elisem | Entries tagged with yuletide

I have met the deadline and posted the thing! Now we just have the week between today and Reveal Day, also known as "the week where I find all the hidden typos and fix them." Main Collection Reveal Day for the fics is the 24th, and is followed by Author Reveals on January 1.

This year was more work than previous years, for a very particular reason. I got COVID for the first time in October, and while I got very lucky (Paxlovid turns out to work for me, yay!), I am so easily drained to exhaustion, by pretty much anything including brain work, which has never been this bad before. Also, I'm used to multitasking, and hoo boy do I need different strategies and approaches now.

I'm planning for a very long recuperation, since it looks like that's the smart way to go. But here we are, and today is a milestone day. The story is a story, and it's posted, and now I can catch up a little on my Etsy shop (I hardly posted anything new while writing) and my eBay offers (I'm selling most of a half-century's worth of queer and related subjects library, since I'm not a working journalist any more and somebody really should get use out of these books and periodicals).

It's been a long time. I had forgotten the peculiar satisfaction that comes with meeting a deadline.

Yes, I am cutting it close. I blame getting COVID Halloween week, and having to rest like a potato. Which I am still doing, but I have advanced to the stage of literate potato. I hope. Because this thing is due in, what, fifty-some hours?

Anyhow, I came here to post that I have reached the milestone in writing the current draft where I just reread a section and said out loud, "OK, so there are actually a few bits in here that aren't completely shitful." Like, it's a known milestone. So that's encouraging.

Onward.

(Yes, that's why nothing new is in the shop this week. I have been on a schedule of sleep, write, sleep, write, with meds and basic necessities in there as needed. Not enough oomph left to photograph new work and still write and edit. Potato has limited spoonage here. But Potato is too proud to default on Yuletide. Please point people to go shop in the Etsy shop, though. Potato is fretting about this being a rough December for so many artists. Oh! Remind me to tell you about Boxing Day, which is going to be completely bonkers in a new way.)

Dear Yuletide Writer,

First, thank you for signing up and offering things. Yuletide is something to look forward to every year, so thank you for keeping it going!

Here are my requests and a little bit about what I like about them and what might be interesting points of departure -- but please, if you have a better idea than any of the prompts or notions I listed, go for it. Do what your writerly heart wants you to do, and I will happily go along for the ride.

Arcadia - Bernard Nightingale, Valentine Coverly, and Hannah Jarvis are great characters. I've been wondering what it might be like to have Hannah be somewhere in ace space; it’s your call if she is also aro, though I confess to being curious about what an ace but not aro Hannah might have to say about the other two and their (unrequited? requited in romance but not sex? whatever works for the fic) desires/feelings toward her (or each other, or whoever). Basically, acerbic and insightful Hannah commentary of any kind will make me pleased, whatever you envision her various aspects to be. Think of the “Pigeons! Literature! Sex!” scene in the play for illustration. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Hannah’s lines there, especially the glorious ranty bits.

Into the Woods - I’m curious about what advice the characters would have to give someone about to go into the woods, and what advice they’d elicit from the other characters (yes, even the ones who died during the play). Any metacommentary from them will delight me. Approach it from any angle you like: compare news stories on the event from a Very Staid Newspaper, and Online Gossip Rag, and whatever publications you like? Or maybe tell it in diary entries where they analyze each other’s motivations and behaviour? Or what do they each write in the Guestbook of the woods, if the woods has a Guestbook for visitors to sign and write their reactions to their journeys into the woods?

Ask a Mortician - Caitlyn Doughty! I love her. I love her snarky humor and her generosity of spirit, as shown in her reaction to the drag queen impersonating her (who was beyond awesome, by the way.) Put her in some unlikely circumstances. Maybe give her a time machine? She does a lot of looks at historical deaths and dispositions; maybe she could do some famous fictional deaths and dispositions, maybe as crossovers even? Set her free to voyage through the possibilities?

It’s funny how / Humans are Space Orcs - I adore this so much that I am completely incoherent about it. Anything you do to expand on this in any way will make me happy. Anything from any angle. Compiled damage reports and analysis files from observing entities and agencies? What department issues warp cores anyhow? What were the side effects of any of the things mentioned? Or what did things look like from the inside? Or are there scholars arguing about. this stuff decades later? You can do whatever, and it will make me glad. Seriously, I love this one so so so much.

The People - Zenna Henderson’s books about the People were a huge part of my adolescence. What have the People been up to lately? Or what were the untold stories from back then? Again, anything at all you do here would thrill me, so don’t be afraid to go wild.

The Waste Land - Again, anything you do will most likely delight me. This poem is fascinating, and the characters must have much to say. Show me how they got here, where they’re going, what any of them might say if asked? Write an AU where they’re all government officials? Or baristas? Or archaologists? Maybe they are offering courses during a summer session, or workshops at a big conference or art retreat? I dunno. Have fun, basically, and go as far afield as you like.

General note: As you have probably noticed, I enjoy metacommentary, epistolary stories, weird narrative, unexpected viewpoints, AU stuff, backstories and what-happened-later stories, and I love reading about what characters think of other characters, how they understand and misunderstand each other. Crossovers are fine with me if that's what lights your fire. I like worldbuilding a lot too. Or you could do collections of drabbles for any of these and make me very happy.

Thank you! I look forward to reading!

This year I signed up for Yuletide instead of missing the deadline (YAAAAYYYY!!!) and now I have my assignment and it is pretty much the best thing I could have hoped for. It's going to require rereading some stories I love a lot (oh, no, not that!) and since one or two of them have escaped from my bookshelves and not come back, I committed book acquisition. Whee!

