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Dear Yulegoat 2009
Hi. Hi there. I realize this is late and I apologize, I hope you haven't been freaking out. I know I promised to link/list some stuff in this letter, so I'm especially sorry it took me this long to get it done.
Right, okay, my requests:
1. Less Than Perfect - Kipp Steadman
I started--and continued--watching this show because Zachary Levi was in it, so my desires are fairly strongly in the arena of Kipp fic. My take on Kipp--the thing I would like to see highlighted--is that for whatever reason, probably career ambition, he's invested in coming off as a dick, but underneath he's sort of secretly a nice guy, some of the time. I think probably the best example of this from the show is when he anonymously sends Lydia two dozen roses on Valentine's and never claims credit; Claude gleefully calls him on having done something sweet and his answer is, "Fine, try telling people I'm a nice guy, see if anyone believes you." The other really nice example is the episode "Kipp Steadman's Guide to Dating," where he gives Claude's boyfriends tips on courting Claude and, though tempted, resists the urge to claim credit because that would screw things up with Claude and her boyfriend. So that's in the vein I'd like to see--Kipp Steadman: dick, dick, asshat, I totally didn't just do a nice thing there, sort of sweet dick. Both his backstabbing friendship with Lydia and his companionable enemyship with Claude would be good playing fields for this.
I've been uploading clips of Less than Perfect to youtube, here are some of the most relevant:
Kipp's Guide to Dating, Abridged - I think the neatest thing about this is how Kipp claims not to give a crap about Claude, yet is totally paying attention. Oh, and you know, also the moment of untruth where he nobly swallows his pride.
United in the Face of Insanity - this is like, a summation of life on a sitcom, I think. I'm not entirely sure it's necessary to write fanfic with sitcom logic and sensibility, but if you choose to, clearly they should be self-aware of the absurdity.
Compliments - I think this one is an excellent example of the extent to which Kipp and Claude can tolerate niceness between them.
Lydia's Birthday - Under the category of nice but bitchy things Kipp has done for Lydia. They're two peas in a pod, two nasty-tasting peas that enjoy driving other peas out of their pod.
Lydia's Roses - This is the secret Valentine's gift and my clearest crystal version of Kipp, the Secretly Nice.
If you want to see more Less Than Perfect scenes I enjoyed, most of my youtube uploads are Less Than Perfect. You can also check out entries under my less than perfect tag.
2. Final Cut (software) - the programmers
Okay, I'm going to explain what this fandom *is* before I ask for anything because I doubt very much you've been matched with me on it (or maybe you have! when last I looked at the offers list, like, three people had put up for this one, oh my god), but perhaps this will amuse. Final Cut video editing software had an easter egg--if you leave it idle for several hours, Bruce the Yak wanders out onto the timeline. He is a small animated figure that eats grass and spouts speech bubbles filled with quotes that the software engineers spouted during development and programming, which uniformly reveal them to be giant dorks, as one might expect. For your ease and convenience I will be posting a full list of the quotes to my dreamwidth in my dear yuletide writer letter, as lifted from one of FCP's support files. What I want is the story behind some of these quotes. A lot of them are like the punchline to a conversation I wasn't there for, and while most of them are intelligible if you have the right geek knowledge set, I really want a story about those people, those geeks, the ones that made the software and actually said those things. I have no idea what their names are and invite you to completely make them up. Just tell me what they're like, how they ended lamenting the loss of the Oscillation Overthruster or saying "Oops" when things worked.
Right, so, I promised you a full list of quotes. Here we go:
I once made a shirt to wear to vividcon that featured a graphic of Bruce the Yak and the quote, "What's the sound of one luma clamping?" I had a hard time picking one hilarious quote, I have a lot of favorites, but I picked that one out for that venue because it's specifically a video editing joke. I don't know how relevant vidders found it, though, because mostly footage we get from TV to vid from doesn't have luma clamping problems, it's already been rendered broadcast safe. Hi, I also work in production and have dealt with HD footage fresh from a camera that did have excess luma issues. I think my point here is I'm a giant dork and I want to read about giant dorks? A lot of these require google for me to figure out why they're funny--I know lots about editing, little about programming. Please bear that in mind and explicate the programming background where necessary.
