12 Days of Fanfic: "A.I., Artificial Intelligence" -- "The First Gift of Christmas"

Requested by nightofcydonia, I've been itching to write a fic featuring Hal McGeever's take on David units...

On the Fourth Day of Christmas, the Matrix Refugee fanficced for ye:

Frank Sweitz adopting a David unit,
One Chateau Christmas party,
One American Gods fic,
and An A.I. fic with David decorating his first Christmas tree.

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"The First Gift of Christmas"

by "Matrix Refugee"


DISCLAIMER: I do not own “A.I., Artificial Intelligence”, its characters, settings, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late, great Stanley Kubrick, of DreamWorks SKG, Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, Amblin Entertainment, et al, based on characters and concepts created by Brian Aldiss. I also don't own Nat the fixer, who belongs to nightofcydonia

AUTHOR'S NOTE: In a lot of ways, this is based on O. Henry's classic "The Gift of the Magi", with a dash of Richard Paul Evans's "The Christmas Box" tossed in for good measure. It's a bit less fluffy than my previous "A.I." effort, but that kind of comes as no surprise given that the story is told from Hal McGeever's largely unsentimental viewpoint of his very sentimental partner Frank "The Heroic Reporter" Sweitz.

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( Christmas night and I'm sitting at the bar in Here Kitty Kitty, nursing a beer... )

"Hey, It's That Voice..." revisited

While watching Bleach: "Hey, this kid bringing food to Rukia sounds like Shinji Ikari. He's even a bit whiny." Turned out to be Spike Spencer, who's admitted that he's had people at conventions call out "Hey, Shinji!" to him, even though his regular speaking voice is a bit deeper and slangier-sounding than that of the pilot of Eva Unit-01.

While watching "Oh My Goddess!": "Why does this gal's dad sound like one of the Gushoshin?". I can't remember the guy's name right now, but sure enough, it was the same guy who voiced the gruffer-sounding of the two bird-like critters in Yami no Matsuei (which I refer to affectionately as "the good old boy" and "the squeaky toy" because of their respective voices).

A few episodes later in the same series: "Urd's old flame sounds like Tsuzuki with a touch of laryngitis; what's with that?" It became more obvious when he hollered something, to which I said, "Summoning shikigami??" Turned out it was another YnM voice actor, namely Dan Green (not the only time I've heard someone who sounded oddly like Tsuzuki in this series: the same VA has had several small parts in it. This was just the most obvious instance).

Cold day is cold! (contains YnM teal deers)

I had planned to go out today and make my at-most-twice-a-month trip to the Burlington Barnes & Noble, but considering the extreme wind chills today and the fact that I was up till the wee hours last night typing one fanfiction, writing another and watching anime (not necessarily in that order or all at once, either), I decided to stay home today. So I've been curled up under the covers of my bed writing and reading. I won't say I'm mildly stuck on the 12 Days of Fanfic challenge, but I think I need a mini-break from it, though that means I may need to double up some days or let the challenge run over the time limit, which I hope people will understand.

Also, my mind seems to be cranking out stuff for anything but the 12 Days fics today, including a passage for a decidedly dark Yami no Matsuei fic that's presented itself to me. ( Lj cut for teal deers )

Aaaand my request to join An Archive of Our Own has been accepted: http://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee. So far all I have on there are the two YnM fics, but I'm working on importing more of the ff.n fics.