dbskyler

I have some vague ideas for my Yuletide fic, but nothing that has really sparked yet. In the meantime I have done some canon review, I have arranged to get access to another piece of canon to review, and I just realized that some canon that I already own might also be helpful to review. Hoping that all this reviewing will help spark a fic.

Speaking of Yuletide, I'm glad I didn't request "The Good Place" this year because I've been disappointed in the current season. It's gone from being a funny show that occasionally touches on ethics to an ethics show that is occasionally funny. At least they're still changing things up enough for me to hold out hope that it will start being good again soon.

And speaking of disappointing television, I'm very sad about how much I'm disliking the current season of Doctor Who. But it looks like the next few episodes weren't written by Chris Chibnall, so perhaps at least one of them will be good.

My most recent Yuletide fic, Janet@12358W (Status = Happy), is now officially my most popular fic on AO3. I do think it's a good fic, but I don't believe it's the best thing I've ever written. I don't even believe it's the best thing I've written for Yuletide. The comments and kudos mostly exist because the fandom, "The Good Place," was a popular fandom for Yuletide last year. I never before realized how much the fandom drives Yuletide response.

Speaking of AO3, I've continued to practice my French by seeking out fanfic written in French. When I like the fic, I am now also trying to give the author a comment in French, and trying to say more than "J'ai aimé ça" ("I liked this"). Writing French continues to be much harder than reading French, and I am still relying a great deal on Google Translate, but I can tell that my French is improving, which is a good feeling.

Finally, I came across a Doctor Who version of a song from "Hamilton" on Youtube that I just have to share: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X67xMJx17NA

There is only one Sarah Jane Adventures fic in Yuletide this year, but it is for ME (for me, for me, for me!) and it is absolutely wonderful:

Title: Bloomin' Aliens
By: Anonymous
Summary: There are aliens at Park Vale and only Gita can save the school.

Great plot, great characterizations, my favorite SJA villain, and Gita is awesome as only Gita can be. Go read it!

I just saw the second episode of the second season of "The Good Place," and OMG this show! I would say that I absolutely did not see that coming, but the truth is I absolutely never see anything coming on this show. It is continuously innovative and surprising in all the best ways.

In other news, I have a new job! I really like it so far, which is fantastic. But as I'm not sure yet how demanding it will be, I'm not sure if I should commit to Yuletide. I'm really in the mood to do it this year, though, especially as I didn't participate last year, and I see stuff in the tag set that I would like to request and offer. I guess I have another week to decide.

And, just to bring this post around full circle -- "The Good Place" is in the tag set, and I am toying with requesting it even though I have no idea how to request something that keeps upending everything you think you know about the show. Imagine if last year I had requested back story on Real Eleanor? Although she's become a very interesting character now, and I wouldn't mind back story on her at all this year, but it would be very different than last year's back story. At least, as of episode 2 . . . who knows where they're going with this whole thing? Certainly not me.

Flist, I am once again having trouble finding 4 fandoms to offer for Yuletide. So, I'm looking for suggestions! What should I consider offering?

My favorite thing to do for Yuletide is write humor, so I am particularly looking for humorous fandoms, or fandoms with a cracky premise, where recipients are pretty likely to be requesting something in that tone. I realize you won't know if I'm familiar with a particular fandom or not, but if you think of something, suggest it, because maybe I know it!

Basically, I'm asking: anything I might be overlooking in the tag set? Or any 5-minute fandoms out there that I should check out?

FYI, you can find the tag set here.

For the first time this year, I wrote for a 5-minute fandom for Yuletide. In fact, it's really more of a 1-minute fandom; the whole thing is contained in this Tumblr post. The name of the fandom is "Incompetent Time-Travelling Saxophone Haters," and the conceit is that since Adolphe Sax (inventor of the saxophone) had multiple mishaps growing up, there must have been time-travelling saxophone haters out to kill him before he invented the saxophone, who must also have been incompetent because they didn't succeed.

thisbluespirit told me about the fandom when I was looking for something else to offer, and at first I was sure that I couldn't write for something like that, but after giving it some thought, I decided to offer it. I knew it would mean writing original characters, which I don't usually do, but I kind of like when Yuletide gets me to do new things, and as it turned out, my recipient's prompt really inspired me and it was one of my easiest Yuletide writing experiences ever. I also really like how it turned out: From the Desk of [Insert Mad Scientist Name Here].

