Off the prompt "cuddles."

Hey, it's a yuletide letter. Let's start with my requests. I figure you probably only matched me on one of these, since they are all pretty damn rare (two of them aren't in the archive at all), so in case for whatever reason my prompt for what you matched me on doesn't fill you with joy, I will tell you about the other ones so you can contemplate picking up a new fandom (they're all book fandoms--reading a couple of novels shouldn't be too time-consuming should it?)

Dancing Meteorite and Stolen Law - Anne Mason
Kira Warden

( my prompt details )

( more about these books )

Perilous Gard - Elizabeth Marie Pope
Gwenhyfara, Kate Sutton, Cecily Heron

( my prompt details )

( more about this book )

Harbinger Trilogy - Diane Duane
Delde Sota

( my prompt details )

( more about these books )

About my requests in general:

You may have noticed, all of my requests are for female characters. I like male characters from these stories, but I don't want to see them central, I want stories about my favorite girls. I think it would be awesome if you wrote me a story that passed Bechdel, though of course that depends on who you choose to have my gals interact with--Kira on a Vallusian explorer ship is going to have a hard time passing Bechdel, I know!

Cultural differences are relevant to all of these stories--with more awareness in the science fiction, more darkness in the historical fantasy. I like the world-building of each, the development of the different cultures, and I think in any story you write me from any of these books, the culture each character comes from and how it shapes her is going to be an important part of the story. There's a richness of cultural context, of characters that come from societies, that I treasure here. Even if you end up writing a PWP for a pairing or threesome I pitched, write me the characters coming together in a way that shows who they are, how they're shaped by their backgrounds. That stuff's sexy! (Cultural baggage is sexy. Hang on, where is my twitter...)(That's... yes. I tweet to mock myself. You should know that about me. decontextual, if you want to watch me mock myself in real time.)

While I like a variety of genres, I really feel like which fandom you write for me is going to dictate genre, so I hesitate to just be like "I like crack!" or whatever. Like, I feel like a Perilous Gard story about Gwenhyfara is necessarily going to be at least a little dark. A Dancing Meteorite/Stolen Law story... well, depending on what story, I suppose it could range! But I'd think it would be more light-hearted. And with a Harbinger story about Delde Sota, I'd want it to be funny, I'd want her sense of humor to color it, whether it's light or dark humor.

Thank you very much for writing me a story! I'm looking forward to Yuletide.
~Juls

Astonishingly, I have posted a yuletide letter in a timely fashion. Like, before assignments go out, even!

This year I requested a bunch of books--Dancing Meteorite and Stolen Law, which are YA scifi, Perilous Gard, which is YA historical fantasy (a retelling of Tam Lin), and the Harbinger Trilogy, which is RPG tie-in scifi by Diane Duane, who makes everything she touches awesome.

All my requested characters are female characters this year! And all my fandoms are tiny, some to the point of non-existence! Although I saw someone else had requested Dancing Meteorite and Stolen Law when I was checking the list for what to offer, doing my sign-up. So I am kind of excited that someone knows what the hell those are and there's an outside chance of two stories for the fandom!

Lists are almost as good as doing things. Because lists help me figure out what to do.

house
--cooking food. I've decided the cooking of food, esp for immediate/next day eating, counts as doing things around the house. Relatedly, the dishes
--taking books back to main library (since this will also clean up the back room a lot)
--laundry
--building the CD shelves
--taking trash and/or recycling out
--mopping/vacuuming
--mending clothes

stab the cat
--go to bank and set up checking account
--go to camera place to look at potential equipment
--budget spreadsheet
--clothes sorting for costume budget
--lyric writing and storyboarding
--pulling the particle accelerator .wavs for sampling
--location scouting
--building the landsail

writing
--I don't know what to put here other than writing. It just needs to get done. I mean, I could list stories, but that doesn't seem useful
--although I was considering writing up things about my yuletide fandoms now as I reread them. btw this year: all out of print books. And possibly Girl Genius as the safety

vidding
--get lyrics and music to n and d for glee vid
--video n and d singing glee vid for lip sync reference
--get clean copies of Enterprise blooper reels for T'Pol adorbs
--...possibly reacquire Enterprise vidding copies. damn it
--force self to rewatch Adam Worth episodes
--finish cleaning the TV ads out of the s1 Sanctuary clips
--and also I just have to sit down and vid

homework
--NOTHING RIGHT NOW
--although possibly I should talk to my advisor. DNW.

