Star Wars: I rant about tactics )
I wrote a story: Five Brains Olivia Moore Never Ate (5621 words) by rivkat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: iZombie (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Ravi Chakrabarti, Liv Moore, Clive Babineaux
Additional Tags: five things, Friendship, profound bonds, Vampires
Summary:

Set during the first season, more or less. Liv and Ravi go through a lot together, but the together makes the lot worthwhile. Warning: offscreen animal death. (And people death, see premise of show.)



And I got a story! Laugh with Me, Buddy (2567 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: iZombie (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: implied Major Lilywhite/Liv Moore, Ravi Chakrabarti/Peyton Charles
Characters: Ravi Chakrabarti, Major Lilywhite, Liv Moore
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Summary:

“Remind we why we can’t be on lawyer brains for this?” Liv asked. It came out slightly muffled, considering she still had half her face pressed against a flat surface. “Or politician brains? Ambassador brains, debutante brains, any brains but our own?”

“Ethical integrity,” Major supplied, and shrugged at the petulant frown Liv flashed in response. “Hey, it wasn’t my idea. I was all about ceding the moral high ground on this one, but Mayor Charles and our collective counsel were pretty insistent we not do anything to ‘preemptively alienate our human audience.’” He put the last part in finger quotes.


Very nice character voices, especially the sweet bro interaction between Major and Ravi (and Ravi’s equally awesome outfit) and the history between Liv and Major. Ignores S5 because why would you pay attention to that if you didn’t have to?

Also:
The Rock Star Reunion Irrelevancy (2163 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Middleman (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: The Middleman & Wendy Watson
Characters: Wendy Watson, The Middleman
Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat, Humor
Summary:

Strange things are afoot at the Osbourne Arena.



Each hair band joke is better than the next. Sweet child o’ mine, Dubbie!

rivkat: Rivka as Wonder Woman (Default)
( Jan. 1st, 2019 12:51 pm)
I got a lovely Killjoys fic for Yuletide! Breadcrumbs takes off from where canon stopped, showing various characters reacting to the memory wipe and Lucy saving the day.

I wrote an iZombie story: Completely Frank Liv,  featuring Clive and Liv undercover as a couple during Season 1, though Liv ends up more exposed than undercover.

KJ Charles, The Ruin of Gabriel Ashleighcute short story )
Genevieve Cogman, The Mortal WordDragon murder! )Ramsey Campbell, Think Yourself Luckywriting is reality )
Welcome to Dystopia, ed. Gordon van Gelder.  sf for the Trump age )
Sam J. Miller, Blackfish Cityclimate changes, people don't )
R.F. Kuang, The Poppy Warall the warnings )
Joseph Bruchac, Killer of Enemiespost-apocalyptic Native fantasy )
Carol Berg, Flesh and Spiritdrug addiction fantasy )
Ilana C. Myer, Last Song Before Night:music fantasy )
William Alexander, AmbassadorYA immigration/sf )
Jacqueline Carey, Starlesssave the world fantasy )

Not One of Us: Stories of Aliens on Earth, ed. Neil Clarke.  sf and humanity )
Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Moonthe moon with Chinese characteristics )
rivkat: Chloe: Here to cheer on a mission from God (chloe cheers)
( Dec. 27th, 2014 07:25 pm)
I got a very fun Sam/Dean sex pollen story from [livejournal.com profile] ephemeralk, Botany of Desire, for [livejournal.com profile] spn_j2_xmas! Dean deliberately goes after sex pollen. This is either his best idea ever or his worst. Sam’s voting for the latter, until things start to go his way.

And another plug for my Yuletide gift, Simple Gifts, The Pretender, Jarod/Miss Parker, General Audiences
Summary: Jarod investigates troubling shortages at a half-way house/shelter that serves displaced and homeless veterans. Along the way he discovers that family is about more than just blood relation.

This case fic gives a really detailed treatment of the family Jarod finds, and into which he’s welcomed. The warmth and love is palpable; the case has a great Pretender feel, including some false steps towards finding the real bad guy and a ‘taste of his own medicine’ punishment for the bad guy; the end has just enough Jarod/Miss Parker to satisfy without getting explicit, and it makes sense for the characters that their moves toward each other would be tentative.
I neglected to nominate Real Genius for Yuletide, and no one else did either! :( But adding Eyal to Covert Affairs was worth it, I hope.

Dear Yuletide author: Thank you! Aside from what I said in my specific requests and as indicated by my fairly vague prompts, I focus most on character. I love plot, but I also love angst and hijinks. Other things I like: flawed heroes; cliche-fic like bodyswap that shows why the cliche is useful for revealing character; the Gift of the Magi; getting the thing that you want the most except that it’s broken; characters who recognize that they have powerful emotions but think what they want is irrelevant because they despair of changing the conditions giving rise to their unfulfilled desires; banter; telling the truth in a way that the hearer doesn’t believe it; characters who think they’re lying but aren’t; shaggy dog stories; love and blood and rhetoric; and so on.

I do not mind unhappy endings. I love melodrama and characters who defy melodrama. Although I primarily read slash these days, as you can see from my requests I am also happy with het, and pretty much my only relationship request, if you choose to include one, is not to use female characters as bad guys in order to bring a m/m pairing together.
My Yuletide story was Anna to the Infinite Power, Divergence to Infinity.

