wanderings

Smart Bitches linked to a music video yesterday, and that post is really fun for a couple of reasons, or, okay, one reason: Sarah seems to be really enchanted by it. There's the part where romance novels are a kind of recurring theme in the video (it's cute and ridiculous and awesome) that she geeks about and then there's the part where Sarah looks up MuchFACT on wikipedia and is apparently quite taken by the concept. Outsider perspectives: they're interesting.

You should totally check out the video. It's something like what would happen if Taylor Swift collaborated with the YellowJackets.

( I'm maybe slightly worried if you aren't a little intrigued by that - embedded video under the cut )

So, I held off posting yesterday, because I knew there was a madness story coming and because I ended up doing a lot of sleeping, and this year for yuletide I got three (three!) stories.

For yuletide I got:

The Absence of Trinkets
Alice (2009)
Rating: PG; 1,537 words; Alice/Hatter, Charlie
Summary: Hatter's had this on his mind for a while now and Alice isn't one for trinkets. Christmas eve is just the excuse he needs. He'll be a better man than his father in this if nothing else.

...and I received two yuletide madness stories, a ficlet and a fic:

By Any Other Name
Alice (2009)
Rating: G; 138 words; Charlie, Alice, Hatter
Summary: Charlie invents a new food.

'Til You're Home Again
Slings & Arrows
Rating: G; 1,303 words; Jack/Kate
Summary: Kate in Hollywood.

Yuletide 2011 is organised by fandom here and Yuletide Madness 2011 is organised by fandom here.

There is so much to read, and I have read so few things so far. (I think my fic needs might be covered for a while now.)

Community is a show that I don't watch but has a fandom that I really dig, because the best parts that its fans pull out of the show and then shine up a little with their fannish love are really, really, incredibly shiny. So, shiny vids:

Sex and Reruns by greensilver
This is an extraordinarily joyful vid. It's about being embarrassed and making mistakes and life sometimes not going your way and also about life being ridiculous and learning to understand people and making friends and supporting each other. The video follows along with the lyrics and cycles through everything as the lyrics repeat, ending with the characters dancing and hugging and smiling and laughing together. It ends with togetherness. It's really exceptionally charming and it's a wonderful voyage.
(Song: Sex and Reruns by Matt Duke)

Folding Chair by sisabet
Annie Edison, aka Little Annie Adderall, aka Caroline Decker from Corpus Christi, Texas (but only that one time) grows up. Hard.
I'm not sure that it's possible to watch this vid and not fall madly in love with Annie. It is about Annie growing up and figuring things out and the ups and downs of that. It does a really excellent job of showcasing what makes Annie awesome; I've been doing this really embarrassing besotted chin-handsing thing watching this. (Go, watch, fall in love.)
(Song: Folding Chair by Regina Spektor)

That Awkward/Awesome Moment by wistful_fever
It's a vid about Troy and Abed's relationship from Troy's perspective, and the song that it's set to is really bouncy. (It's a Fall Out Boy song, so, coming to this vid from bandom and The lyricist really digs the vocalist! Happy people! adds another layer of fannish happiness to this for me; it's nice.) The end of it is really well used; the song has a pretty ridiculous ending and it's really well-matched in this. There's a lot of joy here; it starts with Troy running and making victory arms and touches on a lot of different bits of their relationship.
(Song: G.I.N.A.S.F.S. by Fall Out Boy)

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Hi! I'm sorry that this is late. Thank you so much for writing a story for me in one of these fandoms. I am really kind of absurdly excited for whatever it is that you're writing. :)

Requests, optional details and fandoms - with pictures:

( Alice (2009) )

( Mulan (1998) )

( Slings & Arrows )

( St Trinian's (2007 2009) )

( Other Information )

I love fanfic. I love it for its ability to fill in gaps in a story, to flesh out characters, to explore an idea, to make a point, to be diverting, to show me something I didn't see before. I love its many versions of the same story; I love its tropes. I'm going to be really excited whatever direction you go in. Please, write what you want to write; the optional details are very much optional.

Have fun! And thank you so much, again, for writing something in one of these fandoms! You're awesome!

♥

The yuletide_admin signups post is up, and there's a link to a tutorial on the process. (Everything's happening on the AO3 this year, so you need an account to participate in yuletide. If you don't have one write to the yuletide admins at yuletide@yuletidetreasure.org and let them know and they'll send you what you need to get one.)

The way yuletide requests work is this: you make your fandom and character requests and that's what your writer gets matched on and has to write - a complete work no less than 1,000 words long in one of your fandoms that includes the character(s) you requested for that fandom. After that everything is optional, and then we start getting into conventions, stuff that's common or suggested practice but not rigidly defined or enforced.

Your optional details, for example, are optional. They're usually the first thing that your writer is going to read after their matching fandom and characters. Conventionally, your optional details are basically a quick rundown of what your yuletide writer might write.

There's a large body of meta about yuletide and yuletide requests out there. There's a lot of stuff written about yuletide, period. The first year I did yuletide I researched. I read the FAQ, I looked over the two livejournal communities (yuletide_admin and yuletide), and I read meta, and I read a few people's letters, and I figured out how this yuletide thing worked. (That is how I roll.)

