Making the Yuletide Gay!
Jan. 2nd, 2010 12:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
laliandraHappy 2010!
I had a most excellent New Year's Eve. It involved homemade hats and glitter glue, chocolate fondue, champagne cocktails from the roaring twenties, Nat making friends with a baby, much Inappropriateness and Innuendo("Is Ivy's flange warm?") and The Hat Game, Scattergories and The Humming Game.
\o/
I also kept people still living in the past apprised of the situation re: zombie uprisings and robots. Still no hoverboots. I'll keep you posted!
Anyway, today being the first, I can reveal my Yuletide story! And also talk a lot about the phenomenon known as Yuletide madness. Oh! And explain my present to my December ladies (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pigrescuer , jorajo , miabee023 )
I wrote Tipping The Balance, a fic for The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. If you would like to go read and then come back, my ramblings below might make some sense... You can comment here or on the Archive of Our Own!
I ended up signing up for Yuletide pretty much entirely because ofnovembersmith . She was going to do it for the first time and somehow (I'm still not entirely sure how. Really. She is dangerously persuasive.) she talked me into doing it too. I merrily signed up for a whole bunch of fandoms and got super excited.
So, when I got my Yuletide assignment it actually contained two of the fandoms that I had signed up for - The Graveyard Book and Havemercy. They were both very awesome prompts, but I really liked the Havemercy one. I was fairly sure I was going to write the Havemercy one. Thom! Balfour!
And I had read and loved The Graveyard Book but I hadn't shipped Bod/Silas. Not even a little. Havemercy was the one for me, even though it seemed kind of like cheating, seeing as I had already written two fics similar to the prompt.
And then I thought of one conversation between Bod and Silas. And then I had to write it.
Then, I panicked. Oh god, did I ever panic. I flailed at dearest, patientbrimtoast and CAPLOCKED (with love, darling!) at novemberlauren and freaked out via Skype at kaiserkuchen . My basic problems were
1) OH MY GOD YOU GUYS, NEIL GAIMAN ROCKS. I had to re-read the book lots, obviously, and I got massively intimidated. He wrote so well, such lovely prose and clever dialogue and OMG I could never capture that amazing tone that the book has.
Kaz was very lovely and soothing and explained about how it would be my story in the end.
2) [this one is weirder] Okay, so, I was first exposed to The Graveyard Book by listening to Neil Gaiman read it out loud. And this meant that my brain inexplicably could only hear Silas AS NEIL GAIMAN. Like, all his lines came out as Neil Gaiman in my head. Which was an issue. Because I love Neil Gaiman, I want him and Stephen Fry to be my Awesome Storytelling Uncles, but I cannot put him is slashy situations! ISSUE!
Kaz solved this one by laughing at me. A lot. Thanks bb.
When I spoke to Kaz, by the way, I estimated that my story, at the time about 1,500 words, might reach 3000ish, at a push. AHAHA.
As I've said previously, I didn't have a lot of free time in December, so I did a lot of writing on the bus. I got really annoyed when people came and sat next to me. It is hard to write fic when there is an old man sitting next to you.
And then when I talked about Bod and Silas to other people, we all realised that we hadn't thought of shipping Bod and Silas, but that we really, really did. I mean, it is the most ninja ship that ever snuck up on a person and gave them a whole new OTP. So thank you,jain , for coming up with this prompt! I have never known True Love like this!
Anyway, back to the story of the story. Usually, I write stories for people's birthdays, or agree to do their bidding for the day. But there were three fabulous ladies having birthdays in December, and I knew that I would never be able to find time to write them something. So, as a placeholder present, I gave PR, jorajo and Ariana characters in my Yuletide fic. Did you recognise yourself?!
Much scribbling, cursing Lauren and rereading later, I finally got it done, and betaed (mostly on the deadline day, sorry Kara!) and posted and then I was relieved and overjoyed.
Then, Christmas Day, the fics went up! I waited on tenderhooks! My recipient finally commented and said that she liked it! And then I got comments and did a Dance of Joy for every single one. No lie!
And now I get to share Yuletide with everyone. Yuletide is amazing. There are thousands of fics, and I have hardly begun reading but seriously. There is fic for the unexpected and the delightful. I suggest that you go readnovembersmith 's recs, and then go to her author page and read everything there, because she was a crazy, wonderful person and wrote FOUR fics and I assure you, they are all AMAZING.
