Pen's Nest

Well, this year, I wrote Brian Angst. If you did not figure out which one was my story, I'm not at all surprised—I hardly recognised it myself! But my recipient wanted h/c and Brian being comforted by Nick (the other way round would have come much more easily, I think). I also had a problem getting going with this story, despite some useful ideas emerging from the MTYG weekend with nopseud and chalcopyrite, because I am pretty certain that Brian Littrell voted for Trump, and I am surprisingly invested in Do Not Want there.

However, in the end I managed to fulfil the brief, and achieved Happy Recipient, which is what MTYG is really about. \o/

A big thank-you to sperrywink, who pointed out to me that there really had to be a kiss, and thus prodded me into a very much improved ending.

And a big thank-you to ninjetti75 for writing ..And His Sidekick, Sprinkles for me, a delightful Trickyfish with an established relationship and lots of down-to-earth and fondly entertaining details. I am very pleased with it. You should read it.

As usual, the crop of stories includes a very good proportion of fine fics. I recced three of them yesterday, but if you are still into popslash, or if you have a nostalgic yen to read a few stories from a fandom you used to love, give them a try.

MTYG author reveal!

( I wrote… )

I can also thank GlitterDragon for writing my story, Heading West with an oblivious Lance going on his merry and very gay way, and Chris pining very much long-term and missing his chance at every possible opportunity except the last one, which was basically exactly what I asked for. *throws confetti*

It continues to astonish me that MTYG produces such wonderful stories every time—I think those of you who participated/read them will agree that there were some really super offerings. I think my favourite was All I Want For Christmas, partly because it is hilarious in every way, partly because I could just imagine her recipient's glee as he read it, and quite a lot because I was present at the theoretical birth of the turkipede and am *so* glad it—they—made it into the story.

ephemera asked me for this, and as she has been closely involved with much of my Secret Santa experience, one way or another, it seems entirely appropriate.

( Fandom Secret Santas )

It occurs to me, somewhat belatedly, that I haven't done a 'post-SeSa' post. So here it is.

I must thank the lovely ullman for my wonderful, hilarious story Orange is the happiest color. An awesome job, which made me laugh aloud. Particularly awesome since I have modly insight and am pretty sure it had to be a very late pinch-hit—though I promise, I took great care not to peek at who was doing the job.

I wrote It's Cool, it's Hot, It's a Relationship, It's Not, another take on Letterboys with a side order of Awesome Kevin. Not surprisingly, it probably has quite a bit in common with my previous MTYG Letterboys story "Collaboration". Interesting to note that I was one of very few people to write an actual sex scene this year. Wonder why that is.

I had a very straightforward, entirely do-able request, from a recipient who seemed to want to read the kind of story I like to write, so I thought it would be easy... and it was surprisingly hard to figure out where to start, perhaps because I'd already written my 'ur-Letterboys' story (for JM!). A request with a bump in the road—something that I'd never have thought of writing, if not for the request—is easier to make original (after the initial disbelief, outrage and hair-tearing). Like "post-apocalyptic vampires with romance" or a High School AU featuring two pairings which age-wise, didn't work as they could not have been contemporaries in High School.

I'm most grateful to nopseud for helping me to figure out what the hell to write...

Huh. It was back in 2007 that I last wrote a SeSa story (actually, two) that didn't involve Backstreet. All my more recent ones have featured Boys, although some have been crossover pairings, and in a couple there has been an Nsync pairing as well. I suppose that may be a feature of the shrinking entry pool for MTYG?

So I can now thank Ocelot summer for writing my splendid story, The Kirkpatrick Guide to Aging Gracefully, which I may possibly have squee'd about once or twice already. Ahem. Great stuff.

I wrote Wings Would Be Cool for a recipient who seems to have taken no further part in the challenge after signing up for it. Ah well. I was charmed by the requested pairings, one my OTP and the other a pairing I'd never written (and therefore an interesting challenge) and then thrown by the request for a HS AU. As I've never been to high school, I was *extremely grateful* to nopseud, who suggested guardian angels. (And thanks to both nopseud and snarkyllama for the betas.)

fleurrochard guessed correctly, and therefore gets a ficlet, uh, soon. It's funny—I always think I give myself away in my writing, because my stories seem so *me*, but I can seldom identify anyone else's, so it shouldn't be any surprise that most people don't guess at all, or get it wrong.

Now that the MTYG authors are revealed, I have to say I'm a fan of Ullman, who wrote *three* stories including my own gift, Juncture, which I like very much indeed. Her other Trickyfish offering is 'Sparkly Souls Slow Dancing', otherwise known as the one in which Lance glows in the dark, which is my other favourite of this year's Lance/Chris fics.

My own story was for this world to be unbroken, a post-apocalyptic vampire AU AJ/Kevin story, which I imagine nobody would have expected of me! I confess to being utterly boggled by the request for quite some time, as post-apocalyptic anything is So Not Me, and I don't really Do Vampires. (The AJ/Kevin, fortunately, seemed quite doable, I'd sort of had a dress rehearsal for that last year as it was letterboys's alternative pairing.) Also, this time the recipient was someone I don't know, really, and there wasn't a lot to be gleaned by stalking her LJ—it was a quite different experience from last year, but it's all part of the SeSa fun, I spose.

Luckily I had nopseud and ephemera to offer insanely cracked ideas advise me. I think at one stage I was planning to write four different endings, a pick-your-own conclusion adventure, but happily the story that eventually emerged had other ideas. Our Backstreet Concert weekend did indeed see the birth of a SeSa story, and I mourn the loss of the original title, The Town of Tiny Vampires. This was not the story I wrote, but I was charmed to see its metamorphosis into a sprawling JuNi epic. Hee.

Well. A huge Thank You to nopseud for being my Story Doctor again, and figuring out the major logical flaw in time for me to put it right. Many thanks also to joeysdramaqueen and llamabitchyo for the betas and smoking out of non-American language. In the end, I found I rather liked the story. It's quite fun figuring out what day-to-day life is like in a post-apocalyptic world where there are roving vampires! And it's always good to have a go at something you've not done before.


In other news, I also participated in I Saw 3 Ships, and am pleased to be able to announce that you can now read a Nick/Lance/Chris threesome story written for me here. Sadly it is the only popslash story there—whoever it was who lured me into signing up, you've presumably figured out that I didn't write for you! I had, perforce, to write something *else*, in a fandom I haven't written in before, which was an interesting struggle. Incidentally, there is a marvellous Top Gear story in the list, unlikely as that sounds. I ended up watching a couple of Top Gear programmes over the Christmas period, and, well. Yes.

Yay for MTYG! And a wholehearted THANK YOU to everyone who made it happen, with particular approbation for archie_gremlin, who probably doesn't even read the stories... The rest of you lovely peeps have the pleasure of knowing that you occasioned more than 80 fresh new popslash fics, and of reading them!

Anyway. ( My experience this year )

Oh boy. Yep, so DWNOGA authors are up, and I can reveal that I was lucky enough to be asked to write Trickyfish (yay!) (and added a side order of Chris/Nick, after a fashion), thank the SeSa stars... It's called Prize, and will soon be filling the Birthday prompt in my fanfic100 table. Thanks to ephemera_pop, nopseud, joyfulseeker and sola_fiamma for various kinds of beta work (and encouragement) which improved things so much from my initial draft.

( More writing/reading stuff )