella fic, it's at an address that I could just verbally tell them, or type from memory--eccentric-hat.neocities.org/consolations!--rather than at a numerical address I have no hope of remembering.

I haven't ported over my big WIP, but I look forward to being able to format the table of contents in a way that actually shows the way the sections are structured, rather than being obliged to follow AO3's strict linear numbering.

I wrote three things for the Candy Hearts Exchange, and this year I got into the Valentine's spirit and wrote romance! All of them, although this was unplanned, feature time being out of joint or people living on different timelines from one another.

My assignment was this one:

Who Could Ask For Anything More? (3397 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Josefina Gatsby/Misty Moore | Rowan Berry
Characters: Josefina Gatsby, Misty Moore | Rowan Berry, Bobby Goodfellow
Additional Tags: Campaign: The Unsleeping City, Canonical Character Disappearance
Summary: An immortal diva starts over; someone new is called to speak for the Dreaming; and in Nod it's hard to tell the difference between imagination and desire.

I already wrote about nominating this ship on a whim, and it turned out that I ended up in a swap with my gifter. Both of us had requested a ton of other Dimension 20 relationships, but the lure of 1920s New York is real! This also means that I wrote femslash in February, so really, things are extremely Seasonally Appropriate around here.

After signups were over, I discovered that there was a new series of Ghosts that I hadn't seen. After Christmas I got caught up on the CBS version, and that is all well and good, but they're executing a fundamentally different form; going back to the original BBC show was like stepping into a warm bath. I wrote for this show last year for Chocolate Box but hadn't offered it this year, so I went in search of someone I could treat and ended up with this. Uncharacteristically for me, I wrote this in proper linear order, by hand; I had a little ritual going for a few days of sitting in the chair by the window, lighting a candle, and getting into the mindset of a slightly unbearable failed Romantic poet:

Feeling comes in aid of feeling (3569 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kitty/Thomas Thorne (Ghosts TV 2019)
Characters: Thomas Thorne (Ghosts TV 2019), Kitty (Ghosts TV 2019), Humphrey Bone's Head, Lady Fanny Button, Mary (Ghosts TV 2019)
Additional Tags: Emotional Hurt/Comfort
Summary: Thomas may be a little oblivious to troubles that are not his own, but long acquaintance provides occasions to offer comfort.

And finally, I wrote an extra treat for my assignee, because they had so many ships that I liked and because I was on a roll. I started writing this with no plan whatsoever, and once I finished it I discovered it had an idea to it after all:

Out of Touch (400 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Enchanted Forest Chronicles - Patricia Wrede
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Cimorene/Mendanbar (Enchanted Forest)
Characters: Cimorene (Enchanted Forest), Mendanbar (Enchanted Forest)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon
Summary:
A moment in the castle, after the adventure's been settled.

I've been having a lot of fun with Candy Hearts, the exchange that took the place of Chocolate Box this year. I wrote three whole stories, which I look forward to announcing, and I've been taking time to read the collection in a way that I didn't really manage with Yuletide. So here are some recs! The minimum wordcount was just 300; some of these are longer than that, but I don't think any of them are longer than 5k or so.

Dimension 20

Effervescent: This is my gift! It's Misty Moore/Josefina Gatsby, which is a ship I nominated entirely because, when I had my cursor hovering over the Relationships field in nominations, this ship appeared in the drop-down options and I thought, hey, they did know each other didn't they? And Misty said Josefina was a lot of fun, and there must have been some wild times in the Unsleeping City in the 1920s. I'm so glad I did. This is rhythmic and sweet and flirtatious and gets the mood just right.

Sweeter Than Before is a lovely and, yeah, sweet post-canon Fantasy High story about Aelwyn and Adaine and their attempts to be sisters to each other.

Frasier

Crafty Beer: Frasier and Niles get into craft beer in the most obnoxious way possible.

Gong Show Robbed: it's a crossover with Goncharov, go go go!

Ghosts BBC

Check and Mates: Mike takes up a new hobby.