Plus, she deserves some extra love, because without her, I would never have got so very much Yuletide Treasure - a wonderful story of my own, some unbelievably nice comments, the proud, real ficcer feeling of having a AO3 account and the joy of seeing so many people just being so happy and geekishly delighted by things that they love. <3
I had a most excellent New Year's Eve. It involved homemade hats and glitter glue, chocolate fondue, champagne cocktails from the roaring twenties, Nat making friends with a baby, much Inappropriateness and Innuendo("Is Ivy's flange warm?") and The Hat Game, Scattergories and The Humming Game.
\o/
I also kept people still living in the past apprised of the situation re: zombie uprisings and robots. Still no hoverboots. I'll keep you posted!
Anyway, today being the first, I can reveal my Yuletide story! And also talk a lot about the phenomenon known as Yuletide madness. Oh! And explain my present to my December ladies (
pigrescuer , jorajo , miabee023 ) I wrote Tipping The Balance, a fic for The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. If you would like to go read and then come back, my ramblings below might make some sense... You can comment here or on the Archive of Our Own!
I ended up signing up for Yuletide pretty much entirely because of
novembersmith . She was going to do it for the first time and somehow (I'm still not entirely sure how. Really. She is dangerously persuasive.) she talked me into doing it too. I merrily signed up for a whole bunch of fandoms and got super excited.So, when I got my Yuletide assignment it actually contained two of the fandoms that I had signed up for - The Graveyard Book and Havemercy. They were both very awesome prompts, but I really liked the Havemercy one. I was fairly sure I was going to write the Havemercy one. Thom! Balfour!
And I had read and loved The Graveyard Book but I hadn't shipped Bod/Silas. Not even a little. Havemercy was the one for me, even though it seemed kind of like cheating, seeing as I had already written two fics similar to the prompt.
And then I thought of one conversation between Bod and Silas. And then I had to write it.
Then, I panicked. Oh god, did I ever panic. I flailed at dearest, patient
brimtoast and CAPLOCKED (with love, darling!) at novemberlauren and freaked out via Skype at kaiserkuchen . My basic problems were1) OH MY GOD YOU GUYS, NEIL GAIMAN ROCKS. I had to re-read the book lots, obviously, and I got massively intimidated. He wrote so well, such lovely prose and clever dialogue and OMG I could never capture that amazing tone that the book has.
Kaz was very lovely and soothing and explained about how it would be my story in the end.
2) [this one is weirder] Okay, so, I was first exposed to The Graveyard Book by listening to Neil Gaiman read it out loud. And this meant that my brain inexplicably could only hear Silas AS NEIL GAIMAN. Like, all his lines came out as Neil Gaiman in my head. Which was an issue. Because I love Neil Gaiman, I want him and Stephen Fry to be my Awesome Storytelling Uncles, but I cannot put him is slashy situations! ISSUE!
Kaz solved this one by laughing at me. A lot. Thanks bb.
When I spoke to Kaz, by the way, I estimated that my story, at the time about 1,500 words, might reach 3000ish, at a push. AHAHA.
As I've said previously, I didn't have a lot of free time in December, so I did a lot of writing on the bus. I got really annoyed when people came and sat next to me. It is hard to write fic when there is an old man sitting next to you.
And then when I talked about Bod and Silas to other people, we all realised that we hadn't thought of shipping Bod and Silas, but that we really, really did. I mean, it is the most ninja ship that ever snuck up on a person and gave them a whole new OTP. So thank you,
jain , for coming up with this prompt! I have never known True Love like this!Anyway, back to the story of the story. Usually, I write stories for people's birthdays, or agree to do their bidding for the day. But there were three fabulous ladies having birthdays in December, and I knew that I would never be able to find time to write them something. So, as a placeholder present, I gave PR, jorajo and Ariana characters in my Yuletide fic. Did you recognise yourself?!
Much scribbling, cursing Lauren and rereading later, I finally got it done, and betaed (mostly on the deadline day, sorry Kara!) and posted and then I was relieved and overjoyed.
Then, Christmas Day, the fics went up! I waited on tenderhooks! My recipient finally commented and said that she liked it! And then I got comments and did a Dance of Joy for every single one. No lie!
And now I get to share Yuletide with everyone. Yuletide is amazing. There are thousands of fics, and I have hardly begun reading but seriously. There is fic for the unexpected and the delightful. I suggest that you go read
novembersmith 's recs, and then go to her author page and read everything there, because she was a crazy, wonderful person and wrote FOUR fics and I assure you, they are all AMAZING.Plus, she deserves some extra love, because without her, I would never have got so very much Yuletide Treasure - a wonderful story of my own, some unbelievably nice comments, the proud, real ficcer feeling of having a AO3 account and the joy of seeing so many people just being so happy and geekishly delighted by things that they love. <3
