#secundus

...so it recently occurred to me that, while I shared the original "Smiler In Secundus" story that I wrote for my friend Gigs's birthday over here, I never actually shared the follow-up story that I wrote for her for Christmas. ^^; In my defense, the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026 haven't been good for me (dealing with a family medical crisis), and thus it was pretty easy for me to forget such things. So let's catch up now! Here's what happened after Victor met Smiler and told them that you need a permit to sell things on the streets of Secundus:

--

“Aw, hello there! Hi! Aren’t you a cute doggy? Yes, you’re a very cute doggy! Isn’t he a cute doggy?”

“Cute and extremely energetic,” Victor replied, smiling as Lighting spun in delighted circles in front of Smiler, his new favorite human. “The woman we got him from warned us he was active even for a corgi, but as I didn’t know how active corgis were at the time, I didn’t think it would be a problem.” He crouched down in front of the dog, ruffling his ears. “You’re a little escape artist, aren’t you? You like to slip out of the house and then make me chase you all over the city.”

Lighting arfed and wriggled under his hand, stubby tail wagging a mile a minute. “Heh – sounds like he’s something of a troublemaker,” Smiler said, crouching beside Victor and offering the corgi a hand to sniff. “That’s okay – I’ve been accused of being one too.”

“Same here,” Victor said, watching Lightning lick Smiler’s hand all over. “I think it’s just part of life when you’re a Touched.”

“...I sent you to the store to pick up flour, not another person.”

@ace-of-tales You wanted a sequel to last year's Xmas fic, with Aziraphale and Crowley hitting up Flint Lockwood's famous restaurant in Secundus -- welp, bon appetit, here's the pair enjoying a meal delivered straight from the sky! Well, Aziraphale is, anyway -- Crowley isn't so sure about all this...

--

“Oh – look at that! How wonderful! Crowley, isn’t that absolutely charming?”

“Charming?” Crowley looked up at the spaghetti twirling down from the sky to Aziraphale’s plate, then down at his partner, raising an eyebrow. “Angel, it’s a health hazard waiting to happen. Which I suppose I can get behind – sort of thing my side would like – but still.”

“Hey – I can assure you that the FLDSMDFR 2.0 is as far from a hazard as you can get these days!” Flint Lockwood, the man in charge of the spaghetti tornado, declared as he fiddled with his remote. “Sam, Manny, Steve, and I have spent a looot of time calibrating and recalibrating and re-re-calibrating to make sure the machine can withstand the demands of an entire night of diner requests!”

Crowley stared at him, then at the monkey sitting on his shoulder, sucking its own fingers and staring off into space. “I’m sure Steve helped a lot,” he deadpanned. “But seriously – no food ever ends up on the floor?”

“There is – the occasional misfire,” Flint admitted, running his fingers through his hair and making it stick up at even weirder angles. “But! Any fallen food is immediately and efficiently cleaned up by the FLSCRM!”

Tagged By: @dont-offend-the-bees (sorry it took me so long to get to it)

Rules: Recommend five of your favorite fics that you've written, tag at least five other people

Recs:

Secundus (Valice, Multifandom Steampunk Crossover, First in The Secundus Verse series)

Summary:

It is a world ruled by Mad Science -- but that's never affected Victor Van Dort. Living far away from all the action, he expected to have a perfectly normal, boring life in his perfectly normal, boring hometown of Burtonsville. Fate, however, had other plans in store for him -- in the form of a flying steam train. Accidentally kidnapped to the Mad Science Capital of the World, Victor's going to have to learn to adjust. And in doing so, perhaps discover that the city derided as the capital of crazy is more home to him than his real home ever was. Written for NaNoWriMo 2010! (. . .completed in 2012. I WON the NaNoWriMo, I just get wordy.)

Reason For Rec: It's one of the first longform Valice fics I ever wrote, so it has a special place in my heart. Plus, I still like the scenes of poor Victor going Creative (aka becoming a mad scientist) at the end of Chapter 17: You Must Be..., and Alice later pulling him out of the storm in his head in Chapter 20: Anchor Me.