Valentine's Day: The ghosts help Mike do something nice for Alison. Both this one and the above have perfect character voices.

Historical RPF

She blinded me with science: An absolutely gorgeous tribute to Émilie du Châtelet, including her long love affair with Voltaire but also the work that she dedicated her life to.

Original Works

Spectre: a mundane detective and a supernatural one share details of a case; lovely quick character dynamics.

The Orchard: a farmer gets some much-needed help; sweet and slow-paced.

No Lack of Caring: one of two great fics I've read with the pairing "Superhero Who Works in a Coffee Shop/Tired Supervillain Customer." This one is from the hero's perspective...

Double Shot of Sunshine:...and this one is from the villain's. They're both delightful.

Interrupted Heists, Dentist Visits, and Other Romantic Dates For Your Fake Husband is on a similar theme, a henchman/sidekick fake marriage story that locks the characters in fast and hits a note of labor solidarity along the way.

Ted Lasso

Everybody Wants to Love You: Ted/Trent, meandering their way to getting together over a little bit of jealousy here and there.

The main event:

The Consolations of Arabella Strange (11288 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 17/17
Fandom: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Arabella Strange/Jonathan Strange, Flora Greysteel & Arabella Strange, Emma Pole & Arabella Strange
Characters: Arabella Strange, Flora Greysteel, Aunt Greysteel, Walter Pole, Lancelot Greysteel, Emma Pole, John Segundus
Additional Tags: Epistolary, Post-Canon, Loss
Summary:
I hope you will receive this letter. I am putting it in the hollow of a linden tree, with a strand of my hair under the sealing wax. This method came to me in a dream that may well have been nonsense. In the event that it is, I will come back for the letter in a few days; in the event that it is not, I send you my love. I cannot send anyone’s regards, because the Greysteels have not observed that I am writing this, but they often express their hopes for your well-being.
Arabella proceeds.

The bonus feature:

That Arbitrary Decisions Are Preferred to Rational Ones (1046 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke, MONTAIGNE Michel - Works
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Summary:
The documented history of English magic is by now widely known; one assumes French magic was equally well recorded, but the only text on the subject one has to hand is this assortment of thoughts by sixteenth-century essayist Michel de Montaigne.

I almost forgot about Yuletide reveals! I received a story for a repeat request, which makes me glad that I stuck with it:

In Conversation (2332 words) by Sheliak _
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Elemental Logic - Laurie J. Marks
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Medric & Zanja na'Tarwein
Characters: Zanja na'Tarwein, Medric (Elemental Logic)
Additional Tags: Books, Canon Compliant
Summary: A year after leaving the war, Zanja and Medric discuss the past, the future, and books.

I'm SO grateful for this story, a winter night's conversation between two of my favorite characters about family, community, history, and books. It gets at that feeling I love about the canon, that everyone is pursuing their odd individual destinies against the backdrop of a complex web of community.

I wrote a story for the "Fall of Magic" arc of Friends at the Table. That little campaign bookended my year, since it was my introduction to the show just about a year ago, and it was nice to come back around to it at the end of the year. There's a character here who speaks largely in something like erasure poetry, and I actually did use erasure to create their first bit of dialogue.

a novelty, a choice (3464 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Harp (Friends at the Table), Piccolo (Friends at the Table)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fall of Magic (TTRPG)
Summary: After the world is remade, there's a lot to find out.

And I'm posting something of my own right now! The Consolations of Arabella Strange is a story I began writing in the summer of 2010 while living abroad and feeling extremely set adrift; over the years I both circled back to add to it, and raided it for parts, and I had more or less given up thinking about finishing it until earlier this year when I came across someone else's opinions about Arabella, which seemed to me just incorrect enough to be irritating. I came back to the draft then and discovered that the ending which had eluded me for so long was staring me in the face, courtesy of some chapters I wrote in 2017. The fic will be seventeen chapters in total (which only adds up to around 11,000 words) and I'm posting them one at at time, both because it allows me to be finicky about getting the formatting right and because it took such a long time to write that I can't quite face taking it public all at once. I have more to say about this fic, but I think I'll wait to say that stuff until it's all up.