In the last week I:

--finished my yuletide
--finished a pinch hit
--embroidered oven mitts for a coworker
--celebrated a friend's birthday
--got all my holiday shopping finished
--got all my holiday baking finished
--got all presents handed or sent to their recipients
--worked
--survived Christmas Day with a usual amount of breakdown
--helped a couple of friends get all the crap out of their apartment for moving
--sold them the king size bed
--got them awake and actually heading towards Cali
--went to Ikea for sofa bed
--built, with niq, her giant table and my sofa bed (we have conquered the Ikea!)
--saw Tron
--did not kill my family
--registered for a winter session class

not necessarily in that order.

I did not, however, work on my festivid. I was not expecting the moving and Ikea'ing to be part of my weekend, so.

I am considering going back to Ikea just now actually...

Placeholder.

12/7/10--I see my requests went to pinch hit, sorry to my original writer, and dear new writer: Hi! Thank you for stepping up to bat! I have been a failcakes about elaborating on this entry but I promise to do so by this weekend.


12/12/10--
Okay, I like a lot of stuff, but in the interest of keeping this short enough that I might actually finish it--I think the most important thing to me in fanfiction is the recognizability of the characters. For me, when I'm writing, I know I'm nailing it when I can hear their voices in my head.

I should also say that I consider myself primarily a slasher so it was sort of with bemusement that I looked back and noticed I may have requested het. Like, twice even. Look, if you write het it's cool! I do read het! But as something that may be relevant: I'm queer, I'm interested in the queering of characters and of even het relationships (just because it's a boy and a girl doesn't mean their relationship has to be heteronormative), and I'm also poly, so like, in Girl Genius this is particularly relevant, since the castle ships threesome? But yes.

And I am also interested in the conceits of these stories, I'm interested in exploring what happens because of the odd rules of the universe. I'm interested in Freya BECAUSE she's a telepath, I'm interested in Agatha BECAUSE she's a spark, I'm interested in Wishbone because... because he's a dog who likes literature, and you have to ask yourself, Self, how did that dog even learn how to read? What if Wishbone's been stealing books out of Joe's backpack for years? What if Wishbone sneaks off to the library because his tastes have expanded beyond Joe's? What if there's a librarian who orders special oversize copies of books for Wishbone because it's easier for him to turn the pages? Wow. I had no idea that was in my head. *cracking up* But, see, that's the kind of thing that interests me. The what-if, the how does this work, the if-this-does-that, then-what-are-the-effects-of-THAT?

I don't even know if that was coherent.

Happy yuletiding!


My requests:


Thoughtcrimes--I like this movie a lot, and it was originally a pilot for a tv series (too *bad,* I could have watched Navi Rawat and Joe Flanigan smoke up my screen for years) so if you've something in mind for their continuing adventures together that would be neat. I was also really startled and pleased that this movie passed Bechdel--I'd like to see Freya repairing her relationship with her sister June. Is Freya's telepathy genetically inherited? Maybe June has something less debilitatingly strong in onset but, you know, surprisingly good intuition or something, or maybe she doesn't, but maybe she knows about their crazy aunt or grandmother or something. That could be very interesting. I also have thoughts about the ethics of the whole using telepathy in law enforcement business, and while for Freya it's just who she is, she can't turn it off, I suspect that for Brendan, because he flipped at her reading his mind initially, he might find it troubling--recognizes the utility, worries at the rightness.

Girl Genius--I think it would be really neat to hear more Heterodyne Boys stories, whether told by the girl with the Mary Sue her brothers complain at but that reminds her mother of her own, or as a performance by the Circus--I really like the conceit of story within story, of stories that tell you something about the storytellers. I would be interested to see Agatha's take on Lucrezia these days--does she play her as an insane bitch or does she have some wistful, wanting hope about once-upon-a-time Lucrezia who wasn't out to enslave and zombify everyone, even her own daughter?

Wishbone--Okay, so I had this hilarious idea--Wishbone does awesome scifi. Wishbone does Bujold's Vorkosigan--we've finally found an actor short and energetic enough to play Miles! Wishbone does Dune, or, hahaha, Left Hand of Darkness, or Cherryh's Cyteen, or 2001: A Space Odyssey--you have no idea how much I am cracking up right now at the mental image of Wishbone in a bubble spacesuit helmet looking into the artifact seeing the universe fly by. Almost as much as I cracked up at Wishbone!Vorkosigan when I first thought of that. I mean, the tricky part would be how does Wishbone relate this to the lives of Joe and Sam and David, but yes, this idea fills me with laughter.

