It's a magical world

For Yuletide 2018 I picked up a pinch hit on the list in a wild burst of optimism and hubris when I saw the fandom, The Box of Delights. For those who haven't read John Masefield's classic Christmas fantasy, it's wild, though somehow not quite as wild as its predecessor, The Midnight Folk. Both are available from the NYRB Classics line, and I highly recommend them.

Somehow despite the fact that this was the first fic under the TV tag, it has proven fairly popular for such a tiny fandom. Happy Yuletide to us all.


I finished the book on New Year's Eve 2016, so to refresh my memory I queued up the 1980s BBC adaptation of the book on YouTube, which was helpful in that it clarified the class status of the characters. Reading merriman's letter, I realized that crossing the story over with Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series would solve all of my plot problems, with the nice addition that I am pretty sure Masefield influenced Cooper. I had originally wanted to make this a stealth triple crossover with the Wimsey novels (T9T shares some thematic elements with The Box of Delights, actually), but that proved ungainly--though Merriman and Wimsey do both drive Daimlers. On the other hand, you may also recognize a few elements from The Magician's Nephew; that was deliberate. So was the fact that I ignored the book's cop-out ending, though I think after having read The Midnight Folk I am more inclined to the interpretation that it all having been a dream doesn't mean it wasn't real.

Really, though, I cannot recommend tossing Merriman, the Lady and the Rider into your story enough as a strategy to solve your plot problems. What is the Lady doing lying in a barrow under a berm? Who knows and who cares! They are in all times as they need to be. And Maria Jones is a treat to write. If I had actually read The Midnight Folk before writing this fic, I would have done more with her own magical origins (she and her family were some of Kay's toys originally, probably? WILD), but alas, I had not. 

I thought this was the only story I had written this year, but I forgot that I had written a brief Star Wars Rebels coda by way of an ROTJ coda earlier this year when Rebels finished.


Despite my diminished output over the past few years, I have not been idle on the fanfic front in 2018. I wrote nearly 80K of an epic Star Wars fic, and my main goal for 2019 is to get it finished and posted. May the Force be with us all in our endeavors.

Yuletide fics have been revealed! My wonderful author was lc2l, who wrote me this lovely post-canon Nimona fic.


As for me, I wrote for Captive Prince; I have a much longer fic CP in pieces all over my Scrivener floor, and I'm hoping to post it eventually, at which point this will be something of a prologue.


As for me, it's back to the Festivids mines. 明けましておめでとうございます！

Okay, so we're doing this.

First, thank you so much for participating in Yuletide this year! Second, thank you for agreeing to write a story in a fandom we both love, or at least remember fondly. I'm genuinely interested to see what caught other fans' interests about all of these sources, so please don't feel that my prompts are too binding. I'd rather have an inspired story than slavish devotion to my requests. If you're looking for more of a sense of me and my tastes, skimming through the last twenty entries on my DW will probably give you a good idea; most of the entries in general are unlocked.

I hesitate to say what I do or don't like in fic--I don't have any major squicks, and no firm principles as to what I will or won't read. That said, it's my general sentiment that Yuletide is not the place to go looking for PWP, at least for me; which isn't to say that I wouldn't want sexytimes, as it were, in any story you write, but which is to say that I generally like my sexytimes to go along with plot and characterization. And as you may have guessed from these requests, I do really like women being awesome. In some ways, really, my own fics demonstrate both these preferences very well.

( Peter Wimsey, Nimona, Solar System anthropomorfic )
I hope you can find enough information in here or in the fandoms to inspire you, Yuletide writer. Thank you so much!

My Yuletide authors were snow (Paper Dreams, Escapist) and jadelennox (Wishing you a peaceful future from the earthlings). Thank you both so much!

For Yuletide this year I wrote something that I think was actually somewhat predictable:

The Lost Revolution (4258 words) by starlady
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Gullstruck Island | The Lost Conspiracy - Frances Hardinge
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Hathin, Minchard Prox, Tomki (Gullstruck Island)
Additional Tags: Revolution
Summary: The Lost Revolution, and how it came to pass.

