ALL THOSE YEARS IN THE SHADOWS

 I've got four separate story series going on at the moment over at Archive of Our Own, three of which fall more under an umbrella and make me wonder whether I should make a collection.  Thoughts and commentary welcome. 

1] RotGoCNDUWriMoPlus: 2018-2019

Series Begun:

2018-11-10

Series Updated:

2018-12-08

Description:

Unconnected stories in the RISE OF THE GUARDIANS / GUARDIANS OF CHILDHOOD fandom[s],
and in its subfandom[s] known as Nightmare Dork University / NDU Wardrobeverse.

24 tales in all, written by request for 12 different lovely people on Tumblr.

EACH STORY WILL HAVE ITS OWN RATING, so peruse with care.

Notes:

How in the world did I end up in the absolutely best tandem-fandom ever? And how can I
thank the folks who create for RotGoC and NDU? 

By giving them presents for my birthday....

One short piece based on one of my works, and a second short piece based on one of their
works.

Click the Tumblr link above if you want to know more.

2] Tales of Nightmare Dork University

Series Begun:

2016-04-01

Series Updated:

2019-01-20

Description:

The interactions of five college-aged students at NDU...

1] Pitch Black, high-strung drama major, prone to migraines, jealousy, and hissyfits
2] Piki Black, his more financially successful twin brother, who has emotional baggage
of his own
3] Coz Pitchiner, lacrosse player, athletic scholarship student, in SOME kind of
relationship with Pitch [bed partner? boyfriend? fiend and tormentor?]
4] Proto, rooms with Pitch and Pitchiner, has some HIGHLY unusual habits
and a taxidermied best friend, a ferret called Mister Pickles
5] Jack Sickle, extremely shy and nervous student of early childhood education,
stalked / idolized by Piki

See series notes for more information; I did not create these characters, I'm merely
having the time of my life playing with them.

Notes:

If you are wondering what the devil Nightmare Dork University is, and what it has to do
with either the movie RISE OF THE GUARDIANS or the GUARDIANS OF CHILDHOOD books
by William Joyce, please visit the NDU 101 page on Tumblr and its accompanying tags.
It's a wild and woolly ride involving four different versions of Pitch Black and a very
different version of Jack Frost, all of whom either room together or "fraternize" in a
college / university AU. 

3] NDU Relative Values
 

Series Begun:

2018-02-08

Series Updated:

2018-10-20

Description:

A spin-off of my Tales of Nightmare Dork University series, focusing on family members,
past and present, of our NDU boys.

4] Footlights and Frontispieces, Monsters and Manifolds
 

Series Begun:

2018-10-20

Series Updated:

2019-01-20

Description:

Another offshoot of the Tales of Nightmare Dork University, set in the future.

Notes:

In this AU, Piki Black and Jack Sickle are married and dividing their time between Manhattan
and upstate New York. They have a daughter, Emily Sickle Black, who will eventually become
a volcanologist, and will have a daughter of her own named Zilpha.

Piki is a successful playwright, and spends six weeks each summer running a youth theater
workshop in Rotsblok Falls, 185 miles north of New York City.

Jack has quite a few years of early elementary school teaching under his belt and eventually
becomes the author of the children's book series ARTHROPOD ABBEY, illustrated by his and
Piki's niece, entomologist Seraphina Pitchiner.

Also in this AU, Pitch Black and Coz Pitchiner reunited after a long separation, during which
time Coz did military service and had a surrogate bear a daughter for him, unbeknownst to
Pitch. After a lot of soul-searching, Pitch accepted Seraphina as his own daughter and the
three became a family.

A series of lucky breaks led Pitch to a career as a horror novelist and sought-after
screenwriter, which helped tone down the rivalry between himself and Piki.

After Coz left the military, he took some of the skills he'd learned there to open his own
garage and automotive repair service, which gave him a good enough income that he didn't
feel he was leeching off Pitch. At a later point, for a lark, he answered an ad to teach a night
course in military history at a community college's adult education program, and shockingly
found he was good at it, surprised that his NDU degree was useful for something.

Pitch and Coz did not formally marry until Seraphina was seven. They live in the rowhouse
Coz inherited from his maternal grandparents in Isherwood, a NYC suburb.

Proto, as always, is an unknown quantity. What he did after NDU remains to be seen.

