Flutterings

Happy 2023, y'all! Here's to as happy and healthy a year as the fates allow.

( December. Well. )

Yuletide 2022: Being as extra as last year wasn't in the cards, but it was still a fine time. ChalionKat picked me up as a pinch-hit and sent Sins of the Cities' Mark Braglewicz and Justin Lazarus to fix Oliver Twist - a gift that was a delight to find under the tree not just for its own sake but because of the longtime grudge my husband holds against Dickens, who dissed a great-great's manuscript with the words "I would sooner dine on a boiled glove." Take that, Charles!

I was assigned to lnhammer, which delighted me because the prompt for "A Poem Thrown at Martial Duke Pei" began with "WTF was Duke Pei thinking, burning a poem he knows is by a ghost?"

What with Fic in a Box (FIAB) fills and the promised continuation of a birthday present occupying the front burners, I didn't plan to draft the story until December, but after poking around the web over a couple of nights, it was clear that I would need to visit both the public and university libraries to get a better idea of (1) what the armor looked like, and (2) the terrain the ghost and the duke had traversed.


The top volume is Donald B. Wagner's Iron and Steel in Ancient China (Leiden: Brill, 1993).

Not pictured: Charles Benn's Daily Life in Traditional China: The Tang Dynasty (Westport: Greenwood, 2002), which was so idiosyncratic in style and substance that my eyebrows were hitting my hairline before I'd made it through the front matter. I'd also worked on an exhibition of samurai armor some years ago, and while its objects were of a different country and a later era, I revisited the catalogue anyway, as part of a general feeling-around-to-find-the-story phase.

Around this time, I also took a stroll through the FIAB list of mediums while compiling my pinch-hitter's wishlist, and that's when I learned about the golden shovel poetry form originated by Terence Hayes. Despite the game plan I'd sketched out, and my history of being able to write 1000-3000+ words of solid fic in a single night when necessary (or inspired), I was feeling twitchy about not having locked onto any part of the story yet, so I started a set of shovels to have something potentially submittable, with an idea of working through "Sir Orfeo" as well as the Chinese ghosts.

But then the key questions materialized in my head. Specifically: how did the ghost throw a sheet of paper, and how did the words get to us post-incineration? Once I realized those were the questions I wanted to answer, I started a file with the working title "The Stick Avenges the Sword." The first two paragraphs were slow to take shape - I think I was averaging 2-3 sentences a day - but then the rest of the story jelled in one or two sittings. I waited until the 8th to upload them in case anything else came to mind, and finetuned some spots on the 14th.

Paper Beats Duke (1384 words) by ribbons
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 掷裴武公诗 | A Poem Thrown at Martial Duke Pei - 介胄鬼 | An Armored Ghost, Unspecified Fandom
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE), Blacksmithing, Ghosts, Poetry, War, Brush Writing
Summary:

Where the poem thrown at Martial Duke Pei came from.

Shovels Stranded on a Riverbank (353 words) by ribbons
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 幽恨诗 | Poem of Hidden Resentment - 安邑坊女 | A Woman of Anyi Lane, 掷裴武公诗 | A Poem Thrown at Martial Duke Pei - 介胄鬼 | An Armored Ghost, 虎丘石壁鬼 | Three Poems by a Ghost on a Stone Wall in Huqiu, Unspecified Fandom
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: Poetry, Ghosts, Don't Have to Know Canon
Summary:

A trio of golden shovels based on the following:

1. Poem of Hidden Resentment, A Woman of Anyi Lane
2. A Poem Thrown at Martial Duke Pei, An Armored Ghost
3. Three Poems, The Ghost of a Stone Wall in Huqiu

ETA: It turns out there are several makes of golden shovels. The one in play here is the Masterclass variation, where a word from each line of the source is used as the end-word of the corresponding line of the new poem.

In addition to savoring the comments on and recs of my own work, I had the pleasure of secretly, gleefully delighting in the reactions to PerfectlySteadfast's "Courtship," which I beta'd.

==Yuletide==

Because if one can't be a little bit extra in the midst of death (*) and despair, then when? (**)

More important, the recipients plus others (including writers whose work I've admired from afar) seemed to like them. Pieces at both the ends of the length spectrum (i.e., at least two of the drabbles and the longest story) got rec'ed. The drabbles were a way to relax; I ended up racing the countdown clocks for both the main and Madness collections to get revisions and coding in place in time.

