First, holy shit, I got another story! It's another original work, survival and a western, and it is gorgeous. The creeping danger of the weather feels real, and it rolls out into a delightful story.

Watch For Me By The Moonlight (1738 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Female Wounded Stranger/Female Homesteader
Characters: Female Wounded Stranger, Female Homesteader
Additional Tags: Western, Fantasy, Hurt/Comfort
Summary:

A wounded stranger, a snowstorm, a homesteader, and more...

( MCU )

( Pacific Rim )

( Marvel comics )

Oh my god, y'all, my exchange karma has come back to me in spades for Chocolate Box! This is the first time I participated, and I did not manage to write anything but my assignment, which is weird, because I pretty much always treat. It's just not a good time of year for me, I guess.

BUT THE STORIES I GOT. OH MY GOD. THE STORIES.

I was gifted four stories, and I am thrilled.

( Criminal Minds )

( Original Work )

My MCU (re)watch continues! This time with The Incredible Hulk, one of the parts I'm watching for the first time. I'm a little torn on this one; I love Banner and the Hulk (in part because the Hulk is a great metaphor for bipolar), and I've enjoyed some of Norton's work, but I love the hell out of Ruffalo's version and I don't know how this is going to work for me.

Spoilers for The Incredible Hulk, of course, but also brief talk of Ragnarok and Infinity War. (And this turned into slightly more stream of conscious live blogging than I intended.)

( The Incredible Hulk )

A Dark Room

this isn't ours. (1510 words) by voksen
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: A Dark Room (Doublespeak Games)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Builder/Wanderer (A Dark Room)
Characters: Builder (A Dark Room), Wanderer (A Dark Room)
Additional Tags: Pastiche
Summary:

but if you fixed it, it could belong to both of us.

Haunting, terse, and beautiful.

Oregon Trail

And Then We Shot the Ox (3052 words) by coltsbane
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Oregon Trail (game)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Additional Tags: you have died of dysentery
Summary:

Hundreds of thousands of people made the journey to Oregon. A long time later, only a few made their way back.

Creepy and tense and satisfying.

I'm working my way chronologically through the MCU (some things are a rewatch, some for the first time), and today I finished the last two episodes of Agent Carter, the Agent Carter short at the end of Iron Man 3, and Iron Man. I have some thoughts. Spoilers for both things, and for Avengers: Civil War.

( MCU thoughts )

I managed five Yuletide stories this year, my assignment and four treats. Not my most prolific year, but pretty damn good, and I'm proud of the stories I wrote.

Assignment: Out of Bounds and Off the Trail, Baby-Sitters Club by Ann M. Martin, Abby/Kristy (and ensemble)
Summary: Abby heads up to Shadow Lake for a long weekend of skiing, snowball fights, and hot chocolate. Add in an unrequited crush, two sets of best friends, and a blizzard, and the only thing Abby can think is this: At least we're not being stalked by a failed killer this time.

Treat: (Not a) Survival Group, Jurassic Park series/Jurassic World series, Lex/Kelly (and ensemble)
Summary: It's not a dinosaur survival group. Not really. It's just that, well, they all survived dinosaurs once. Or twice. Kelly hopes there will never be a third time for any of them.

Treat: No More Crossroads, No More Waiting, Thunderheart, Ray/Walter, soulmate AU
Summary: The movies got the soulmate thing all wrong.

(I 100% expected carlyinrome to guess this was me, but she swears she did not.)

Treat: Advance and Retreat, Avengers Grimm, Sleeping Beauty and Red Riding Hood
Summary: Beauty's magic fails her sometimes. Snow thinks it's high time she learned to fight. Red's the one given the job. No one is happy about this.

(New fandom! I've wanted to write for this for a few years now, and I was thrilled to find another fan.)

Treat: Say Hello to Your Friends (Again and Again and Again), Baby-Sitters Club by Ann M. Martin, Mallory/Jessi (and ensemble)
Summary: When Mary Anne gets married (again), Mallory and Jessi reunite with some old friends. It's not nearly as awkward as Mallory fears.

questionoftheday asks: Do you sleep in silence, or do you have to have background noise? Is there a reason for this? How about light? Does it have to be pitch black, or do you need at least a sliver of light to sleep?

My answer:

I have insomnia a lot of the time, but when I do sleep, I can sleep through noise or light. Normally I have a fan running, though not blowing on me most of the year, because I get cold easily, but that's more because I like the sound of the fan than anything. (And as I live now, J can't sleep without a fan, so it's a good thing noise like that doesn't bother me.)

When I'm in hotels on my own, I'll usually fall asleep with the t.v. on, because it's such a strange thing for me. (We don't have cable at home nor a t.v. in the bedroom.) I'll shut it off at some point, though.

I sleep best in a dark room that is cool enough I can sleep under a heavy comforter, but it can't be too cold, because if my feet are cold, I can't get to sleep, yet I hate wearing socks to bed (and in general). (I never wore socks to bed at all until I lived in Michigan and then, despite how warm I kept my apartment, sometimes I needed it. I still sometimes do so in winter, but it is a rare, rare thing.)

J likes to fall asleep to stand-up comedy. It doesn't keep me awake as a noise, but I do sometimes get caught up listening to it as an actual thing I want to stay awake for rather than background noise, so I have to be careful not to get caught up in it. (Much like getting caught up in a story I'm reading.)





Unrelated, I haven't talked about Yuletide as much as I normally do, mostly because I have been fighting a depression crash over the past few months and have been left feeling flat. I got my story done, I wrote one treat, and I'm trying to finish another. Compared to the years when I wrote 10 stories, this could be disheartening, but (a) I've been writing longer stories for my assignments the past few years and (b) I was frantically trying to finish the first draft of a novel before the end of the year (which I did), and that took far more of December than I expected, time which normally would have spent on Yuletide.

I love the assignment I wrote, though, and I think the recipient will enjoy it.

Questions taken over here, comments screened.

alesse_irena asked: What's a fic you wish existed but you've never seen?

So many. So, so many. But currently, I have a desperate craving for a long, plotty, tropey Criminal Minds case fic with a snarky, slow-burn Garcia/Alvez and all the chosen family feelings I have for the team showing up everywhere. Some of my favorite tropes include trapped in a cabin (or other places, basically forced proximity), fake dating/undercover dating, friends to lovers, snark = flirting, and, god, I just love tropes. Requirements: no villanizing Morgan or Lisa (oh my god, I see so, so much of this when I go looking for fic, including Morgan having used Garcia the whole time and their friendship not being real, which NOPE hard disagree), no Garcia freaking out over her weight or beauty or size or whatever, snark that is fun but not cruel, and an ensemble cast because I love the current team dynamics so much.

What? I'm not asking for a lot. Really, that looks totally simple, right? RIGHT?

(I have considered writing one myself, but (a) I'm not great at the snarky, flirtatious dialog it needs, and (b) I probably couldn't do it justice in less than 50k, and that many words really needs to go to some of the other projects I already have underway. Plus (c) writing it is not the same as reading it.)

If you have any recommendations, I'll take them!