3. Raines
The best thing about this show was how his profiles called him out on making broad assumptions off of little details. I love the sequence in the pilot when his vision of the victim asks him why she's drinking and smoking despite him not having found booze or cigarettes in her apartment, just because he found out she was a prostitute; asks him why his mental image of a prostitute is the way it is. This is such a challenging thing; a part of Raines will leap to a conclusion of what this person was like, based on race or gender or job, the same kind of assumptions everyone makes, but then another part of Raines, the part he's personifying as the profile, will make him re-examine and take apart why evidence A implies conclusion B in his thought process, and why it shouldn't. So--write me a casefic. Build me a character from the ground up and talk about the associations we make, the stereotypes we assume, and how unfounded they are, or how lacking in complexity. Make this smart and psychological. I think it would also be fun to have the psychiatrist involved, but that would totally be gravy.
Okay so for those of you playing along at home, Raines was a short-lived show where the titular character, played by Jeff Goldblum, is a profiler who is going around the bend and hallucinating people he profiles. The hallucination's personality becomes more detailed and refined the more Raines finds out. He knows this is all in his head, it's not ghosts, and the profiles will often tell him, "Well of course I couldn't tell you that, you didn't know it," because everything comes from his own knowledge. He's also carrying around his dead partner in this manner, and generally freaking his coworkers out.
This is the clip with the prostitute I was talking about in my request.
If you don't have a clue what kind of character to build, maybe a queer one? There's all kinds of societal expectations built around different kinds of queer, and most of them are horseshit. I'm queer (mostly lesbian, and poly to boot) so that would interest me--but if you don't think you can handle that, try something else. Maybe something closer to you. What assumptions do people make about you based on your job or your hair or your clothes or your sex or your race or your faith or your age or your body? How many of those assumptions are totally wrong? Here's a great opportunity to spork them.
Beyond fandoms: what I like.
I realized that I didn't put any pairings in any of these, so I should probably say here, I'm mostly a slasher. But I also read gen, and I also read het (and I also read femslash, although I had to remind myself to add it as a separate category, because I tend to assume "slash" swings both ways), and I also like threesomes etc. (I kind of think this is unlikely to come up with this request set, but, my favorite threesome configuration is M/M/F--Mommy and Daddy and Daddy's boyfriend!) I don't, usually, read smut, though. I'll read stories with smut in them but I tend to skim past it. Unless there's important characterization to be had in the sex, I'd druther a fade to black.
And, seriously, gen is totally fine too. (I'll note again that I didn't put any pairings on these. Heh.)
I like humor. I like crack. (If you had any desire to take a standard crack or AU trope like Age of Sail or Egyptology or Genderswap or Wingfic or With Dragons and drop it on any of these fandoms, I think I would probably die laughing. But I'm totally a fifth-wave fan; if you're going to do something like that, commit to it, invest in the detail and treat it seriously, because that's how it becomes seriously awesome.) I like irony and snark and gallows humor. I like plot. I like fluff. I hesitate to call the kind of wallowing I do with angst "like" but I do enjoy it. (I enjoy it more if everyone's dealing with angst by snarking off. Did I mention I like snark?) I like it when I read the dialogue and it sounds so true that I can hear the characters saying it in my head. I like smart. I like it when characters are smart and I like it when plots are smart and I like it when stories answer questions, and when they pose them. (This is probably related to my enjoyment of science fiction in its speculative mode, but also to my enjoyment of fanfiction as a way to fill in the blanks canon leaves, explain things left hanging.)
I've put this in two previous yuletide letters so I think I'll keep it as a tradition:
In someone's commentary on the Etiquette of Yuletide, there was mention of the struggle some authors have between fulfilling exactly a detailed request, and writing a good story. It is my feeling that this should never be an issue. If you are struggling between writing a crappy story to my specifications and writing a good story that throws them out the window, for God's sake, write me a good story.
Thank you.