Total: 1 pinch-hit, 2 full-length treats, 30 drabbles (and umpteen outlines/sketches for future NYR or exchange fics)

Fandoms: England Series (KJ Charles), Will Darling Adventures (KJ Charles), The Dark Is Rising Sequence (Susan Cooper), Le nozze di Figaro, Henry IV Part 1, Hot Goth Lady and Himbo Witch and Fair Maiden, Florida Man Catches Alligator in Trash Bin, Duolingo Welsh Course, Yudah Cohen (Rebecca Fraimow), Simon Feximal/Green Men (KJ Charles), Lord Peter Wimsey (Dorothy L. Sayers), Sotherans


The pinch-hit

Lie Still, Ye Thief (8015 words) for Ferritin4
Fandoms: England Series - K. J. Charles, Henry IV Part 1 - Shakespeare
Rating: Mature
Summary: Theatre manager Frank Benson favours a certain type of actor. Archie and Daniel are added to his Henry IV anyway.

The recipient provided perfect prompts for this -- guiding without confining. I am indebted to rymenhild for pushing me to make this twice as good as the drafts sent to her on super-short notice.


The full-size treats

Sharpening (7789 words) for leiascully
Fandom: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Rating: Explicit
Summary: Jane looks back and moves forward. Will and Bran share what they can.

What the recipient asked for: "I'm an inveterate Will/Bran shipper, but I also love Will/Bran/Jane. I'd even be interested in Will gently pushing Bran/Jane together because he's an Old One and will have to leave them at some point. I love stories where Bran still has a little magic, or sort of remembers, or sometimes his heritage shines through in some other way. I like Will trying to live a relatively normal life. I like Jane coming into her own."

Beta'd by the beauteous aunty_marion, who also answered ninth-hour queries about onions and pence for the other treat I pulled together . . .

Put to Their Books (6 chapters + notes) for azurewaxwing
Fandoms: Sotherans (Twitter), England Series - K. J. Charles, The Will Darling Adventures - K.J. Charles, Undisclosed Fandom
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Dramatis personae: Oliver, Chris, Rebekah, and Rosie (Sotherans); Daniel da Silva, Archie Curtis, Fenella Carruth, and Patricia Merton (England); Kim Secretan and Phoebe Stephens-Prince (WDA)
Summary: Beleaguered booksellers. Reincarnated operatives. Things get social.

Me troubleshooting CSS tags at 2 a.m. on Boxing Day = people dealing with "some assembly required" overnight on behalf of Santa. Totally worth it. :)


The drabbles (non-explicit unless otherwise indicated)

Le nozze di Figaro | The Marriage of Figaro - Mozart/Da Ponte
Di dolcezza e di piacer (Contessa/Cherubino) for foxtwin

Hot Goth Lady and Himbo Witch and Fair Maiden (Tumblr Post)
Love Is Not a Cinch for epicycles

Florida Man Catches Alligator in Trash Bin
Running Scales (Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia pledge and alligator) for FandomisOhana

Duolingo Welsh Course
Noson hir yn y glwb nos (Owen and too many parsnips) for sabinelagrande

Yudah Cohen Series - Rebecca Fraimow
Und mir haltn zikh in eynem (descendants) for imperfectcircle
Un mir zaynen freylekh munter (ghost klezmer band) for partypaprika

Simon Feximal Series - K. J. Charles/Green Men Series - K. J. Charles
Light on the Blue (Jo/Sam) for torakowalski

The Will Darling Adventures - K.J. Charles
Letting Rip (Teddy, Maisie, Phoebe, Kim, Will) for Luna
E dico ben, se 'l voler no me muta (Will/Kim) for dkwilliams
Conveyance (Maisie/Phoebe) for Sixthlight
Fashioning Channels (Maisie/Phoebe, Kim/Will) for brutti_ma_buoni
Daimlers Are a Girl's Best Friend (Kim/Will, Maisie/Phoebe) for azurewaxwing

The Will Darling Adventures - K.J. Charles x Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Outside the Primrose League (Will, about Lord Peter) for pressdbtwnpages

