Fandom: MCU
Pairings/Characters: Katy Chen/Shang-Chi
Rating: Mature
Length: 53k
Creator Links: NyxEtoile, OlivesAwl 
Theme: marriage of convenience, AU, going home, friends to lovers, everyone thinks we're dating, competence, characters of color,

Summary: As they walked out, she could feel Shaun stewing and probably pissed off beside her, but he didn’t say anything, so neither did she. Instead she pulled out her phone and googled San Francisco marriage license.

They were in the elevator before he finally spoke. “This is not something I’m willing to let you do.”

“Okay, well, getting deported back to fucking China is not something I’m willing to let you do, so where does that leave us?”

Reccer's Notes: Shaun has a problem with his immigration status. His best friend Katy offers the obvious solution: a green card marriage. This changes many things, but others stay the same. This fic explores Shaun and Katy's life together, from marriage to school to the Snap to the events of the movie, in a fun and engaging way. I love the way both characters are written, but especially Katy--she really gets a chance to shine, when she's not shoved into the Funny Best Friend role.

Fanwork Links: Sing You a Song of Devotion

Fandom: Endeavour (TV)
Pairings/Characters: Endeavour Morse/Joan Thursday
Rating: teen
Length: 57k
Creator Links: Pink_Dalek 
Theme: marriage of convenience, kidfic (has kids), AU, fork in the road, small fandoms, domestic, friends to lovers,

Summary: An AU starting from when Joan came to Morse's flat in "Harvest." What if he'd told her what he felt wasn't pity? What if she'd told him about the baby? Things could have been very different. No Series/Season 5 spoilers.

Reccer's Notes: In the show, Morse and Joan have a flirtation and chemistry and some light pining, but nothing ever comes from it because we know from the other shows (Endeavour (TV) is a prequel) that Morse never married. Instead, Joan had an affair with a married man, got pregnant, miscarried due to abuse, became a social worker, and married someone else. There are a lot of AUs where Morse and Joan get together, and this is one of my favorites. When he finds out she's pregnant, Morse asks Joan to marry him, and off they go from there. Both of them have a lot to learn about life together, and I enjoy watching them and their children grow and change.

Fanwork Links: An Unexpected Family

Fandom: Vorkosiverse (Ethan of Athos)
Pairings/Characters: Terrence Cee/Ethan Urquhart
Rating: Mature
Length: 20k
Creator Links: fresne 
Theme: marriage of convenience, worldbuilding, small fandoms, book fandoms, old fandoms, rare pairings, telepathy, pretend couple, post-canon, family,

Summary: Terrence Cee had spent most of his life feeling like a jumpship caught in the gravity well of a blackhole. Engines on full bore. Only able to keep out of the crushing center, but never able to escape. Now in his new life on Athos, he found himself unsure of how to find a new pace.

Ethan wondered if there was a way to get his love life gestating again. Not frozen like zygotes stored in a bio-freezer against some eventual future.

Reccer's Notes: Ethan of Athos is a largely stand-alone book set in the Vorkosigan universe. It tells the story of Ethan, a reproductive specialist from an isolationist planet that is entirely men (because they believe women are inherently sinful). When they need new ovarian cultures, Ethan is sent off into the larger galaxy to purchase them, and ends up having an adventure. Along the way, he meets a man named Terrence Cee, genetically created in a laboratory to be a telepath, who tried to slip telepathic genes into Athos' ovarian cultures because he believes that if telepaths are a minority, they will always be feared and exploited. Since everyone on Athos reproduces artificially, putting telepath genes in their ovarian cultures will mean that future generations will be entirely composed of telepaths. At the end of the book, Ethan agrees to use the telepath cultures, and invites Terrence to live with him and be a co-parent--a relationship which can be sexual, but isn't necessarily.

This story is a lovely exploration of what happens next. The worldbuilding is excellent, taking the hints from the book and expanding them into a fully-realized world. The characters are all well-written, and the relationships feel real, as Terrence tries to adapt to Athos, and both of them try to figure out what they want from each other and how to work towards it.

Fanwork Links: Time Enough

Only two entries this week, so it'll be the usual Amnesty until Wednesday. Stay tuned for your regularly scheduled new challenge at the usual 9pm EST!

Signups are now open! They will remain open until Monday, August 11 @ 11:59pm Eastern Daylight time (Countdown). You can browse the requests in the app!

The tagset will remain open for nominations through the end of signups. Please disambiguate your nominations to make the approvals process faster.

IMPORTANT RULE CHANGE: We have a new rule this round that participants cannot opt out of single drabbles. In other words, you are still welcome to request/offer other drabble types, but you cannot exclude single drabbles from your offers or requests. We will let you know via the email associated with your AO3 account if we notice you've left out single drabbles in your signup. Matching and signups will otherwise work the same as before.

Have questions? Expand the "Key Info on the Rule Change" section below for more info. If your question is still not answered, please get in touch via email or the Mod Contact Post.

