Holiday reveals post! (Does this feel spammy to you? Last New Years-y item, I swear.)

So this year for yuletide, I wrote Turn, a Gunnerkrigg Court fic. nextian requested Kat/Annie, which happened to be exactly what I'd been hoping to write. :D I had a lot of fun reviewing the comic, and trying to invent some new crazy Forest stuff that fit with the occasion, without interfering too much with any of the unsolved mysteries in canon. I am . . . not the most dynamic ficcer ever? But I'm pretty happy, overall, with how this came out.

And since yuletart reveals are today, here's my contribution: a Middleman/Umbrella Academy fancomic. bluelittlepig and I matched on four fandoms, so it was a little hard to pick. ;) I went with this combination because I love wacky fanart crossovers, and because there is no Middleman fanart out there. I'm super proud of the piece: I spent two solid weeks on it! (So much Photoshop, oh my god. I barely noticed the bus crawling home at half-speed, the day before Thanksgiving.) I think I may need to start reigning in the background detail a bit, though; that large panel is kind of, er, cluttered.

I had some awesome fannish holidays . . . I'll think of them fondly while I'm wallowing through admissions season at work. /o\ I'm going to try and get those yuletart recs up tonight, but you should really go poke through the whole comm if you get the chance. What an amazing year.

( roundup of this past year's fanartCollapse )

This entry was originally posted at my dreamwidth. If you like, you can comment there (using OpenID)!

Sorry for the spam, bbs, but I thought I might also post some yuletide recs. I haven't managed to get any up before reveals in a few years! (I don't think I'm going to link this in the comm, though - it's kind of flooded.)

These are really pretty random. I haven't read anything in the Madness collection yet, and I haven't read everything in all of these fandoms, either. I was just clicking at random for awhile there, though I did read straight through most of the Leverage fic at one point.

Fandoms: Alleluia (Dar Williams), Arcadia, Arthurian Legends, Being Human, Castle Waiting, Dykes To Watch Out For, Eastwick, Fried Green Tomatoes, Gunnerkrigg Court, Jeeves & Wooster, Leverage, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away), and Victor/Victoria.

( 18 Yuletide Recs!Collapse )

I'm not sure I'll keep posting recs - I'm hoping to get my full recs pages set up on dreamwidth fairly soon, so I'll just stick yuletide stuff in there as I go. On the other hand, I definitely plan to do some yuletart recs this time (post-reveal, though, because I'm not caught up yet). :)

My family's getting ready to head across state to visit my grandmother in her nursing home, rather than our usual cozy lingering over presents in our PJs. (My mother is worried about the weather tomorrow. IDK. It's a good thing to do anyway. :)) So I must be brief.

Merry Christmas, darling flisters, to those of you who celebrate it! (And to the rest of you - I hope you have a really awesome day. ♥)

Check out what I found in my stocking: Glories Stream, a delightfully sexy and irreverent look at Heaven, based on Dar Williams's "Alleluia." I am absolutely thrilled with it! The tags list alone almost made me crack up out loud (which would have caused awkward questions from my family) .

Also, I see that someone else has written for the same prompt I did, which is also exciting - it's a fandom/pairing that I'd really like to read, you know? :D Man, I can't wait to dive into the archive later, in general. Also, I need to catch up on my yuletart commenting. (Still can't get over the incredible quality and variety of the work there!)

Must dash. Love!

yuletide signal boost, since I know some folks on my flist were thinking about pinch-hitting: there was a problem with Yahoogroups and now you have to contact a different email address if you want to claim one of the pinch-hits that have already been sent out. (Not sure yet how the rest are going out.)

I got my story uploaded with about two hours to spare, and headed into the Square for what was meant to be a brief celebratory dinner with comics-boy. And two and a half hours later, realized that I'd totally lost my entire evening. /o\ I needed a break, but the next two days are going to be a frantic whirl of wrapping, packing, mixing, drawing, and sending out belated cards, so um. I'm probably going to be scarce, online and off.

Also, I bought myself a brand new pair of combat boots (to replace the six-year-old pair that were very slowly starting to fall off my feet). I'm trying to be cautious/slow about breaking them in, but my ankles are kind of on fire right now. Still happy, though!

[ETA:] There's a new back-up pinch-hit mailing list for yuletide!

Hey guys, heads' up - this year, yuletide Madness will be open to anyone with an AO3 account. (That's when you get to write fic of any length based on any of the unfilled prompts! I've only participated once, but it was a blast.) I don't have any invitations right now, but you might know someone who does - and the invitation queue generally seems to move at a pretty fast clip.

I'm polishing up my final story; should be able to have it uploaded whole hours before the deadline. ;) I wrote all day long yesterday! It was awesome. (Now I'm having third or fourth thoughts on this being my last year. /o\ Of course. Well, it's not like I have to decide now - although I'm also planning to apply to my wacky grad school of choice next year.)

