EXCHANGE INTERFACE

title: Heart Of Glass, Heart Of Stone
summary: She's steel and nothing can touch her.
characters: Maria Hill, Tendo Choi (cameo), Steve Rogers, Brock Rumlow, Jack Rollins, Jean Grey (cameo), Madelyne Pryor (cameo), Scott Summers (cameo), Original Characters
relationships: Maria Hill & Pepper Potts, Maria Hill/Steve Rogers, Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers (past), Jack Rollins & Brock Rumlow
tags: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Alternate Universe - Jaegers, Angst, Crash & Burn, Conflict, still not the happy ending you're looking for
warnings: None
rating: PG-13

One assignment, one pinch hit.

My assignment was for nasimwrites, who asked for Narnia, Cor/Aravis futurefic.

title: sons of kings, daughter of tisrocs
summary:

Aravis has renounced all else, but she cannot renounce the blood running in her veins. She is born out of the line of Tisrocs and Tarkaans, blood of Calormene rulers who have laid siege to Archenland by means both foul and fair through the ages, and she may not lay claim to Archenland’s heir.

tags: Aravis/Shasta|Cor, Aravis, Shasta | Cor, King Lune, Corin, Original Characters, Hwin.
notes: My assignment, which I left until the last minute, submitted about 4K of average fic, and over the next week wrote it into 8K of something I'm actually quite happy with. Man, trying to get the language right was difficult. As was imagining the politics of not only nationalism but also race and gender in a world that was written by a clueless white guy. I guess I pulled it off; the response appears to have been positive.

--

The pinch-hit was for DesertVixen who wanted a Wonder Woman/Captain America crossover.

title: Last Night I Dreamed Of Peace
summary:

Her first sight of Bucky Barnes is over the barrel of a sniper rifle in the hills to the west of Wroclaw, deep in German-occupied territory. He is young and martial then, frowning slightly as he watches the prison camp in the snowy valley below through the scope of his rifle.
Some seventy years later, Diana’s first sight of the Winter Soldier is sitting on a seat of carved stone in a tropical garden in Wakanda, leaning back so the hot sun falls across his body, the rough arm prosthetic a jarring sight in the fluid greenery of the garden.

tags:James "Bucky" Barnes/Diana Prince, Crossover, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
notes: This was a mad-panic 'waiting on this story' pinch hit that I took up after I spent the week rewriting my assignment. Do you know how hard it is to confine a meeting, history, relationship, and changed world canon in under 2K with a satisfying resolution? It's HARD. Probably just as well I wrote it in four hours last Sunday night or I'd have spent a lot of emotional energy fretting about it. As it stands, I'm pretty happy with the result.

On the off-chance that someone was wondering about the unusual word I used in both (last post), it was "ablutions".

The sedoretu is coming along. I may have to skip Maria's "wait, wtf" scene with T'Challa, because I don't actually have enough space in this section. I'm trying to make each 'chapter' of the story ~3500 words, but so far we're at 1900 and I've just managed to introduce the complication. And Bucky has interrupted it as per the plan.

Now we need to have the conversation about Bucky and Steve, Maria and Steve, and Sharon and Steve, and then I was hoping there'd be room for T'Challa and Maria, but I'm doubtful.

After that, Natasha gives her opinion on EVERYTHING and starts trying to staunch the bleeding (metaphorically, not actually).

I guess this story is at the usual stage of "HIT THE PANIC BUTTONS, ALL RELEVANT PLOTBUNNIES TO THEIR STATIONS" given my life busyness right now and the due date for the wipbigbang which is Mid-June (right around the same time as my quilts for the show are due; JOY).

--

I took a PH for a fic exchange that I can't specify because specifying it will instantly out me as the author (as though the story itself won't).

Why did I do this? Because...I don't even know why, only that I've made my situation a lot more complicated right when I don't need to.

Self? You suck.

--

Two fic exchange reveals (as though it wasn't immediately obvious).

worldbuildingex

TITLE: All The Daughters Of My Father's House
SUMMARY: Lyra and Jyn Erso bouncing around a universe where the shadow of the Empire is growing longer.
CHARACTERS/PAIRINGS: Lyra Erso, Jyn Erso, Saw Gerrera, Chirrut Imwe/Baze Malbus
TAGS: Alternate Universe (canon divergence), Jedha, Lyra survives, Mother Bear, Celebrations on
RATINGS: Gen
NOTES: My assignment asked for "rogue one: give me those ladies *grabby hands* i’m super interested in the structure of the rebel alliance as well as seeing women in positions of power/getting to tell their stories *cough*lyra*cough*. alternatively, my gay azn fathers. (tell me about the jedi temple! and chirrut’s relationship with it! and chirrut/baze ofc)". There were two more chapters planned, where Lyra goes to the Rebel Alliance and tries to keep Jyn from becoming a child soldier, but I didn't get to them. The worldbuilding for Alderaan academical structures was just a little more than my brain could take at the time.