Hi anonymous writer!

I'm

eccentric_hat. Yuletide is a highlight of my fannish year, and I'm happy to be back here again! I'm fannishly omnivorous and will look forward to whatever you write for me in one of these fandoms, all of which I'm extremely fond of. I wrote longer requests for some than for others, but that's mostly to do with how many characters are in the tag set. I'm also open to treats, since I guess the AO3 changed its settings and we have to specify that now.

I like first, second, and third person; romance and gen of all ratings; past, present, and future tense; canon-compliant stories and AUs; serious or sad fic and comedy and stuff that doesn't fall into those categories. So in general, go as your heart leads you.

To be a tiny bit more specific: These are all canons I like, and I'll be happy to see a fic that continues on in the same vein, but I also enjoy pushing back on canon or troubling its assumptions. I'm always up for a good character study (or, uh, city study, in the case where I've requested worldbuilding). I don't tend to enjoy stories where the members of a ship are too dim to realize their feelings toward each other and their friends have to shove them together. I like stories about people being unconventional in their relationships or life choices or tastes. I like stories containing a strong sense of setting or time, or a difficult moral quandary, or a distinct narrative voice. If this list of likes is totally unhelpful, ignore it and do what you want, because most of all I like to read something new in a tiny fandom I'm fond of, and a fic for any of these canons is definitely going to be that!

I don't have any real triggers; I would prefer not to read about graphic or sexual violence or unexpected (that is, non-canonical or not consistent with what's implied by canon) major character death. Addressing those topics to the degree they appear in canon is fine.

Ultramechatron Team Go

Characters: any (nominated: Sarah, Brody, Galatax, Jillian)

I really like this goofy, unexpected, gloriously cheap-looking show! It's funny when they're simply doing monster of the week battles, and then the Galatax angle and resolution of the story are so unexpectedly compelling. I'm casting a wide net here with an Any request because I really just think the show deserves more fic than it has (so...any fic at all). I would love to see some post-canon stuff with Jillian (bring in as many other members of the cast as you like!) and explore how the good guy/bad guy relationship got reconfigured after the events of the finale. Alternately, something about how the pilots got chosen could be really fun! I nominated a couple members of the team and would be happy to see the others make appearances too.

DNWs: sexual or graphic violence; major character death

Elemental Logic

Characters: Medric and Zanja

I'm just barely tweaking my request from last year, because my heart is constant on this one:

I started reading these books because someone told me about Medric. I thought he didn't show up until book 2 and was absurdly jazzed when, in the middle of book 1, Zanja found herself crashed on the bedroom floor of (I think this is the description) "a bespectacled book-hauling boy with a blue ribbon in his hair." Since then, the moments when these two characters interact have been among my favorites in the series. I love the way they trade questions back and forth when talking in fire logic to each other, the offhanded way she (like most of their family) cares for Medric and reminds him to put his glasses on, and the way he kind of wanders through their family life making himself at home while saying things people don't understand--and all of that is the surface level of a relationship built on enormous trust, intimacy, sorrow, and responsibility. Out of all their family, Medric might come the closest to understanding Zanja's conviction of her own guilt--even while he prefers to play his own sorrows close to the chest a lot of the time. (There's mention, I think at the start of book 2, that he doesn't drink alcohol, coffee, or tea or consume sugar because those things would interfere with his visions, and much later there's an offhand comment that the Sainnites remember him as a drunk. Oof.)

I would love to see more interaction between these two, whether it's an adventure, a card reading, or simply a shared meal. The fire logic that they share is so compellingly odd and any way you wanted to incorporate that into a fic would be really cool. I adore the whole family of which they're part--it makes me especially happy how, at the series midpoint, they start referring to their lovers as husband or wife, without apparently having done anything to formalize that status--and any and all members of that family are welcome to make an appearance.