Fixing You (Valice, American McGee's Alice/Corpse Bride Crossover, Eleventh in The Forgotten Vows Verse series)

Summary:

Victor and Alice would have liked all their problems to have been over with the restoration of Victor's memories. But as 1876 starts, Alice is still dealing with Londerland hallucinations, and Victor's struggling with the after-effects of being Bumby's slave. Perhaps what they need is a change of scenery. . .and perhaps Dr. Fixxler and his uncommon cures can be of use. . .

Reason For Rec: The Forgotten Vows Verse is probably the series I'm best known for (if I'm known for anything) -- and while it might have made more sense to recommend the first entry in the series, Losing You, I went with this final entry in the main "___ You" arc because it has the most moments that I personally like to reread -- Victor and Alice visiting the Land of the Dead and meeting the Liddells in Chapter 7: Heck Though Ain't It Grand, Victor and Alice visiting Wonderland in Chapter 10: The Grand Wonderland Tour (I had SOOO much fun writing Alice taking Victor around all the various domains), Victor and Alice taking on Silent Burtonsville, and Victor making his own proper Otherland in the aftermath in Chapters 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16, and of course the wedding in Chapter 18: A Day For A Glorious Wedding. :) Just mind the rating and some of the warnings!

The Technicolor Phase (Vemilicia, American McGee's Alice/Corpse Bride Crossover, Standalone)

Summary:

It works like this -- the world is gray, to start with. But the moment you make eye contact with someone who'll be important in your life, you gain a color. Some people see everything in vivid hues by the time they're twenty-five; others only see what grass truly looks like at the end of the lives. Sometimes, you can meet someone important even after you've died. Just remember: "Important" does not imply "good." And "love" does not always mean "couple." A polyamorous soulmatey Corpse Bride/American McGee's Alice crossover AU, based off of this prompt on tumblr

Reason For Rec: This was just a very fun one to write -- even if it did get a little tricky near the end coming up with who had given who what colors! XD But I like how I managed to adapt the prompt to get around the problem of "if she received confirmation that he wasn't her soulmate, why would Emily run away with Barkis," and I very much like how I managed to intertwine Alice's confrontation with Bumby with the Dollmaker boss fight in Chapter 18: Lizzie Red. Added a certain something to the whole thing, I feel!

Valicer In The Dark (Valicer, American McGee's Alice/Corpse Bride/The Smiler/Blades In The Dark Crossover (with some background multifandom elements), Series)

Summary:

Victor Van Dort, Alice Liddell, and Smiler Alton moved in rather different spheres of Duskwall society…until chance happened to throw them all together one foggy eve. Now the three find themselves residents of Six Towers, their old lives having been left behind for something a little more -- criminal. Together they will take on dangers both physical and spiritual, carve a place for themselves among the many factions of the city, and even -- with a bit of luck -- improve not only their lot, but the lot of their chosen home. These are the adventures of the Three Pillars.

Reason For Rec: Okay, it may be cheating to recommend an entire series, but my counterpoint is "you people are lucky the ENTIRE LIST wasn't Valicer In The Dark stuff." Because I absolutely freaking LOVE this AU. These versions of Victor, Alice, and especially Smiler are some of my favorites, and I adore writing their dynamic and their lives in the frankly-fucked-up setting of Blades In The Dark. As of this writing, there's only two completed stories on AO3 -- "Start At The Beginning...Sort Of" (which contains what I feel is the best chase scene I've ever written) and "A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded" (which has what I feel is a very satisfying Bumby murder) -- plus the first chapter of the third, "The Van Dort Vacancy," but I am planning on LOADS more. Just -- all the fics set in this universe.

Valicer Multiamory Month, Day Thirty-One: Morning routine (Valicer, American McGee's Alice/Corpse Bride/The Smiler/Blades In The Dark Crossover (with some background multifandom elements), tumblr prompt fic, part of Valicer In The Dark)

Summary:

[post a long explanation of why I chose to do Valicer In The Dark for this prompt, including "enjoying the idea of doing the 'morning routine' prompt for a world that doesn't have mornings," which I will not copy here as this post is long enough] So yeah! To send off Multiamory March, have a look at a typical “morning” in the Three Pillar’s lair once they’ve gotten all their pets and suchlike. Enjoy!