Key Info on the Rule Change

Q: Why make this rule change?
A: Since this is an event celebrating drabbles, we thought it made sense for a 100-word single drabble to be the minimum that participants can expect to write or receive. We received the suggestion from a participant and put it up to a community poll, where a strong majority were in favor of the rule change.

Q: How does this rule change affect how I sign up?
A: It affects the signup process itself very little. You can still select the fandoms, characters, and drabble types you are interested in writing or receiving. You are still free to request or offer longer drabble types. You can still check "Any". However, you can no longer exclude the "Drabble" tag from your signup.

Q: What happens if I don't include single drabbles in my signup?
A: We will reach out to you via the email associated with your AO3 account and offer two options: we can either edit the signup to add single drabbles, or remove your signup. Participants who don’t get back to us by the end of the grace period (12 hours after signups close) will have their signup removed.

Q: How will matching work?
A: Since everyone is requesting or offering single drabbles, you are effectively matchable with anyone requesting/offering the same fandom AND character. However, drabble types are still a matching criterion. In other words, people who want to write/request other drabble types would still be more likely to match with each other. For example, all things being equal, someone requesting Single Drabble and Triple Drabble is more likely (not guaranteed) to match with someone offering Single Drabble and Triple Drabble, than with someone only offering Single Drabble, or someone offering Single Drabble and Single Drabble Series/Sequence.

Q: Do I have to write single drabbles to participate?
A: If you have matched to someone who has only requested the "Drabble" freeform tag, then yes, you have to write a 100-word drabble for your assignment. If they have requested other drabble types, though, you are welcome to write any of them for your recipient.

Q: What if I don't like this rule change or it ends up sucking?
A: We tried implementing the rule change in a way that caused the least disruption on the participant side of things, but we will be soliciting feedback at the end of the round. If you have opinions or ideas you'd like to share at that time, we would love to hear them. This is admittedly a test run.

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GENERAL SIGNUPS REMINDERS:

Please disregard the Optional Tags field! It will not be used in this exchange.

Is AO3 not letting you sign up for a character that you know is definitely in the tagset?

• If it is simply not appearing in the dropdown, try copy-pasting it from the tagset itself. This is a known AO3 bug.
• If that does not work, please comment here or email us with the exact fandom and character(s) you were trying to request/offer. A mod will then batch load it for you on the backend, and you will be able to request it. This is a caching issue with AO3.

Requests:

• You must request 3-10 fandoms with 1-20 characters and 1-7 drabble types each. Fandoms in your requests must be unique, but may be related (e.g., three Star Wars requests would be fine, as long as it was three separate Star Wars fandoms).

• If you wish, you may request Any for drabble type. This means you are open to receiving any of the 7 drabble types in the tagset. Additionally, please note that as of this round, you cannot opt out of single drabbles. In other words, you are still welcome to request other drabble types, but you cannot exclude single drabbles from your requests.

• If you wish, you may request Any character. This means any character in the canon (NOT just the tagset). Please do not request Any unless you really are open to receiving any character from that canon.

Other:

• If you encounter any issues while signing up that are not noted above, please let us know ASAP, as AO3 bugs can sometimes hit exchanges.

• If you need to let us know something about your signup (such as not wanting to be assigned to a specific other participant), please contact us via email (seasonsofdrabbles AT gmail) or the mod contact post.

Fandom: Original Work; writing-prompt-s
Pairings/Characters: F/M; King Aerlin the Third of Aelren (OC)/Lady Mirena of Lirenthal (OC); various matchmaking OC courtiers
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 1,409
Content Notes: Tumblr fic; court intrigue; the Power of Pragmatism; possible Reality Subtext.
Creator Links: (Tumblr) sleeplessspell
Theme: Marriage of Convenience, Competence, Enemies to Lovers, Original Work, Politics, Women Being Awesome

Summary: A king who doesn't really want to and isn't able to run the kingdom properly catches wind of a noble woman who wants to kill him to take over and he realizes she is extremely competent so he decides to propose to her to save everyone the hassle and they have a surprisingly healthy relationship.

Reccer's Notes: Another hit-and-run gem from prolific Tumblr author sleeplessspell; it’s complete as it stands, but Tumblore has a way of snowballing in transmission; this may be worth keeping an eye on.

Fanwork Links: A Reasonable Proposal, by sleeplessspell from a prompt by writing-prompt-s.

fancake is a thematic recommendation community where all members are welcome to post recs, and fanworks of all shapes and sizes are accepted. Check out the community guidelines for the full set of rules.

This theme runs for the entire month. If you have any questions, just ask!

Fandom: Smallville
Pairings/Characters: Clark/Lex
Rating: E
Length: 103,242
Creator Links: toomuchplor
Theme: Marriage of convenience
Content notes: The author has a note for this, but there are two attacks on women, one of which is a sexual assault. These are not graphic, nor do they involve main characters. There is mention of (poorly managed) mental health care facilities and life in them.

Summary: A long story about Froot Loops, celery salt, dorkdom, and -- oh yeah -- marriage.

Reccer's Notes: I first read this fic twenty years ago (!!) on LJ, and loved it. I was skeptical about whether I'd still like it since I'm not into Smallville anymore, and, you know, twenty years. Reader, it is still good. I stayed up late reading. I was nearly late to appointments because I was reading. It's that kind of story. Surprisingly few things seem dated. The phones are not smart, of course, and there's maybe more attention paid to Clark's bisexuality than would occur now. But, other than that, it has held up remarkably well, and only has about five typos. 🥰

Essentially, Lex's father, Lionel, has disowned him, and Lex needs to be married for a year in order to get an inheritance set aside by his mother. Clark needs money for college. They sign an agreement to be married for a year.

The trajectory of the story is absolutely what one would expect from this trope, but what sets the story apart is the quality of the writing. The plot is well thought out and the pacing and character development are excellent. I also appreciate that the supporting cast get their screen time: Pete, Chloe, Lois, Lionel, Mr. and Mrs. Kent. (Lana makes an appearance, but her screen time is blessedly minimal.) The story also takes on issues like Clark's abilities--and the ethics of using them--and his development as a reporter.

There's a good amount of humor in this story, too, which is a bonus. I mean, Clark is such a dork, and it's great. The requisite Smallville farm jokes are here for you.

Fanwork Links: Omiai

Theme Prompt: #269 - Self-indulgence
Title: You only live twice
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1,000 words
Summary: Ianto decides to take full advantage of Jack’s generous offer of a day off.

( Read more... )

We've got a bonus banner for this month's theme! Invite all your friends to a Marriage of Convenience!!


Just straight up steal this image and slam it into your social medias, or calmly copy the following code to share on Dreamwidth and other LJ forks:

Our theme for August is marriage of convenience!

These partnerships are made for practical, political, or professional reasons rather than personal ones, but they rarely stay that way...

Since this is a Flashback Round where we revisit a theme from the early days of the comm—marriage of convenience was a Cupcake Round back in 2014—this month it doesn't matter if a work has already been recced for this theme, go ahead and rec it again!

The tag for this round is: theme: marriage of convenience

If you're just joining us, be sure to check out our policy on content notes. Content notes aren't required, but they're nice to include in your recs, especially if a fanwork has untagged content that readers may wish to know about in advance.

( Rules! )

( Posting Template! )

( Promote this round! )

Theme Prompt: 269 - Self-Indulgence
Title: Treating Herself
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating/Warnings: PG / None
Bonus: Yes.
Word Count: 898
Summary: Buffy has money from her birthday to spend, but is it a good idea to spend it on such an impractical self-indulgence?

Fandom: Star Wars
Pairings/Characters: Kleya Marki & Luthen Rael from the Andor series
Rating: K
Length: 7,108
Creator Links: FFN Profile
Theme: Working Together

Summary: He was never meant to survive. So why is she risking so much to save the man who killed her family?

Reccer's Notes: Kleya does her duty, as does Luthen, in aid of the rebellion. When their wishes and deeds clash, it takes forever and a day to reach an equilibrium. I especially enjoyed the scenario of two rebels diminishing status once their seminal work concludes, because how do they fit in now? And do they want to? Fine characterization, and a what-if that we hope happens, in some other timeline, perhaps.

Fanwork Link: Questionable Provenance

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Stephen Caldwell, Elizabeth Weir, Laura Cadman, Radek Zelenka, Lindsay Novak - the usual Daedalus and Atlantis suspects.
Rating: Teen
Length: 100,449
Content Notes: Contains descriptions of serious injuries, animal attacks, extreme environmental conditions, violence, murder. No AO3 warnings apply.
Creator Links: Sholio on AO3, Sholio's old SGA website
Themes: Working together, Action/adventure, Competence, Hurt/comfort, Novel-length, Epic work, Genfic, Worldbuilding

Summary: When a scientific mission goes wrong, the Daedalus crashes on an ice planet along with Atlantis's top scientists and a ruthless saboteur. Will rescue come before injuries and the elements take their toll? Roughly season two era.

Reccer's Notes: This is a gripping, full-blown novel. The Daedalus crash-lands on a Gateless, uninhabited, icy planet while carrying a number of Atlantis personnel (Rodney, Radek, Elizabeth and Cadman), while back on Atlantis, realising something's gone badly wrong, John, Simpson, Carson, Lorne, et al try frantically to locate them, then to reach them by puddlejumper. It's a thriller about surviving both a disastrous crash and the freezing, inhospitable planet, plus searching for the saboteur or saboteurs who caused the crash. There's tons of detail about how the two groups separately work together to survive, and to find and reach the crashed ship, and then once the relief party arrives their troubles aren't over, with the saboteur still working against them and the logistics of only having puddlejumpers to perform a complex rescue. Sholio weaves it all together masterfully and it's an extremely good read with excellent worldbuilding, better than most pro thrillers. Highly recommended.

Fanwork Links: The Killing Frost on AO3, or here