populuxe

An annual tradition! Here's 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021.

Fic-wise, this was a big year for me: I managed to finish not one but two lengthy WIPs, the first of which I'd been chipping away at since 2022. Finishing the first one gave me a lot of confidence that I could finish a WIP (I have a fair number of them hanging around, some of which have many, many words), so obviously finishing the second one makes me feel like I could finish ALL the WIPs. 😅 We shall see what 2026 brings.

In total, I published three fics in 2025: those two now-completed WIPs bookending my fic for this year's remix (my least-read fic ever, but imo one of the best I've ever written?? That's always the way lol).

1) "The Apparent Trap" ~100K words, modern AU, teenage David joins forces with Wanda and Pietro to perform the world's most incompetent parent trap (the Cherik sequel to my Charles & David story from a few years ago) Summary: So much has changed for David recently: after spending the summer on his father’s book tour, he and Dad are closer than ever. In a special mutant program on Saturdays, he’s learning a ton about mutant history—and he even made a new friend, Wanda.

Unfortunately, Wanda’s twin brother, Pietro, seems to love tormenting him—so much that their parents are called in. David had thought his biggest worries were Pietro’s pranks and his ongoing crush on his classmate, Teddy. But none of them could have predicted what would happen when their fathers wound up in a room together... 2) "One Good Turn (The Lost Souls Remix)" ~37K words, Buffy fusion (all X-Men characters, but in a Buffyesque world), featuring Evil!Charles and a fair bit of explicit vampire sex Summary: “He swore he wasn’t imagining it,” Darwin continues. “But…he saw Charles last week.”

Raven’s heart clenches, and she rises involuntarily out of her seat. “Charles is alive?”

“No,” Darwin says, shaking his head. “He’s not.”

For years, Raven was the Slayer, Charles was her Watcher, and Erik was Charles’s boyfriend (and a vampire with a soul). When Charles is kidnapped and their search for him is fruitless, they assume that he’s dead. Before long, though, they learn that he's anything but—and Erik quickly realizes why Charles was so insistent about never wanting to be turned into a vampire. 3) "What We Hold in Trust" ~55K words, modern AU, a blend of mystery and thriller set largely in Charles's hospital room and apartment Summary: Charles and Erik have been married for years: in public, the tabloids have dubbed them New York’s “powered couple,” and in private, they’re deeply in love.

But when Charles wakes up in the hospital, he finds his life has utterly unraveled while he was unconscious. Three years prior, he was hit on the head and sent into a coma-like “telepathic fugue state”; today, Erik is in prison, convicted of attempted murder for a crime it seems like only he could have committed.