I'm going to treat myself and do that thing where you write about your five favourite stories of your own (of the moment). why the hell not.

everything we do is sewn with this colour [DS9] A late-seasons DS9 Julian/Garak story with a very simple premise: Garak teaches Julian to sew. It takes time for Julian to learn, and during that time, the two of them go from being awkward and unhappy friends with benefits to being in a functional romantic partnership. The idea, of course, is that Garak can sew - he's a tailor, he runs a tailoring business, people get married in the dresses he makes - and in a way, this is the only way Julian can be sure Garak isn't lying to him. If Garak teaches him to sew, then it's because Garak really knows how to teach him. It's my only real Julian/Garak, and honestly I don't think I need any more: this is how I see it going. It's also got Miles, Keiko and Kira as a functional triad in the background, because I know what I like. My one grief about this story is that I don't think Phoebe, purplefringe, my beloved Julian Bashir superfan, ever read it.

some things you just can't speak about (wherever they come from, they'll never run out) [DS9/MASH] This is the most fun I've ever had writing anything, ever. Like, somehow I'd never done a MASH Star Trek AU (I have Star Trek AUs for nearly every non-SFF fandom I've ever done, including Sports Night and Master and Commander), but it didn't click until I realised it was a story about the Dominion War, and then suddenly it's a DS9 AU and it's my two favourite things mashed (lol) together. So this! Hawkeye, though not the protagonist, is very much the main character: they're a nonbinary half-Betazoid, still bipolar, still brilliant, still a walking fuck-you to authority. I made no changes at all to the canon version to make them nonbinary, or an actually-psychic empath. (The screaming! I think some ppl thought I had made up the scene where Hawkeye screams in their sleep enough to wake up everyone in the habitat. Nope, the tv one does that, and he isn't psychic.) The only real change to this Hawkeye is that they're ship's CMO - so they do, sometimes, have to give orders. They don't like it, but they do, and in so doing have to betray their competence (love ppl being competent). And also, they wear the Starfleet uniform dresses, because I could not with how cute that would be. I never said in the story that they were afab, but I assume they were just so they'd be shorter than Margaret.

The other thing here is, the tension between Hawk and Margaret in the show is gender. Margaret would thrive, if she could do what Hawkeye can do - if she could be a soft-edged man who gets respect from nearly everyone for his ability and competence, who sleeps around nd never has it damage his reputation. But he can do that, and she, a woman in the 1950s, can't. Instead, she gets harassed and socially punished every time she steps out of line, though fundamentally she's nothing different from him. But Star Trek doesn't have that gender tension, so instead we have Margaret as Bajoran, who doesn't have Hawkeye's privileges as a Federation citizen. And it's the one rift in their otherwise extremely loving best-friends-with-benefits relationship. (my fave! their canon relationship, my favourite in fiction, probably).

BJ, bless him, is exactly unchanged: his role in the story is to observe the others. Even Potter, a female half-Vulcan who tolerates no crap who I enjoyed enormously. Anyway this story is 40k! longer than any other fanfic of mine and probably always will be because I can't imagine anything else being as fun.

a girl wild and unwished for [MASH] Ah. So, it's 1957 and it's not fun. Hawkeye is in his mid-thirties, and he's fine, except one night he's not: following an intense depression, he tries to commit suicide and is stopped barely in time.

Which is a hell of a beginning to a story, and honestly I feel a bit conflicted about it; I've been unhappy for years about how (some bits of) fandom went from to "you should content-note this content" to "you shouldn't make this content". When this sort of thing is so often my subject matter, it often does feel like fandom doesn't want my fiction and it legit was part of the reason I shifted towards pro. But that's by the bye, and I'm trying to write what I want to again. So in this story, Sidney is so worried about Hawkeye's mental state that he persuades him to try psychoactive medication for the first time. And the story becomes, in its way, a retelling of The Bell Jar with Hawkeye in place of Esther Greenwood: so about life and friendship, about New York in summer, about Hawkeye's work and place in the world, all muted and sharpened and modulated by the effect of the drug. Of course it's about Hawkeye's manic depression, but it's also about who he is; about what he can concede of his mind and personality, and what he can't. I was really pleased with this one. Despite the description, it does have jokes in it.

who were captured, who would not yield [Good Omens] A Good Omens story written just after s1, in the summer of 2019. That feral Good Omens summer! That summer where everything was still perfect and beautiful! I remember writing this by hand on the train to Cardiff to Vidukon, to P's endless amusement. The story isn't a romance - Aziraphale and Crowley have sex in it, for purely pragmatic reasons - but a story about what they do now they're not on opposite sides or on sides at all. Like in all my GO stories, they go to Waitrose, as follows:

Everything is fine. Crowley is definitely not having a breakdown in Waitrose.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, by the self-service checkouts. “You were supposed to get an avocado pear.”