Reason For Rec: ...I said I loved this AU. XD Seriously, though, I wanted to do at least one of my tumblr prompt fics, and this final prompt from Multiamory March 2025 is one of my favorites, perfectly capturing a chaotic morning in the lives of the Three Pillars, their pets, and their ghostly mentor. It's just -- fun. :) (And if you want to see more, you can always check out my "valicer in the dark au" tag...)

Haven't had one of these in a while, have we? But, as it happens, a friend of mine who isn't on this platform, Gigs, had a birthday recently -- and for her gift fic, she asked for Smiler in Secundus! Which is, for those of you who don't remember, the big old multifandom steampunk crossover series that came immediately before the Forgotten Vows Verse. The world in it is inspired by stuff like Girl Genius and Narbonic (characters from both appear in the fic in very minor roles, in fact), and is set in the titular city of Secundus, the "mad science capital of the world" (or at least of Europe, let's be real here). Victor ends up accidentally kidnapped to said city by Doc and Marty testing out Doc's flying steam locomotive; decides he likes the place and chooses to stay with them; falls in love with Alice (here a monster hunter and counter person at a very real Hatter's, aka Richard Dodgson, hat shop); and -- during a fight with the local, unfortunately very real version of the Queen of Hearts -- ends up becoming a Touched, the local term for mad scientist, with of course his area of expertise being butterflies. He's the one with the big riding butterfly, Ferdinand. :p I don't really do much with this series anymore (other than some roleplay over on @thevalicemultiverse), but Gigs still likes it, obviously. :p And when she asked for Smiler to make an appearance in the world, I knew I wanted to share the result over here with you guys as well. Because putting Smiler into previously Valice-only universes is kind of my thing these days. :p So here's the fic, along with my author's notes about how Smiler would fit into the world of Secundus!

Oh, but before we begin: this is a "first meeting" fic for Victor and Smiler, with the plot revolving around Victor discovering that his reflexive assumption that Smiler is a man like him is wrong. So trigger warning for misgendering for the first few paragraphs of the fic -- obviously accidental and not malicious, and Victor immediately stops doing it once he realizes he was wrong, but it feels wrong not to warn.

--

And there we are – at least that was a quick trip to the store. Now to get this home so Alice can make her bread...and then straight back in the lab so I can figure out just where I’m going wrong with this latest project! You’d think that making a butterfly that can change colors wouldn’t be very difficult at all, given they’re naturally inclined toward camouflage...maybe I’m tweaking the wing scales too much...

“Hello there! You look like you could use some help smiling! Might I interest you in a syringe of my excellent Joy Serum?”

Victor blinked, shaken abruptly out of his thoughts. He looked over to see a man about his age grinning at him from over the top of a briefcase-turned-salesman’s stand. The case was spread open before him, displaying a collection of gleaming glass-and-brass syringes, each filled with a mysterious substance glowing the same brilliant yellow as the seller’s eyes. “Your – what?” he said, trying to catch up with the conversation he hadn’t expected to be having.

“Joy Serum!” the seller repeated, tone as sunny as the liquid he was hawking. “Made personally by yours truly!” He stuck out a hand. “Smiler Alton – pleasure to meet you!”

I’ve got till Aug. 13th, give or take. Let me know if I miss anything

Thursday (night) — Lost to the Winds of Notos (six, give or take, more)

Friday (night) — Within the Gaze of the Damned (three, give or take, more)

Saturday (night) — To the Waves, We Return

Sunday (afternoon/night) — In This Twilight, Our Choices Seal Our Fates

Stuff That Needs Finishing:

- Religious Trauma AU (conclusion - two more)

- Children of Time and Space (many more)

Stuff That Really Needs Finishing:

- In the Next Samsara (Nahida pt. 2, Al-Haitham chapter, Kaveh chapter, bonus?) (3/4 more)