DNWs: sexual or graphic violence (it's okay for fights to happen, given that this is a war story, just no vivid descriptions of injuries please); non-canonical major character death

The City & The City - China Mieville

Character: Worldbuilding

This book clawed its way into my brain when I first read it and has never left. I'm a little obsessed with what makes cities the way they are, and after I finished reading this I kept looking at all the spaces in my own city where I never go, thinking, why not? What gave me the message that the coffee shops on that street are not places for me but the ones on this street are? How can my friends who also live here know so little about the civic issues that consuming all my attention? I would love some exploration of what it's like to be in each of these two cities, and how each one can have a character when it has the other one in the way. What's public space like in Besźel? Is it nicer to go running by the river in Ul Qoma? Do politically active people in one city ever refer to the news from the other to make a case, or are they all determined to reinvent the wheel? Do kids ever sneak into somewhere they shouldn't be and tell each other they're really in Orciny? Or some in-universe text (history, literature, stuff from pop culture...) would be really fun.

DNWs: sexual or graphic violence

Seraphina series - Rachel Hartman

Characters: any (nominated characters are Seraphina, Orma, Spira, and Tess)

Confession, I am...only halfway through the last book. I like it very much, it's just been a tough year. But! I am definitely going to finish it soon, and I will absolutely finish it before reveals, so don't worry about that--just, if I say something here that makes you think "huh didn't this person read the books," there's a reason for that and it's not that I'm willfully ignoring something.

I would be happy with a lot of different stories for these books. Taking the characters one at a time:

Seraphina: I love how she's so emotional from her own perspective, so captivated by music and overwhelmed by love, but when we see her from the outside in the Tess books there's a real dragonish, analytic edge to her actions. I didn't have room to nominate Lucien and Glisselda but I like them both very much, and the relationship of those three to one another. I have to admit, though, my favorite relationship Seraphina has may be her bond with--

Orma: oh, this poor guy. Hartman's take on dragons is so interesting and there's a kind of strange, slow horror in the way Orma has ended up living as a human and having to endure human emotion, constantly trying to understand anything at all about the way humans feel toward each other or the way his sister felt toward Claude or the fact that Orma loved her enough to get into this situation. A couple things always stick with me about Orma--Seraphina's observation that he sits on his stacks of books because they're his hoard, and the conversation when she's horrified that his father bit him and he says, "We're dragons, Phina." Anything about Orma's dragon or human self is welcome here: what would it even mean for him to try to live as a dragon at this point, with his baggage? What can his relationship to Seraphina look like after the last time we saw him on the page?

Spira: I don't have as much to say about them because of how I haven't finished their book yet, but Spira is such a cool expansion of Hartman's depiction of dragonhood. There's so much gender happening here, and yet, for Spira, kind of none at all! So much about disability and other people trying to leverage it against them and Spira's simultaneously angry and thoughtful response to that, and of course it's connected--their reference to gender as a human affectation comes in the context of their having to live as a human because their condition makes it too painful to change. There's obviously kind of a question mark here because I haven't finished reading but Spira's a good character and I'd love to see more of them.

And finally, dear Tess! I read Tess of the Road before I even knew it was part of a series, and I loved it so much; I reread it earlier this year and I still love it, for the meditations on walking and the much harsher vision of the church than we previously had and the parts about the innocence of the body. I love the way she's depicted as so enmeshed in her family but needing desperately to get out from their influence. I think Seraphina looks more calculating from Tess' perspective because Tess herself is, for much of her youth, all feeling, all desperate desire, which can sometimes obscure the fact that she actually knows quite a lot. I'll take Tess in childhood learning Quootla, Tess the sailor, Tess the scholar, Tess learning to get along with either or both of her sisters, anything about Tess being thoroughly human always.

DNWs: graphic violence; non-canonical major character death; sexual violence is obviously a theme in these books and it's fine to address it to the same degree that canon does.

Oh hey, I never posted about Chocolate Box!

