sailing the fingers of the dragon

Having received notice this morning that my LJ account turns twenty-two today, I could not resist an Tumblr reference - since, after all, the traditional twenty-second anniversary gift is copper. :P

I'M HOME, HAVE A YULETIDE REVEAL

there's no place like home (1425 words) by kathryne
Fandom: A League of Their Own (TV 2022)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Lupe García, Jess McCready
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Gay Bar
Summary: It’s not like Moose Jaw, she thinks, looking around. / Jess starts to find her place in Rockford.

*

...look, when ELSE am I going to get the chance to reference Moose Jaw in a fic, okay. :P Nothing else I wrote this year could be at all Canadian so I had to get all the Canadian out in this one! And it was fun. It was exactly what I was hoping I'd be able to do for Yuletide after having a long and challenging Femslash Exchange fic - short and solid and self-contained and a lot of fun to write. And I got more comments than expected and even a couple of recs!

gabolange guessed this was me, and I usually offer to at least attempt a 500-word ficlet to people who manage to do so, so if you want to prompt me with something...!!

*

My two weeks of holiday travel ended this morning, so there may be a bunch of catching up today, or I may mostly nap. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion to this mystery.

Ohhhhh my gosh, I got an EXCELLENT yuletide surprise this year??? Today Is Just the Other Side of Yesterday is 10.6k of Scandal and Jeannette from Secret Six having violent and slightly sexy adventures?!? Truly did not expect this as it's by far the smallest of the fandoms I requested and has had very little fic through the years! If I still have any other Secret Six fans around, you should definitely click through.

I have one fic in the archive this year. I think it is excruciatingly identifiable as mine just from the summary, lol, but maybe in a less-expected fandom, so hey, if anyone wants to guess, let me know :D

Otherwise I am hoping to dig in to more of the collection this afternoon, so possibly more recs to come!

I am doing the December posting meme! You can still assign me topics/questions here.

Dec 5: Top 5 femslash tropes for bell

I find this kind of hard because I don't tend to think of tropes and then write or read around them... I just write or read what rings true to the characters. Something that works for one pairing is going to be all wrong for another, you know? (There was a meme going around twitter about looking to see which additional tags on AO3 one uses most often... mine, by several orders of magnitude, is just "Pre-Canon." Shocker, I like backstory!)

But, okay, a few things that I do like:

Enemies to Lovers
I like it when that switch flicks from one type of obsession to another. These often have some dominance struggle in them, which I find a lot of fun to write and to read. Sometimes they're good for really having fun with unreliable narrators, too.

Mutual Pining
I like the angst of when the pining goes undiscovered and the joy of when it gets resolved! This is also one where fanfic can be a very particular vehicle - ie, writing about characters where one is canonically interested in the other, and then getting into the second person's head for what they think is unreciprocated pining but the audience knows better...

Epistolary Fic
I don't know if this counts as a trope, but I have long wanted to write a really good epistolary fic, but never quite been in an appropriate fandom. I love putting the emphasis directly on the character's voice, and just stripping away anything extraneous except what they want to say to the other person.

Huddling for Warmth
Look, any excuse for a snuggle, sometimes, okay.

Hurt/Comfort
Given a very wide definition of hurt, this might be one of my favourites. I just really like characters taking care of each other.

I have no idea what these reveal about my psyche, but there you go :D

I am doing the December posting meme! You can still assign me topics/questions here.

Dec 2: How & why did you get into weight lifting? for gabolange

( this is a very Me story. )

fiachairecht asked me five questions! Would you like five questions? Let me know in the comments and I will ask you some.

1) If you could work on the Wheel of Time show in any capacity, what would it be?
I have to admit I sometimes ask myself why I stopped reading these books as a teenager when I could've potentially been the woman who is literally paid by the production to fact-check the show against the books. I could have been the Wheel of Time book nerd! :P But honestly, if I'd loved them that much, I think I would have a harder time with the adaptation. And I am so impressed so far with how the showrunner, Rafe Judkins, is adapting them that I don't even want to take over as showrunner. I don't particularly want to be a tv writer as my actual career, but for WoT I think I would love to be in the writers' room because I am so fascinated by the process of adaptation in general and how this immense, sprawling series with a lot of interiority is being adapted to screen in particular. I really want to pick Rafe's brain and see how he's making those decisions! So in this case I would definitely take a writing job. (And it would be nice to know other people in the room would be thinking about how to make the show queerer and more diverse, not just me...)

2) What's your favourite tea and why?
This totally depends on context. If I just want comfort tea, what I really want is milky, sugary Red Rose like my grandmother used to drink every day. If I want to really experience the tea I'm drinking, I love lapsang souchong, but I really have to be in the right mood for that. I drink a lot of mint tea if I'm just looking for a non-caffeinated warm drink, but I wouldn't say it's a favourite. And I do love a good Earl Grey or Earl Grey variant (Lady Grey, Cream of Earl Grey, etc), just because the smell of it is so right. And now I want tea.

