Stories for a winter's night

I'm trying to get back to something that resembles normalcy so back to keeping regular updates and attempting to get back to writing. So, lets get back into this:

1. Bleeding Daylight - This was to be my entry to the Robot Big Bang before life tried to eat me and resulted in my dropping out. It's a Wings Universe AU dealing with a Smokescreen/Swindle cross faction relationship, questions just how free the Decepticons are, and its just an all around epic love story. It's got Smokey/Swindle, Onslaught/Blast Off (and I'm trying to respectfully write demisexual Blast Off), Ratchet/Twins, and a deep Ratchet/Smokescreen friendship.

I'm currently reworking what I had already written to include the various subplots I had to drop for time and space. Once that's done I will finalize the ending, get it edited, and start with the posting. Now, since I don't want to compete with the Big Bang and I really want to be sure that things are edited well, I may not start posting this fic until the new year.

2. Being Human - This is my Humanized TF/MCU crossover. I've posted the first three chapters here and I'm currently working on the fourth. Combat is breaking out properly and the Autobots and Avengers will actually meet.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

3. You Remind Me of Someone I Used to Know - This story has a long, long way to go. I've worked on some of Chapter 4. Smokescreen has been found out by Jazz and Mirage and he's promised to leave Ratchet alone. Unfortunately Ratchet's curiosity has been piqued and isn't going to give up on finding out who Cortano really is.

4. Survivor's Guilt - I've been picking at this one for ages. I noticed that there were a variety of fics out there dealing with both Blue and Prowl dealing with the fall of Praxis, but it's super rare for anything to be written about Smokescreen. So I started working on this idea. It's the anniversary of the city's destruction and Smokescreen is dealing with his survivor's guilt by getting overcharged on his own and Bluestreak decides he's having none of this. This isn't going to be part of the Medical Psychology series.

5. Who Counsels the Counsellor? - This is another one that I've been picking at. It's the Festival of the Five and Smokescreen is attacked by an unknown assailant. Then he's attacked again. And again. And no one knows who's doing it. I sort of got sidetracked on this one because I couldn't decide which Autobot was doing the attacking. Fact is, according to the fandom Smokey is the designated asshole, so I wasn't sure who to chose at the bad guy knowing that I'd be pissing readers off.

4. Untitled Heat fic - There have been a variety of fics out there dealing with sudden heats among the bots. It got me to thinking, what if someone went into heat and the only person there to help them is someone they loathe. It's become a rather difficult dub-con fic that will have to be dealt with very carefully. Smokescreen/Mirage. This one is part of the Medical Psychology series.

5. Red Tape sequel - After all of the issues with my parent and the hospital, I am planning on a medical system red tape fic and poor Ratchet having to deal with it.

6. Daughters of Liberty - This is my Fallout 4 walkthrough fic. The idea is that there are a number of people survive the vault and the protagonists are a pair of sisters - one a Marine lawyer and the other an Army engineer. It's pretty amorphous at the moment but it's slowly progressing. Basically I want to flesh out the story a little and play with the world.

So, there we go. Clearly I will not be finishing all of these this month, but I do plan on working on most of them. I may post some of the WIPs over here at some point. It may be silly but I find that if I post it somewhere where people can see it (they don't need to, but they could) then I'm less likely to go back and edit the bejesus out of it.

Day 12

In your own space, create a fanwork. Make a podfic, an icon, a sketch, a meta, or a rec list. Arts and crafts. Cross stitch. Draft an essay about a particular medium. Put together a picspam or a fanmix. Write a review of book you love, a ship manifesto, a you-should-be-listening-to-this-band essay. Create something. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.


Title: Pickman's Model
Fandom: Fallout 4
Rating: M (?)
Warnings: Violence, Dark themes, Serial Killers
Relationships: none
Characters: Sole Survivor - female, Pickman

Summary: What if the Sole Survivor had been a serial killer before the war? Is Pickman a potential student or a rival?

A/N: This is the first thing that I have written in a long time and I am rather pleased with it, even though it needs to be edited and cleaned up a little.

( Pickman's Model )

So, we have slightly less than a week until NaNo 2017 starts up and I am busying myself with the plantsing. I refuse to call it planning and it is more than panting, so plantsing it is!

I'm writing a novelization semi-AU of Fallout 4 based partially on my own playthroughs and partially on the concept art for the game. There are also several logical things that are never dealt with due to gaming constraints. I mean, I get that creating an inside for every single house in the game is impossible, but writing has no such limitation. I am also having both protagonists survive. Yeah, I know why the game has one killed, but it's an old and overused trope. And given that the game really, really wants you to play the male character, it's all far too close to fridging for my liking. A kidnapped child is more than enough motivation. So Nate is going to be combat engineer and Nora is a JAG lawyer. I love that Nora is a lawyer, but she is far too capable with a gun, with survival, and with everything else for her to have no survival or military experience. So my choices were Survivalist or Ex-military and I figured that there was absolutely no reason why she had to be a civilian.