I finally wrote a yuletide letter. (Fandoms: Thoughtcrimes, Girl Genius, Wishbone)

So: I'm tired and depressed. Not depressed in the way that impacts my ability to enjoy the things I can do, like read novels and hang out with niqaeli, just depressed in the way that keeps me from getting things done, like writing or computer repair or dealing next semester or family or laundry. I should probably write another to-do list and have a go at it. My uterus finally rebooted anyway; note to self: five months is a little long, and since you KNOW you skip when you're stressed, you should probably have taken the hint and dumped some stress sooner.

I have not finished clipping for festivids.

I have not started writing for yuletide.

I have a lot of scenes of the (oh god) four semi-nano stories in my head, but very little is filtering down to the keyboard.

There is a kitten. Her name is Mia.

Attempting to generate requests (which is the hardest part of yuletide for me)

Lilo & Stitch
Sorcerer's Apprentice
Thoughtcrimes
Girl Genius
Wishbone
A Tale of Time City
Damar
Hexwood

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 )

( 2. Final Cut (software) - the programmers )

( 3. Raines )



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

(prof unbent slightly re illness and asked for documentation. I emailed him a scan of the paperwork from my most recent doctor visit. And he emailed me back in a timely fashion, and has accepted my exam with no late penalty, praise be.)

Initial Yuletide offer list is 128 fandoms long and includes things like the Canterbury Tales. I think my next step shall be to lop off things with double digit worth of offers (unless I'm really, really feeling them). Well! That skimmed it down by a hundred (but Chaucer is still on the list, just barely, heh), so I think I'm set for my offer list. I think I shall go ahead and offer any for all, despite some misgivings. I always find that when I want to offer some characters for a fandom, it's really "all of them except this one," and you can only select four to offer, and it doesn't quite seem fair to lop off the rest of them to avoid the one. (Ballard, I am looking at you. If I get a Dollhouse request with Ballard specified, I will be acquiring a new fandom from one of my recipient's other requests.)

Right, that's done. And now I shall put it out of my mind and wait see what I get, rather than cultivate plot bunnies or starting rereading canons.

And now: my televisions (oh my god, how did I end up watching this many first-run shows):

( for some reason echan thought I wouldn't like the last half of this Supernatural )

( What gets me about White Collar )

( It should of course surprise everyone that Merlin is a witch. )

( Flashforward bores me )

yulevid

I am pretty sure it would be insane of me to sign up. Especially since they're talking about a one month turnaround, and I'll be writing up a storm.

So I have been shamefacedly watching a few-years-old sitcom called "Less Than Perfect" because Zachary Levi is in it and I have been in Chuck withdrawal. If you want to see bits without subjecting yourself to whole episodes, I've been uploading a (mostly Kip-tastic) selection of clips to youtube (Kip being Zachary Levi's character).

This is a sitcom. It's driven by Idiot Ball more than my usual run of cheese. It hurts me often but fannishness has been creeping up in various ways. I considered asking for Less Than Perfect for yuletide. I even thought of what I would ask for (it's Kip-related. surprise). I was thinking about vidding it, because it would be less painful than trying to write it.

But I've just found the pairing I like for it. *headdesk* This is terrible.

Quick rundown of what this show is about: ( Read more... )

I've come to the terrible conclusion that my pairing of choice is Lydia/closetedgay-denialy!Kip. ( Read more... )

You see the myriad ways in which this is horrible and it pains me to contemplate writing.

Okay! I have written 1147 words on Yuletide C and though it is not done, that is enough for me to take a break and write something else.

So: 409 words of Torchwood. My revenge on the Gwen/Owen shippers, I suppose. Also on AO3.

( Aliens. )

Inequality (flashfic)--a very, very last-minute pinch-hit in Ocean's 11 fandom, because I was hanging around in the IRC channel and asked elynross if I could help. Linus's look at Rusty and Danny.

Distant, Petshop of Horrors. Leon and D in epistolary format.

The Story of Thomas Piper (As Told by Thomas Lynn), Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock, which is a modern-day Tam Lin story. Polly asks Tom how he got tangled up with the Fairie Queen to begin with, and he doesn't quite tell her.