A huge, huge thank-you goes out to ellen_fremedon, who beta-read my draft at very nearly the eleventh hour and told me what I had suspected but hadn't wanted to hear, that it needed to be much longer and that I actually needed to show, you know, the actual revolution in question. The story is much stronger for her comments, seriously.


Yuletide having been revealed, it's time for the End of Year Fanworks meme! 2013 was another fallow year in most respects, but here it goes anyway.

X-Men: First Class
[WIP] Sweeter Than Honey, Your Eyes - There are many ancient Rome AUs; this one is mine. Okay, by "many" I mean about five, and most of them including mine don't meet the request in this particular kinkmeme comment, which I will admit made me laugh. I actually have most of this story plotted out, and I do intend to finish it; but it's also me looking head-on at some of my own tastes in XMFC fic, and in my own way trying to make a little restitution. It's also been a very enjoyable excuse to read up on Roman sexuality and other aspects of Roman society. My ancient urban Rome seminar got a lot more interesting after I started writing this fic, that's for sure.

Five-Minute Studies - Hello, my past and current lives! Chapter one is a grad student AU and chapter two is a string quartet AU. I at one point had most of a Philadelphia Orchestra AU worked out in my head, and while I'm not sure I'll ever write it, it was fun writing the string quartet one in particular. I love playing music.

The Most Sincere Patch - I like to think I'm getting better at writing short fic, but really I have no way of knowing. This one was inspired by tumblr (as was the Roman AU) and it makes me smile. Charles and Erik meet cute at a Halloween party. 'Nuff said.

Frances Hardinge
The Fractured Realms
Paragon's Tale - I love Frances Hardinge's books, and in particular I love the Fractured Realms books. This fic, a tag for Paragon after the end of Twilight Robbery, is something of a love letter to the books--I did my best to try to capture some of the same rhythms of Hardinge's language, and I also did my fallback Yuletide trick of setting my fic at solsticetide. It makes me happy.

Gullstruck Island
The Lost Revolution - In previous years I have sometimes made it my practice to offer as a Yuletide fandom a source I have not previously consumed. My Pillow Book Yuletide story of 2010, Bangai (Apocrypha), was one such effort; I hadn't previously read The Pillow Book before I got assigned the request for the exchange. In this year's case, I had Gullstruck Island sitting unread on my shelf, and I signed up late enough in the exchange that to be quite honest, some careful scrutiny of the sign-ups list allowed me to game the system to some extent--I offered the book with a strong feeling that I might get matched on it, and in the event, that is how it turned out. I was able to read the book with my recipient's letter in the back of my mind, which isn't a bad way to read; the rest of it was just a matter of finding time to write, and then of nearly doubling the word count of the story when Ellen gave me her comments. I'm very pleased with the final result, and very grateful to Ellen for telling me what I needed to hear.

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
[vid] 雙女｜Double Woman - This is probably the thing I did this year that I am proudest of, an auction vid for oyceter, who asked for a vid about Shangguang Jing'er and Wu Zetian being awesome. I learned Premiere Pro and learned to do more with After Effects to make this vid, and I think that work shows very well in the vid.


( Questions and answers )

Next year: Keep calm and keep making fanworks!

My recipient and I appear to have very similar tastes in fic, and also in fandoms and fandom opinions. I actually offered a few "stretch" fandoms this year, in that they were canons I haven't consumed but wanted to, and this request gives me the option of doing one of them, or possibly another one I'd have to review. Either way, I'm excited! 

My Yuletide authors were infiniteeight and greerwatson. Thank you both so much!

For Yuletide this year I wrote something completely different:

…And a Song for Minneapolis (2541 words) by starlady
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dessa (Musician)
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Characters
Summary: The little mystic and his handler grow up.

With a huge shout-out to laceblade and oliviacirce for beta-reading on very short notice. I'm pleased with this story, but the song contains multitudes, and this is only one of them.