Do you do Yuletide?

Dear Yuletide Author:

Thank you for writing a Yuletide something for me. I'm pretty much going to be delighted by anything at all, so go ahead and try things you've wanted to try, or do a cozy thing that might seem "too quiet," or whatever else you like, because it will make me happy that you tried a thing.

I have a couple of DO NOT WANTS. They are:

1. Please don't end with a character trapped in a hopeless-feeling situation. (It's odd that I need to say that, but I did get bit by it recently in a story. I'm not the audience for that kind of cliffhanger at all.)

2. Please don't give me non-consensual sexual activity. (Especially as tragic backstory.) Thanks.

3. Do not use a disability or disfigurement to signify that a character is eeeeevil. Thanks.

I have some DO WANTs, or maybe they are DO LIKEs:

1. Stories where characters risk being vulnerable. Maybe only a tiny bit, but a tiny bit can be a big deal sometimes.

2. Ensemble casts and the ways characters communicate to each other and take care of each other.

3. Stories "without enough action" are just fine with me. A set of related drabbles also works fine for me. Stories told in epistolary form, or in a series of quotes, or in a chronological set of museum labels if that's what you got -- whatever you do like that is probably going to make me coo with delight.

4. AU shenanigans, larking about with crossing worlds, breaking the fourth wall, building new walls in order to have the opportunity to break them, crossovers of many sorts, time travel that makes the narrative linear structure all wibbly-wobby: those are all fine with me! Have fun!

5. Characters telling us things we didn't know about them, or how something REALLY happened and why it got told the way it did before. I love stories that make me think about characters in new ways.

6. I like watching writers have fun.

7. I am not afraid of cozy stories and character studies and worldbuilding fics. Bring 'em on! Do whatever you are called to do, however it comes out!

Thank you so much, Yuletide Author. I really appreciate your time and work and imagination.

Love,
LionessElise

Dear Yuletide writer,

Thank you for being part of this, for signing up, and for coming to read this letter. I feel lucky that I got you. Yay! I've done Yuletide several times now, and I am always surprised and delighted when someone writes something for me. Thank you for liking the fandoms and for being up for trying to build something nifty for me to read!

Here are details, but if you are looking for a short summary instead of long format, I would prefer no embarrassment/humiliation, no grimdark just for its own sake, and no non-consensual sex, please. What I do like in fic is slow burn -- in friendship, in lovers, in sex itself - the careful building of something which earns the payoff. And I like characters who are better at the end than they were at the beginning. It's your call what "better" mean. Have fun with it. I know you care about the characters or you wouldn't have signed up, so I trust you, and I am definitely open to being surprised. The thing you write might turn out to be a thing I love and never knew existed.

My name on AO3 is MixolydianGrey. If you look at what I've posted there, I enjoy working with short pieces of fiction, verse, song lyrics, or plays/musicals.

Details:

1. The thing I most love in fic is competent people being competent, or learning to be competent, and learning to know themselves and to connect with other people. It is fine and lovely if this takes a while. (See also "slow burn.")

2. Ensemble casts are awesome. Interactions in groups fascinate me. I adore stories where people build their own families-of-the-heart. If it's complicated and sometimes difficult and requires a leap of faith, I adore it even more.

3. Any rating is fine; if you're inspired to write a glorious boink-fest, go for it. If there's no sex, no romance, whatever, that's fine with me too. Go where the writing takes you.

4. I'd rather not read non-consensual sexual contact in this year's fic, please. Nor embarrassment/humiliation, please. I'm not currently into grimdark, so if you get grim or dark or both, please make sure there's a point to the story beyond just grim and dark, yah? My rather tattered heart thanks you.

5. Um.... I may add more here. Because I live at the crossroads of ADHD Boulevard and Afterthought Avenue. So maybe check back again in a few days, yah?

OK, let's talk fandoms.

Goblin Market - Christina Rosetti

I love fic that turns a story a little bit inside out and shows me something I never knew about the characters. Feel free to move this one anywhere, anytime. (If you wind up writing me a Food Truck AU of this I will utterly bliss out, I confess, but you can stay trad if you like; you should go where your muse takes you, even if it's the original setting. I just mean it's unlikely your muse will take you further than I will go.)

Please have a good time!

Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen (song)

The odder you get with this one, the better, as far as I'm concerned. Throw extra characters in there if you like; cross over with whatever other fandom floats your boat; heck, do the whole thing in limericks as recited by various Tom Stoppard characters if you feel moved to do so.

Or if you want to write something quietly moving, that's all good too.

As long as you love the song, it's all good. Write from that place in your heart. I will love it. Even if it's deliciously cynical around the edges and daringly earnest in the middle. Go for it.

Transients in Arcadia - O. Henry (short story)

O. Henry has a special place in my heart. When I was a kid, before I turned 13, I bought a battered second-hand pile of books for ten cents apiece at a library discard sale. They were volumes from a collected works of O. Henry. They were old books and therefore presumably Actual Literature, and I was allowed to have them. (I grew up a long time ago in a very strict family in a very strict religious community.) O. Henry was where I learned to look at people and try to understand what made them tick, and to not believe everything they told me the first time.

Please write something that plays with the story in ways that might surprise and delight the adult who was that kid. I've long since escaped from the strict places, but could use a little affirmation of what the characters in the story are exploring and accomplishing. Most of all, please write something where the characters love themselves at the end. Thank you. (Other than that, you can put it on a submarine, or set it on the moon, or turn it into a crossover with Eloise at the Plaza, or whatever you like. Go for it!)

Thank you, dear Yuletide writer! Thank you so much! I hope the writing brings you joy too.