So, I have meta recs for figuring out how to write your requests - your optional details and your likewise optional yuletide letter:
Random Blithering and a Poll on Prompts and [Meta]: The Yuletide Prompt Poll Results by thefourthvine
Thoughts on Yuletide prompts & requests by liviapenn

Those are all really awesome resources for figuring out what this request business is about and what prompts and the yuletide letter are and do. There's some really good discussion in the comments and I love the poll answers for just how clearly they demonstrate that different people have very different approaches to yuletide.

My first year I read all the meta, I'm pretty sure, and I read a few other people's letters, and then I followed the instructions. And after I wrote and posted my letter I read more people's letters from the dear yuletide writer letter collection post and I began to feel progressively more, um, special, because none of the letters I read looked much like mine. Mine was long and picture-heavy. There were useful biographical links.

Signups and the yuletide letter are actually my favorite part of yuletide, because I get to be ridiculously organised and excited about small fandoms. ("Some day," she said, "my yuletide letter will be perfect." There was a terrible glint in her eyes.)

I'm pretty ridiculous about sign-ups and the letter, and it's this whole absurd process for me, that, really, I wouldn't necessarily recommend for other people. I figure that sign-ups and the letter are a pretty individual thing.

Reading all of that meta I developed a kind of theory or philosophy of yuletide (...yeah.) and a kind of system for approaching it that has a lot to do with what kind of fanperson and person I am, which I will share, in case it's useful to anyone.

One of the suggestions that people make with fandom selection is that you set it up so that your writer has an out, so that they can run away from whatever fandom they got matched to you on and write a different fandom for you. You can do this by nominating your fandoms in pairs with similar source material or including two fandoms that are easy for your writer to bring themselves up to speed on. I try to do the latter, but it's not necessarily something that I succeed at, because I don't know what source material is accessible to my writer - I don't know what's available where they live or what they can find online - and I also might get really distracted by some shiny fandom that I really want to request, and that's fine; yuletide is about shiny fandoms.

Remember that your character requests are something that your writer has to fulfill; all of the characters you request need to be in the fic that they write for you. Keep this in mind when you're filling out your optional details and yuletide letter.

The optional details boxes of your signup form are where your prompts go. Something to remember is the diversity of fandom: your usual might be angsty character-driven slash and you might get an author who writes fluffy adventure-driven gen. Giving your author different directions to go in is a good idea. What I try to do, because I like prompts, is give my writer six different basic story ideas. I think about what type of story I'd like to read, and what kind of directions someone might go with that fandom. "What would futurefic look like?", "What about back-story?", "Is there something going on in the story that's interesting, a B-plot or some little detail?", and "What would happen if someone wrote a particular genre or trope?" are questions I might use to come up with prompts.

The optional details is also where I toss in that I'm good with whatever, any rating or relationship genre, because I am. I've seen it recommended that if you have triggers you mention them there.

Your optional details are optional. Technically it's something that they don't even have to read, but yuletide is all about it being a gift and writing a fic for someone specifically - that one person who's going to read your fic, because you wrote it for them.

The yuletide letter is also optional. I include the information from my signup in my letter, so that its accessible to people who aren't my assigned writer and so that my writer has everything in one place. I write about why I love my fandoms, so that my writer has some kind of raw data to work with and can see where I'm coming from and kind of pick and choose elements that make them happy. I formatted that as a pretty straight-up fandom recruitment thing last year because it made sense to me; I got to talk about why I thought the source materials were awesome and maybe lure in people who were just kind of casually reading my letter. How I'll end up writing it this year is going to depend on what I request. I like having pictures, because I do write at length and I think that pictures help to break up that text and can help with structuring things, but that's a format that works better with some fandoms than others. I try to write about my fandoms at an equal length and enthusiasm level, because I don't want my writer to feel like what they matched me on was my second or third or last choice; they're all things I'm going to be really excited to get. So I pretty much try to just be really enthusiastic at them.

There's also a section in people's letters where they write more generally, about what they like or don't like in stories in general - their story kinks, pretty much, and their back-button things, including that list that goes something like "so, this might be your kink, and your kink is okay, but it is not my kink". People write about themselves. They might include a link to an "about me" post or their reccing website or whatever, anything they think it might be useful for their writer to know.

Your yuletide letter is also an address to your writer, so it's a "hello" and "have fun" and whatever else. Be friendly!

There's a lot of variation among yuletide letters; people approach them differently and do different things. My yuletide letters are here if you want to look. I'm pretty serious about the one day my letter will be perfect thing, just in that there's stuff I've done that I'd do differently and will do differently this time.

I try to give my writer as much information as I can without tying them to anything. Writers are different. There are people who would honestly like a detailed fic outline and others that want no additional information, so I try to make something that will make them both happy, or not unhappy, anyway.

So a lot of what I've written here is a reiteration of what's in those three meta links. They're good. I like them. You should check them out.

Signups are open now. They close Monday, November 21, 2011 at 01:00:00 GMT. (I should get on that.)