"12 Days of Fanfic" -- Yami no Matsuei -- "Not Quite the Life of the Office Christmas Party"

At long last, the first of (possibly) several YnM fics I have planned for the 12 days: this based on a prompt from veleda_k who requested "Hisoka and Tatsumi at the office Christmas party. (Can be either gen or Hisoka/Tatsumi.)" It's mostly gen but maaaybe there's something hidden behind Tatsumi's blue eyes...

This one turned out a lot better than I feared it would, and I made it up to Watari for Putting Him on a Bus in the Twhinelite crossover: I think I finally got his voice down pat, and the same goes for Terazuma, who's a tough guy to write in all senses of the phrase (mentally casting his voice with Adrian Pasdar's "cigarettes and whiskey" gruffness helped; yes, I map the dialogue by imagining the VAs from the anime, or fantasy-casting the ones who didn't get cast.).

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

One Meifu Christmas office party,
A drunken Evangelion New Year's party,
Redpills stealing a Christmas tree,
Harry Dresden for the holidays,
Frank Sweitz adopting a David unit,
One Chateau Christmas party,
One Christmas spirit in the American Gods 'verse,
and An A.I. fic with David decorating his first Christmas tree.

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"Not Quite the Life of the Office Christmas Party"

by "Matrix Refugee"

Disclaimer: I do not own Yami no Matsuei, aka Descendants of Darkness, it’s characters, concepts and other indicia, which are the intellectual property of Yoko Matsushita, Hiroko Tokita, Manga Entertainment, Viz Media, Hakusensha, et al.

Author's Note: I had a heck of a time getting into this story, but once I did, I snowballed through it. Then I got slightly stuck while typing it. And mind you, I love this fic (well, I love all my stories) and the characters in it, but for some reason, my hands kept failing me as I worked on it: I suspect part of me wanted to keep it to myself...

And also this fic proves I actually *can* write one for this universe which doesn't feature any insidious energy vampires.

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EDITED: Three times to fix broken code, more broken code, and a forgotten Lj-cut >.<

( Parties of any kind were never Hisoka's thing, even when the crowd included even those nearest and dearest to him... )

Two days worth of grocery store mayhem

Inventory last night: They did this differently than they have in previous years. Instead of having all of us gather in the back room and get our assigned aisle there, we had our assignments listed on a sheet near the time clock and when we punched in, we had to head right to our assigned aisles. Except I somehow wasn't on the list, so I had to consult "Joe the Angel" (ie. the assistant store manager) and get an assignment from him: I ended up in the cereal aisle counting organic/gluten-free oatmeal and such.

Today: Because of the snowstorm we had the past two days, people weren't in out shopping. Today they were. I'm in a bit of a cranky mood right now, but it's nothing that can't be cured by some random absurdness. Like people's LJ icons, and my mother asking me if we had any "tacky tacks" when she was looking for some thumbtacks. To which I replied, "Tacky tacks?! Are you implying that our tacks are cheap and ugly-looking and likely to come apart randomly?!" said mischievously.

Typing up an "A.I." fic, which is also the last of the requests/prompts, which will likely go live later tonight (read: "Just after midnight"). I'm undecided about cutting the second Evangelion fic from the 12 Days of Fanfic list: I'll probably type it/post it if I have time, and since I have tomorrow and Wednesday off, I may be able to squeeze it in. Wednesday is likely to be a bit of a fic-dump day, so brace yourselves (especially since I have at least two in mind that day).

Flurry the budgie is continuing to become more personable; he's making up his own sentences now: we definitely heard him say "You're a good parakeet" the other night. My mom says "You're a good bird" to him when he does something cute, but he somehow swapped out "bird" for "parakeet". The look on his face as we praised him for saying his first sentence was comical, as if he were thinking, "Huh? Why are people squeeing over me?" He's a very shy and modest little bird.

Doing a bit of "something old, something new" this week in terms of fannish stuff. The something new: I just started reading "Deathwish", the fourth of the Cal Leandros books by Rob Thurman; I keep chuckling over how much the series reminds me of what you'd get if you crossed "Supernatural" with the Dresden Files and threw it into a setting very like White Wolf's World of Darkness. The something old: I've also started rewatching Cowboy Bebop. Hey It's That Voice moments galore, including the voice of Aramaki from GitS:AC as a random old guy in a market; also had a moment where I jokingly said, "Hey, I know who Faye Valentine is: she's Haruhi Suzimiya, all grown up. Guess her hair and eye color changed because of the cryostorage." (Ie. Wendee Lee voiced both characters).