the sun and the moon and the stars

Have I missed the signup cutoff?
Do I want to sign up?
Can I do this?
AUGH.

Edit: Okay. So it seems I have until Monday. Now to get thinking.

...to think about teeny tiny fandoms.

So despite my bemoaning in my last post it seems I haven't missed Yuletide after all (due to it being late this year, not due to me being awesomely on top of things, because, well, I'm not). I appear to have found my squee, or at least enough squee to carry me through Yuletide, and I really don't want to miss it this year; it's often my sole fannish output in a year and it just wouldn't feel right not doing it. This is complicated, this year, by the fact that the new WoW expansion comes out December 7th, which means I might be trying to write Yuletide with one hand while steering my way through a very crowded Azeroth with the other, but whatever. I'll just not sleep for the fortnight or something.

The trouble is, due to the fact that I was disengaged from about August onwards, I kind of haven't been planning for YT this year and so I don't have my usual shortlist of fandoms to request or nominate -- usually throughout the second half of the year I go through and write down stuff that I want to request, especially. This year, not so much.

So I'm currently going through the fandoms list with a fine toothcomb identifying the stuff I know well enough to offer, and trying to think about what to ask for. This is harder than I thought!

...hmm. I was sure I made a "for next Yuletide" reminder post for myself at the start of the year. Maybe I should go look for that.

Galaxy Quest - Yesterday's Gone
Music: "Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)" by Status Quo (Fleetwood Mac cover)
Content: Gen, ensemble.
Footage: Galaxy Quest movie.

One thing made the good old days great: teamwork. In which the cast learns that nobody can go it alone, and together they’re unstoppable.



Download: MP4 file (55.6 MB) or Zipped AVI (51.1 MB).
Streaming: here.

( Lyrics behind the cut. )

This vid was originally posted for Festivids, and you can see all the pre-reveal comments on that post.

Well, it's Reveal Day, so I can now say publicly that I wrote The Blue Door and The Green Wood, in The Swish of the Curtain fandom, and But Where Are All The Splash Fights?, a Questionable Content storylet for Yuletide Madness.

Interestingly, the latter got twice the hits of the former, but half the comments.

And yes, helens78, I did guess that A Few Of My Favorite Things was your creation. The note at the bottom of the story was what gave it away. Thankyou so much :-)

First up one must acknowledge the huge amounts of work done by the Yuletide mods, elynross and astolat, without whom we wouldn't even have Yuletide. ♥

Also owed thanks are the coders and volunteers from the AO3, who built the platform in time for this year and wrangled every bug into submission. ♥

And the good people of #yuletide, hippos and non-hippos alike, for the awesome support and company. ♥

...this is starting to sound like an Oscar acceptance speech, so on with the show.

I was lucky enough to get four stories this year, and I have a sneaking suspicion that at least one of them is written by someone I know. My signup actually went up for pinch-hit (along with 300 others, heh), so I'm not sure which is my 'official' story, but they're all awesome. I haven't commented yet because the Archive server is sadfacing all over the place (as someone said in chat, BEST BETA TEST EVER) so I thought I'd squee about them here. :)

I got:

When We Meet (gen, general), a Fifth Element story about one of Korben's less-than-perfect fares. I love The Fifth Element so very much, and yet I've always been totally unable to produce any fanworks for it - seeing another slice of the world is very, very cool.

The One With No Pants (het, mature), a Castle story about the morning after the night before. I love the banter between Beckett and Castle, and the characterisation felt very true to both of them.

Years Gone (gen, general), a Bugs Potter story about where Bugs is in ten years' time - and it's not where one might expect. A very interesting concept about the future, and I didn't see it coming. Plus, hey, Bugs Potter - a Korman fandom that does not get enough love. :)

A Few Of My Favorite Things (gen, general), a Castle story full of Christmas and laughter and awesomeness. This is the one that I think was written by one of you lot (or at least someone who knows me) and oh, it's delightful. The characters are all note-perfect and it's a lovely Christmassy slice of Castle.