I wrote a gen fic, but it's about friendship and doing a craft together, which is much more Valentine-y than last year's somber meditation on unknowing:

where you tend a rose a thistle cannot grow (965 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Alison & Kitty (Ghosts TV 2019)
Characters: Alison (Ghosts TV 2019), Kitty (Ghosts TV 2019)
Summary:
Alison and Kitty in one of the disused rooms of Button House.

I binged all the episodes of Ghosts (the BBC version) at the end of last year and beginning of this one, and it was nice to be able to write a little fic for it while it was fresh in my mind. This fandom is very well-suited to my general ficcish formula of "write about a meaningful moment, with overtones of sadness."

I received an absolutely lovely story about the big poly family from Greater Boston; not only is this the fandom I wrote my Yuletide assignment for, it's actually by my Yuletide recipient, which is a very pleasing bit of full-circle-ness:

Workshopping (943 words) by Synergic
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Greater Boston (Podcast)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Poletti/The Family
Characters: Lily of the Valley (Greater Boston), Poletti (Greater Boston), Particle Physics (Greater Boston)
Additional Tags: The Family (Greater Boston), Slice of Life, Canon Trans Character, Canon Non-Binary Character, How do you tag for Poletti's Many Names
Summary:
Of all the rooms in his family’s house, Extinction Event Poletti loves the studios best.

Separately, and as a total surprise, I got a New Year's Resolution gift for one of my YT requests. It's about Kingston Brown from Dimension 20: The Unsleeping City, my favorite character from my favorite D20 campaign, and it's perfect:

long time running (1350 words) by somehowunbroken
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kingston Brown/Elizabeth "Liz" Herrera
Characters: Kingston Brown, Elizabeth "Liz" Herrera, Langston Brown, The Dream Team (Dimension 20: The Unsleeping City)
Additional Tags: Fluff, Non-Linear Narrative
Summary:
Kingston has always had this dream, even though dreams are for other people.

Except maybe this one can come true.

I have read only a little of the Yuletide archive this year, but I really liked these:

And then I'll finally be // Stalagmighty (1084 words) by dalia
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Galilei Galaxy - Let's Make a Music (Album)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: The Crystal Goblin (Galilei Galaxy)

This is my gift! It's a fic for the absurd and wonderful Galilei Galaxy EP from the podcast Let's Make a Music, which I hope returns from its hiatus sometime soon. It's very nice to see the little crystal goblin from that story (story?) making his way in the world.

The Top 9 Trends To Bring Back In 2022! (1115 words) by Lanna Michaels
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Yuletide 2021, Clickbait, Worldbuilding, Future Fic
Summary:
The last one won't shock you!

This is just a DELIGHT.

four poems by archy (1446 words) by CenozoicSynapsid
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Archy and Mehitabel - Don Marquis
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Archy (Archy and Mehitabel), Mehitabel (Archy and Mehitabel)
Additional Tags: Poetry, Literary References & Allusions, Blues, Cockroaches, Beowulf (sort of), Non-graphic Animal Death (background character only), Canon-Typical Child Neglect
Summary:
in fact i did recently
come across a poet s
soul in the body of a
silverfish he was picking
out the words of his latest
composition by biting them
out of a disused
encyclopedia

I'm not super familiar with archy and mehitabel, but I have fond memories of the time I read some of it, and the voice, format, and insight in this fic are absolutely spot-on.

at dusk through narrow streets (1427 words) by raven
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme Season 9
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Susannah Noone/Gally Nightingale | Gally Midnight
Characters: Gally Nightingale | Gally Midnight, Susannah Noone, Oswald "Newt" Nightingale, Vanessa Noone
Summary:
Newt, Susannah and Gally, on one winter's day in 1923.

This is a lovely, bittersweet slice of life for Newt and his family in the early days.