It wasn't particularly well received, but then, it's not a particularly stellar story, IMO.

My smutswap was immediately identifiable:

TITLE: Trust Tease
SUMMARY: Going slow, going deep, playing games with someone you trust with your body and your vulnerabilities.
CHARACTERS/PAIRINGS: Maria Hill/Steve Rogers, Thor (cameo)
TAGS: Smut, Oral Sex, Multiple Orgasms, Fucked Raw, Sex
RATINGS: NC-17
NOTES: I had sunspot on my treats list anyway, because I never get assigned the Maria/Steve prompts...and lo and behold, I got assigned to them! So I wrote smut. It's very vanilla smut at this point, although they discuss/negotiate kink for later times, and I was planning to write the later times, only again, the due date defeated me.

I got a bit of flak on this one for forgetting that it was smut and labelling it 'G', which then had a whole bunch of people clicking on the story to check that I hadn't signed up for a smut swap and then written non-smut. However, I found it somewhat amusing that someone on FFA apparently gathered their courage, closed their eyes, and searched for oral sex in the story - OMG THE HET SEX IT BURNS MY EYEN!

--

Otherwise, April was spent in Camp NaNo trying to write original fiction - back to the Shadowkids again. I have the structure, I just have to concentrate enough to write it, dammit.

So May: write fic, make quilts, seek job, get winter garden in, score goals for hockey, cook for self...

A lot of remixes that came out all at once! And the RemixMe and FemmeRemix were due pretty much within days of each other, which made things a little crazy while I was on holidays...

MCU Rolling Remix

title: there is no in-between (fight the good fight remix)
summary: We’d rather have you with us, than against us, Peggy Carter told her after Madripoor. At the time, Maria thought it foolish flattery – appreciated it, sure, but it was a sweetener, not the truth. Then again, she’s now Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D, so it seems the former Director was right.
tags: Maria Hill & Peggy Carter, Maria Hill & Clint Barton, Maria Hill & Steve Rogers, Maria Hill, Steve Rogers, Clint Barton, Peggy Carter, Melinda May, Backstory, Friendship, Parallels.
notes: Okay, so I seriously twisted the story around so that I could shoehorn Maria into the plot, because the original story didn't even mention her and, well, I knew that if I didn't rectify that, she wouldn't get mentioned for the rest of the remix. But apparently I spearheaded the charge into 'Team SHIELD' territory? At last according to the MCU Rolling Remix Masterlist. So, it's interesting to see where people took the original story and how they interpreted it.
original: Between The Wars by MarnaNightingale


Femmeremix

fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel the Series
title: Dust From A Distant Sun (the Hellburned remix)
summary: Kate was never the kind to lie to herself. She picks the corner table because it means she can keep an eye on everything in the bar – and it’s definitely an everything kind of bar.
tags: Kate Lockley, Dawn Summers, Walk Into A Bar, Post-Series, Not comics compliant
notes: I had a brief panic attack when I saw my assignment, because the characters weren't my usual ones, then I got a grip and started writing. I think it turned out okay, even if it wasn't quite the story I wanted to tell ("a ghost, a cop, and the Key walk into a bar - and it ain't no joke").
original: Sunfaded by shobogan

fandom: MCU
title: holding onto what I haven't got (the sitting in an empty room remix)
summary: The hardest part of ending is starting up again.
tags: Natasha Romanoff & Maria Hill, Peggy Carter & Maria Hill, Steve Rogers & Maria Hill, Peggy Carter, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Steve Rogers, Maria Hill, Sam Wilson, Wanda Maximoff, Soul-Searching, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro
notes: This came to me as a PH since the recipient has boasted that they don't kudos or comment on their gifts, and the person assigned them found this out and promptly deflated, quite understandably.
original: just a voice like a riot by meatball42


Remix Me

fandom: Angel the Series
title: Watcher, Resurrected (the Ascending Tartarus Remix)
summary: A lot can happen between death and re-life.
tags: Faith Lehane, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Lorne | Krevlornswath, Dawn Summers
notes: It was a little surprising to end up writing two Buffy&Angel remixes after such a long time since being in the fandom. But, yeah. This was seriously abbreviated from what I felt should be an EPIC STORY about the end of the world. (Again!) I really liked the idea of time having passed and the world of the Watchers and Slayers being very different to how it was at the time that the shows ended, but I was out of time.
original: Ascending Tartarus by Persephones_Keeper

TITLE: a practical acquaintance with bees (Part 1)
SUMMARY: The price of being the best is to always be the best, and sooner or later, the universe catches up. Maria Hill learns this the only way she knows how: one day at a time.
TAGS: Maria-centric, Maria/Steve, pre-Cap2:TWS, cast of thousands
RATING: PG-13
NOTES: The Maria Hill epic I've been threatening for the last three and a half years. Still only half-complete, but at a decent resting point, with more to come.