The Will Darling Adventures - K.J. Charles x England Series - K. J. Charles
Improper Intelligence (Kim, about Jimmy Yoxall) for Jenett
And Beautiful (Will and Daniel) for FairestCat
Foresight (Kim/Will) for celli
Prideful (Archie/Daniel) for Sixthlight
It Tutors Nature (Maisie, Laura, Phoebe, Fen) for scintilla10
Standing (Kim, about Daniel and Will) for Roga


England Series - K. J. Charles
Sounding: Daniel and Sounding: Archie (Archie/Daniel; explicit) for goseaward
I will unclasp a secret book (Archie/Daniel) for Ferritin4
Skill Born of Long Practice (Archie/Daniel) for Jenett


Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
The Lady brought home a west wind (Will/Jane/Bran) for leiascully
The Path Taken (Will/Jane/Bran) for coralysendria
Usefully Jolly (Merriman & Ellen Drew) for magelette
Towards the Light Is Striving (Merriman) for sageness
A New Verse (Will/Bran) for Rimedio
Not Any Man's (Gwen Stanton, Will/Bran, Robin Stanton) for sultrybutdamaged
Slicing Ginger (Black Rider/Will; explicit) for blueteak


(* Got a "Call me" message yesterday afternoon, about someone I had danced and taught with. The silver lining was a chance to catch up with the messenger, a friend I hadn't talked to in months.)
(** I'm mostly kidding. IRL I'm highly allergic to drama and maddeningly matter-of-fact. But I really did have a fine time crafting this lot.)

==The rest of the year==

The Dark Is Rising (drabbles)
"Impact Factor" (Will and Bran)
"Fearful Parallel" (Jane/Will)

England Series
"Competence" (15824 words) for whetherwoman
"Matter of Fact" (404 words)

Squee!

( my gift: The Traveler in Black )

---

As usual, a lot of reads have been shunted to my "for later" queue, because due dates and illness, bah. But from what I've managed to consume so far, here are some additional recs:
( England Series, Dark Is Rising, Yudah Cohen, Will Darling, Sotherans, Duolingo Welsh, Hamlet, xkcd )


Jennifer Egan's "Black Box" -- I am not done reading this yet, because it is intense. Those of you into spy stories (especially honeypot missions) may want to take a look.

---

Not Yuletide, but posted on 25 December, and possibly of interest to the Sayers/Charles fanatics:

"Exit, pursued by a bear" (mentioned in my previous entry) shows up in "התחלה" (Beginning), a Lord Peter Wimsey/Will Darling Adventures crossover by Ellendili. I am not Hebrew-literate, so I resorted to Google Translate, which was worth it for (among other things) the glimpse of my beloved Countess of Severn and Thames. The author has earlier stories in both fandoms as well.

From 2009: POEM (1056 words) by ishafel
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: RPF - 20th-21st c Arts and Sciences
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Frank O'Hara, Edward Gorey
Summary:

Frank and Ted's excellent adventure. 1948

What it says on the tin. I basically start making squeaking noises every time I reread the opening:

Listen, Ted. Enough. Enough with the alphabet already. We believe that you know it. Friday night, six inches of snow. (But that's CAMBRIDGE IN DECEMBER.)

There has to be a party somewhere. Something that doesn't involve tiny detailed black and white drawings of people who don't actually exist.

And then Frank doesn't shut up, and I imagine Ted burrowing deeper and deeper into a gigantic Edwardian fur coat, and it's just glorious, and only a bejeweled slice of fruitcake with a mug of good coffee could make the rereading better.

(Also, I miss Boston. Friends live there; friends of friends are moving there; I dreamed of some of those friends two nights ago, and had planned to see them two years ago, but now it's looking like it will be another two years before the stars miiiiight align. Which is better than never again, but still.)

Altogether Your World (9554 words) by Slantedlight
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Bran Davies/Will Stanton
Characters: Bran Davies, Will Stanton (Dark is Rising), Jane Drew
Summary:

Will Stanton has been watching for years, and now it seems there's something to see.

What I keep coming back to in this Yuletide 2020 story is the happy Will/Bran dynamic, where they're cheerfully sassing each other, as they did from their very first meeting. For instance, when Will hosts Bran at the place he's house-sitting . . .

"Speaking of kettles – tea or coffee?”

“Have you got the kind that percs in the kitchen, or do you make all the noises yourself?”

