Yuletide reveals

So, several months ago, I got my Yuletide assignment and promptly cracked up. And no, settiai it wasn't you, though past experience explains why we both assume this as a matter of course.

Actually, I was laughing because I hit another pocket of my semi-incestuous fandom corner, and was assigned to tielan, who had written for me last Yuletide, and we matched on a slightly different set of books. I ended up writing:

Building Blocks (5782 words) by mari4212
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Keisha Alder/Darian Firkin
Characters: Keisha Alder, Darian Firkin, Nightwind
Summary:

"then things are actually better than they were before the fight, I think, because they've made another compromise with each other." -Darian Firkin

And when the fics went live, I found myself very glad I'd written my second idea, because someone else had written a take on my first concept as another gift for tielan. My first thought had been to do scenes from their courtship, including the first fight as a minor scene, and track how the relationship grew.

...Several false starts later, I ended up jumping to the fight, and pretty early on, needing to figure out why they were actually arguing, and how the heck the resolution would improve the relationship, while still leaving the tensions in place that developed in the first half of Owlknight. It was when I was trying to explain who the characters were and a little of their backstory to someone else which gave me the insight into Darian's fears, and gave me what would make him lose his temper. Re-reading the books also gave me Darian's view of Nightwind and Snowfire's relationship, and that he'd want to fight fair and resolve conflict well in any relationship he considered serious.

I also wanted to have some echoes for Kiesha from Owlknight. So there's both some of her worries from that book, traced back in to their roots here, and there's also parts of her advice to Shandi that developed into the scene with Nightwind.

My big regret is that I couldn't get Kel in, but there was no place in this scenario that he was a good fit.

Resolutions

I normally don't make formal resolutions, but I did want to pin these down to remind myself later:

1. Read more non-fiction, and try new authors.
2. Review more fanfic when I read it, even if it isn't newly posted.
3. Focus more on which veggies I'm eating each week, and plan meals around the vegetable first. Technically I started this resolution last week, getting the things to make a sweet potato and kale soup and baba ganoush, but I do want to be more intentional about it.