So now that Yuletide has been revealed, these are my four gift-fics for the 2015 Season:

Yuletide Assignment

fandom: Mad Max: Fury Road
title: The Road To Legend
summary: Fair go, whisper the eddy currents, stirring the sands. Not easy pickings, but a fair go.
rating: PG-13
characters/pairings: Furiosa, Capable, The Dag, Corpus Colossus, Toast The Knowing, Cheedo The Fragile, Max Rockatansky
tags: Post-Movie(s), Slice of Life, Misses Clause Challenge

This was my assignment, and I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it. It worked out pretty well, I think, but wasn't very popular. Someone else had written a better, more detailed version of this story, and their work was more recently posted (mine was the first Mad Max Fury Road fic posted in the YT challenge) and so by the time people got around to reading it (if they did), they were 'eh, not as good'.

Yuletide Pinch-Hit

fandom: Tokyo Crazy Paradise
title: Magnet And Steel
summary: The boy he used to be trapped her into service; the man he is becoming wants her to stay of her own desire.
rating: PG-13
characters/pairings: Shirogami Ryuji/Kozuki Tsukasa, Shirogami Ryuji, Kozuki Tsukasa, Shibuya (Tokyo Crazy Paradise)

Until two days ago (when someone posted three little ficlets), I had written the only two fics in this fandom on AO3. And, yes, last years YT Madness ficlet "Chrysalis" connects with this YT assignment fic "Magnet and Steel". I nearly linked the two, but decided, no, I wouldn't. I did anon Chrysalis after I posted, though. Just in case.

This was kind of fun to write - I've had some little bitty plot bits and pieces here and there for this manga ever since I read it back in...oh, 2009? Writing last year's Madness ficlet and this year's pinch hit forced me to actually complete them.

I guess I'll have to actually write the story where Tsukasa climbs into Ryuji's bed as an acceptance of their relationship, won't I?

Maybe next Yuletide....

Pacific Rim Secret Santa

title: together we are not optional
summary: Co-pilots, after the Drift.
rating: PG-13
characters/pairings: Mako/Raleigh, Caitlin Lightcap/Sergio D'Onofrio, Mako, Raleigh, Herc, Caitlin, Sergio
tags: relationship, love, friends, angst, fluff

The request was for Caitlin/Sergio taking Mako/Raleigh in during the holiday season. But the movie happens at the start of the new year, so the next 'holiday season' would be the Lunar New Year - which, given the strong focus of PR on the Asian countries, would be perfect.

However, there was the small issue of actually getting Mako and Raleigh together first. I've wanted to address the issue of previous sexual partners before in fic, particularly since I could write either Mako or Raleigh as ace, but since they have such a lovely respectful relationship, I really prefer them as het - and hot for each other, but working out how the whole issue of boundaries works.

So Part 1 is them getting together, and Part 2 is them working out how to balance it all in the midst of the crazy publicity that would be post-Pitfall in the Jaeger program. It's a very simple piece, which is just as well, because the Captain Hill Secret Santa was kind of crazymaking.

Captain Hill Secret Santa

title: Personal Is Not The Same As Important
summary: Personal is not the same as important. Maria Hill and Steve Rogers understand this far too well.
rating: M - canon-standard violence, flashbacks of physiological and mental torture.
characters/pairings: Maria/Steve, Maria, Steve, Rhodey, Akela Amador, Cameron Klein (Technician Guy), Melinda May's Mom, Original Male Character...and then we get into cameo territory, which is Pepper Potts, Nick Fury, Natasha, Sam, Vision, Wanda...
tags: Civil War (Marvel), Angst Action/Adventure, Happy Ending, Aftermath of Torture, Psychological Torture

Oh look, it's yet another Maria-in-Civil-War fic. Actually, the recip was a late entry into the Secret Santa. So I gave her my assignment and took hers on instead - and she wanted something that dealt with MCU Civil War. This was the short version and the happy-ending version. (Seriously, the long version involved a trip to Asgard, Maria picking up the Hammer, and ending up holding the universe together while pregnant with Steve's child to stave off Ragnarok. And it was angsty as hell, in case you couldn't tell.)

