Yuletide reveal
5/1/10 08:47![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bronze_ribbonsDue to various quantities of mishegoss in various areas of my life, I'd fully intended to sit out Yuletide this year. Didn't nominate, didn't sign up, didn't even bother reading many of the pinch-hit requests.
Didn't unsubscribe from the list, though. Too much entertainment to be had when I do read the prompts, in part from never having heard of 95% of the fandoms (which are nonetheless snapped up right away by someone else, which seriously, truly makes me marvel at the sheer glorious breadth and abundance of fandom) and in part from sheer voyeuristic curiosity (which characters - especially secondary ones - are compelling enough for fans to plea for more stories? what kinds of stories are being asked for?).
This, of course, is like a sushi junkie sitting in Masu for hours and thinking she'll just drink tea. Final tally: two pinch-hits and two Treats. To wit:
[Haru wo Daiteita] No Life Save When the Swords Clash, for Snapelike [Yuletide letter]. Mochimune/Miysaka, Kikuchi/Onozuka, Sawa/Yukihito, Iwaki/Katou. Probably too much swearing and smooching to be worksafe. 7937 words.
Writing this was a typical Ribbons fest experience in many respects. Day 1: "It's only a 1000 word minimum, so if I get stuck, I'll just write ten drabbles so that S. gets something." Day 2: "WAHHHH!" The fic pretty much ended up eating my head every spare moment and then some for eleven days, took 27+ drafts, and required an all-nighter to finish, but it was also fun as hell. Most important, it made S. laugh, and two other readers enthusiastically rec'd it.
[Dar Williams - "Alleluia"] The Cafeteria's Got Everything, for Wasuremono [letter]. Magenta-haired angel/Narrator. 1888 words.
Pinch-hit #314, posted the afternoon before pinch-hits were due. I claimed it before dinner, worked out the logistics in my head during choir rehearsal, and wrote the whole thing overnight, in-between bouts of wrestling with the Haru fic.
[RPF - 18th/19th-century politics] Every Thing Necessary to Procure, fortwtd [letter]. Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens. 342 words.
So, it's around 6 a.m., and I'm thinking of grabbing a couple hours of sleep before starting prep for the birthday dinner I'm hosting that night, but first I need to come down from the high of finishing two stories, and the list of unfilled prompts has gone up, and - What!? Someone else has heard of John Laurens? SOMEONE ASKED FOR JOHN LAURENS FIC FOR YULETIDE???EEEEEEEEE!!!!
(Ultimately, Kevin Conroy is to blame: he played Laurens in a 1980s miniseries about George Washington, and that was enough for me to trawl through dozens of books on the American Revolution, gathering up every shred of info I could on the guy, about whom I wrote one grade-school paper and one not-yet-ready-for-prime-time professional essay. Conroy's current claim to fame is as the voice of the animated Batman, and yes, now I really want a Dark Knight/Founding Fathers crossover in the worst way.)
[Springsteen - "Thunder Road"] In Rags At Their Feet, for strangecobwebs [letter]. Mary and the guy with a guitar. 882 words.
Back in grade school, a friend gave me a cassette with "Thunder Road" on it, and I danced across my bedroom countless times while it played on the boom box. From my window, I could see the huge Pentecostal church at the center of the subdivision. A couple hundred feet to the north, cattle farm. A couple hundred feet north of that, the road to my old school, so narrow and bumpy that riding the bus on it was like an amusement park ride (especially when the janitor subbed for the regular driver, a lady with a foot-high beehive who lived maybe six or eight houses away from mine).
In short, it wasn't New Jersey (although I eventually dated someone from there, whose father's history students included Jon Bon Jovi), but I sure knew "stranded." Boy, did I know "stranded." Another friend told me I had the hugest smile out of everyone in the yearbook graduation group photo. And while all of this is way more background than anyone needs for "In Rags At Their Feet," it wouldn't be a stretch to say the years of feeling stranded has informed a good deal of what I write. And do.
Didn't unsubscribe from the list, though. Too much entertainment to be had when I do read the prompts, in part from never having heard of 95% of the fandoms (which are nonetheless snapped up right away by someone else, which seriously, truly makes me marvel at the sheer glorious breadth and abundance of fandom) and in part from sheer voyeuristic curiosity (which characters - especially secondary ones - are compelling enough for fans to plea for more stories? what kinds of stories are being asked for?).
This, of course, is like a sushi junkie sitting in Masu for hours and thinking she'll just drink tea. Final tally: two pinch-hits and two Treats. To wit:
[Haru wo Daiteita] No Life Save When the Swords Clash, for Snapelike [Yuletide letter]. Mochimune/Miysaka, Kikuchi/Onozuka, Sawa/Yukihito, Iwaki/Katou. Probably too much swearing and smooching to be worksafe. 7937 words.
Writing this was a typical Ribbons fest experience in many respects. Day 1: "It's only a 1000 word minimum, so if I get stuck, I'll just write ten drabbles so that S. gets something." Day 2: "WAHHHH!" The fic pretty much ended up eating my head every spare moment and then some for eleven days, took 27+ drafts, and required an all-nighter to finish, but it was also fun as hell. Most important, it made S. laugh, and two other readers enthusiastically rec'd it.
[Dar Williams - "Alleluia"] The Cafeteria's Got Everything, for Wasuremono [letter]. Magenta-haired angel/Narrator. 1888 words.
Pinch-hit #314, posted the afternoon before pinch-hits were due. I claimed it before dinner, worked out the logistics in my head during choir rehearsal, and wrote the whole thing overnight, in-between bouts of wrestling with the Haru fic.
[RPF - 18th/19th-century politics] Every Thing Necessary to Procure, for
twtd [letter]. Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens. 342 words.So, it's around 6 a.m., and I'm thinking of grabbing a couple hours of sleep before starting prep for the birthday dinner I'm hosting that night, but first I need to come down from the high of finishing two stories, and the list of unfilled prompts has gone up, and - What!? Someone else has heard of John Laurens? SOMEONE ASKED FOR JOHN LAURENS FIC FOR YULETIDE???EEEEEEEEE!!!!
(Ultimately, Kevin Conroy is to blame: he played Laurens in a 1980s miniseries about George Washington, and that was enough for me to trawl through dozens of books on the American Revolution, gathering up every shred of info I could on the guy, about whom I wrote one grade-school paper and one not-yet-ready-for-prime-time professional essay. Conroy's current claim to fame is as the voice of the animated Batman, and yes, now I really want a Dark Knight/Founding Fathers crossover in the worst way.)
[Springsteen - "Thunder Road"] In Rags At Their Feet, for strangecobwebs [letter]. Mary and the guy with a guitar. 882 words.
Back in grade school, a friend gave me a cassette with "Thunder Road" on it, and I danced across my bedroom countless times while it played on the boom box. From my window, I could see the huge Pentecostal church at the center of the subdivision. A couple hundred feet to the north, cattle farm. A couple hundred feet north of that, the road to my old school, so narrow and bumpy that riding the bus on it was like an amusement park ride (especially when the janitor subbed for the regular driver, a lady with a foot-high beehive who lived maybe six or eight houses away from mine).
In short, it wasn't New Jersey (although I eventually dated someone from there, whose father's history students included Jon Bon Jovi), but I sure knew "stranded." Boy, did I know "stranded." Another friend told me I had the hugest smile out of everyone in the yearbook graduation group photo. And while all of this is way more background than anyone needs for "In Rags At Their Feet," it wouldn't be a stretch to say the years of feeling stranded has informed a good deal of what I write. And do.
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