Yuletide reveals 2021

[primeideal]

Publish and/or Perish (5460 words)
Fandom: FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion Of Your Thesis Defense (McSweeney's Post) - Luke Burns
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: Academia, Mathematics, Snake Portmanteaus or Snortmanteaus
Summary:

In order to prevent “frivolous disputations unbefitting the history of our institution” (read: “some kid getting way in over their head, dying, and us getting sued,”) you couldn’t just walk in and demand to fight a snake.
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So I offered this McSweeney's post because it's the kind of thing that's quintessentially Yuletide. There were 8 requests and 27 (non-bucket) offers, so I didn't really expect to match on it, I figured I'd get picked for something rarer. And then I matched on it. And it was like..."deadpan humor about how grad school is an absurd and surreal experience (and also by the way there are snakes)"? I can do that, I do not need to do any "canon review" for that one.

A couple of the author's notes pretty much speak for themselves:

-The snake people or sneople meme dates from Steven Universe and Tumblr on 2015. (The things you learn researching.)

-This is very loosely based on a true story, not only in the sense in which every artist puts a little of themselves in their work, but in the sense that some of the personalities and archetypes are drawn from RL with identifying details obscured. If any of my academic friends see themselves in this, I hope they are not too offended. No snakes were harmed in the making of this story nor my higher education.

My working title was "snek" (another meme) until I wrote a line about "publish or perish," blinked, and was like, "there's the title."

This being Yuletide, there are 14 other stories in the same fandom, and they are all great. (Turns out there are a whole lot of Yuletide people who are current or recovering academics, who knew?!) One of the things I noticed was how different subjects are treated slightly differently; one of the Madness stories pointed out that math students probably get tiny snakes because everyone assumes their thesis is correct but nobody out of their subfield can read it, and, too real. Whereas I think the old-school McSweeney's humor was more targeted at humanities students who often have longer PhD time and/or smaller stipends, so they need to play up the angst and woe.

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Momomme (5465 words)
Fandom: Quatrevingt-treize | Ninety-three - Victor Hugo
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Characters: Michelle Fléchard, Housarde, Tellmarch
Additional Tags: Ghosts
Summary:

The dead do have power to protect.
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Okay, so what if Quatrevingt-treize, but with ghosts? Actually, if you're willing to accept "everyone talks in paragraphs because Victor Hugo" conceit, a lot of this stayed pretty close to canon. Like, these are lines from the original that fit almost perfectly, except I wanted to rewrite them to not completely plagiarize!

"In the language of Georgette a "momomme" was anything that looked like a man without really being one. Living beings are strangely confused with ghosts in the minds of children."

"I am angry with you for saving me; you did wrong. I would rather have died, for then I should surely see them and know where they are. They would not see me, but I should be near them. The dead must have power to protect." (Michelle to Tellmarch)

"While the district was in a state of combustion and conflagration, when warfare, devastation, and carnage were the sole occupations of life, when every man was doing his best to burn houses, murder families, massacre outposts, and plunder villages, thinking of nothing but setting ambushes and traps and killing one another, here was this hermit absorbed in nature, enjoying absolute peace of mind, gathering plants and herbs, interested only in flowers, birds, and stars,—of course he was a dangerous character! He must be insane. He never hid behind a bush to fire at his fellow-men. "The man is mad!" said the passers-by." (Tellmarch)

Anyway, it's only at the end that the changes to canon have ripple effects for the other characters. I'm not sure what happens to Gauvain and Cimourdain in this timeline, hopefully good things. But it's Hugo so who knows.

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Dreamt Music (1909 words)
Fandom: Blade Runner (Movies)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: K | Joe (Blade Runner), Ana Stelline, Rick Deckard
Additional Tags: Character Death Fix, Hurt/Comfort, Headaches & Migraines
Summary:

Ana gives K a place to hide and recuperate. K returns the favor.
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So the prompts were for hurt/comfort and family feelings. Which is a little smaller-scale than the "hunt down and kill the treacherous robot" plotlines of canon. But, along the lines of the snake fight fic, it was like..."what if this very smart but isolated scientist lady also had migraines...haha...don't need to research that one either /o\" Title is of course from Deckard and Rachael's conversation in the original.

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World Enough And Time (5836 words)
Fandom: 三体 - 刘慈欣 | Remembrance of Earth's Past Trilogy - Liú Cíxīn
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Chéng Xīn/Yún Tiānmíng
Characters: Yún Tiānmíng, Ài AA, Chéng Xīn
Additional Tags: Fix-It, Yuletide Treat
Summary:

The universe is grand, but love is grander.
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Spoilers for canon, but I really thought we were going to get the Cheng Xin/Tianming reunion at the star. And then Cixin Liu decides to run over our feelings with a bus. :( I do think the end of "Prince Deep-Water" is supposed to provide a hopeful context for Cheng Xin and Guan's life/the pocket universe/the future, but I wanted to write this AU as well.

I'm also not sure if the stuff about "Galactic humans" is meant to be taken as authoritative, there's a lot of commentary suggesting that "Death's End" in particular has some unreliable narrators/PoV in Cheng Xin. But either way, I wanted to push back against it.

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Twice Dawns the Day (5593 words) 
Fandom: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Nynaeve al'Meara, Rand al'Thor, Elayne Trakand
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, background canon relationships, Fate & Destiny, Yuletide Treat
Summary:

Rand slays the Dark One, and the world is set free. With one exception.
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I never did get around to writing up all my "Memory of Light" thoughts, did I? Well, one of the prompts here was "the whole 'evil is necessary for free will so really you can't live without it' was kind of a cop-out, let's have a better reason why Rand needed to seal up the Dark One instead of just killing it." And...I agree. The whole "a world without of nations, without weapons, without war, where Andor and the Aiel are peacemakers and happy about it...WOULD BE TERRIBLE!" scene didn't stick the landing for me. So this happened. (By which I mean, I was brainstorming ideas almost as soon as I saw the prompt, and wrote the vast majority of it very close to the deadline. As one does.)