So, I wrote the Civil War section of the fic. Which featured Maria being awesome, because this is me and this is Maria Hill. And then, because there was no way that Maria was just going to forgive Steve and take him back...it turned into a two parter. With a side of torture and psychological angst, because it's kind of fun putting Steve through the emotional wringer. I was writing the penultimate scene when I realised the connection between the two (sometimes my brain does this; I'm writing something without quite knowing where it's going, and then BANG the connection to the beginning is there and it is Very Good) and then it was tea and happy endings.

--

So that was my 2015 Christmas Season.

Now to do the Year In Fic list... Sheesh.

new ficlet: The Tools To Hand
Civil War, the way it won't play out. Because Maria Hill. (*grumbles*)

Sometimes I feel like Hollywood, its producers and writers and directors and bigwigs all need to be told "step away from the franchise and let someone else take up the helm with new ideas". And no, the audience won't love those new ideas to start with (witness all the whinging about Mad Max: Fury Road) but a new batch of audience will go "gimme more!" And a large batch of the old audience will go: "hey, that looks interesting, I'd like to see where they're going with this."

--

( Garden thoughts )

--

( hockey )

Anyway, today:

- change of clothes for after hockey
- dress pattern and dress fabric for sewing group
- matching thread for dress pattern/fabric
- sharp scissors
- handsewing and bits for cutting
- a plan for the hexie flowers I'm making for a swap
- sewing machine (of course)

The reason I'm making this list here and not going off and putting it all together right now is because I have a cute, warm cat in my lap and I'm a horrendous sucker and can't quite bring myself to move her...

space_swap pinch-hit: Augment (Young Wizards)

Not as detailed as I wanted it to be: I had too many ideas and they all pulled in different directions - or required rather more time than I had to give it. And it was tricksy and difficult and awful and...

It's good enough, but not brilliant. I feel like it needs a jolly good sand and polish. *grumps*

Still, in the end, the recip liked it. So, small and very grateful mercies!

ship_swap: Gravity's A Bitch (Pacific Rim)

I wrote this pairing once before, and while I like it and the sex is hot, I'm just not that into white males sexing each other. It's not that I dislike white males, I just think female characters are more interesting. (And the feminist in me insists that it's more important to stretch the boundaries for women than to retread the comfort zones for men. Plus, I have the emotional and psychological wherewithal to do so, as well as the will and desire, which I gather a lot of female authors don't.)

It's really just a scene in a bigger emotional picture. Believe it or not, there's enough a plot and a psychological profile behind the sequence. I put it off and put it off and put it off, and in the end, just finished the scene, polished it off, and put it out there.

Better than nothing, although I think it was the recip's "emergency fandom" - "break glass in case of lack of matches" - and it wasn't quite what she was hoping for. (All her other requests were for a single fandom with multiple branches - think Marvel comics.)

--

Other fics I have committed in the last couple of weeks:

The Odd Couple - Maria/Steve, Maria&Sam, Steve&Sam, post-AoU. WIP - 1/5. Or how a changed outlook on his life gives Steve new options.

People We Are Not - Clint & Natasha, Clint & other, with an intent to portend Clint/Natasha. Basically a fix-it (alternate universe?) for AoU. WIP - 1/2, although reads as complete.

Maybe Why - Maria/Steve, post-AoU. Comment fic for scribble_myname. A little mood piece - a quiet moment of interaction and intimacy.

Once Worshipped - Maria & Thor & kitten. Comment fic for geckoholic. Pretty much complete fluff.

His Mother's Son - original character, Maria, Steve, background Maria/Steve. I had a trope bingo square. And I started writing it. And somewhere along the way, this story happened.

The MCU Ladies Exchange is live! (And full of wonderful, wonderful stories.)

My recipient didn't leave me that much to work with in the beginning, and then defaulted (with silence) anyway. Nevertheless, this gave me a good opportunity to finish a fic that's been hanging around for about six months:

A Question Of Loyalty
Summary: Who is Maria Hill loyal to? (The answer is worth fifteen years, and takes some time to explain.)
Relationships: Maria Hill & Peggy Carter, Maria Hill & Original Female Character, Maria Hill & Phil Coulson, Maria Hill & Melinda May, Maria Hill & Natasha Romanoff, Maria Hill & Steve Rogers, Maria Hill & Pepper Potts, Maria Hill & Nick Fury
Characters: Maria Hill, Peggy Carter, Phil Coulson, Melinda May, Natasha Romanoff, Nick Fury, Steve Rogers, Pepper Potts, Original Female Character, Alexander Pierce
Additional Tags: Character Study, Friendship, Loyalty, What Makes Her Tick, Backstory, Post-Movie(s), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse

The MCU Ladies Treat Collection will go live at some point in the next 24 hours. If you're able to write a ficlet or prompt, please do!