Yuletide/Madness/Tagmod Nonsense 2025 Reveals

So I've been working on a long project which continues to be...in progress, and in part due to that, my main collection output was not particularly prolific, but, events conspired in such a way that I produced plenty of tiny ficlets!

My original assignment was for "The Frugal Wizard's Handbook to Surviving Medieval England." When I first read it, my reaction was: "There's also a tantalizing offscreen subplot hinted at involving the "Waelish" who preceded the Anglo-Saxon arrivals, but despite my guesses and extrapolations about what was going on there, it didn't really turn out to be as prominent as I'd expected." The Waelish leader is a King Arthur expy! Which is interesting! But then he just...doesn't play into the overall plot.

Anyway, as a tagmod, I get to be privy to discussions in tagmod chat as nominations come in. One of my fellow tagmods took a screenshot of this book, nominated with the only character "The Black Bear," and commented "this is also making me laugh. Probably it's clear! It's just funny. The only character." So immediately I responded:

i have that book and can fact-check (i don't remember that character)

ohhhh is it the [spoiler tag]king arthur expy[/spoiler] who never appears on screen 😠

(i wanted that character to be more of a thing than he was 🙁

yeah, he's an offscreen bad guy. [spoiler]the Waelish king[/spoiler]

Anyway, someone requested him and was interested in his POV on the conflict/other Arthurian allusions, so I was very excited about offering that, and then that was what I matched on! Like I mentioned before, canon review was relatively quick (the Bear is only mentioned in a couple offscreen places), it was just a matter of procrastinating until I finally wrote it. In a world where the monotheists are Zoroastrians instead of Christians, presumably they'd go on a quest for the sacred fire rather than the Holy Grail!

Very loose correspondences to the Arthurian knights, somewhat based on notes I took on Le Morte d'Arthur years ago:

• The Boar ~ Sir Bors
• The White Shoat ~ Helin the White (Bors' son)
• The Peacock ~  Sir Persaunte, the Indigo Knight
• The Lark ~ Dinadan
• The Turtle ~ Tristram
• The Otter ~ Lancelot
• The Cub ~ Galahad
• The Bull ~ Palomides (Zoroastrianism celebrates a "primordial bovine"!)

Also, 2023 me noted: "There are a lot of illustrations/marginalia (especially for the in-universe portions), done by Steve Argyle, which I think I'll be able to better appreciate when I get a hard copy." Well, this was my first time reading the hard copy cover to cover, and sure enough, in the inside back cover, there are pictures of the characters in the post-canon era. Runian and Sefawynn getting their happily-ever-after while Logna looks on from a distance, etc. And there's also one of Yazad...with a bunch of windmills, implying he succeeded in teaching that technology to the locals <3

The True Tale of the Black Bear (1681 words)
Fandom: The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England - Brandon Sanderson
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Black Bear (The Frugal Wizard's Handbook)
Additional Tags: arthuriana
Summary: Come, all you Keltmen, and hear of your hero, most feared in the forest! Accept no slanderous skop's substitutes, none of Logna's lies.

Then for Steerswoman, some in-universe mythology based on one of the stories Rowan hears at Rendezvous (and later tells Steffie).

Outcast (1156 words)
Fandom: Steerswoman Series - Rosemary Kirstein
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: In-Universe Mythology, Outskirters, Ghosts
Summary: "Rowan heard of...a haunting, where the spirit of an uncast man killed his tribe's goats, one by one, until his body was found and given proper rites." -The Outskirter's Secret

Madness:

I saw a request for crossovers with the Snake Fight Thesis Defense, and the requester linked to a list of 100 influential books. Scrolling through that I was like...this person has great tastes, all of these academic types should fight the snake. So I turned it into a drabble sequence. (Crossover fandoms are: Gödel, Escher, Bach; Kairos (Murry-O'Keefe) books; Oxford Time Travel Universe; Vorkosigan Saga; Steerswoman)

Not An Exact Science (526 words)
Fandom: FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense - Luke Burns
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Drabble Sequence, 5 Things, Crossover
Summary: Five worlds where the snake fight thesis became a tradition.

I have been super into Slay the Spire for the last few months, so I figured I'd write something for the Merchant. It turned out to be a one-sided conversation between the Merchant and the Watcher.

Masked Man (674 words) 
Fandom: Slay the Spire (Video Game)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Merchant (Slay the Spire), Watcher (Slay the Spire)
Summary: Only two things are certain here, death and my completely arbitrary sale prices! But mostly death.

My first stab at the Steerswoman fic was on the shorter side, so it was like, "maybe I'll write several pieces of in-universe mythology and collect them into an anthology-type thing." Then when I wrote "Outcast" it was like, okay, this is already 1000 words, fine. So I posted this separately in Madness. It's a...very different kind of in-universe mythology story.

The Cloven Men (424 words)
Fandom: Steerswoman Series - Rosemary Kirstein
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: In-Universe Mythology, Canon-Typical Sexism
Summary: Steerswoman have gathered all sorts of stories, from Inner Landers and Outskirters and even Christers.

