Epilogue :: Author's Note

I know I promised this one a few days ago, but there's two reasons why this one is late. One, I was trying to write a good little oneshot for New Years and it failed horribly. The other (and some of my readers know this well) is that I have a knack for procrastination and have a short story due tomorrow that I hadn't even started when I wrote Prompt #24. So, there are my lame excuses. Sorry, all.

What I do want to say is thank you to all of my readers. It's been a roller coaster ride, writing these little fluffy oneshots, but getting feedback was one of the best reinforcing of the lessons I've learned while writing this. There'll be an analysis of all of the chapters below, but I definitely want to recognize Blaze, FeytedintheTARDIS, Shizuka Ayasato, White-D, YoshiStack, sakana-chan63, FieraRosette, Feyfangirl, and OddWriter12 for all of your reviews, follows, and favorites of this little collection. It got way more attention than I thought it would, now that I write out everyone! Thanks again, and it's been a fun ride. As always, I do want to say that I will collaborate with anyone (but I won't beta; too much to do, sorry!), so if you should ever want to write with me, it's an open invitation!

As always, I look back on the completed story (or stories, in this case) and comment on them all of the things I didn't say before. Feel free to skip over this part, but I know some readers like to hear what the author thinks about it.

Stats: The fic ended with 2,960 views, with as many as 1, 090 views from the USA alone in December. According to the graphs, there were people from 37 different countries, many of which are not primarily Christian nations, so I hope a bit of culture exchange happened here! Up until this epilogue, there have been 26,154 words, which would be roughly the length of most litigation documents or a standard memoir, according to Google.

Chapters:

Mistletoe :: An odd first prompt, in my opinion, and the first shipping I used. I knew there were a lot of people who supported Kiria/Edgeworth from The Seven Year War series, so it was a good bit of misdirection that I had decided to use had I ever gotten stuck. Little did I know that I wasn't sure where I was going with the Phoenix/Maya thing, and used my misdirection in the first chapter. D: And while I could have used it again later, it ended up working.

Hot Chocolate :: I love Phoenix/Trucy, as I said, and knowing how hard it is to be away from family during the holidays, this was a good place to channel that. Originally, there was a preview with Iris, Maya, and Pearl at Hazakura Temple, with Iris asking where Phoenix was and Maya telling her that he wanted to spend Christmas as just the two of them. Midnight would strike, and the Feys would drink hot chocolate and look up at the night sky, which would be filled with paper lanterns to signify the holiday. It ended up being waaaaaay too many words, and so it was cut down to just Phoenix and Trucy's interaction.

Snow :: The first of many horrible prompts with snow. As the series is set in southern California, I knew I had to do something different with these. Hence being set in Germany with young Miles and Franziska. I've never been to Germany, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't snow as much as I made it sound.

Candy Canes :: Because Diego/Mia is another one of my favorite pairings, I wanted to do something with them. An early edit had Godot merely reminiscing about Grossberg's Christmas party and flirting with Mia, but in the end, I wanted him to have a visitor. And I wanted a chance to use my awful Waiting For Godot joke.

Christmas Tree :: The first of many that I wrote and went "What was I trying to do there?" If you read it through, it's basically Mystic Althea telling Pearl, "Yep, the world sucks, and then you die." Not exactly in the Christmas spirit.

Angel :: A prompt that I could have went mainstream and did a pairing with or completely risky and unorthodox. You see I went with the second option. Young Kiria is someone who hasn't been explored yet in the Seven Year War series, and I wanted to do something with her and Nadeshiko. Oddly enough, it evolved into a family fic, which I think went well enough.

Pie :: This ended up being one of my favorites, although in the end, I had to work out a few plotholes. Writing a soft Edgeworth was much nicer than I thought it would have been, and it was nice to experiment with the two of them together again. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what I was thinking when I used up my "freak snowstorm" deus ex machina here. I could have waited for a snow prompt, but noooooooooo.

Tinsel :: Another one that I like to pretend didn't happen. although now that I read over it again, it's not as bad as I had thought. Writing something about a product you never knew existed up until this point? Bad idea.

Ice Skating :: I liked this one too when I wrote it. More Edgeworth/Kiria, which I found was much easier to write (and got good reviews). It's pretty unremarkable, save the part with Nate sliding across the ice on his butt. I still love that part.

Frost :: In one of my creative writing classes, we had talked about sentiment and sentimentality, which the only difference is that sentiment is sadness that you can still think through, and sentimentality is so sad that it just takes over the story completely. When I started writing about Li Sheng (who may show up in the series, because I kinda liked him), it quickly became an exercise in just that. Lang was, in general, a hard character to write fluff about. It just doesn't happen. It's like trying to write Franziska-fluff.

