eccentric_hat

caminante has been teasing me about cryptids. I tried to tell her "I'm not all that interested in cryptids by themselves, it's just Amnesty fandom," and she came back with "how many times have we had sad Loch Ness Monster conversations?" Those conversations were really about The Areas of My Expertise, but you know what: fair. She bought me a Bigfoot sticker that says "Hide & Seek World Champion" on it and offered/threatened to come up with a pairing smush name for my weird ship. "There are only like two of us who ship it," I said, "I don't think we really need one of those," and she said, "No, I'm going to get into it! You can do something with their cryptid names!" But there aren't a lot of great possibilities. Mothfoot might as well be a fairy from Midsummer Night's Dream, and Bigman sounds unrelated; you could come up with a fanciful ship name like people used to do a la Stark Spangled Banner, but I haven't thought of one.

(I also told her my fic has "so much more apocalyptic dread and so much less midcentury cryptid shenanigans than I intended," and she said, "well, that sounds like a fic by you. [eccentric_hat], every year: 'Is this story too sad for a Yuletide gift?'")

All of this is to say, I'm posting a chapter of my Bigfoot/Mothman Amnesty fic today, the last chapter I currently have ready for posting, and I felt like talking a bit about where it came from.

( Source texts & sideways influences )

I thought twice about signing up for Yuletide this year. I was working on another fic, I knew I'd have a very busy fall, and I couldn't remember why I started doing this exchange in the first place except that I was excited about having free time after finishing grad school. But it worked out well! This was the first year I came into Yuletide full of new-fandom feels and got to use them for my assignment, and the first year I wrote and received fic in the same fandom. It was a bit of a SURROUND SOUND sensation, and I enjoyed being so immersed, especially because I'm sure this fandom won't be Yuletide-eligible forever. I wrote this:

Spicy Bell Pepper with Thyme (3400 words) by Eccentric_Hat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Adventure Zone (Podcast), The Adventure Zone: Amnesty - Fandom
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Duck Newton, Aubrey Little, Edmund "Ned" Chicane, Barclay (The Adventure Zone)
Summary: The members of the Pine Guard try to take a day off. It's a mixed success.

This is mostly a team-bonding story, but I threw in some feelings of nameless dread to keep things interesting (and seasonal! there's a reason it was December when I wrote about the idea of being terrified by angels). ( Here's my customary self-analysis + some headcanons )