All shall be revealed.
yuletide authors have been unmasked, so once again, it's time for the annual Yuletide post-mortem.
I wrote Lessons I Learned in the Dark for whiteraven1606. Covert Affairs is a new fandom all around - for me and for Yuletide - and, while it wasn't the assignment I was expecting at all, I had an absolute blast trying to climb inside this character's head. Auggie, in all his complexity and capability, is my favorite thing about the show, and playing up his very unique place within this world was something that really excited me. I got to inject some of my Auggie headcanon, and the running thread ended up being built on that. There was a period of wild panic for a while there - I'm a visual writer, and Auggie is a blind character. Finding ways to incorporate all the things he sees without sight turned out to be my favorite aspect of the story. Also unexpectedly fun: putting on my slash goggles for the canon review. It's amazing how little things - lines, glances, blocking, movement - can be interpreted when you look at them from a different angle, and interpreting the as-yet-unspoken history Auggie and Jai clearly have as a more-than-platonic one, even if it stems from different places for each of them, was easier to do within canon confines than I expected. Usually the fun in Yuletide, for me, is playing in sandboxes I've never set foot in before and probably never will again, but I have definite plans to revisit Auggie. He shares quite a few characteristics with the go-to boys I love so much, but his voice is altogether different, and I've never written anything quite like him before.
Then I lost my ever-loving mind and picked up a pinch hit. Creative (Non)Fiction, for keerawa, is pure, unadulterated cracktastic metafic. Abed, challenged with crafting a short story for class, decides to move from filming the Community gang to ficcing them, in nearly every fanfiction genre he can come up with. It consists almost entirely of banter and blatant trope abuse, which made me fear for my recipient's enjoyment - hir DYW letter mentioned an aversion to wingfic, tentaclefic, crackfic in general, and random pirate AUs, and running down the finished story was like a laundry list of Do Not Want (wings? Check. Pirates? Check. Crack? Check check check.). I even genderswapped. A monkey. But it came together in no time, lovely recipient seemed to enjoy it immensely, Abed was a blast and a half to write (as was the rest of the gang), and it's aaaaalmost taken the crown from "Requiem" as my most-commented single part of anything ever. So it ended well after all. :)
(It must be said that Community, as a whole, had consistently amazing fics this year. A good fifth of them had a side of noir (including mine), which was sort of priceless, but every single one was hilarious and adorable and absolutely in character. And since we're talking twenty-some-odd fics, that's a damn impressive feat.)
Many, many thanks to this year's ever-awesome support system: martinigrl, darkmuse_ic, attempt_unique and mjules (who taught me the art of a sex scene in two sentences). Could not have made it to the end without you all.
Also awesome - writing characters of color as part of Dark Agenda's Chromatic Yuletide collection! Warm welcomes to Abed, Troy, Shirley and Jai, who join Miranda Bailey, Zoe Washburne, Inara Serra, James Ellison, Victor Henrickson, Charles Gunn, Victor Stone, J'onn Jonzz, Alyssa Locke, Ronon Dex, and Teyla Emmagen in the land of PoC I've written thus far. And maybe Lorne, if green counts.
As you can see, this year's frenetic fication was sponsored by the letters C and A. I wrote an Auggie, an Abed, and two Annies. Another Yuletide down! See you next year.
I wrote Lessons I Learned in the Dark for whiteraven1606. Covert Affairs is a new fandom all around - for me and for Yuletide - and, while it wasn't the assignment I was expecting at all, I had an absolute blast trying to climb inside this character's head. Auggie, in all his complexity and capability, is my favorite thing about the show, and playing up his very unique place within this world was something that really excited me. I got to inject some of my Auggie headcanon, and the running thread ended up being built on that. There was a period of wild panic for a while there - I'm a visual writer, and Auggie is a blind character. Finding ways to incorporate all the things he sees without sight turned out to be my favorite aspect of the story. Also unexpectedly fun: putting on my slash goggles for the canon review. It's amazing how little things - lines, glances, blocking, movement - can be interpreted when you look at them from a different angle, and interpreting the as-yet-unspoken history Auggie and Jai clearly have as a more-than-platonic one, even if it stems from different places for each of them, was easier to do within canon confines than I expected. Usually the fun in Yuletide, for me, is playing in sandboxes I've never set foot in before and probably never will again, but I have definite plans to revisit Auggie. He shares quite a few characteristics with the go-to boys I love so much, but his voice is altogether different, and I've never written anything quite like him before.
Then I lost my ever-loving mind and picked up a pinch hit. Creative (Non)Fiction, for keerawa, is pure, unadulterated cracktastic metafic. Abed, challenged with crafting a short story for class, decides to move from filming the Community gang to ficcing them, in nearly every fanfiction genre he can come up with. It consists almost entirely of banter and blatant trope abuse, which made me fear for my recipient's enjoyment - hir DYW letter mentioned an aversion to wingfic, tentaclefic, crackfic in general, and random pirate AUs, and running down the finished story was like a laundry list of Do Not Want (wings? Check. Pirates? Check. Crack? Check check check.). I even genderswapped. A monkey. But it came together in no time, lovely recipient seemed to enjoy it immensely, Abed was a blast and a half to write (as was the rest of the gang), and it's aaaaalmost taken the crown from "Requiem" as my most-commented single part of anything ever. So it ended well after all. :)
(It must be said that Community, as a whole, had consistently amazing fics this year. A good fifth of them had a side of noir (including mine), which was sort of priceless, but every single one was hilarious and adorable and absolutely in character. And since we're talking twenty-some-odd fics, that's a damn impressive feat.)
Many, many thanks to this year's ever-awesome support system: martinigrl, darkmuse_ic, attempt_unique and mjules (who taught me the art of a sex scene in two sentences). Could not have made it to the end without you all.
Also awesome - writing characters of color as part of Dark Agenda's Chromatic Yuletide collection! Warm welcomes to Abed, Troy, Shirley and Jai, who join Miranda Bailey, Zoe Washburne, Inara Serra, James Ellison, Victor Henrickson, Charles Gunn, Victor Stone, J'onn Jonzz, Alyssa Locke, Ronon Dex, and Teyla Emmagen in the land of PoC I've written thus far. And maybe Lorne, if green counts.
As you can see, this year's frenetic fication was sponsored by the letters C and A. I wrote an Auggie, an Abed, and two Annies. Another Yuletide down! See you next year.