But there are other, ancient, stories, in this world, that no Steerswoman has yet heard nor seen.

The three-minute song/music video "The Devil Went Up To Boston" (a rewrite of "The Devil Came Down To Georgia") was linked on the promo post on September 16. I got around to watching/listening to it on December 22. Typical Yuletide procrastination. (In the video, Sully wears a Red Sox hat and the Devil wears a Yankees hat. Which is great, but also, Damn Yankees crossover potential?)

Anyway, we have the devil. He makes deals for people's souls. He goes to Boston. The subway cops get mad. If you are like me, and familiar with goofy songs via Yuletide osmosis, the conclusion is obvious.

Counterproposal (100 words)
Fandom: The Devil Came Up to Boston - The Adam Ezra Group (Song)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: The Devil (Devil Went Down to Georgia), Sully (Devil Came Up to Boston)
Additional Tags: Drabble, yumadrin, Crossover, Canon-typical language
Summary: And you thought the subway cops were mad before.

Anyway, then Yuletide came around and the fics revealed and we all got our gifts and lived happily ever after OH WAIT there was a weird glitch and the authors revealed. The mods and tagmods who were around did yeopeople's effort in getting things fixed and re-anonymized, I get zero credit for this because I was going to Christmas Eve worship. But then they were like "what causes the glitch, can we test it, let's do science." And then they set up a mini-Madness type thing for tagmods to treat each other, basically just treating it as "any fandom I've requested before" via the autoapp.

Now the thing about Yuletide mods and tagmods is that they have exquisite tastes in fandoms. So it was very "senpai noticed me!" when I got recruited. And there would be a zero percent chance of me creating for all the possible recips I could, even if I had all of the Yuletide creation period. But! Because it was so short-term and low stakes, I was able to relax enough to just do some short ficlets (which I put on my 3SF/art sock) and not worrying about making it epic masterpieces. (This was Christmas Eve night for me--less busy for my family than previous years but that's another story.) I was able to focus enough to treat the mod-mods, and the newest members of the tagmod team.

What if Baze and Chirrut (from Rogue One) were nohecharei (from The Goblin Emperor)? That's it that's the fic.

Firsts in War (235 words)
Fandom: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), The Goblin Emperor Series - Katherine Addison
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus
Characters: Baze Malbus, Leia Organa
Additional Tags: Fusion
Summary: The first nohecharis has a favor to beg of Her Serenity.

Prompt was for Shara and Olvos from Divine Cities, but it's from Tatyana's POV. (I may have been too coy about who Olvos is. Hazard that comes with writing for old prompts.)

Eternal Flame (360 words) 
Fandom: The Divine Cities Series - Robert Jackson Bennett
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Tatyana Komayd, Ashara "Shara" Komayd
Summary: Parents worrying about their kids is a universal.

Another prompt was for A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), horror. Hmm, do they have Christmas in ASOUE-world? I think I remember reading somewhere that that setting seems to be more culturally Jewish. Maybe they have Hanukkah. Maybe from a certain point of view, Hanukkah lends itself to horror tropes.

Wick(ed) (477 words) 
Fandom: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Violet Baudelaire, Klaus Baudelaire, Sunny Baudelaire
Additional Tags: Hanukkah, Horror, Lemony Snicket Narrative Style
Summary: One person's miracle is another person's horror story.

And then for a fellow roguelike appreciator, FTL! Anything silly that would work in the FTL setting? What if the Biblical Epiphany story was an FTL encounter, that seems like the kind of absurdity they would go for.

Star of the East (310 words)
Fandom: FTL: Faster Than Light (Video Game)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: Christmas, Biblical Epiphany Narrative
Summary: Wise beings have traveled a long way for this. Like, a really long way.

I already knew that mod pendrecarc enjoyed Divine Cities and Steerswoman, so clearly more exquisite tastes, but also I had just written for those so I was kind of in the mood for something different. And then I saw this extremely galaxy-brained prompt: what if Rowan's world was the long-lost Alpha Colony, and Cordelia Naismith (from the Vorkosigan Saga) had discovered it in the Shards of Honor era? Yes please. This is totally a premise that deserves a 10k epic, but a 400 word ficlet is what we're getting, so there. Also there was still time to nom it for Candy Hearts so...yes, I will be plagiarizing some prompts there.

Shards of a Guidestar (436 words)
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold, Steerswoman Series - Rosemary Kirstein
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, Rowan (Steerswoman)
Additional Tags: Crossover, Canon-typical levels of dysentery, Dubauer can't catch a break on any planet, Religion
Summary: Cordelia gets stuck on a technologically primitive planet. You know how this goes.

Of course when I went to post this on my sock I was kind of tired and I just kind of...forgot about...the "post to collection" button. So I just hit "post" and did it the normal way. Which meant it was not anon and pendrecarc, who came up with the idea in the first place and was the original collection maintainer, got an email notification. From an unfamiliar username, not the one I normally use in the tagmod channel. So while we were trying to troubleshoot the anonymity glitch, it was like, "what's going on now." "Nothing interesting, just user error, sorry." "Oh okay!"

And so then we lived happily ever after.