Thankyou, wonderful writers, thankyou so much! ♥

Plus I've got two more gifts waiting for me when Yuletide Madness opens, which will hopefully be soon!

Now I am going to eat dinner, and when I come back I will brave the servers to leave grateful comments for my lovely generous Yuletide writers!

Hooray, it's Madness time :)

(For those of you who may or may not want to write to my prompts, they're in my letter here. :))

This year, for the first time, I actually wrote a treat! I feel very proud of myself.

HELP HELP IT'S TWO DAYS TIL YULETIDE HELP HELP.

(I'm at two thousand words and the story shows no signs of stopping any time soon. Send help.)

Edit: 2700 and counting, and I reckon I'm about 2/3 of the way through. Which means, in reality, I'm probably about halfway through. :D

Which means I might actually have time to write a stocking stuffer or two, too!

Dear Yuletide Writer,

First, and most importantly, thankyou very much for signing up to write a story in one of the fandoms I love so much. I hope that you enjoy writing the story as much as I'll enjoy reading it!

If you're looking to get a general idea of what pushes my buttons, you can read my fandom journal here; my main day-to-day journal is ladyjestyr. But this wouldn't be a Dear Yuletide Writer letter without some specifics, so here goes!

( General Thoughts )

Now, onto the specifics!

( Fandom Thoughts )

Like Yuletide, Festivids is having a nominations phase before its signups. I spent a while thinking today about what I wanted to nominate - although vids are my primary fanworks these days, I find inspiration harder to come by, so I wanted to be sure I was nominating only sources that I'd be really happy to either receive, or vid for.

My noms list, finally, looks like this:

Appleseed (movie/anime)
Fifth Element (movie)
Galaxy Quest (movie)
Tomb Raider (movie)
Ocean's Eleven series (movie)
Pirates of the Caribbean series (movie)
Wall-E (movie)

I was amazed by the fact that there were no TV series in the list - but I think the series for which I have good source are pretty mainstream, and nothing really leapt out at me from the stuff I have on the computer.

Yuletide nominations open later today!

\o/

...oh shit, I've lost my List Of Fandoms What I Want To Request Or Write For Yuletide. Augh.

Wait, no, there it is.

The Middleman
Glee (maybe)
Korman-verse
Leverage (probably too big this year though :/)
Castle
Constantine
Ballet Shoes
The Mummy
Dark Angel

Um. Am I missing anything?

Edit: Wait, that's eight, and I seem to recall you can only nominate six. Okay, I think I'd knock off Glee (since I expect it to be well-furnished with fic this year anyway), Leverage (as it's probably too big anyway) and... erk. Probably Ballet Shoes, as I'm not sure there's enough in it to really talk about.

ARGH, except now I want to write/read Swish of the Curtain, too.

Okay! Revised list:

Castle
Constantine
The Mummy
Swish of the Curtain
and two contenders from Korman-verse. I wrote No Coins, Please for Yuletide last year, so I might nominate Macdonald Hall and Bugs Potter this year. (I am, uh, suddenly inspired for Bugs Potter. Weird.)

In her last post zvi made reference to the launch of Femslash09, a femslash ficathon. I'd somehow never heard of the ficathon before, although it's been running since 2004 - clearly I'm oblivious, or not in the loop.

I see that there are some shows in the (potential) fandom list that I feel comfortable in offering to write - Firefly, NCIS, Harry Potter, and (whee) Leverage - and perhaps even Bring It On. Hee. So, I shall watch, and vote, and try my very best to participate - if it weren't for deadlines I'd never get anything done at all!

Also, if you can or will or do write femslash in femslashy fandoms, you should get on over there and nominate appropriate fandoms and sign up and write and stuff.

(And now I shall go and expire from the hypocrisy of me telling someone else to write. Sigh. :))