A couple of other things:

Mutant Rights, Marvel arguing that X-Men are monsters and not humans for tax purposes.

Sweet Eureka episodic goodness, Pterosaurs for All.

Haven, Duke Ex Machina, equally sweet in its own way.

The Middleman, The Infernal Celibacy Rededication. Roxy Wasserman! The Booty Chest!

Fannish freecycle: I now have an extra copy of The Hunger Games. Comment or email me at rivkat at gmail if you want it.  Ties broken by randomness.
rivkat: Chloe: Here to cheer on a mission from God (chloe cheers)
( Nov. 16th, 2011 05:38 pm)
So I’m browsing the Yuletide fandoms on my mobile phone, expecting it to be impossible but necessary since my broadband was down—and holy cow, that’s neat!  It collapses into nice little chunks. I now see it also does this on my regular Firefox, though I prefer it in single columns like on the phone. And there’s this “shuffle” button, hunh.

Also I discovered the Justice League Remake/Remodel, so thanks, Yuletide!

Dear Yuletide author )
rivkat: Rivka as Wonder Woman (chuck sarah)
( Dec. 25th, 2009 10:13 pm)
My Yuletide gift was Chuck, When He Catches His Reflection on Accident, Ellie finding out about Chuck. Her reactions, and the reactions of the other characters, are spot-on, and bonus points for remembering what a doctor would do under the circumstances.

I also wanted to thank [personal profile] elynross and [personal profile] astolat, the amazing administrators of the Yuletide challenge, as well as the coders at the Archive of Our Own [ETA, reminded by [personal profile] jadelennox: and the great folks at OTW Systems, who do largely invisible and completely necessary technical work to keep the computers talking to each other], who kept slogging under heavy fire. The previous software was held together with spit and baling wire, neither of which are pleasant to work with (ick and ow). Given that the transition to the AO3 coincided with the continued uptick in participation, surviving was its own Yuletide miracle, and offers the prospect of easier future years.

Since a lot of people are doing "the decade in review" things, here's a retrospective of Yuletide challenges (pun intended): We begin with 300+ participants!  Yuletide was huge in 2003! Too bad the software couldn’t handle smart quotes.  .txt only to be sure it was right, no takebacks!   In 2004, with over 500 participants, the site was hacked due to the host's failure, despite [personal profile] astolat's warning, to correct a security vulnerablity. Result: server move mid-uploading crunch,  with extra fun propagating a new domain name, and resulting comment glitches. 2005: Growth continues apace, with ~850 participants. Still no editing without modly intervention.  2006: Delays due to server load; incrementally backing up after every single story was uploaded, necessary because of creakiness of database, took time.  There were bizarre uploading database issues, the kind of things it takes a computer to screw up.  Last minute archive lockdown!  Still no editing without modly intervention. And who else recalls the spam comments flood of 2006?

2007, with [edit with info from [personal profile] elynross] 1266 people signed up: Remember having to save your emailed comments, because otherwise you couldn’t respond after the author reveal?  Heavy server load issues are scary.  Yes, modly intervention still required for edits.  This one’s just a well-titled post: We’re working on the problem! (At one point, a couple hundred stories were stranded in database hell.)  I wrote you a story but the server ated it. Strangely prolific author, whose name just happens to be the first on the list.  The archive goes down Dec. 28, and not in the good way.

2008, another year of growth [edited: 1599 signups]: Pre-Dec. 25: Various small but nervewracking bugs, heavy server loads, representative database crashes, including one when astolat herself had crashed, leading to database nervous breakdown, and up and down again (note that these aren’t even all the instances, just a representative sample: something needed to change). Post-Dec. 25, server load still heavy, links still wonky due to size of database, server load so heavy that the quicksearch links couldn’t even be fully generated. Slowness due to heavy server load continues through the author reveal. 

From what I observed from the outside, this year there were the kinds of bugs one expects on new software with a new posting interface, but what I didn't see--characteristic of past years--was a database overloaded and broken down merely by attempted uploads as the deadline approached.  The server's definitely been hammered today with people reading, just as the former server was last year, but at least there are greater resources available now. I’m exhausted just thinking about the huge amount of work, under extraordinary time pressure, the switch to the AO3 represents. I’m really glad there are more wonderful coders around now to share some of the load.
Other than what I said in the signup, I like:

Happy endings; sad endings; cliche-fic like bodyswap that shows why the cliche is useful for revealing character; the Gift of the Magi, where each character sacrifices her/himself for the other; grownups who still desire their parents' approval, whether or not it's forthcoming; the plural of apocalypse; characters who recognize that they have powerful emotions but think what they want is irrelevant because they despair of changing the conditions giving rise to their unfulfilled desires; and many other things -- I hope the prompts spark a premise for you.

With respect to Nip/Tuck specifically: I'm happy if you want to make me like Sean, or if you leave him out of it, or if you mock him as Christian does. But since I don't come to the story from a particularly Sean-friendly perspective, I will need help from you to remember why Christian really does love him (however you choose to interpret that love). Fundamentally, I think Christian's best chance for happiness was with Kimber, though that time may have passed.

(And thank you!)

SPN spoilers: )
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