~juls
Right, okay, my requests:
1. Less Than Perfect - Kipp Steadman
I started--and continued--watching this show because Zachary Levi was in it, so my desires are fairly strongly in the arena of Kipp fic. My take on Kipp--the thing I would like to see highlighted--is that for whatever reason, probably career ambition, he's invested in coming off as a dick, but underneath he's sort of secretly a nice guy, some of the time. I think probably the best example of this from the show is when he anonymously sends Lydia two dozen roses on Valentine's and never claims credit; Claude gleefully calls him on having done something sweet and his answer is, "Fine, try telling people I'm a nice guy, see if anyone believes you." The other really nice example is the episode "Kipp Steadman's Guide to Dating," where he gives Claude's boyfriends tips on courting Claude and, though tempted, resists the urge to claim credit because that would screw things up with Claude and her boyfriend. So that's in the vein I'd like to see--Kipp Steadman: dick, dick, asshat, I totally didn't just do a nice thing there, sort of sweet dick. Both his backstabbing friendship with Lydia and his companionable enemyship with Claude would be good playing fields for this.
I've been uploading clips of Less than Perfect to youtube, here are some of the most relevant:
Kipp's Guide to Dating, Abridged - I think the neatest thing about this is how Kipp claims not to give a crap about Claude, yet is totally paying attention. Oh, and you know, also the moment of untruth where he nobly swallows his pride.
United in the Face of Insanity - this is like, a summation of life on a sitcom, I think. I'm not entirely sure it's necessary to write fanfic with sitcom logic and sensibility, but if you choose to, clearly they should be self-aware of the absurdity.
Compliments - I think this one is an excellent example of the extent to which Kipp and Claude can tolerate niceness between them.
Lydia's Birthday - Under the category of nice but bitchy things Kipp has done for Lydia. They're two peas in a pod, two nasty-tasting peas that enjoy driving other peas out of their pod.
Lydia's Roses - This is the secret Valentine's gift and my clearest crystal version of Kipp, the Secretly Nice.
If you want to see more Less Than Perfect scenes I enjoyed, most of my youtube uploads are Less Than Perfect. You can also check out entries under my less than perfect tag.
2. Final Cut (software) - the programmers
Okay, I'm going to explain what this fandom *is* before I ask for anything because I doubt very much you've been matched with me on it (or maybe you have! when last I looked at the offers list, like, three people had put up for this one, oh my god), but perhaps this will amuse. Final Cut video editing software had an easter egg--if you leave it idle for several hours, Bruce the Yak wanders out onto the timeline. He is a small animated figure that eats grass and spouts speech bubbles filled with quotes that the software engineers spouted during development and programming, which uniformly reveal them to be giant dorks, as one might expect. For your ease and convenience I will be posting a full list of the quotes to my dreamwidth in my dear yuletide writer letter, as lifted from one of FCP's support files. What I want is the story behind some of these quotes. A lot of them are like the punchline to a conversation I wasn't there for, and while most of them are intelligible if you have the right geek knowledge set, I really want a story about those people, those geeks, the ones that made the software and actually said those things. I have no idea what their names are and invite you to completely make them up. Just tell me what they're like, how they ended lamenting the loss of the Oscillation Overthruster or saying "Oops" when things worked.
Right, so, I promised you a full list of quotes. Here we go:
If we can't ship this puppy by then, we might as well be herding yaks.
I'm glad it's getting weird again. I didn't understand it when it wasn't weird.
Wow! This is just like Congress.
Nothing's going to happen for the next month.
Optimist.
Leave me alone. I'm posing for a lawn ornament.
Orp. O r r r p p !
I've solved world hunger. Twice.
I know what I'd do with a single battery.
Dude! Suite!
Dance, puppets!
Whines well with others.
We can at least get a great one act play out of it.
Wait, you can still tell it's a horse.
He wouldn't want one of the ice cream to actually escape.
That's why my tummy feels like it has a hole in it.
It's not that I want things my way, I just want things done correctly.
It's cute, not ironic cute.
It's like knowing how hot dogs are made, you just don't want to... in all cases it gives me indigestion.
Final Cut, the musical!
Sexy? No. Useful? Yes.
