#lostchips

- makes puppy eyes-

I'll do you one better -- I went looking through the novels in the works-in-progress file, but the problem is that most of the scenes with Jerry and Alanna involve spoilers.

But then I checked my file of short stories (unposted) which includes both complete and WIP stories, and I forgot I had one that is very appropriate to post this month! And it's got a little bit of Jerry/Alanna for you, as well as Eddie Rambler the Consulting Bisexual, and Milo Ansevali winning a bet.

A preview:

When Jerry's phone rang on a Tuesday morning in May, with a Galian number headed CARLO PARTYCOUNT in his caller ID, he answered speedily. He was fond of Carlo, the de facto leader of neighboring Galia's party set, and any call from him was definitely going to be interesting.

"Jerry!" Carlo called when he answered. "How are you?"

"Barely caffeinated," Jerry replied, settling into his usual seat at the palace breakfast table, fresh from a morning run with Gregory. Gregory, stirring sugar into his own coffee, raised his eyebrows curiously. Jerry mouthed Carlo and Gregory nodded. "What can I do for my favorite party count?"

"What a title to have," Carlo said. "How much do you know about Pride parades?"

Merry Christmas Kuro!

To be Even More German: Santa Claus doesn’t come for Christmas. St. Nikolaus visits on December 6 and brings either Lebkuchen, nuts and oranges if you have been good, or a bundle of rods if you have been naughty that year. On Christmas, it’s the Christkind (aka Jesus as a baby) that brings the presents, and it already brings them on December 24, on Christmas Eve.

Me, trying to narrow it down. So, fun facts about me, like I ran a blog and business about 19th century historical costuming for years. So, like, yes, I Know Things. You're gonna need to be a little more specific.

Uh, chair bustles were a thing. Or at least, a proposed thing:

(I wanted to make one so bad because I was the woman in costume with a folding wooden seat-cane for disability reasons.)

Uh other random facts: the reason we mostly have teeny tiny sizes of clothing remaining is because anything larger was either passed on to another wearer, or more commonly cut into a new style or smaller size to fit someone else. Fabric like that wasn't wasted when the dress was out of style after a season. So only the ones that couldn't be cut down because they were already so small they wouldn't fit anyone else are still intact.

Please and thank you! 💕

I talked about Comet in a previous ask, so I will take Devil here. This is one of those stories I have wanted to write for a while so I'm really glad that jelly, who won me for MTH, just told me to write a thing I already wanted to write, or I probably never would have gotten around to it.

So one of the things we know about Steve, canonically, is that he's an artist. This is one of the things the MCU kept about him -- we see him sketching in CATFA, I think. So there are a lot of MCU AUs where, like, modern-day Steve is an artist and he meets Tony at a gallery show or whatever and I love them all.

But also I wanted to write a story about 616 Steve being the kind of artist that he is in canon. We do occasionally see him sketching in 616, and I'm not saying that he doesn't use art to express his creative impulses, but that isn't really... the kind of artist Steve is, in the comics. Steve is a commercial artist. There's actually a fair amount of comics canon devoted to him making art pretty much for money. His backstory gives him a WPA job painting murals (this was mentioned somewhere very incongruous, like maybe a Cable & Deadpool issue?) and there is a period of time in the early 80s where he decides he wants to be a commercial artist. And that's what he does.

And I think it's great, but also he doesn't get to do a lot of things he really likes in that art career. He's illustrating men's adventure magazines he clearly doesn't like. He's working for shitty editors who insult his art and say shitty anti-Semitic things (Steve quits, of course, but then eventually comes back after the guy apologizes). He's working for ad agencies. Honestly I think the only thing in this era he enjoyed drawing was when he decided he was going to be a comic book artist because that sounded fun and he got a job drawing Captain America comics for Marvel.

So I wanted to write a story about Steve in that era of canon, but I also wanted to give him an art job he'd actually like. So I figured if I set up a situation where he was broke enough and would draw anything for money I could make him stumble into drawing gay S&M porn for money and then have him find out that this was actually a great time. Because why not write a story where Steve gets to draw gay porn about him and Tony? I felt like, you know, we in the gay porn segment of fandom might relate to that and it would be fun and a different angle on his commercial work. It's a job! Someone's got to draw men in bondage! They don't just draw themselves!

And, okay, yeah, I thought it might be fun if it were also a kink-discovery kind of story where Steve didn't actually realize at first that he was drawing gay bondage art and thought he was just A Regular Guy drawing something that surely everyone would like (a sexy dude being bound and beaten) because obviously he would know what Regular Guys like because he is totally a Regular Guy and he thinks that looks great. So everyone else will like it too. Problem solved! Except it turns out that that's actually, y'know, a bit of a special interest.

And of course Tony was going to be into it too, so, yes, the whole thing was basically plotted out with the idea that the reveal was going to happen when They Both Reach For The Same Gay Porn Magazine Oh No. Then it actually turned into a story about the nature of art and creativity and kink when I wasn't looking. Whoops.

One day in late fall, Da Qing wakes up and the apartment is cold and empty and oppressively silent.

He’d slept on Zhao Yunlan’s pillow, which has long since ceased to smell of him at all. There’s no lingering trace of his cologne in the apartment. Not even the ages-old traces of cigarette smoke and nicotine that had clung to the walls and furniture longer than anything else. No hint of tea or Shen Wei’s shampoo. Only the leather of Zhao Yunlan’s motorcycle jacket remains.