So, Nora was a Marine JAG lawyer with political aspirations and Nate was an army combat engineer who basically wanted to work for Habitat for Humanity or the Peace Corps. They find themselves in this broken and rotting world that has so much potential, but infighting (and possibly Institute influence) has stopped any form of progress until these two people basically travel in time and give the world a new perspective. I'm going to be coming at this kind of like .... Okay, bad analogy time: You live in a house that has been consumed by a hoarder. You need to clean but you're too close to it and have no idea where to start. You need someone to some in from the outside to help you get that starting point. That's basically how I am viewing all of this. I mean, it's been two hundred years! Maybe 150 since things became habitable again. There should be larger communities. People should have mined the old factories and companies for information and technology. According to the Fallout Bible, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was the tech capital of the USA. There is no reason why everyone is still living in hovels, not when there are perfectly good houses still standing.

I also want to play with the idea that the Super Mutants are not the irredeemable brutes they come off as. The Commonwealth Super Mutants show the ability to strategize and both Strong and Ericsson aren't brutes. Therefore there may be hope to deal with them in one way or another. Yes, a faint hope, but hope nonetheless. At least better hope than the guy who tried to civilize the mirelurks.

And lastly I am hoping to have a different ending for the Institute. Yes, Father is unwilling to listen, but he isn't all of the Institute, and I hate that the game lets you become CEO and then doesn't let you change anything at all!

So, yeah, those are just a few plans. We'll see how things go and see if I actually have something worth posting in the end.

So I am finally starting to feel better and have gotten back to writing a little. I am currently working on a fic request "Smokescreen/Swindle - The Good Old Days" for Ultharkitty and then I will start on "Anything with G1 Lambos and/or Bumblebee" for Aerylon. I've also been contemplating jumping fandoms and trying my hand on some Fallout 4 ficcage.

Yes, a game has eaten my soul and I have been lost to it. Now, yeah, I know that fans from the old, pre-Bethesda days of the game have issues with it and yes, it does have some pretty hilarious (and sometimes oh so frustrating) bugs, but I'm enjoying a pretty much open sandbox survival game. I love the moral options and that you have so many paths that you can follow. I mean, yeas, I absolutely adore the Bioshock series, but it really is a bit of a railroad. In Fallout you really can do just about anything. Including killing and eating annoying NPCs apparently. No, I haven't tried that yet, but it is an interesting option to have. And I will admit, it has been very tempting to do something horrible to Knight Rhys and Marcy Long -- honestly, more Rhys than Long.

All that being said, I do with that there were more than four dialogue options. I would love to be able to ask Preston about the Brotherhood or the Children of the Atom (yeah, I know, minor characters but still a semi faction). I would love to be able to let Rhys know that I was a lawyer/soldier and probably do have a rudimentary understanding of Latin mottoes (in my mind Nate was a Marine). I would love to be able to have a minor breakdown after the first fight with the Deathclaw and to be able to do more to comfort Nick. ... Basically there are a ton of questions/actions I'd like to take that the game doesn't allow for. One noted example is when you run across the Gunners who are running a toll on a bridge. Your only options are to pay or kill them. Why can't I just acknowledge the cost, apologize for stepping in their territory, and then leave? I mean, yeah, they're likely to still shoot me, but then I can kill them in self-defense rather than have it be murder. Why can't I offer to hug Nick or Cait? And why can't I ask Codsworth how he stayed sane for all these centuries?

So, yeah, there are a lot of questions and that's leading to a lot of bunnies that might lead to a Fallout 4 Novelization fic. They're probably a dime a dozen, but I figure it can't hurt to try. Maybe it'll be an idea for June Camp NaNo or for the real NaNo in November. the Adventures of Nora Rigg, Sole Survivor and former JAG lawyer (hey, it's as good an excuse as any for how she's so good with those guns!)

In other news, work is trying to kill me and I am doing the work of four separate people/positions so I'm more than a little stressed and that is effecting my writing output. That means that the above plans are going to be slow in coming. But they are started, so that's a start, right?

And lastly, I may actually post a picture of myself for the first time at some point later this month because I am allowing a section of my hair to go silver and I will (if all goes to plan) have a Rogue-like stripe in my hair by mid-May. I'm not exactly comfortable with photos of me but if this works I'm really going to want to share!