============================

I will be slowly transporting the pieces that were originally posted on Tumblr, and
crossposting the ones that appear on AO3.

 

Fandom: Rise of the Guardians / Guardians of Childhood

Rating: General Audiences

Pairings: None

Characters: Nicholas St. North, Jack Frost, Carol Bird, John "Uncle Jack" Fields, Sarah Maud Ruggles

Story Summary: A crossover between RotGoC and THE BIRDS' CHRISTMAS CAROL, a Victorian children's book written by Kate Douglas Wiggin.

Author's note: Written for nxghtlight for my RotGoCNDUWriMo personal challenge over on Tumblr.

====================================================

Algaonice, Taqi al-Din, Mary Somerville, and Tycho Brahe were some of North’s heroes. Their inventions and observations of the workings of the starry firmament, worthy of Ombric himself, sang to his soul.

 

But when it came down to it, none of their orreries, steam turbines, or armillary spheres could hold back Time.  And the current rushing-by of Time was telling the Guardian of Wonder that as of today, November 24, 1887, Christmas was only a month away.

North sighed and turned back to his Observometer, a marvel in and of itself insomuch as it operated as much by magic as by technology.  Normally this telescope gathered information all on its own, hour after hour unceasingly, day after month after year after decade, as to which children were Naughty and which were Nice, only needing North’s lightest touch every few weeks to compile The Lists.

Today, however, he was in an odd mood, at loose ends, unable to focus.  It was Thursday in most parts of the globe, creeping towards Friday in some.  He was almost tempted to bend Manny’s ear to complain of his restlessness, but did not want to alarm his old friend.

Phil and Henrietta seemed to have the Workshop under control, despite the rapidly increasing pace of Yeti production and elf hindrance, and thus North found himself actively using the Observometer for the first time in centuries.  

He scanned Australia and the Pacific Rim first, sighing over the lack of children in Antarctica. Then Asia, Africa, Europe, and finally the Americas.

The Observometer seemed to tug North’s hand as it passed over the east coast of the United States.  Intrigued, he turned the focus first on New York City, then on the borough of Brooklyn, and finally to a carriage house roof where nine raggedy children sat and conversed with a girl on a glassed-in porch balcony which overhung the yard.

Well, “conversed” may have seemed an insufficient description.  The girl on the balcony, who appeared to be an invalid, was swaddled in a thick nightrobe and blankets and sat in a wheeled chair.  Her voice was sweet and very serious, with an undercurrent of suppressed laughter.  The children on the roof seemed to be as comfortable with their precarious perch as if they’d been born to it.  They were answering the girl’s questions in tones ranging from high-pitched squeaks to almost full-throated bellows.

“Horse-cars!”

“The way clocks tick!”

“Trunks!”

“Pork steak!”

“Effalunts!”

“My lame puppy.”

“All the words in the world.”

With a start, North realized that the gist of the conversation was that they were all listing the things they were grateful for.  A strange assortment to his ear, but apparently dear to them.  In particular, the eldest girl on the roof, who held a squirming toddler on her lap, struck a chord with him; it was she who had made the last statement.  Her reddish-brown hair was neatly braided, and she was tall and raw-boned, but if he closed his eyes, he could almost hear Katherine’s voice in her words.

The bundled-up girl on the balcony nodded at each of their comments, and listed the people in her life as what she was grateful for, and lastly that she had been born a Christmas child.

North’s face broke out into a glorious grin.  Stroking his beard, he shouted, “IDEA!” and bolted out of the observatory, racing down the stairs three at a time to his own private workshop.

A few days later, there were gifts of his own devising, to be delivered to a certain brownstone with an overhanging glassed-in balcony.... a bookshelf with brackets and shutters to protect precious volumes from grubby hands, a silver watch with elegant curlicues on the casing and a glorious sound, a tool chest for woodworking that any malletier would envy, a truly incredible Noah’s ark with animals that seemed about to roar and squeal and gallop, a carpeted dog-house where a faithful canine could rest in comfort, a full place setting for twelve [that all MATCHED!] with cunningly carved wooden cups, bowls and plates, and a veritable chorus line of lovely dolls.

With a little help from the Sandman, North was able to convince the inhabitants of the brownstone - mother, father, three brothers, a visiting uncle, and one frail young lady - that the gifts for their back garden neighbors had been all acquired through their own devices.

As far as holiday magic went, that was only fitting, after all