“Nothing but Nescafe’s best for you…”

“Tea it is, then,” Bran said easily, following him down the short hallway to the living room, and dropping his rucksack onto the floor.

And:

Bran struck a pose, lifting a foot onto the sofa, one hand on his hip, and the other flourished in the air, then held Will’s gaze and declaimed.

“Mi gerddaf gyda thi drwy weddill f'oes,
Pan fydd yr haul ar fryn neu'r dyddiau'n groes;
A phan ddaw'r alwad draw, pwy wyr pa awr,
Mi gerddaf gyda thi i’r freuddwyd fawr. ”*

He should have looked ridiculous, and he’d started with a mocking twist on his lips that suggested he’d meant to, but the light from the fire caught him so that his hair shone white-gold, and his eyes flashed with age and history, and for that minute he was the Pendragon again. There was a pause when he’d finished, until he tossed his head in dismissal and plonked himself back down on the couch beside Jane.

“Well I never,” Will said at last. “And do you speak Welsh?”

And they were off then – Bran launching himself across the table to Jane’s surprised shout, tussling and giggling until they were breathless.

---

Die ich retten kann is incapability87's German translation of "Those I Can Save," which I wrote for Snupin Santa 2007. That fic also sparked three delightful illustrations by Dido, featuring Hooch, Snape, Lupin, two kids, and a cow.

Dido's Assorted HP Gift Fanart by Didodikali
Chapter 3: Illos for Those I Can Save for Bronze Ribbons

---

I keep humming "Lo, How a Rose Is Blooming." It's used so well in When Harry Met Santa (the Norwegian postal service m/m romance par excellence), and last night I was caught up in a rendition by Sting and friends in a Durham Cathedral concert (about 18 minutes in).

Competence (15875 words) by ribbons

Chapters: 1/1

Fandom: England Series - K. J. Charles

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Relationships: Archie Curtis/Daniel da Silva, Fenella Carruth/Patricia Merton

Additional Tags: Attempted Sexual Assault, Post-Canon, Established Relationship, Spies & Secret Agents, Gun Violence, Judaism, rescue lesbians, Edwardian Period, Homophobia, Olympics, Dragging Yeats, Canon Jewish Character, Snark, Feelings, Literary References & Allusions, Ageism, Yuletide New Year's Resolutions Challenge


Summary:

Sometimes friendship means telling people what they don’t want to hear. And sometimes it means laughing at and with them.

[If you don't want to know anything about K.J. Charles's England World/Will Darling Adventures before reading them yourself, come back to this entry later. Since they're romance novels, I don't consider the mention of pairings = spoilers, especially given my lurid history of non-canonical shipping, but mileages do vary.]


Many things are going well -- sometimes astonishingly so -- but I have nonetheless been moody and apprehensive AF for more than a month, because, oh, I'm me (hello past sins and persistent demons) and the world abounds with supremacists and traitors and airheads. Good God almighty on a rusty skewer.

(The astonishing includes finally winning You Can't Win Jack, a tennis contest I'd been close-but-no-cigar in a number of times for more than a decade -- and you can tell I was moody off the charts because I didn't find out or see the congratulations for half a week, having silently taken a break from following either the second half of the USO or the forum.)

What I am congratulating myself on this morning is knowing my wiring well enough to know that if I could simply get an England World drabble posted, that would appease the bunny-chasing part of my brain that was opening my fic-scribbling folder every hour and let me get on with the other things that have to be thinged before I dive into full-barreled canon review and research. It ended up being 400 words . . .

Matter of Fact
G, Archie/Daniel, post-canon, doting, no plot

Until yesterday, the line I quote in the fic summary was arguably my favorite in Subtle Blood (hello, competence kink), but the one that has been ringing through my head the past two days is "You stupid bastard, you're true as steel." In Think of England, this speech may have been the first passage I bookmarked:

“Thirdly, and this is the important one: dead men. Dead men under the sun of Jacobsdal or floating down the Thames at night. Dead and smashed in the seas off Beachy Head, or in lonely rooms with a gun falling from their hands, or in the next war because of the secrets that have been sold. The Armstrongs have left a trail of blood for their own enrichment, and I intend to bring them to justice. And I am quite sure that you will stand with me to do it, whatever else happens, because if you are a man to put personal concerns before duty, then I have lost my judgement.”