Four Misleading Visions Of Emil Paladin, And One That Was Simply True (1587 words) by spiritinthespacebar
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Elemental Logic - Laurie J. Marks
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Medric/Emil Paladin
Characters: Medric (Elemental Logic), Emil Paladin
Additional Tags: Divination, Prophetic Visions, Co-Parents, Books, Enduring love, Mentions of Canonical Substance Abuse, Angst with a Happy Ending, Spoilers, covers events in all four books, Second Person, third person, Future Tense, Past Tense, Nonlinear structure, aka A Fic Only A Water Blood Could Love, Minor Character(s), Zanja - Freeform, Gabian, Leeba - Freeform, garland - Freeform, Norina - Freeform, 5 Times
Summary:
Medric and Emil were walking back from town when the vision caught up with him. Some visions arrived only once, but occasionally the same one would follow him about for days, sneaking the same scene into the edges of his mind.

I think this is the only Elemental Logic story in the main collection. If we could only have one, it's an excellent story to have. The narrative structure is lovely, as is the depth of the relationships within.

I beta-read the following two:

Once and Future (5004 words) by phoenixflight
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bran Davies/Will Stanton, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Characters: Bran Davies, Will Stanton (Dark is Rising), Jane Drew (Dark is Rising)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, First Kiss, Yuletide Treat, Memory Alteration, Fix-It
Summary:
“Will!” Bran seized Will in a quick, hard embrace, crushing Will against his warm, bony body. Will felt all his senses, human and otherwise, light up at the contact. “Duw, Will, did you walk from the station?” Bran pulled back, holding his shoulders. “That’s miles! I was waiting for your call. Wondering what was keeping you, but I thought it must be British Rail.”

This one is an artful, atmospheric, deeply felt story about one way things might go, after.

et lux in tenebris lucet (4288 words) by kangeiko
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Terra Ignota - Ada Palmer
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Mycroft Canner, J.E.D.D. Mason
Additional Tags: Perhaps the Stars spoilers, Worldbuilding
Summary:
I wonder, if the Wish List were to be resurrected, what name would be at the very top.

Actually, this one is also a deeply felt story about one way things might go after; but the things being felt deeply are quite different, and do some solid pushing-back on the source material.

I wrote two stories for Yuletide, a drabble and my assignment. The drabble came first, in one afternoon, the same day I finished reading Air Logic, and it's a little sketch of one of my favorite relationships in the books:

this country of original fire (100 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Elemental Logic - Laurie J. Marks
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Medric/Emil Paladin
Characters: Medric (Elemental Logic), Emil Paladin
Additional Tags: Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational
Summary:
They're parallel lines.
Title from Mary Oliver's poem "Humpbacks."

My assignment was for Greater Boston, a podcast I love but got stalled on reviewing because the municipal politics in it felt too real. The fic does not contain any municipal politics. It took me a while to get it into shape, because I was trying to write about the giving of advice, and the content of the advice was distracting. Also it took forever to start, because I kept thinking I was going to go back and finish my canon review! I wrote the second half of the story on a train and in a train station, appropriately enough for the canon, and posted it from my brother's basement, and then polished it over the following week. I'm pretty happy with how it ended up:

a small live letter that says only Stay (3181 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Greater Boston (Podcast)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Leon Stamatis & Michael Tate
Characters: Leon Stamatis, Michael Tate
Additional Tags: Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Summary:
It's important to give advice in the correct way.

Hi there, I'm

Eccentric_Hat! Thank you so much for writing me a story! I'm sure I'm going to love it. I'm kind of a fannish omnivore, especially for small fandoms centered on canons I love. Past, present, and future tense are okay; first, second, and third person are okay; all ratings are acceptable. My prompts, as is usual for me, tend toward gen, but ships are welcome to show up too. I'm generally not wild about stories where other people make a couple get together; I like stories where the people in a relationship understand each other in a particular way that others just don't get. Happy endings are optional. Crossovers between any of these fandoms are welcome if you see a way to pull it off. If you're going to write about any real current events, in particular the pandemic, you can definitely do so, but please tag it.

DNWs: I don't want to read about sexual violence; I would rather not get graphic violence, though in each case, violence at the level present in canon is fine.