“Damn your avocado, angel,” Crowley says, trying not be actively diabolical in all directions. The next customer is buying strawberries, whipped cream and WD-40 – it’s a Friday night – and Crowley can make out the scent of unhappy dairy. Everything’s fine. He’s definitely not having a breakdown. Much more of this and there’s going to be an unexpected fire in the bagging area.

in the chillest land on the sea [the Magnus Archives] Until recently this was my longest story on the AO3, because it was co-written with dearthoughthenightisgone (imperfectcircle on the AO3 because of their godawful brand management). It's a very complex Magnus Archives story, where the basic premise is that all the while Jon is accumulating the statements belonging to the fears to go into the Archive, there is one additional power that we don't see: hope, at the bottom of Pandora's box. So every so often he gets a hopeful, happy statement, and eventually - the day in the Scottish cabin where it all goes wrong - the assistance of the hope power makes things go a little differently. I love this story. We had to write the statements! There are five of them and each one is a little standalone work of original fiction. And the two of us are pretty good at jamming together our disparate styles and themes and doing something good with them, but this one was hard - they wanted a happy ending, I wanted a bleak ending, we had to thread that needle. But I think we did it well, because this is the story where I get the most consistently overwhelming and sweet comments, people who read the story while a beloved family member was ill, or when locked down with covid, and took a little comfort from it. There was fanart! It was something special.

meditations ex post facto [Guardian] This is allegedly a Guardian AU. (Guardian is a fantasy cdrama about a guy called Zhao Yunlan who runs a paranormal investigatory agency, and his lovely boyfriend, who is both a local academic and, uh, a mysterious ancient ghost king.) What this is actually is a romantic comedy with lawyers. It's all I want in life. I wrote the entire first half of it in the Apple store in Covent Garden waiting for my updates to install. This is the best bit in it.

Zhao Yunlan can’t actually blame her, because he’s never been any good at hiding his feelings and he’s kind of composing an email to Shen Wei in another window. Deaaaaar Professsssor Sssshen, he writes. The spilled latte from the other day has made itself at home in his keyboard. Zhao Yunlan painstakingly scrolls back and deletes all the extra letters. I reaaaaally want to see you again pleaaaaaaassse come to dinner with me.

Not at all weird. 

Shen Wei, I was planning to go for noodles tonight. Perhaps you’d like to accompany me.

Weirdly formal, but better. He presses send before he realises that “planning” still has two extra As and a stray Z.

I realized it might take a little longer to make the other Spotify playlist covers for the Picture Perfect Boyfriend playlists I've been chugging along on, so I'll just post this one here as well already.

Got a playlist for the Ashino fans out there! I tried to make it generally a mix of songs he'd enjoy and ones that inform his vibe in some way.

For each character, I specifically start the list on something they'd listen to, so he gets Wannabe by Spice Girls. The second song is more about the character, so I chose Leave the Door Open by Silk Sonic, since it's a fun retro throwback love song, but can come off braggadocious to the point of smugness.

Aside from that, I'll make a cut below for game spoilers for Picture Perfect Boyfriend REBOOT. I suppose you can consider the playlist itself also a spoiler, but I hope people at least played some of Ashino's route before deciding to listen to this thing. :p

After that is a small string of fairly innocuous love songs. I thought that would be a fun way to sort of imitate the first date. Things are going fine (aside from some perceived self-centeredness) right up until it's really not fine. Arguably, the song Plastic Love by Mariya Takeuchi is a small warning, since it's about empty and unfulfilling flings, but I set Dangerous by Big Data and Joywave as the moment the other shoe drops. (Fun Fact: Ashton gets a song from the same album as Dangerous.)

After that, the playlist mostly vascillates between sweet, bitter, and a couple of anime themes (if you know, you know). I specifically chose Rondo Revolution from Revolutionary Girl Utena (they didn't have the actual soundtrack version, so I chose a cover by Shokotan), as well as Morning Grace from Princess Tutu. Considering his tastes, I would so twist Ashino's arm into watching Princess Tutu, if he hasn't.

Aside from that, I think the most notable detail was that I added two songs regarding summer, namely because of a certain someone that canonically loves summer the best. Specifically, I chose to end on summertime by cinnamons and evening cinema for a sweet note, despite the fact that the game isn't finished, so what happens with Ashino is very open-ended at the moment. I just want to end each playlist on some sort of positive note.

I think one of my personal favorite choices for this playlist was the very bubblegum cover of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath by The Cardigans. It's a really good match for Ashino's feelings towards the Bureau as well as the existential nightmare that is his life (similar to Ghost in the Machine by SZA and Phoebe Bridgers but with absurdly sweet production) and I think it can also vaguely work for his constant attempts to gaslight Kadsey (something I really wish I could berate him for).

Guess I had more to say than I expected, but there you go! Next up for a cover image and post like this will be Ashton.