To do: 1) write that tool; 2) attach wings to pigs.
I guess programming isn't like the French Riviera... running around naked actually gets you busted.
What, were you expecting "Moo" or something?
This is not a Yak Bite.
Somehow I can't convince myself that this isn't all just one big hack.
At least Spock had stone knives and bear skins!
It's a single malt problems.
Everyone drops it the first time.
OK... who's job is it to write the Flush Wizard?
Controlled evil is not necessarily bad.
Pinky, are you thinking what I'm thinking? I think so, Brain... but can you do that with a Yak?
It's like a gob of peanut butter for the roof of your brain.
Savor the unbridled complexity that we've crafted for you.
Look, there's no such thing as a 'Clacker'!
Don't panic - everything is under control. There is no fire. Have a great day.
Get rid of the spasmic "U".
That's my fault originally, but many others are to blame since.
The disco ball is spinning, but no one's home.
There were many lessons learned during the early years.
That movie had plot holes big enough to drive whole other movies through!
Please refrain from sucking.
I'm highly in favor of putting in code to do stuff.
I want to see lots of deliminators.
Can I get that for free?
Wrong thinking will be punished. Right thinking will be as quickly rewarded.
All right, Who replaced the Oscillation OverThruster with an AutoSyncDetector?
Will, you're scaring the children.
Didn't this used to be purple?
Hellooooo! I'm trying to edit here!
Remember-- thingies are free!
...and so forth and so on...
That and a folded napkin will level a chair.
Oops, It works!
Free drink? That just cost me $200!
Don't lick your zipper.
I went to pull it out and it was like three feet long.
Kinda cool; kind of a hack. Like so much of this business.
Salad is a lot of work!
The opposite of "weird" is "boring".
Do or do not. There is no don't.
Thirty quatloos says it crashes during launch!
Check your Caps Lock key....by an expert. Worse, a committee of experts.
It's in my culture.
Bundle up Toto and let's go!
I have a fix for this but I have to access the danger.
I am a stub! I am a stub!
It's like magic, but it doesn't work as well.
It's like project SETI; "In search of intelligent code."
Nothing I can think of; I'm overwhelmed with stupidity at the moment.
Live young. Die Happy!
No more french fries now, just ice cream.
Some of the code is of drinking age.
Don't you taunt me you cow!
Big fat watermelons of opportunity... really low hanging fruit!
Mint tea plus too much lemon tastes like dirty gym socks.
That sucks like a bucket of ticks.
Option click on the cute fuzzy little kitten.
Aardvarks and breakfast cereals beware the omnivore.
I have an aunt who is a belly dancer in Santa Cruz.
Why do I feel like a dentist pulling teeth on this?
I can see the mothership from here.
There's a disease going around in QA right now. Stay away from those guys.
What? You were expecting a paper clip?
Personally, I _like_ editing under a tree!
We're going to leave the underwear in the tutorial.
Ok, Nobody prints, Nobody gets hurt!
Please hold for the next available consumer.
Cows didn't have dynamite and steam shovels.
This is so lame it hurts.
She's speaking in tongues.
I was the innocent victim of a drive by coding.
It's all wired up... we just have to turn it on.
Where's the 'Poof' manager?
It's the international symbol for "Your zipper's open".
There exists, but you can't get there from here.
There was a memo?
That's a little too non-virtual for this group.
These buttons are... Bonk with Wrench, I Love Lightning, and Enjoy Fireworks from Lakefront.
It also doesn't read French novels.
I am SO 29.97 all the way!
Well, and 7 is more than 6.
Two "its" can be a "them".
I assume you stayed away from the snapping turtles in the pool.
I've been here before
More lizards, fewer bugs.
It's not awful by some of our standards.
I speak for us, all three of me.
With a rotary attachment like that it's already interesting to me.
That's the pain that keeps on giving.
Am I going to get killed if I walk through here?
I've got a slimy stick
The yellow snow ones have been really popular.
The teeth marks, you know, they just don't say squirrel.
Did we just have an HR moment?
We're still almost done again.
You'll notice a lack of crystal balls in this office.
We have a plan, we just need to tackle him.