"I intend to bring them to justice" is sharing the room in my brain that also has "Everyone who fought or resisted in World War I or II or the others had other things they could have done with their lives had it not been for supremacists, traitors, et al. Everyone who had the misfortune to be born in outright serfdom or slavery is a testament to the world being profoundly unfair" and "Your parents survived martial law and poverty. Get over yourself and get on with things."

But since I am also an unconquerably frivolous and hedonistic soul, there is also the Yuletide Fandom Promo post to be vastly amused by (I started laughing at the very first one and didn't stop, and I had been warned in advance that someone had nominated Sotheran's Twitter, but still... *wipes tears from eyes*). It occurred to me this morning that Yuletide is much like RPGs for me -- I'm too much of a control freak and hot mess to participate as a regular, but I love the lead-up (building characters, aye; actually playing them, nay) and once in a blue beaverish moon popping in to serve a morsel of mayhem.

Anyway, I've got to dedicate 14 hours to professional melodrama today (melodrama being the topic rather than the situation, fortunately), so off I go. I have a glass of water at hand and I slapped sunscreen on my face before sitting down, so that's at least two teensy steps toward getting back into a good groove.

I'm also wearing my phone as a pedometer, because my employer is dangling gift card raffle entries as an incentive to get in 7,000 per day. Which has not been happening with me yet, but it is helpfully informative to see just how sedentary I currently am, and to plot how I'm going to fix that once the melodrama has been curtained off.

Due 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, 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.

Happiness is snacking on homemade chocolate-covered orange peels (a gift handed to me last night after Lessons and Carols) and listening to the Beautiful Young Man laugh at a brutal video dissection of The Phantom Menace and making some gifts (baking, wrapping, writing...).

I'm virtuously staying away from Yuletide until the first frenzy is over - the server's groaning under the load, and I'm that hoping whatever's ailing the comment function will get sorted out by the time I do start bingeing on reading this year's offerings. I did compulsively refresh isityuletideyet.com last night until I went to bed, just because it was making me giggle. ("Pssst... I see you shaking your presents!" "I can't tell you how much I wish I had put a hit counter on this damn thing." Etc.)

Then again, it's not as if I'm caught up on any of the other fests, never mind my teetering stacks of offline reading. I admit part of me is simply eager to find out if and how some of the more brain-breaking requests got filled (for instance, Mardy's prompt for the "Total Eclipse of the Heart" video: Please oh please tell me what in the name of dancing ninjas is going on in this thing, and /why/? ).

In the meantime, though, there's a ficlet to finish and cranberry bread to bake. Happy feast-day, y'all, if feasting you be.

(1) meretricula's
four reasons Roger Federer wished the Japanese Davis Cup team would fall into a really deep hole (and one reason they weren't that bad after all). Tennis RPS / Prince of Tennis crossover, 2800 words, absolutely hysterical, and with mentions of the Spanish Davis Cup team as well. Its opening lines:

To be fair, Roger actually liked playing Echizen. The kid was good, he was getting better all the time, and the stretch of trying to beat him was satisfying. The problem was that whenever he played Echizen, he would almost inevitably have to talk to Echizen, and as soon as the brat started speaking Roger felt an extremely uncharitable urge to punch him in the mouth. Since Echizen was seventeen years old and less than five and a half feet tall, Roger thought that this might be problematic for his reputation.

(2) There's a teacher in Nevada seeking donations in order to purchase a gyotaku (rubber fish) printmaking set for her students.

(2a) The anonymous donor from LJ's fandom-of-one comm is still making contributions to charity in honor of New Year's Resolution fic. She or he donated $5 to the rubber fish project in honor of Deserving. This has made me ridiculously happy, as did his/her earlier donation to a tennis-equipment-for-kids project (now fully funded) in honor of Interrobang.

(2b) [blatant hinting] There are still 3625 prompts up for grabs at the Yuletide archive. You do not have to be a previous participant to play. You do not claim a prompt - you simply submit the story when it is done. (You do have to write the story specifically for NYR, and it has to be 1000 words minimum.) The open prompts currently include one for Harudaki (*cough* - yeah, it's mine) and others for Three Investigators, Bujold, the a-ha "Take on Me" video, and a bajillion manga/anime titles I've never even heard of...