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Hello to you, my lovely MahoAko compatriots!
14 December 2024
I've stuck the Xmas tree up today and am feeling nice and festive, with grace notes of poignant melancholy appropriate for this time of year, largely induced by twinkle lights and the Strictly Come Dancing final, and possibly also helped by a couple of festive tipples to help with my creativity.
To celebrate the most wonderful time of the year (c.f. Andy Williams) I’m starting off a new fic to run over the next few weeks. A few points of order:
1. It’s absolutely nothing to do with Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky! I’ll still be working on that – the next chapter of Wish You Were Here will be going up tomorrow, fingers crossed, and I’m going to try to keep the weekly postings on the go as far as is humanly possible. This one is going to be completely different…
2. It’s called “Fairy Lights” because that’s how I want it to be – little, bright, cheerful, different colours, and absolutely no 10k stories of people sitting around tables being all angsty and miserable. Although there may well be nasty stuff in some of the stories – there’s a great tradition of ghost stories at Christmas, after all. A nice break from the Small Black Flowers darkfest for all of us, although I hope lots of people get the chance to have a read of that while sofa surfing in the bleak midwinter.
3. Each posting will be a different short story/poem/critical analysis of Goethe/whatever, with no chronological order or interlinking between the two. If someone ends up married/dead/pregnant/living in Djibouti in one story, it’ll all be back to normal by the time of the next chapter. Proper crackfic, in other words.
4. There’s not going to be any consistency to the stories at all in terms of characters, style or genre. I’m going to keep them short, though – not easy for me, as I have crazy verbal incontinence, but I don’t want them going much over 1,000 words a time if I can possibly help it. I’m wanting it to be more like a Christmas stocking/Portmanteau thing, where each one will be radically different from the last – so if you don’t like one, never mind, the next one might be more to your tastes! I’m also aiming for easy reading – like snacking on a mince pie or grabbing a handful of chocs from that tub on the go on the coffee table, rather than having to really engage brains.
5. I’m not going to commit to any particular posting schedule on this – I’ll load ‘em when I’ve written ‘em, and I’ll be doing minimal checking and editing so they may be a little bit more ragged than usual (and for those of you who’ve seen me hastily patching up chapters of Small Black Flowers…. You’ll know that I’m already plenty ragged.) I’ll knock it on the head once my Crimbo hols are over, as work and stuff will get in the way, but if it is a success – you never know, I may wheel it back out for Xmas 2025!
6. As far as possible, I want this to be spontaneous and fun. In particular, I’d absolutely love it if folks want to post their own bits and bobs down in the comments, or stick in requests for stuff for people to write about, so we can make it into more of a communal exercise – it’ll take the strain off me a bit, and will probably dramatically increase the quality and quantity of writing. As long as it’s vaguely Christmassy/wintery if you squint a bit after a couple of drinks, then it’s all lovely...
Update - 4 January 2025
It's the end of the hols and I'm now back properly into work mode (boo, hiss etc) but I have absolutely loved putting these together over the last 3 weeks. Excluding the Christmas Carol thing (more on that later) we ended up with:
- Secret Santa. Kaoruko. Rude and a bit lewd, and a bit fluffy
- Mistletoe. MataNemo - Also a bit rude, but mostly just fluff!
- FCK KFC Kiwi rages against the machine! Silly, with KxK hints
- Momomori Momo's Christmas - Pantano Pesca Poetry Pandemonium!
- The Blue Pond. BaiZul - is it naughty or nice? Can it be both?
- The Bad Joke - Schio-chans, plus ghostly horror! Not joking!
- Walking In The Air - Korisu - all alone, or is she? Short and sweet, like her.
- Letting Go - Sayo/Kaoruko, plus Haruka cameo and Disney. Be ready to sing along with the snow queen. Tooth-rotting, but might be my fave...
- Christmas Stockings - Haruka in different guises, different outfits, and different moods. Yep, this one is filth.
- Choccywockydoodah - TM, esp Kaoruko, fighting petty criminals but finding a generous side - idea contributed by Ercel211! 🩷
- Naughty And Nice - Enormeeta enjoying a visit from St Nick, a hint of smut and a few laughs, idea contributed by the lovely LariaEnl!
- Fall At Your Feet- Kiwi, Utena, Haruka and Kaoruko hit the ice in style. Consult your dentist first, this is a tooth-killer. From an idea from the inimitable Crepe-Chan 😻
Overall I'm pretty pleased with the quality and variation which we managed to squeeze in given the writing speed (including 14k words on Wish You Were Here 😆); from my point of view, any challenge that generated The Blue Pond, The Bad Joke, Letting Go and Fall At Your Feet can't have been a complete waste of time and energy. The word counts were way higher than I thought, and my writing was a LOT more fluffy than I expected, but - yeah, not bad overall, I hope. If there's anything in there you really liked, or hated, please let me know so I can factor that into future writing...
I have LOVED the freedom of the writing. I'm 100% doing it again next year, and I'll be better prepared this time! Stuff I've already got ready to write includes:
- Nachtmas Carol parts 2 and 3 - it's happening, and will be better!
- The Festive Period aka Crampus
- Christmas Wrapping
- On Thin Ice
- Getting into the Festive Spirit
- Slay ride
- The Baisermas Incident - courtesy of TehFlyingKyukon!
Not gonna lie, I'm looking forward to that already. In fact, I'm looking forward to it so much that I'm almost certainly going to do something very similar over other school holiday periods - you'll see that this work is now part of a holidays group...
It's been a joy. Thank you to all readers, especially those of you who added kudos or (😍) comments below the chapters - you've given me more of a boost than you'll ever know!
Have a fantastic 2025, everyone, and have a Fallen Medic sign-off for old times' sake...
😉💋