Yuletide being made known, it's time for the End of Year Fanworks meme! 2012 was kind of a fallow year for me in this regard, but here's the list anyway:

Fic I Wrote
The Wallmaker's Carol, The Old Kingdom Chronicles (New Year's Resolutions 2012)
Wages (The Only In Our Dreams Remix), X-Men: First Class
Nothing on Earth of Interest (Seeds of the Melon), Sherlock Holmes steampunk AU/The Singsong Girls of Shanghai
Worthy Opponents, Sengoku Jidai RPF (Kaleidoscope 2012)
…And A Song For Minneapolis, Dessa songs (Yuletide 2012)

This doesn't count the two XMFC WIPs that I am very slowly and torturously working on, and in point of fact "Nothing on Earth of Interest" is listed as the first chapter of a WIP, but I'm putting it up here because it can be read as complete in itself and I like it. All told, including the WIP chapters that are up on the Archive, I'm at about 25,000 words for the year. That is shockingly low for me, and I'm not really happy about it.

Vid I Made
Starman, Prometheus (2012)

( Questions and answers )

Well, we've watched Muppet Christmas Carol, A Christmas Story, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and are currently smack-talking our way through Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I forgot that RPatz and Ten are in this one! Why was RPatz hanging out in the tree? Oh Harry, everything you don't know is going to try to kill you and everyone you love!

We also made gingerbread redshirts and had the traditional Christmas cheese fondue, and I got some really great books and bird wine glass markers for presents. I also got a Yuletide story! Our house internet is on the fritz every other minute, so I've done very little reading in the collection beyond my own story, which is great.

From the Past Comes Your Calling (2829 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
Rating: Mature
Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Characters: Hansel, Gretel
Summary: Set pre-movie. After escaping from the candy house as children, Hansel and Gretel had to concentrate on surviving on their own. But eventually fate reminds them that there's more than one witch in the world.

I submitted this request on a lark, and it paid off quite handsomely! This is a vivid and action-packed look at how Hansel and Gretel start to become who they are. I loved it.

Merry Christmas and/or a Happy Yuletide to all those who are celebrating, and to all, a good night!

Dear Yuletide writer,

First, thank you so much for participating in Yuletide this year! Second, thank you for agreeing to write a story in a fandom we both love, or at least remember fondly. I'm genuinely interested to see what caught other fans' interests about all of these sources, so please don't feel that my prompts are too binding. I'd rather have an inspired story than slavish devotion to my requests. If you're looking for more of a sense of me and my tastes, skimming through the last twenty entries on my DW will probably give you a good idea; most of the entries in general are unlocked.

I hesitate to say what I do or don't like in fic--I don't have any major squicks, and no firm principles as to what I will or won't read. That said, it's my general sentiment that Yuletide is not the place to go looking for PWP, at least for me; which isn't to say that I wouldn't want sexytimes, as it were, in any story you write, but which is to say that I generally like my sexytimes to go along with plot and characterization. And as you may have guessed from these requests, I do really like women being awesome. In some ways, really, my own fics demonstrate both these preferences very well.

( Looper, Olympics Opening Ceremony, Hansel and Gretel - Witch Hunters, Flower Fairies )

Taken all together, these seem sort of random, and I guess they are; for me the fun of Yuletide is just as much in the giving as in the receiving. I hope the same goes for you, and that you can find something in here to tickle your fancy.

♥,
Me

Some disclaimers: These are in no particular order other than alphabetical. Chromatic recs will be a separate set. I have many more tabs open; there will be more recs later.

Fandoms: Bagthorpe Saga, Captain America/various, Don Giovanni, Hark! A Vagrant, Historical/literary RPF, Indiana Jones, Inspector Spacetime, Madelyn Mack, Magic Schoolbus, Mary Poppins/Doctor Who, Octopus Steals My Video Camera…, Old Kingdom Chronicles, Queen's Thief, The Sandbaggers/James Bond, St. Trinian's, The Secret of Kells, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Wars: Thrawn Trilogy, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, Vienna Teng songs, Young Wizards


( 36 recs in 20+ fandoms )

Home in Jersey! With the combined powers of my sister we are well on our way to making Christmas happen in ~4 days. One of these days I will remember that no chain restaurant here can properly dress arugula. 

Yuletide status: Can't Must sleep, bears will eat me.  

Happy Hannukah, all.