( Elemental Logic )

( Galilei Galaxy )

( Anathem )

( Dimension 20: The Unsleeping City )

( Greater Boston )

While I'm talking about fic, I should mention that I've posted SIX new chapters of Easily Assimilated in the last six weeks. A new gate between worlds opens, someone gets Chosen, someone's grandma gets involved, Bigfoot attempts scientific inquiry, a politically active young vampire crashes the scene, elsewhere the entire Mothman story takes place, there's an emotional reunion, and we have finally, miraculously, reached the end of 1967, a point I originally thought I might reach in chapter 2 or 3. There's so much plot in this part of the story that I would feel entitled to spend the rest of it on muted conversations about feelings, if there weren't other things I still want to do.

I almost forgot to post about my contribution and gift from Jukebox! I wrote a short story about animals on bikes, the canon being a music video about animals on bikes:

Watch on YouTube

Never Mind the Weasels (1172 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Fahrrad fahr'n - Max Raabe (Music Video)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Summary:
Berlin has a lot more cyclists than it used to.

I received a really rich piece of fantasy writing inspired by Vampire Weekend's song Harmony Hall. This video has a lot of bugs in it, but I prefer it to the rather listless official music video:

Watch on YouTube

Bread and Oranges (8213 words) by Kiraly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Harmony Hall - Vampire Weekend (Song), Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Nonbinary Character
Characters: Original Male Character(s), Original Non-Binary Character
Additional Tags: Magic, Traumatic Backstory, Sign Language, Ableism, Walking Canes, Revolutionaries, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Mentions of past genocide
Summary:
Twelve years after Sovran and his men invaded, the hall of the Stone Singers still stands - but no one has been able to call on their magic.
Some people want to find a way to change that. Some people just want to avoid notice and stay alive. Sometimes, those people care deeply for each other. Somehow, they'll make it work.

The Vampire Weekend song hints at a lot of political context without getting too into it, and while I can easily apply the lyrics to the here and now, they're also suggestive of a whole world with its own problems. This story provides that world, in a way that's both sweet and grounded. I'm extremely grateful for it.

Hello, Jukebox creator! I'm psyched to be doing this exchange for the first time! Here are some optional details about each of these requests. I'm requesting only things I nominated, so these are all songs I like a lot and would love to see explored; I recommend all of them and will include links!

I have no triggers and relatively few dislikes. I love lots of genres, and my AO3 profile might or might not give you a clue of what I'm into. I dig love stories and also gen; I'm fine with all kinds of narrative structures, perspectives, and tenses; and for the most part I don't have fixed ideas about the characters and stories of these songs, so you have lots of leeway to do what you like. Please do avoid writing about graphic and/or sexual violence. I'm okay reading stuff that references the current pandemic, but probably it's a good idea to warn for it up top.

I've ticked the boxes for both fic and podfic for all of these, so do whichever format makes you happy! There are a couple where I'm also happy to receive art.

( Three by LMAM )

( Born Under Punches- Angelique Kidjo )

( Leaving the City - Joanna Newsom )

( Yeoman - Baths )

( Harmony Hall - Vampire Weekend )

I got two quite different gifts this Yuletide!

all men shall be sailors then until the sea shall free them (1601 words) by strikethesun
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Starbuck/Mary Starbuck (Moby Dick), implied/past Starbuck/Ahab, background Ishmael/Queequeg
Characters: Starbuck (Moby Dick), Ishmael (Moby Dick), Mary Starbuck (Moby Dick), Starbuck's Son (Moby Dick)
Additional Tags: Dreams and Nightmares, Vignettes, thoughts of murder, Whump, nobody dies in this but like we all know what's coming up, overdependence on leonard cohen lyrics for setting the mood
Summary:
forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.
Choice vignettes in the life of one first mate Starbuck: two meetings with Ishmael on the deck, a dream, and a nightmare.

I appreciate how hard this leans into Starbuck's regrets, and what he stands to lose.