3) What's a place in Canada you've always wanted to go to but haven't yet managed?
Ahhh there are SO many. This country is very large. I would love to go to Quebec City, especially for Carnaval, but also just to explore the old city and the battlefields and all the history there. And I have never been further east than Montreal - I would love to go out to the Maritimes. I dream of convincing people to fly into Newfoundland and then road trip back to Toronto with me.

4) Do you play any video games, and if so, what's your favourite?
I am a very lackadaisical gamer. I never managed to make a transition to gaming on a computer because I just couldn't get keyboard controls, and I had an X-Box once in my life when I worked in an electronics department, but otherwise I have been a Nintendo girl since the SNES. Honestly, Mario Kart is probably my very favourite game of all time. I also usually get the newest version of whatever Mario game comes out. Breath of the Wild was my first Zelda game and I enjoyed it a ton and am looking forward to the sequel (although I uh still haven't finished BotW) - I do love open world games, and occasionally dick around on some when at friends' houses. But I'm not a collaborative gamer at all and I'm totally just a combat button-masher as opposed to actually good. :P

5) Forest or ocean?
Ocean.

Thanks for the questions!

Dear Yuletide writer,
Thanks so much for writing a story for me! I am very excited to see what you come up with.  I have given you some ideas about what I like in each canon, but if you already have an idea, then as long as it doesn't hit up against my DNWs I look forward to it!  Write something you will have fun with.

If you're here browsing letters, I'm kathryne at AO3 and my account is set to allow gift works/treats.

( do not want )

( do want )

( Wheel of Time )

( Star Trek: Strange New Worlds )

( Secret Six )

And that's that! I hope you have fun writing whatever you choose to write and have a very happy Yuletide. Thank you again!

I am being frugal in the face of potential expenses later this year, but if I were spending money, some of the things I would spend it on are:

Jewellery from Sofia Zakia. I bought myself this ring to mark the completion of a big project last year. Now I am eyeing something from their Medusa line: this gorgeous ring in white gold and/or this earring (probably with this earring paired with it). I also quite like their moon (phase) rings.

Replacing my laptop. I actually only bought this one about two years ago, but it's been a bit finicky honestly since I got it. The new Macbook Airs look like they'd at least have more power! If I want to get anything back for this one I ought to trade it in soonish. Plus the new ones come in black again... (my first Mac was a black Macbook back in... 2009? ish?) (This reminds me I should do a backup this weekend.)

A trip someplace for my birthday in November. But let's be real, by November I expect I won't much want to be travelling anywhere. Again.

A rowing machine. Oh, I don't have space for it, but I miss my rowing workouts.

Oh, and tattoos. Always tattoos. :P

Among the things I am budgeting towards are new furniture. I need to set up a proper home workspace, finally. Mainly I will splash out on a fancy chair, which will not be cheap. I also covet an external monitor and peripherals. I may also replace some large pieces of furniture that aren't really Toronto-condo-size-appropriate - in fact, they are both on my main floor because they couldn't fit up the stairs. And I also have soooo many things I want to frame!

I haven't been completely denying myself all treats, of course. I accidentally spent $100 on candles last weekend. Well, you know, it happens. :P And I just replaced/updated some of the cutlery I inherited from my grandmother (not from that site, but that shows the pattern). I was very reluctant to take this silverware when I moved, but I'm so pleased now that I did and I wish I'd taken more of it. But hooray for the internet. Plus I caved and bought another month of Audible so I could get thirty more hours of Rosamund Pike reading me to sleep. NO REGRETS. And now I should go and do said sleep thing.

What have you treated yourself to of late? What would you buy if money were no object?

sweetbitter unmanageable creature (2143 words) by kathryne
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Wheel of Time (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Moiraine Damodred/Siuan Sanche
Characters: Moiraine Damodred, Siuan Sanche, Alanna Mosvani
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Secret Relationship, Caught in the Act, In Public
Series: Part 2 of no, not forgot: were unable to reach
Summary: She’d been back at the Tower for mere days and already Moiraine found herself longing for the comforting roll of the road. To be this close to Siuan and yet unable to touch her, speak to her… it was worse than being leagues apart. Written to the prompts "A Hope We Don’t Get Caught Kiss" and "Getting Caught in the Act" on the occasion of gabolange's birthday.

we in our youth did these things (4000 words) by kathryne
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Wheel of Time (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Moiraine Damodred/Siuan Sanche
Characters: Moiraine Damodred, Siuan Sanche, Lan Mandragoran
Additional Tags: Backstory, Pre-Canon, Secret Relationship, Semi-Public Sex
Summary: Siuan and Moiraine reunite after their first separation during the quest to find the Dragon Reborn.

Written for rarefemslashexchange! I'm sure no one guessed this was me. :P

(Chapter 4 of 'it moves when her body does' is delayed because... it is going to be as long as chapters 1-3 put together, and needs some work. In the interim, here.)