It's hard to be mad in fuzzy slippers.
Do you have an chickens that you want to sacrifice at this tim?
Exploding trail mix strikes again.
Someone barfed performance all over our shoes.
Call it art and buy a frame.
Are we letting him modify code?
All through art school... I was clean!
If you'd filmed it right the first time, you wouldn't have to cut it.
I don't think I was tall enough to get on this ride.
The answer is violence.
Programatically generated violence?!?
Stimulants for everyone.
I have enough seeding in my life. I don't need them in my grapes.
What's next for our headless friend?
They're too busy rioting.
All of our balls are effectively juggled.
But they looked cute online.
It's not like you put it in your mouth.
Once you change how you think it makes sense.
Are headless yak bites appropriate for younger viewers?
So maybe you can tell me how this is supposed to work?
Is Marketing under NDA?
I'm sooo a rock star already.
Why does feature creep have to sound so ominous?
You know they were peeing in the pond and now no one wants to drink.
Stop messing with the tail of my stuffed animal.
Drop ribs, not frames.
Holy shh...oes!
If we're not going to do it we should do it now. If we are going to do it we should wait.
I'd be less concerned if it weren't for the squeeling animal sound that preceded it.
Just put a fresh diaper on it and ship it!
Who is Mark Good anyway?
He's kind of middle-aged, but he might not have a head.
Semi-transparent hangover.
Your brothers and sisters still exist when you aren't on the phone with them.
That's a better finger than all five.
It's easy to rock when you're in a great band.
The best thing about living in San Francisco is that you have time to make a full build on your way home.
Understanding threads in a C++ world is like getting a root canal.
This is terribly unsatisfying.
It's far more satisfying if you throw it at someone.
That would be better on a hot dog bun.
The C switch statement: Mmmmmm! Chock full of nooses!
That would be like crossing the streams or something.
Mmmm... Chicago style pizza!
I've got my blankie, I'm good to go.
A lot of this job is mental.
"Mostly clockwise, sometimes reverses..."
What's the sound of one luma clamping?
I just wanna be in the app!
Oh, rough and woeful music which we have! Cause it to sound!
The Yak is a delightful creature... rather like a visit with a bovine Confucious
Nobody might know anything.
I don't know, somehow it just works.
How do you tempt a Yak?
Chocolate covered espresso beans!
We're not the engineers you're looking for. Move along, move along.
The little cartoon man is messing with my head!
Speed kills, but sync maims.
It's compatible with it's legacy.
Twix bars: A brand-new bad habit!
Many Yaks were exploited during the creation of this product.
I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of nuclear weapons in this product.
I'm concerned because the cow sounded pretty threatening.
I am NOT a mad cow!
I don't care who's on the other end of the phone... Hang it up!
I have deniable plausibility.
Note to the galley: Romulan Cosmos no longer to be served on school nights!
Carrot and a footprint.
Asteriskified?
Where's a single Yak to go now that the Edit Bar is gone?
Aaargh, I forgot to pay the rent!
When you have a car that's that uncool, you just gotta drive stupid.
Did it happen with yesterday's umbrella?
When can I do color correction by the pool?
Are you filling his head with chocolate?
The lights going off at midnight, it's almost like a slap in the face... Hey, stupid, it's tomorrow!
Yeah, that's covered under item #152.
I was probably the last one to see him alive.
We're not play'in poker here.
All I want for Christmas is a stack trace!
Think PIKE!
Don't look at me. They're not my flying monkeys.
What, were you expecting "Moo" or something?
This is not a Yak Bite.
You can call me Bruce the Wonder Yak.
I once made a shirt to wear to vividcon that featured a graphic of Bruce the Yak and the quote, "What's the sound of one luma clamping?" I had a hard time picking one hilarious quote, I have a lot of favorites, but I picked that one out for that venue because it's specifically a video editing joke. I don't know how relevant vidders found it, though, because mostly footage we get from TV to vid from doesn't have luma clamping problems, it's already been rendered broadcast safe. Hi, I also work in production and have dealt with HD footage fresh from a camera that did have excess luma issues. I think my point here is I'm a giant dork and I want to read about giant dorks? A lot of these require google for me to figure out why they're funny--I know lots about editing, little about programming. Please bear that in mind and explicate the programming background where necessary.