Ironically, the fandom was originally wrangled with a parent tag under "Celebrities and Real People," and I was really afraid for awhile that I was going to have a repeat of last year, when I wrote Five(ish) Doctors Reboot fic that got wrangled as Doctor Who RPF, so no one could find it as its own fandom. I had visions of Incompetent Time-Travelling Saxophone Haters being renamed to "19th Century Belgian Musicians" or something equally obscure, which would also have been very ironic as Adolphe Sax isn't even a character in my fic. So I emailed the mods for the first time ever, and they were super nice and super helpful, and as a result, the fandom also got "Other Media" as a parent tag, and in the Yuletide collection the fandom actually appeared as it was nominated, which was a huge relief. Because, to be honest, I'm still not over what happened with my Five(ish) Doctors fic last year.

Yuletide reveals have happened, so I can claim ownership of my fic! Here's what I wrote for the main collection:

Title: From the Desk of [Insert Mad Scientist Name Here]
Fandom: Incompetent Time-Travelling Saxophone Haters
Rating: All ages
Characters: Original characters
Summary: It began, innocently enough, with an email address.
A/N: Written for team_fen for Yuletide 2015.

"Incompetent Time-Travelling Saxophone Haters" is from this Tumblr post. Thanks go to those people for creative inspiration. Thanks also go to Starrie Wolf for fantastic help on the laboratory chemicals used here for saxophone-hating purposes.

Finally, many thanks as always to Persiflage, my wonderful beta. Additional special thanks go to lost_spook, who introduced me to the Incompetent Time-Travelling Saxophone Haters Tumblr post.

( story here )

( Face the Raven spoilers )

After all my hesitation about doing Yuletide this year and not being matchable, I got a great match and had the easiest writing experience I've ever had. My fic is back from beta and I think it might be ready to post. And it's not even December yet! How did this happen?

In the meantime, I'm late on my promised contribution to the 52nd anniversary fanworkathon at who_at_50. Partly this is because I got on a roll with my Yuletide fic and didn't want to interrupt it, and partly it's because I have no idea what to post. My original idea was to do a kind of retrospective on SJA, talking about all the little nods to Classic Who (plus some big ones -- SO glad that we got the Brig in SJA!), but now I'm wondering if I should write fic or something instead. Of course, if I try to write fic, there's no telling how long that will take me. Except that I am apparently on a roll, as I just finished my Yuletide fic in record (for me) time.

I have enjoyed Yuletide every time I've done it, but I'm just not feeling the Yuletide spirit this year. I am especially depressed about the fact that no one seems to be sharing my fandoms. I know, it's silly to moan about the smallness of your fandom for a small fandom exchange, but here we are.

( cut for length )

Yuletide is over, and I've posted my fic to my journal. The fandom was Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, which was a fandom I did have to think about before deciding to offer, as RPF is one of my squicks. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I really was completely fine with writing Five(ish) Doctors fic, because the characters are so obviously not meant to be the real people. (I'm pretty sure that John Barrowman is not a closet heterosexual.) Ironically, AO3 disagrees with me, and my fic is officially tagged as Doctor Who RPF, and although I did send a ticket to support about it, the wrangler refuses to change it. I guess, coming from the RPF side, Five(ish) Doctors feels like a cracky RPF sub-genre? I wouldn't know since I'm not familiar with the RPF culture at all. Anyway, hopefully the people who actually like Five(ish) Doctors will still manage to find it, and either way it's a Yuletide fandom, so the readership is bound to be small.

Once I got assigned Five(ish) Doctors, I had a blast writing it. (Well, except for the times when I got stuck, but that goes for all my fic.) My recipient gave me a great prompt, and told me to have fun, and I really did. And it's something I would never have written if not for Yuletide, which for me is a large part of the exchange. Even if it was once again Whoniverse-related, like almost all of the rest of my fic.

This time around, my fic actually was recced by someone on my flist while it was still anonymous, which was an interesting experience. Basically, I discovered that it didn't make any difference. I guess I've always felt that when I get a rec from someone on my flist, it's not because I'm the author, but because they really like the fic, and the only thing being on my flist contributes is that they're more likely to have seen the fic. So my reaction to the rec was feeling happy, but not at all "I can be sure they're not pretending to like it just to be nice because they don't know I'm the author." In other words, I don't think anyone on my flist is ever just being nice? ; ) But I mean that in the best possible way.