Yuletide reveals

For the first time ever this Yuletide, I had my assignment mostly done by the standard deadline, and then wrote not just one but two treats (woo hoo!). It also probably helps that I a) did not get covid, which I’ve done for the last two Christmases, and b) did not move house or travel overseas (ditto).

I matched on Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, which I played through as soon as it came out this year and liked a lot. The recipient wanted something about how the ghost of Link was present through the narrative, and I personally wanted to do something with the costumes Zelda picks up during her adventures, especially the cat outfit that gives you the power to communicate with cats (so that all the cats you’ve been able to interact with to make them say “miaow” are now giving you useful information, quests, their opinions etc).

I initially thought about doing all the outfits or mixing the outfits and accessories, but I also wanted to get Link’s pov in there so reduced my ambition somewhat (I did wonder about putting Link’s weapons in and adding Dark Link but it all got a bit complicated, plus canon is vaguely unhelpful over the rift behaviour prior to the game start and what the hell Ganon has to do with it this time - does the fact that there’s a copy of him mean he’s trapped in there somewhere as well?). I also had to decide how to deal with whether Link was speaking or not (in this canon he loses and regains his voice but there’s a lot of Mute Link in other games/the fandom) and for pairings for this game I like Zelda/Dohna, the Gerudo captain, so snuck a hint of that in. And got most of it sorted by the deadline, with just some ending tweaking to go.

Dress Up (1493 words) by Cyphomandra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Link & Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Characters: Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Link (Legend of Zelda)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Canon Compliant, Cosplay, Cats, Video Game Mechanics
Summary:

It's not what you wear, it's who you are. Or is it the other way round? Zelda considers her options.

china_shop on her first Yuletide EVER was super productive, and asked me if I was interested in listening to a John Finnmore audio play in order to beta one of her treats; I have previously been a no on podcasts, audiobooks, audioplays etc but spent much of this year listening to the Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobook versions and have revised my opinion somewhat, so I said I’d give it a go. I listened to English for Pony Lovers while driving into work, liked it, and then idly considered what I’d do if I had to write fanfic for it. The canon has a German woman (Elke), meeting an English woman (Lorna) for an English lesson; Elke is particularly keen on getting translations for some words used, it turns out, in the My Little Pony fanfic that her teenage daughter Claudia is writing (Elke has befriended Claudia online, pretending to be a fellow fan and teenage girl in Bogota, because her relationship with Claudia IRL has fallen apart and obviously this will totally fix things). Lorna is also concealing some fairly major secrets. It occurred to me that it would be fun to write a fic made up of Claudia’s fanfics, dealing with the fallout of Elke's reveal.

I scribbled a few notes and then beta’d china’s fic, which was excellent and fortunately did not include any fanfic summaries. I wrote a few more notes, sent china an apologetic “actually now I want to write a treat too” email, and then sent her a more panicked one once I realised that a) I am terrible at tagging b) I don’t know how to format fics to look like summaries c) I had made both of these things essential for my story. China very kindly found me a workskin, I drafted the fic - turns out writing tags and summaries for works I have not actually written is easier than doing it for the ones I have - and then spent an evening wrestling with workskins and html to produce:

[AO3] Pferdeäpfel posted a new work (675 words) by Cyphomandra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: John Finnemore's Double Acts
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Claudia, Elke
Additional Tags: telling stories in tags, never piss off a teenager in fandom, AO3 Tags - Freeform, Yuletide Treat
Summary:

Esperanza's Elke's inbox

When not being waylaid by unexpected canons I had really wanted to write something for Dungeon Crawler Carl, which I offered but didn’t match on. I loved luthien’s fic about Elle, Transformation, and her prompts were great. I’d been tinkering with ideas about Donut, particularly her life prior to the dungeon, but wasn’t quite sure I’d got her voice right and the segments weren’t gelling. However, while I was sifting through AO3 workskins and how they work, I’d found a number of chat/text workskins. It’s unclear how chat looks in DCC and probably it’s closer to Discord or WhatsApp, but I wanted to focus on Donut in 1:1 chats so went with a basic iPhone style, loaded the workskin, copied over the relevant html, and typed HI ZEV, all of which finally got the story to work.

You Know You Love Me (1122 words) by Cyphomandra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dungeon Crawler Carl Series - Matt Dinniman
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Princess Donut, Carl (Dungeon Crawler Carl), Katia, Zev, Loita, Bea
Additional Tags: Chatlog, Plotting, Fandom, ALL CAPS, Yuletide Treat
Summary:

A small but crucial part of Crawler #4119 Princess Donut's chatlog during the events of level 5 of the current crawl, colloquially referred to as The Gate of the Feral Gods. This chatlog has been subject to seizure by the Borant Corporation due to their suspicions of interference -

 

SYSTEM AI: Nice try, bitches, but you're not getting this one.

It’s always interesting seeing how my relationship to a work can shift when I write fanfic for it. Often it makes me like the canon more (every time I write in Stardew Valley I realise how much I love all those pixels) but sometimes it’s less (writing for Connie Willis’ To Say Nothing of the Dog got me deeply annoyed with all Willis’ anachronisms). Doing this DCC fic made me realise just how unbelievably tight all Dinniman’s plots are - I set this fic specifically in The Gate of the Feral Gods, which means during these text interactions Zev is removed as social media manager, Loita is murdered, and Zev & Donut decide that they will conspire to overthrow the Borant system, which they can’t say out loud as their texts are being monitored - this is why the Gossip Girl fic they are discussing sounds slightly odd!

(While this was mostly a great Yuletide with lots of firsts, it’s also been the first time I’ve had my assigned recipient fail to comment on my story, which is a bit sad - they also haven’t commented on their treat. It made the lovely comments I got from my treat recipients even more special)