Joe Pera Shows You How to Buy Light Bulbs (1264 words) by Merlin Missy
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Joe Pera Talks With You (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Joe Pera/Sarah Conner (Joe Pera Talks With You)
Characters: Joe Pera (Joe Pera Talks With You), Sarah Conner (Joe Pera Talks With You), Gene Gibson (Joe Pera Talks With You)
Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat, Post-Episode: s02e10 Joe Pera Helps You Write, Canonical Character Death
Summary:
Joe goes to the hardware store.

This has quite perfect narration and moves at the perfect pace for the show. I really cannot recommend this show highly enough, and I loved getting this little additional window into Joe's world.

(also, it's a demonstration of the do-what-feels-right nature of rating and tagging on AO3 that it's the Joe Pera hardware store fic, and not the Starbuck's-gonna-die fic, that gets a T rating and a character-death tag.)

( More recs in Fiddler on the Roof, Spinning Silver, Piranesi, Possession, the humans-are-space-orcs meme, Northern Exposure, snake fights, Sense & Sensibility, Galaxy Quest, You're Wrong About, Jeeves & Wooster, and Strange & Norrell )

I wrote two stories and received two stories for Yuletide this year! I want to make a recs post but in the meanwhile here are the two I wrote:

Amazing! This Secret Meeting Between President Nixon and the Apollo 11 Astronauts Was Almost Lost to History (1151 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: This Speech Was Written For President Nixon To Deliver If The Astronauts...(Clickhole)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Richard Nixon, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins
Additional Tags: Don't Have to Know Canon, although canon is a two-minute read
Summary: The astronauts have braved the spooky dangers of space, jumped around on the moon, seen zero monsters, and returned to satisfy Richard Nixon's great and terrible desire for moon rocks.

This was my assignment. I didn't have any particular ideas when I offered this fandom, but I thought the original article was funny, and my WIP is also taking place in the late 60s, so I thought it might be an opportunity to explore that period further. I felt a little at sea when I actually matched on this fandom and my recipient didn't make any specific requests. I considered writing for another of their requested fandoms. But it did seem like writing for such a micro-fandom might be a gift, so I did some digging around. To call it "research" would be excessive. Mostly I listened to the first season of "13 Minutes to the Moon," which gave me a nice historical grounding in the Apollo 11 mission and what led up to it. I spent one particular cold, windy Sunday afternoon walking around Bde Maka Ska and either crying about the Apollo 8 mission or having the wind prick tears out of my eyes, it was hard to tell which. I mention that day because it's a little wild that it resulted in...this.

The actual story was entirely based on the thought "Michael Collins seems like a pretty grounded person." Once I found that, it was one of the easiest things I've ever written, and by far the most ridiculous. My friend caminante has already recruited a full cast and recorded this for a Voiceteam challenge, and I can't wait to hear what they did with it.

Finer Points of Enchanted Sword Logistics (7826 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Enchanted Forest Chronicles - Patricia Wrede
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Morwen/Telemain
Characters: Morwen (Enchanted Forest), Telemain (Enchanted Forest), Cimorene (Enchanted Forest), Willin (Enchanted Forest), Kazul (Enchanted Forest), Original Characters
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It
Summary: In which a witch and a magician consider alternate methods for saving the king of the Enchanted Forest.

( Longer, mildly spoilery process notes on this one )

( Here we go! Greater Boston, Enchanted Forest, Joe Pera Talks With You, Moby Dick )

Profile

eccentric_hat

February 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Oct. 16th, 2025 02:02 am

Recent Entries

someone write a crappy YA novel and call it A Winter of Operas and Priests

Yuletide reveal, a week later

AO3 Wrapped

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

Candy Hearts recs

proper announcement post now that the AO3 is back up

Updates on the fandom front!

Dear Yuletide Writer 2022

(no subject)

...and a few recs

Yuletide reveals

Dear Yuletide Writer 2021

(no subject)

Jukebox bounty

Dear Jukebox Creator leter

Yuletide recs

Yuletide reveal!

Dear Yuletide Writer!

Profile

February 2025

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags