nevanna | October Fanfic Roundup (Reply)

Appropriately enough, all of my fanfic during Spooktober has been for The Magnus Archives, my spooky podcast obsession. I also wrote a blurb for the show to share on Facebook for my friends who might have been wondering what I've been yelling about for the past couple of months. (I don't talk about the nitty-gritty of my fannish life on that platform, but I definitely talk about Stuff I Like.) Here's what I said:

The Magnus Archives is a horror podcast centering around a paranormal research organization, and each (roughly) 20-minute episode takes the form of a grumpy British man recording a different eyewitness account of Weird Stuff. As the story goes on, we start to learn more about our Archivist, the place where he works, and how all of those eyewitness statements fit together. There are monsters, Evil Books, mind control (lots of that. like, more than you think you're getting at first), eldritch gods, Office Politics But More Spooky, and plenty of queer pining. (And not just pining! The Archivist is canonically asexual, one of his assistants is bi, another is unquestionably Attracted To Other Dudes, two of the recurring lady characters eventually end up in a loving and supportive relationship, and side characters often casually mention same-gender partners. Some of those people end up evil or dead, which I understand some audiences may not want to hear about, but not with any greater frequency than cishet characters, and rarely if ever *because* of their queerness.)

I'm not going to claim that this content is Pure and Wholesome and Unproblematic; there are probably a lot of Nope Factors that I have failed to consider because it's brought me so much joy. But the creators seem genuinely invested in treating sensitive subject matter with the respect that it deserves (for instance, they have adamantly refused to use sexual assault as a vehicle for horror), and avoiding lazy storytelling as they delve into the truly awful things that human beings are capable of doing to each other, with or without the influence of extranormal powers. They HAVE been up-front about this story being An Tragedy, so I am fully prepared to Feel All The Feelings when it wraps up a year or so from now.

As it turns out, I am Feeling All The Feelings considerably ahead of schedule, since the Season 4 finale dropped earlier today. The show resumes in April, at which point... er, happy birthday to me?

Meanwhile, here's the fic that I wrote this past month!

No Haven For This Heart was a realization of an idea that I had way back in July, in which the resident evil mind-controlling manipulator reveals exactly how much he knows about the aforementioned Intense Queer Pining what's been happening at the Magnus Institute.

The other stories are in the Vampire AU that another writer in the fandom helped to create. Now, the canon mythology and world-building of TMA are beautiful and original and I wouldn't trade them for anything, nor do I plan to abandon the core continuity anytime soon, but this particular AU gave me the opportunity to write some very specific mind control tropes and scenarios that had been gnawing on my brain, and so the leap of faith that led to one "Magnusquerade" story eventually turned into four (and counting). In order of publication: Encouraging Employee Initiative, The Necessary Compromises of a Demanding Career, Transparency in Working Relationships, and Knowledge Management in an Academic Setting. (The bureaucratic language was not my idea, but I've had fun trying to generate titles within that framework.)

I will be spending November using the scaffolding of NaNoWriMo to fill out at least two intersecting lines on my

hc_bingo card, which looks like this:

medication	wasteland	dungeons	extortion	skeletons in the closet
toothache	loss of a treasured possession	survivor's guilt	heat exhaustion / heat stroke	eating disorders
whipping / flogging	cuddling	WILD CARD	crisis of faith	loss of job / income
hypothermia	body image issues	forgiveness	imprisonment	unrequited pining
loss of limb / amputation / mutilation	begging	loss of identity	drowning	amnesia