Dreams and Swords

Title: Our Shadowy Pattern
Series: IDW Transformers
Characters: Megatron/Impactor
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2100+
Summary: It's friendship at first word. But it's the poetry that undoes him.
Author's Notes: Written for the tf_rare_pairing prompt 'Megatron/Impactor, i want to paint a love poem all over the sheets and you'.

( Our Shadowy Pattern )

[Bex]: Meanwhile, Shockblast looks like Shockwave, sounds like Depth Charge, and is a complete psychopath.
[Kep]: that's the TF hotness trifecta there!

( There's a lot of Transformers stuff under here )

RIP Anne McCaffrey

I am terrible at talking about authors who affected me or deaths in general. So. The Harper Hall trilogy was one of the earliest pieces of fantasy I read, and it's one of the pieces I will pick up for comfort rereads.

First of all, thank you for whatever you write for me this year. Please have fun and try not to stress over this. Unless you're like me, where running around and going "aieeee!" is part of the fun. ;-)

I am generally into all sorts of stories: adventure, romance, drama, comedy. Since this is Yuletide, I definitely do not want a deathfic, and for the most part, I'm not particularly interested in angst. I'm also not interested in a fic that's solely smut; I'd rather have some plot going on alongside the sexy times. (I'm not really expecting smut to come up with any of my prompts, but I figured I'd throw that out there.)

( Fandoms, Prompts, and Expansion on Same Behind the Cut )

Ganked from all over.

- Open up your music player. Hit shuffle.
- Record the first few lines of the first thirty songs that come up that do not give away the name of the song. Skip instrumentals, but don't skip the embarrassing ones.
- Make hapless LJ denizens guess the song names and artists. Google is cheating. For musical songs, the name of the musical is acceptable in place of the artist.
- Least hapless LJ denizen wins admiration. That's right; the points are something you'll never see, just like Pat Buchanan in the White House!

( Music of the Niiiiiight )

Writing this story is a... weird process to me. I'm throwing story bits at a wall to see if they stick! Sure, I started out with a very basic idea of what was going to happen, but now I have this whole other subplot moving in from left field, and yet another subplot lurking in the wings. This is so strange!

Usually, when I'm writing, I have a fairly good idea of what I'm trying to accomplish. I had the final scene in mind for "Ember, Ash, and Kindling" from the very beginning, and I was just writing to reach it. But this NaNo is just "words! I must words on pages!", and shockingly enough, to me, I haven't used SUDDENLY, NINJAS to increase word-count yet. All the fights so far were planned.

Also, I'm finding that being willing to stick in [name] or [city] helps me a lot with just keeping things flowing. I can come back and hash out names later.

The really tricky things so far have been making sure I keep my continuity guide updated as I write and not getting too distracted by Luna posting new fics.

Speaking of fics, I still haven't finished off Oracle Zuko. I know what the last scene needs to be, I'm just not sure how to start it off. "All art is recovery from the first line."

Of course, I keep looking at the story as it is now and wondering if it's a satisfying story. I am sure Floranna will be happy with it (Floranna, I love you, but you'd probably be happy with two thousand words of Oracle Zuko/Jet smut in the woods), but I'm not sure if it's going to be worth the wait for anybody else.

I suppose this is what beta-readers are for: to tell you if you've fucked up the landing.

Can't manage NaNoing tonight, so I'm dorking around with my Days of Future Past DZ AU. Angstpocalypse!

---

Needlenose eyed the circuit laid out in front of him critically. The pattern of its teal leads against the pink semiconductor irritated him. It was ugly, jarring and tangled, almost impossible to set up for a fabber to produce. He couldn't achieve the visual effect he wanted without sacrificing its functionality, and he couldn't make it mass-producible without sacrificing both functionality and aesthetics.

Sure, he could make up for the loss of efficiency by splitting everything across five or six circuits. But they still wouldn't be mass-producible, and they definitely wouldn't be chic.

Besides, Perceptor made fun of him for how many of his Spinister-chips he already had installed.

If he stopped insisting on the colors, he could rearrange the leads to achieve functionality and mass-producibility.

"I like the colors," Needlenose muttered, antennae flicking back.

Putting so many of Spinister's sensor-baffles in one circuit was difficult enough without frivolous patterns and colors.

"If I wanted something completely utilitarian," he snapped, "I'd go to Shockwave."

In another room, he heard and felt Hairsplitter sigh and Sunbeam say, "Dude, you're arguing with Spinister again."

So he was. For years after Spinister's death, he hadn't understood why he couldn't get over the helicopter. He'd had thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of lovers throughout his life. Some of them he'd even cared for as much as he had Spinister, and they'd faded from importance inside a year. But Spinister stayed in his head.

Or, rather, Spinister stayed in Singe and Hairsplitter's heads.

[Bex]: I suspect my Nano is going to be a lot of "and now Becca describes this cities and its customs in detail because hey, word count, and she will sculpt this all into a story next draft"
[Rin]: that is most Nanos
[Kep]: *is thinking a lot of mine will be "and here is faux historical documents 'casue, word count and this way we have filler material for the back of the book..."
[Bex]: "and now, Revenant and Counterpoise have kinky robot sex and I try to remember Counterpoise is an it, not a he or a she"
[Rin]: personally I'm trying for "and now Rin describes this one cultural detail via sexy makeouts"
[Rin]: ahahahaha
[Kep]: Aww yeah
[Rin]: there will be a LOT OF making out
[Pux]: "And now, Rafe angsts/Monica is sweet/Chantelle kills shit/Rin has a hat."
[Bex]: Aw yeah! Hat!
[Rin]: A HAT A HAT
[Kep]: HAT!!!

Title: Be Fruitful
Series: G1, mostly cartoon
Characters: Dr. Susan Hoffman/Onslaught, Hot Spot, Blades, the Constructicons
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2100+
Summary: Onslaught is pregnant. He doesn't understand how that can be, since he hasn't slept with another Transformer in millions of years. What with being locked in a box and all.
Author's Notes: For those of you who don't keep track of obscure comics characters, Dr. Susan Hoffman is made of awesome. Also, this fic proves that I love Dr. Hoffman/Onslaught like whoa.

For the purposes of this fic, I am assuming an established relationship between the two of them.

( Be Fruitful )

Toying around with an Aerialbot (Slingshot)-specific table for 6impearfics. It's probably really self-indulgent to use my adminly powers to make it an official prompt table.

Playing around with them as they were in the early days: arrogant and young, utterly certain of themselves and unsure of the people around them.

---

JAILBAIT
Innocence defiled. Sticky pink bubblegum and the thick, sweet scent of orange and cherry lollipops smeared over a breath of heady womanly perfume.

ZEPHYR
A gentle white scent, breezes laced with the scent of springtime blooms and citrus. Lemon, lemon verbena, neroli, white musk, white florals, white sandalwood, China musk, bergamot and a drop of vanilla.

SWANK
Simply cool, the essence of Lounge: the scent of a crisp pomegranate martini.

HURRICANE
The Dark Side of Air: a high pitched, tangy, clear scent -- light China rain deepened by murky vetivert.

JUKE JOINT
A bawdy, gleefully wicked and unruly scent: Kentucky Bourbon, sugar and a sprig of mint.

THE BOW & CROWN OF CONQUEST
And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

Nobility and haughtiness befitting the Antichrist: sage, carnation and cedar with lavender, vanilla, white musk and leather.