In other news, Mikeyway is so fucking adorable. ♥

Happy Solstice, lovelies! Um. Some of your cards are totally going to be late. (Certainly the international ones I put in the mail today will be, as the lady at the post office smugly informed me. :/) I'm sorry! But ILU all to bits, you know. ♥♥♥

My yuletide story is going agonizingly slowly . . . so per as usual, then! I know what's happening all the way through, thank god, but that doesn't make it easy to put my thoughts on the page. Seriously, these word things are frustrating! Writing with pictures (or preferably a combination) is so much easier. :/

But but but! yuletart has been delighting me throughout, and now I have art of my very own! :DDD Check out the hilarious (and pretty!) AOS OT3 comic panel that somebody drew all for me. (I am maybe a little overexcited and sleep deprived. But seriously!) I love everything about it, from the classic presentation to Spock's hilarious (but totes logical) thought bubble. Oh man, I am so happy right now.

Back to work. But. :D

Working on my yuletide fic is making me listen to more Tori Amos than I have in a long time. I'm too tied up in knots to get nostalgic, though, so that's good!

So, what do those of you who write fic do when you're working with an open canon? Particularly one that's full of suspense and unsolved mysteries? Do you just sort of make guesses and have fun with things you know will be jossed, or do you focus in on character relationships and little day-to-day normalities, and just sort of slide past the questions you're leaving unanswered?

Just curious. ;)

I've spent my evening alternately messing with notes/outlines, and working on cards with Pushing Daisies in the background. (God, this show is adorable!) I should sleep; I have managed to set tomorrow entirely aside for continuing both tasks. And maybe shopping for a calendar online, because I swear, there are no literary-themed calendars within the Cambridge city limits, and I don't have time to comb through Boston too. Shopping for my dad: WHY SO DIFFICULT?

But first! There is Middleman fanart at yuletart. \o/ Sculpture, even. The quality and variety of the work this year has been completely fantastic in general . . . maybe I actually will do recs, but seriously, go see! It makes me so impatient, because I love getting four or five new pieces of art to view every day, but at the same time, I want to see them all right now.

Hey flist, hey! How are you, bbs?

I have a question. Do any of you have recommendations for a really super easy beginner-level cookbook? (Like, for a soon-to-be college grad who barely knows how to boil pasta?) I was trying to think of a practical Christmas present for my bb brother, and cooking, and it occurred to me that he is going to need to learn to feed himself soon. He doesn't strike me as the type to raid food blogs, the way I do, and he probably wouldn't be into most of my (vegetarian, first-order-ingredient-focused, deeply random) recipe collection.

I'm going to poke around my favorite local independent bookstore tomorrow, but I thought I might try you guys first. :)

I have spent this weekend freaking out about my yuletide fic before finally having a breakthrough. (This always seems to happen in the shower - is that just me?) Whew. Sometimes I wonder if I should stick to fanart and comics, but I feel as though it's really important to keep practicing prose writing, and anyway I love the fest to bits. Amazing as yuletart is, there's really nothing quite like it.

I watched the latest White Collar episode last night, and um, holy shit. I've been on a fairly mild enjoyment level with that show for most of its run so far, but talk about taking it up a notch! And that was even before the last minute or so.

The butternut squash soup I've been cooking all afternoon really needs to be done now so I can eat it and get back to writing.

[ETA:] OMG SNOWFLAKE! Thank you, glockgal. ♥ We had our first real snow last night and I'm still super happy about it.

So, guess who has ten fingers and toes, but only one apartment? \o/

I feel like I can breathe again, oh man. Now I can turn my fuller attention to making my awesome new apartment even more awesome, and focus more on other projects. Holiday projects, mostly, and not before time! I did a whole bunch of work on my yuletart piece last night in a celebratory rush of inspiration. I think it's going to be pretty awesome.

I've also posted my fairly epic yuletide letter, so now I'm just sitting here obsessively keeping track of sign-ups, per as always. ;) Of my ten offered fandoms, eight have been requested at least once . . . all but the two I actually offered "Any" characters for. /o\ OH WELL. I have no clue what I'm likely to wind up with, really, but I'm so excited!

It's a gorgeous damn day, and I need to go out into it so I can drop off my old apartment keys and pick up some straggling mail. But! I have already started planning out this year's holiday card, and I think I'm actually going to make it happen in a physical, hard-copy kind of way. (Something I always try for, but never manage.) So, poll!



The card will not be fandom-oriented; it will include a couple of my own original characters, along a wintry theme. Comments are screened; please feel free to leave any thoughts, and if you want to participate, your address. (You can also email me at fairiesbite at yahoo dot com.) ♥

[ETA:] Ahaha, I fail at coding/crossposting today. /o\ I have no idea if anyone had a chance to take the poll the first time around, but do me a favor and try again?

Dear Yule Goat,

Thank you so much for being my writer! I can't tell you how much I appreciate your efforts already, mysterious and awesome person. I should also warn you: this letter is long. This is intended to give you more options (if you want them), rather than freak you out, so . . . I hope it doesn't. Freak you out, that is. ♥

( General blather!Collapse )

( Requests and additional thoughtsCollapse )

I think that's probably plenty to be going on with, yeah? Like I said before: feel free to use as much or as little as you like. I'm quite convinced that I'm going to love whatever you come up with. ♥

Thank you again, and happy writing!

This entry was originally posted at my dreamwidth. ( comments)