3. Raines
The best thing about this show was how his profiles called him out on making broad assumptions off of little details. I love the sequence in the pilot when his vision of the victim asks him why she's drinking and smoking despite him not having found booze or cigarettes in her apartment, just because he found out she was a prostitute; asks him why his mental image of a prostitute is the way it is. This is such a challenging thing; a part of Raines will leap to a conclusion of what this person was like, based on race or gender or job, the same kind of assumptions everyone makes, but then another part of Raines, the part he's personifying as the profile, will make him re-examine and take apart why evidence A implies conclusion B in his thought process, and why it shouldn't. So--write me a casefic. Build me a character from the ground up and talk about the associations we make, the stereotypes we assume, and how unfounded they are, or how lacking in complexity. Make this smart and psychological. I think it would also be fun to have the psychiatrist involved, but that would totally be gravy.
Okay so for those of you playing along at home, Raines was a short-lived show where the titular character, played by Jeff Goldblum, is a profiler who is going around the bend and hallucinating people he profiles. The hallucination's personality becomes more detailed and refined the more Raines finds out. He knows this is all in his head, it's not ghosts, and the profiles will often tell him, "Well of course I couldn't tell you that, you didn't know it," because everything comes from his own knowledge. He's also carrying around his dead partner in this manner, and generally freaking his coworkers out.
This is the clip with the prostitute I was talking about in my request.
If you don't have a clue what kind of character to build, maybe a queer one? There's all kinds of societal expectations built around different kinds of queer, and most of them are horseshit. I'm queer (mostly lesbian, and poly to boot) so that would interest me--but if you don't think you can handle that, try something else. Maybe something closer to you. What assumptions do people make about you based on your job or your hair or your clothes or your sex or your race or your faith or your age or your body? How many of those assumptions are totally wrong? Here's a great opportunity to spork them.
Beyond fandoms: what I like.
I realized that I didn't put any pairings in any of these, so I should probably say here, I'm mostly a slasher. But I also read gen, and I also read het (and I also read femslash, although I had to remind myself to add it as a separate category, because I tend to assume "slash" swings both ways), and I also like threesomes etc. (I kind of think this is unlikely to come up with this request set, but, my favorite threesome configuration is M/M/F--Mommy and Daddy and Daddy's boyfriend!) I don't, usually, read smut, though. I'll read stories with smut in them but I tend to skim past it. Unless there's important characterization to be had in the sex, I'd druther a fade to black.
And, seriously, gen is totally fine too. (I'll note again that I didn't put any pairings on these. Heh.)
I like humor. I like crack. (If you had any desire to take a standard crack or AU trope like Age of Sail or Egyptology or Genderswap or Wingfic or With Dragons and drop it on any of these fandoms, I think I would probably die laughing. But I'm totally a fifth-wave fan; if you're going to do something like that, commit to it, invest in the detail and treat it seriously, because that's how it becomes seriously awesome.) I like irony and snark and gallows humor. I like plot. I like fluff. I hesitate to call the kind of wallowing I do with angst "like" but I do enjoy it. (I enjoy it more if everyone's dealing with angst by snarking off. Did I mention I like snark?) I like it when I read the dialogue and it sounds so true that I can hear the characters saying it in my head. I like smart. I like it when characters are smart and I like it when plots are smart and I like it when stories answer questions, and when they pose them. (This is probably related to my enjoyment of science fiction in its speculative mode, but also to my enjoyment of fanfiction as a way to fill in the blanks canon leaves, explain things left hanging.)
I've put this in two previous yuletide letters so I think I'll keep it as a tradition:
In someone's commentary on the Etiquette of Yuletide, there was mention of the struggle some authors have between fulfilling exactly a detailed request, and writing a good story. It is my feeling that this should never be an issue. If you are struggling between writing a crappy story to my specifications and writing a good story that throws them out the window, for God's sake, write me a good story.
Thank you.
~juls
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