Eggnog :: This was another prompt that I wish I could have extended. I never liked eggnog, but the smell always brought back old memories of Christmases past, which was the driving force behind this oneshot. Unfortunately, with as many people as were in the scene, not everyone got their chance to talk. It's one that I might think about extending someday. As an aside, Nate's childhood desire to be a greeter stems from my own childhood desire, according to my mother. I had high goals for myself when I was young, apparently.

Cider :: I really wanted to include Apollo in these, because he is a large part of the Seven Year War series, but he's from a different time period than when it's set. Where did the pumpkin come in to the equation? To tell the truth, I don't have a clue. I don't know what pumpkin cider tastes like (I'm not a pumpkin fan in general). I also wanted to have some fun with the apathetic Phoenix we see in Apollo Justice, because I don't get to play with him that much, and he seems much more contemplative than younger Phoenix did.

Peppermint :: Why we had peppermint as a prompt right after Candy Canes earlier, I wasn't sure, but this wasn't a good day to begin with. I had gotten home from work only to find out about the Connecticut shootings and the Chinese knife attacks, so this one seems a little heavy to me. I kind of let my emotions get in the way of a clear narrative here. Writing an established pairing for Kiria and Edgeworth wasn't as easy as I had thought it would be either, oddly enough.

Gingerbread :: I liked this one as well, although trying to figure out who would be good at making gingerbread houses and who wouldn't be wasn't the easiest thing in the world. Mostly unremarkable except for the word count.

Presents :: The famous prompt where I didn't look at the other prompts before writing this one. Again, a mostly unremarkable one in general, although I do like it.

Fireplace :: I noticed when I joined the fandom years ago that Maggey and Gumshoe were pretty much ignored as main characters, but I didn't have any way to change that until I wrote this oneshot collection. It was originally going to go a lot worse than it did (like almost-catching-Gumshoe's-house-on-fire worse), but again, there was the word count to think about.

Stockings :: This prompt is the one I really remember struggling on. I mean, what do you write about stockings? They're just sort of . . . there. So, cue Mike Meekins. The fact that he looks up to Gumshoe so much is hilarious. It started out with me trying to figure out why he would idolize Gumshoe, and then it just became a given fact again, so I failed on one end and succeeded in writing about stockings.

Cookies :: I don't usually write completely crazy things, so this ended up being a bit crack-y for my tastes, but I adored Ron and Dessie so much that I kept it in the collection instead of attempting a new one. I'd love to see Ron DeLite become Mask*DeMasque again (for the Yatagarasu? Haha), but it's probably not going to happen, so I wrote this instead.

Santa :: I think this is going to be one that I'll continue later, seeing as no one took me up on my offer to continue it. I adore Klema, but since there's no textual evidence to support it in the games, I generally don't write it.

Sled :: More snow prompts! I remember really kicking myself for using up the spontaneous snowstorm on Pie. I wanted to use Will Powers, but I couldn't think of a good thing for him to be doing, so he was babysitting. This ended a little too "Disney" for me, for some reason. Maybe it's because I'm not generally a feel-good person, and this one was definitely something to feel good.

Snowman :: The flagstone Phoenix/Maya piece, in my opinion. I wanted to make it a little playful, but not too playful, and this one came out. I kind of want to see all of the snowmen now that I've written them.

Jingle Bells :: I was a little skeptical on this one, because I didn't know how people were going to take young Kiria and Nate, but it seemed to go over well. I'm not really sure where Peter Pan came in, but I adore the quote "Faith, trust, and a little bit of pixie dust". Although if someone gave me sleigh bells for Christmas after having me hooked up to a harness with them on, I would probably commit murder.

Carols :: This ended up being my favorite piece of the set. The dialogue flowed pretty easily, and a bit of grouchiness was needed in a collection that was all happiness.

Christmas Movies :: This was the prompt from hell, mostly because, what do you do with it? In the end, I referenced a bunch of movies and decided to be done with it. For some reason, the dialogue was flowing pretty well in this one too, although it definitely could have been confusing.

Finally, we'll end with the replying of everyone's final comments, and a happy holidays to every one of my readers!

Blaze :: It wasn't quite the New Year when I read it, but it was New Year's Eve, so I'll count it as such. I hope you had a lovely New Year as well, thank you!

Sakana-chan63 :: They're not the people you would expect to carol, would you? There had to have been some blackmail in there.

Shizuka Ayasato :: Nate is really the only one who would enjoy most of the things I force him through, awful writer as I am. I'm glad you liked that moment in Chapter 25; I laughed while writing it (is that like laughing at my own jokes? I can't stand people who do that!). Thanks again for sticking around, and I hope to hear from you again sometime too!

FeytedintheTARDIS :: Take your time. I'm not going anywhere, haha.

Feyfangirl :: I'm so glad you liked the last few chapters. I think they turned out better than I had hoped.

Thanks to everyone, and I hope we'll meet again soon!